I'd like help from some fellow languaphiles

[Zinegata]

and again, I never made that equivocation.

Lying shit. Look up and read what you posted yourself.

and while you didn't technically say it's poor people's own fault they're poor, you did imply it's their own fault that they're fat, unhealthy and dead:

You're such a lying shit I don't even need to go to another thread to show you did make that statement.

[Nicklance]

Another thread destroyed...

[DragonChild]

See: http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51280

Or in other words:

Both of you petty, moronic numbskulls need to shut the fuck up.

When you want to fight with someone, MAKE A NEW GODDAMN THREAD!

[CatharzGodfoot]

When you guys want to argue like this again, how about keeping it to PMs?

[Zinegata]

We've resolved it in the other thread.

Sorry.





But he started it! >_> <_<

[Username17]

So my Kinsey rating is HARD GAY.

Interesting fact: HARD GAY is straight. Also: an attention whore.

In an effort to talk about the original discussion point: terminology is not consistently used. By anyone. People have a wide variety of sexual proclivities and having a small number of words to talk about them is unrevealing. However, using a large amount of words to talk about them is confusing, and made doubly so by the fact the people won't even agree on what the individual words in the lexicon actually mean.

Attempting to nail down sexual preference terminology is like trying to nail Jello to a wall. Basically all you can hope for is to use the words that are used in the circles you travel in and hope that other people can figure it out. And accept that when you're talking about anything specific or obscure, that you will have to explain yourself to people. Often several times.

It's just unreasonable to expect that you can talk about "Looners" without having to stop and explain that the word refers to people who get sexual gratification by watching women pop balloons. It's a fairly specific word, but outside of a fairly narrow context it is not a particularly useful word, because most people don't know what it means. This is actually less helpful in most forms of communication than simply using words whose meanings are overly broad - like "heterosexual". Sure, heterosexual is a category so vast and untamed that it actually includes Looners (who are male) as well as a wide variety of other fetishists whose particular kinks happen to involve the use of one or more women (if they are men) xor men (if they are women). But it's seriously more useful than "Looners" because the first job of any word is to convey meaning. Which more specific sexual preference designator words generally don't.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

So what you're basically saying is that it's not worth the effort to make a little platform out of nails to place your Jello® on?

[Prak]

I was thinking of a bucket, actually

[Username17]

So what you're basically saying is that it's not worth the effort to make a little platform out of nails to place your Jello® on?

Not if you want anyone to understand what you are doing.

-Username17

[CatharzGodfoot]

So what you're basically saying is that it's not worth the effort to make a little platform out of nails to place your Jello® on?

Not if you want anyone to understand what you are doing.

-Username17

Fair enough.

[Dean]

See I think all of you are in search of perfection here, or in the very least something without flaws. But I think that creation of a small increase of terminology for bisexuals would be of benefit in more clearly transferring meaning, and while not solving almost ANY of the problems of identifying sexuality in individuals in a society I still think it would has use and a value as a -word-. I think the same could be said of the usefulness of the word "Looners" if as large a population of men were "Looners" who couldn't use that word but simply had to use "Heterosexual" to try to encompass what they were as there are women who are "Sexually attracted primarily to men but with a lesser but still considerable sexual interest in women" who are forced to use "Bisexual" to try to encompass the former sentence.

I think there would be a use in these words. And I think that words can be very very powerful and that by naming something you can grant it considerable traction that it never had before.

[Username17]

All the titles of "homosexual", "heterosexual", and "bisexual" are for is to give a first approximation of an answer to "Can I hit that?"

That is, if some dude is homosexual, your chances of hitting that are, as a woman, essentially zero. That's important to know. If the dude is hetero- or bi-sexual, your chances of hitting that are merely very low. Which is fine. Most people you meet are never going to reach under your skirt. But having a word which quickly and concisely determines whether you have a snowball's chance in hell is convenient and useful.

Having a word that indicates that the guy is more attracted to dudes than ladies is rather pointless. It would be like having a word that indicated his general preference for blonds over redheads or whether he wanted "yes fatties" or "no". If he is willing to bang women at all, then he gets one of the two tags that indicate that women have a chance of scoring. The number of reasons it could end up not working out are innumerate - from incompatible political or religious beliefs all the way to incompatible sexual fetishes. And there are really too many important ways for the hook up to fail to make it useful to have a lexical term for each reason why.

There are 3.5 billion women in the world. And this year I will probably only be sleeping with one of them. My hitting that percentage is therefore 2.85*10^-8%. And of all the reasons why I'm not sleeping with all the billions of women I'm not sleeping with this year, there isn't time in the day to even list a word for all of them. So there's no point in bothering to make up a word in the first place.

-Username17

[Prak]

except there are already terms that serve this end rather well.. "bi-male/female/no preference," "hetero/homo-leaning bisexual," bicurious" (when scorn isn't heaped upon it), and even just "queer" (which seems to be getting more use as a general "whatever makes me happy" or "to hell with labels" term than to mean just "gay," lately)

http://www.darcomic.org/2007/12/11/dykewithboyfriend/
http://www.darcomic.org/2008/11/11/titles/
http://www.darcomic.org/2009/06/23/identity/

[CatharzGodfoot]

except there are already terms that serve this end rather well.. "bi-male/female/no preference," "hetero/homo-leaning bisexual," bicurious" (when scorn isn't heaped upon it), and even just "queer" (which seems to be getting more use as a general "whatever makes me happy" or "to hell with labels" term than to mean just "gay," lately)

http://www.darcomic.org/2007/12/11/dykewithboyfriend/
http://www.darcomic.org/2008/11/11/titles/
http://www.darcomic.org/2009/06/23/identity/

Your links seem to support the idea that having lots of terms for various sexual orientations isn't useful.

