[Theory Thursday #2]

[sythyry]

Mirrored from Sythyry.

Though my prior theory of cisaffection and transaffection was quite elegant and straightforward, it doesn’t seem to be terribly good at either describing people (e.g., people who are, say, primarily interested in powerful mages of any species, or certain other quite disreputable acts), nor at predicting what they will do (e.g., the exotic prime species get relatively little attention from most traff-folk, contra theory).

My previous theory could be described pictorally thus, where the entire block represents the behavior of all people, and the ?’s are choices that are poorly described by it.

?	?	?	?	?
?	Classical Transaffection			?
?	?	?	?	?
?	?	?	?	?
Cisaffection	?	?	?	?

Unfortunately, my new theory looks more like this, where the “–” marks a behavior that is not strictly cisaffectionate, but may be anything else:

–	–	–	–	–
–	–	–	–	–
–	–	–	–	–
–	–	–	–	–
Cisaffection	–	–	–	–

I suppose this may be considered an advance. It does cover all possible choices of behavior and desire — by definition, for the outer box is defined to be the set of all such choices. I do not know precisely what this set is. I am not at all sure I want to learn what all the corners are like, even. The advance, such as it is, is admitting that (contra my previous theories) the outer box is quite large, and must not be reduced to a couple of little sub-boxes, regardless of how plausible they may seem to people who are trying to live in them.

I daresay that Prof. Plunatti, for one person I have had a long but slow correspondence-duel with on this topic, will be glad to see me concede defeat.

Still, this leaves me in a certain amount of uncertainty about what to do next. A theory that says “In few if any cases is sexuality a simple matter; it will generally require a paragraph to describe an individual’s essential tendencies, and even then the person may violate those tendencies occasionally without invalidating the paragraph” has very little predictive value.

Nor can it be used as the foundation of a community such as Castle Wrong, which is one of my immediate needs.

(I must defend myself on this point — I was not wholly ignorant of this theory before today, or even before this century. I dismissed it as useless, preferring a theory that had some intellectual power. And some community-building power: if traff-folk all have the same sexual orientation, then it is sensible to weld them into a community and work for common goals. If we are all fundamentally individuals without anything in particular in common, then we are divided ab inito, and devoid of natural allies. Whatever I may conclude privately — or in the non-privacy of my own diary — I do not wish to announce a theoretical advance that, fundamentally, attacks Castle Wrong.)

[Pace the people who gave Sythyry good and useful answers. The lizard may yet get to them, but zie is slow. -bb]

Comments

[bloofox.livejournal.com]

It does have some community building power, though. Consider that in the lower left-hand corner you have your Standard Ciff Sorts. Immediately around them you have some that may be 'not quite right' but don't get commented on.

And then radiating out you have those on whom the Shaming Eye of Society looks with disapproval and who must wear the Badge of Markedness. What all the traff folks have in common isn't a singular orientation, their common feature is being lumped together as 'traff' by others.

Out of curiosity, how similar is the common view of 'traff' to your view of a 'libertine' with regard to lust rather than love?

[rowyn]

Defining people by what they are is generally more powerful than defining them by what they are not, it's true. Nonetheless, all of the people at Castle Wrong do have something in common: society as a whole disapproves of them and/or their behavior. This definition encompasses even the clearly-not-traff such as Grinwipey.

You could define Castle Wrong as "Primes whom society spurns even though the Primes in question are not harming society". Unfortunately, this requires you to define "harming society" for yourself, since some people might argue that traff behavior undermines the fabric of society by creating non-fertile unions in place of fertile ones (or whatever). You might be able to substitute "doing anything illegal in Vheshrame" for "harming society", though. That's probably overly broad.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

How about Castle Wrong as "Trying to rescue people who want to be happy, but other people don't think should be happy the way they want to be happy?" Sythry, despite zirself tends to have the White Knight Complex... or if Zie doesn't, Phaniet does.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not doing that for everyone! I want to help traff-folk. Which would be a lot easier if I knew what that meant. And if I was sure I was one myself.

[kensan-oni.livejournal.com]

Why do you have to be the only person to define Traff, though? Why not ask your friends? You have a whole ship of them!

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Well, how about keep it to "people with odd genders, sexes, and sexual identities, with the caveat to only accept folk who wish to do others no true harm in being who they are, and also accepting other wrongfolk of non sexual sorts on a case by case basis."

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

For political and social purposes, a broad category may contain several smaller categories. In the universe my body inhabits, "queer" spans "gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender" and sometimes other subcategories of preference. It is moderately effective for unifying people against an outside threat ... not perfectly effective, though.

Re: Well...

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Gay/lesbian are fairly equivalent to the "classical" notion of "traff". Bisexuality seems to have an interesting parallel on the Tree in those who will bond with their own AND other species(multiaffectionate?): the cissies see them as traff, the traff see them as cissies, neither group wants to be too closely associated with them.

Transgender also has an interesting parallel there. Still staying with the World Tree tendency to emphasize species over gender, there was, of course, Mynthe(put the umlaut on there, can't type it on this keyboard), who would have been quite happy with a same species lover... if that same species were Orren or Rassimel instead of Herethroy.

