[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

[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...