Also, based on Frank's logic it should really be "Gay, Straight, Bi, or Asexual/Married".

[Prak]

sorry, they were more meant to support the "queer doesn't mean just gay anymore" thing...

edit: also, this is bugging me, I think it should be "linguiphiles", not "languaphiles"...

[Maj]

For what it's worth, one of the 847 "D&D: SEX edition" books lists a scale of Gay - Bi-Gyno - Bi - Bi-Andro - Straight (female) and Gay - Bi-andro - Bi - Bi-gyno - Straight (male). It also has a scale for how voracious you are (libido/sexual appetite/sluttiness). Basically you can have a sexual alignment, which is less stupid than the current one.

Holy shit... you could have Detect Lesbian as a spell. That would be so awesome. That's without getting into Smite Slut, Smite Them HARD.

This is awesome.

[Josh_Kablack]

My understanding of the existing terms:

Hetero/Straight/Breeder: Someone who partners with opposite sex exclusively (or very nearly exclusively)

Meterosexual: Male who partners with opposite sex very nearly exclusively, but has a number of appearance and personality traits culturally associated with gay men and/or straight women.

Reterosexual: Male who partners with women exclusively, and also has a number of appearance and personality traits culturally associated with men, manliness and machismo.

Gay: Partners with same sex preferentially.

Homosexual: Partners with same sex preferentially. because of confused greek and latin root words, more commonly used to describe males that females, but can be applied to either

Flaming / Fabulous: Male who partners with other males nearly exclusively and projects a number of appearance and personality traits culturally associated with homosexuality.

Lesbian: Woman who partners primarily with other women.

Bisexual: Partners with either sex. May or may not have a preference for one or the other

Bi-Curious: Person with limited sexual experience primarily with one gender, but is interested in persueing experience with the other gender.

Transgender(ed)/Tranny/Trans/Transman/Transwoman/Passer/etc : Person who attempts to modify their life to act and be treated more like the other gender. This encompasses a wide range of experiences (including some individuals who for biological reasons do not fall neatly into either sex -see: Intersex, Ambigious Genetalia, XY females, etc) and due to cultural biases such individuals are often highly sensitive about gender issues and their own identity. This results in confusion over terminology and many unintentional offendings. Josh advises not using this term directly for any specific individual and instead using the "call them what they say they want to be called" rule if you want to be polite and using "hey, asshole" if want to offend.

Queer: Not straight. Can be anything else and seems to be used by those unsure about their own sexuality.

Asexual: Not interested in sex. May or may not still be interested in relationships, romance hugging/kissing.

Opportunistically gay/Bi or Situationally gay/Bi: Someone who believes that they have a strong sexual and romantic preference for the opposite sex, but has a stronger preference for just having sex and will therefore engage in same-sex acts when opposite sex partners are not available/interested. Some such individuals will hold their same sex pairings to be merely physical and therefore lesser than their opposite sex relationships; others will attempt to equivocate with unfathomable semantics how they are NOT GAY, because they only do X and not Y.


Of course it should be obvious that my understanding in limited for those terms which do not describe my own sexual preferences and experiences. And of course the meaning of "partner" in this post is vague, which just highlights the difficulty of talking about it.

[Crissa]

Breeders refers to those with children. Can be used against anyone with a child from their loins. Flamer can refer to any guy with that behavior pattern; just as there are diesel dykes who are straight (tomboy).

-Crissa

[violence in the media]

Breeder also seems pejorative, compared to Straight or Hetero.

Can you even be a diesel dyke if you're straight? Wouldn't that definitonally make you not a dyke? Why would tomboy be a subset of diesel dyke, instead of the other way around?

[Josh_Kablack]

Well that is not how **I** understand those terms. Around here "breeder" can be and is used to apply to anyone hetero, whether or not they have kids.

But googling "diesel dyke" led me to a couple of obvious collections of existent sexual terminology and slang

http://lesbianlife.about.com/lr/lesbian ... y/69086/3/

http://gaylife.about.com/od/gayslang/Gay_Slang.htm

[Ramnza]

[The Associate Fence Builder Speaks]
So long as we can stay on topic this thread remains open. Anymore tantrums and I will shut it down.

[/The Associate Fence Builder Speaks]

[PoliteNewb]

Well that is not how **I** understand those terms. Around here "breeder" can be and is used to apply to anyone hetero, whether or not they have kids.

But googling "diesel dyke" led me to a couple of obvious collections of existent sexual terminology and slang

http://lesbianlife.about.com/lr/lesbian ... y/69086/3/

http://gaylife.about.com/od/gayslang/Gay_Slang.htm

Interesting...there is another slang term on that first website that seems to address the OP's goal: heteroflexible.

http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/otherfu ... exible.htm

Wouldn't that meet the definition for someone who is primarily attracted to one, but open to the other?

[ubernoob]

Well that is not how **I** understand those terms. Around here "breeder" can be and is used to apply to anyone hetero, whether or not they have kids.

But googling "diesel dyke" led me to a couple of obvious collections of existent sexual terminology and slang

http://lesbianlife.about.com/lr/lesbian ... y/69086/3/

http://gaylife.about.com/od/gayslang/Gay_Slang.htm

Interesting...there is another slang term on that first website that seems to address the OP's goal: heteroflexible.

http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/otherfu ... exible.htm

Wouldn't that meet the definition for someone who is primarily attracted to one, but open to the other?

Oh wow. Definitely stealing that term to use.