Any of these would probably be seen by polite WT society at large as sexually deviant or "wrong". So there's still a theme to gather people around - so long as those people are mindful that some of their number might occasionally enjoy the things that are "normal", and shouldn't be shunned because of it. (Even if it was at least partly in jest, I'm thinking of the reaction to the bells-with-kissing-Sleeth way back in the early days of the "vacation". And Inconnu's "As if *I* would touch an *Orren!*" or however he put it doesn't seem unusual among the political traff.)

Re: Well...

[kris-schnee.livejournal.com]

I've found people who seem to want to abolish categories for this sort of thing, so that whatever they do can't be condemned... because the words for even describing it are poorly-understood. For instance, a person argued to me that "genderqueer" should describe anyone who doesn't conform strongly to society's stereotypes of male and female -- meaning it applies to almost anyone -- meaning that there should be no distinction between a man who doesn't like football and a man who's attracted to livestock. Sythyry's original categories didn't perfectly describe the people zie deals with, but I'm leery of how zir new theory doesn't yet draw any useful distinctions at all.

Re: Well...

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

The main problem with the original categories was that people thought too rigidly with them. They didn't allow for deviations from the "standard" of those categories. They could be useful guidelines - not entirely predictive, but better than nothing; the problem was that the predictions kept getting applied to people for whom they had been shown to be inappropriate.

Re: Well...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

"People" being "me". I wouldn't say that everyone was that fussy about the standards.

Re: Well...

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Maybe not, but some of my remark elsewhere was meant to point out that even other people in your household seem to think so. And you got that line of thought from other people, way back when. There was a time when you allowed for the possibility of being in neither rigid category; then you adopted the local custom and identified as firmly "traff".

Re: Well...

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

That was before I really thought about it much!

...

Which doesn't at all mean that the thinking was right, or even useful.

[redbird]

Maybe Castle Wrong should be for {trans people who have problems with their families or society because they're trans}. That might not include, say, an orren who is attracted to both orren and rassimels, but has made a conventional orren marriage in which she is happy, and doesn't feel the need to tell her spouses that her fantasy life includes members of another species. But it would include someone with the same orientation who had fallen in love with a rassy and been kicked out by their family.

That's not the strongest definition of orientation, but it might be a useful definition of what Castle Wrong is about.

[sythyry.livejournal.com]

And the first case is precisely the sort of person I was trying to avoid.
Though avoiding them by defining them out of existance is rather a mistake.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Why not adopt something my world has done, such as use something like "queer" as a catch-all term for 'sexually weird and considered wrong in the eyes of traditional society'? Open castle wrong to ALL folk who have some sexual identity that ostracises them from mainstream society, with the unifying factor being a.) it's not traditional sexual behaviour, desire, or identity, and b.) traditional society at large considers it wrong and not appropriate behaviour?

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

However, society doesn't consider ALL sexual options unifiable socially under 'queer', though. There are some that queer-folk ostracise because it *actually harms people*, or is the sort of thing where giving informed consent is impossible or doesn't happen. But folk can fairly easily simulate those things with a person who does give true informed consent.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Then there are some things like bestiality or necrophilia where no one is harmed but it's sooooo icky that even queer folk don't want to be associated with it.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Hence why I mentioned "not able to give informed consent OR folk are harmed" because that pretty much takes out most of the nasty possibilities, like those two fall in the informed consent thing.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Neither case involves anyone who'd *need* to give informed consent.

They are both basically Extreme Masturbation, though. Which is usually separate from gay or straight.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Plenty of places give at least some rights to animals, if less than to sentient beings.

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Which is why they need the protection of someplace like Castle Wrong. But they aren't going to get it because they're icky.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

I was hoping we could Really Not Talk About That... siiigh...

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Maybe you could make people take an oath that they would act traff while identifying as traff, with some defined penalty if they strayed into cisaffection or gave people trouble over being traff or whatever else would make traff-folk uncomfortable.

Then you could just penalize yourself and stop feeling guilty! Or not penalize yourself if a secret affair is okay. Which it might be, if the goal is mostly making traff-folk feel welcome.

The idea basically would be to expand the categories as naturally as possible and let people who might not *really* be in either (eg, classical libertines) choose which one to be in for a while.

[shurhaian.livejournal.com]

Honestly, for all I've railed against the duality of thought, your original notions weren't horrible. They weren't entirely adequate, but you didn't need to toss them out entirely. There are doubtless people who fit the "classic" definition, and people who are closer to it than not but don't quite fit into it(attracted to a subset of primes which is not "all but their own species", and may in fact include their own, or ALL the prime species).

Let specific people arrange themselves loosely so that people have a rough idea what to expect. They can make the specifics plain as they get to know potential friends/partners.

[gavinfox.livejournal.com]

Here's an idea... how about TWO models...

One that is made to be ACCURATE but not really *predictive* -- ie, it describes behavior as accurately and precisely as possible, and has lots of categories...

...and one that is made to be PREDICTIVE and USEFUL, by actually making broadly generalizable predictions about behaviour of PEOPLE (not 'a person', but 'people'), but is specifically described as not being actually accurate or precise about any given person?