Check out these awesome new words to replace “homosexual” and “heterosexual” (and everything in between).
“Androphilia describes sexual attraction to men or masculinity;
gynephilia describes the sexual attraction to women or femininity.[1]”
This way, being attracted to one’s own gender, or one’s opposite gender, isn’t even a thing! The only relevant piece of information is what you are into. You could of course, invent more words, as long as they end in “philia”
You could say “I’m feeling rather gynephilic today, because I just watched a movie starring Angelina Jolie.” or "In general I’m more of an androphiliac, but. I had the most gynephilic dream about you last night. "
[1]“Androphilia and gynephilia,” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
Interesting words. I may start using them.
However, practically speaking, androphelia or gynephilia don’t stand for the same thing as homo/hetrosexual thus doesn’t actually replace them.
Did you make them up?
Well, when I say replace, I don’t mean that they “literally translate,” but that they could replace the function of the words homosexual/heterosexual/gay/straight etc. Meaning that instead of saying “I’m gay,” a man could say “I’m androphilic,” thus the term “androphilic” would replace the word “gay” in the context of its usage.
No, I did not make them up, but I’ve always preferred to think of myself and others as liking boys or liking girls or liking both or liking neither or liking androgynous clowns or… etc etc etc.
There used to be an Acronym (or Initialism) of LGBT, representing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transsexual. It’s now LGBTIQ, with the addition of Intersex and Queer.
Expect it to one day be LGBTIQSWTUVFGRUASERRIOOOOONXCVXCVXCVXCVQWERTYUIOP.
First off, they aren’t exactly new words. Google will confirm this.
Second, they are not synonymous with homosexual, heterosexual, etc.
Third
Nowadays some add “A” (asexual) and “Q” sometimes means “questioning.” “P” is often added for “pansexual.”
I admit I’m uncomfortable by the continued addition of labels, as it opens up serious topics to cheap shots. But I have 100 more important things to be concerned about about than that.
I’m Inspector Doctor Jackson with the Importance Priority Police, ma’am. I’m gonna need to see that list. And don’t make any out of town plans for the near future. Unless we determine that making out of town plans in the near future is of sufficient importance. You will be notified. Unless we have something more important to do.
[sub]Sometimes I just ramble on like someone cares…[/sub]
The point isn’t to add new words. The point is it would be idealistically better if these words were used instead .
i’m saying scrap the LGBTQ etc altogether (except for trans, because that’s not a gender thing, not a sexual orientation).
Of course this will never happen. But if it were this way, hypothetically, it would be awesome because then people would be grouped by what they like rather than what they are
Well, it would be more efficient in polls to say, “Hey androphiliacs, do you think X is dreamy?” rather than " Hey, gay men, straight women and bi people of both sexes, do you think X is dreamy?"
Interesting. I’ve been using androsexual and gynosexual for awhile to mean the same things. I still like them better, since “phile” has some negative connotations from being prefixed by pedo-, necro-, and biblio-.
Yes, biblio. Let’s just say there are some things you can’t un-see no matter how much you wish to.
I get your point, but ultimately, I think it’s a solution in need of a problem. As far as labels go, I think the big reason heterosexual vs. homosexual is most useful is because it separates on a meaningful distinction as far as social and political issues go. Wheras, gynephiles problems are of the “pff… women/men!”. That is, being heterosexual is large majority, whereas defining on the preference first pretty much just divides the population into two more or less equal halves.
That said, I could see it being useful in some small cases, like the aforementioned polling options, but even then, the idea that asking if, say, a certain celebrity is attractive naturally follows from the idea that would would, in general, find that celebrity’s gender attractive, so the distinction seems unnecessary. I could see it being useful to have a pole question like “hey androphiles, do you prefer to partners circumcised or not?” whereas, without it, there might be some ambiguity about whether a man has that preference about himself. But still, it’s not like a question like that would come without some context, and it’s still extraordinarily rare.
Moreso, as others said, we start getting into too many labels. On dating sites, I’ve seen obsurdly long lists of various sexual preferences and sexual identities. I get that, in certain contexts, specificity is important, but for the most part, it’s just unnecessary and serves as a distraction instead. And, as a few said upthread who I know have direct ties to the issues these labels are used for, it makes the whole problem look like a joke to the very people that need to be convinced.
So, at least in the current social/political environment, I don’t think they serve much purpose. Maybe in a time when various sexual preferences have a greater equality, it’ll make more sense then.
