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At this risk of making pointlessly technical and obscure what is already elegantly represented by this nice rhetorical question in the post, this was interesting enough that I cannot resist. It is interesting to model sexual “orientation” as not a position along some axis but rather as a vector in a high dimensional space of many axes, none of which are mutually exclusive. This is a much more intuitively fitting model indeed
At the risk of doing this much more so, allow me to disagree in detail.
I think modeling sexuality (or rather attraction) with many dimensions makes it much less understandable for me. Try visualizing a 10-or-so dimensional space.
Of course, every model is wrong. That’s the definition of a model after all, simplifying an infinitely complex reality until it is usable to get information.
The most dimensions I feel like you need for most attraction modeling is two: X-axis: male <—> female, Y-axis: male-presenting <—> female-presenting, plus maybe a third dimension for attraction strength (modelled as color). Also, attraction would be an area instead of a point. Also also, this doesn’t account for those whose sexual and romantic attraction differs; they get two plots.
Counter argument, attraction exists on an infinite dimension hyperspace encompassing all of time and space and all past, current, and future configurations of matter and energy. We try to fit the world to our models but the world doesn’t concern itself with our musings. Attraction is on a case by case basis for all of us anyway.
Agree, no model is accurate. The question is when is a model accurate enough to be usable?
Side note: hyperspace isn’t a real term, there’s nothing that distinguishes it from a “normal” infinitely dimensional space.
Side side note: The space would only need to be finitely dimensional since there are only finite humans and finitely many factors that can affect you (since you can only ever have finite experiences). The finite number for a “perfect” model would have to be incomprehensibly large though.
A surprisingly simple model can be accurate enough to be usable, but you need to understand the limitations and assumptions of it. You need to understand when the model is prudent and when it gives erroneous results. The problem with models of gender and attraction is people take them at face value and assume that they’re complete, when in fact they are almost all deeply flawed in one way or another. Ignoring those flaws creates blindspots and bias, which ultimately hurts everyone, but hurts individuals who fall inside the blindspots or who become victims of bias most of all. Anyone who goes through a mechanical engineering program will know that steam isn’t an ideal gas, but that doesn’t stop an ignorant layperson from assuming it is and hurting themselves and others as a result.
What if I am attracted to trans girls with huge cocks, or beefcake lumberjack guys who are into chastity?
Gender itself isn’t a neat tidy line from Male to Female that people fit on, it’s more complicated. And if gender itself is more complicated than a line, how can we use a line to model attraction to it?
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That’s why I didn’t attempt to model gender but rather attraction.
Since gender is more complicated, you would have to reduce the dimension of someone’s “true” gender to this model, losing some information (such as the exact correlation) and projecting them onto multiple points. For example, the lumberjack guy would be projected onto two opposed points in “masculine presenting” and “feminine presenting”. If your attraction area doesn’t encompass both these points you are not attracted to him.
Also, models are simplifications. Since I am not a sociologist, I do not need a highly complex model trying to achieve 99.9% accuracy - nor would I be able to grasp it. A simple one, achieving something like 95% accuracy is sufficient.
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