The Gaming Den

Prak wrote:Pansexual is a term that basically says "There are people who will bang guys and chicks, but not necessarily androgynous or genderfluid people. I will bang anyone who's attractive to me and willing, and I don't much care what they identify as, including 'both,' 'neither,' or 'fuck gender identities."

It does not, necessarily, say that women and transwomen are different categories for the purposes of attraction. (However, 'transwoman who still has her penis,' for example, is, for practical purposes, a separate category that not everyone will be into.)

Androgynous itself is a spectrum, and it's very easy to imagine a person who is nominally androgynous being sexually attractive for their feminine or masculine traits to hetero/homo/bisexuals who are attracted to that particular gender. Genderfluid just describes someone who is inconsistent in their expression of gender, and obviously any particular expression du jour (or several) could catch the fancy of a hetero/homo/bisexual. And I reject the notion that a transwoman with penis is a wholly separate category. A lot of people are going to evaluate that person's attractiveness based on how well they live up to the viewer's ideals of female beauty, and then either be uncomfortable/flip out or not about the penis thing for reasons unrelated to those ideals.

A lot of the behaviors that fall under the umbrella of pansexuality also happen with people whose sexual preferences hold to the gender binary. Wanting to bang something that looks like a dude/dudette because it looks like a dude/dudette really isn't an exception to the standard rules, even if the thing you want to bang doesn't fit perfectly to the conceptual dude/dudette - very few actual dudes/dudettes do to begin with. This isn't to say that there aren't people who exist and have gender expressions and sexual preferences that don't fit the gender binary. There very clearly are. But behaviorally speaking, a lot of the things under pansexuality's umbrella also happen in people whose sexual preferences hold to the gender binary, making a complicated matter even more complicated.

PoliteNewb wrote:Uh, it is a legitimate sexual orientation to not be attracted to trans people. Or white people. Or any kind of people you're not attracted to. Because who you are or are not attracted to is legitimate, and no one's business but yours. No one has a right to be found sexy.

Focus less on the legitimate part and more on the sexual orientation part. As in, do you think the reason people find trans individuals unattractive is a matter of their sexual preference or social norms? The part of your brain that decides who you find bangable is only a subset of the part of your brain that decides who to bang, and so there are obviously factors that will lead to you choosing not to bang a person that have nothing to do with how bangable you find that person.

DSMatticus wrote:A lot of people are going to evaluate that person's attractiveness based on how well they live up to the viewer's ideals of female beauty, and then either be uncomfortable/flip out or not about the penis thing for reasons unrelated to those ideals.

You keep saying this, and I don't understand how you cannot see the obvious incorrectness.

If there is a woman, and you are attracted to women, and she is attractive to you, but then she has a penis, your decision to not have sex with her is very very likely to be based on the fact that she does note meat your ideals of female beauty.

Yeah I have to say, my idea of what makes a girl attractive does include the "Does not have a penis" qualifier. It's rather high on the list. Even higher than "Does not have a hipster tractor tyre in her ear that makes her earlobes as big as those of Liu Bei" but not quite as high as "Must have skin covering the muscles, fat, bones and so on".

Not wanting your partner to have a cock because you're not attracted to it doesn't make you transphobic.

Kaelik wrote:

DSMatticus wrote:A lot of people are going to evaluate that person's attractiveness based on how well they live up to the viewer's ideals of female beauty, and then either be uncomfortable/flip out or not about the penis thing for reasons unrelated to those ideals.

You keep saying this, and I don't understand how you cannot see the obvious incorrectness.

If there is a woman, and you are attracted to women, and she is attractive to you, but then she has a penis, your decision to not have sex with her is very very likely to be based on the fact that she does note meat your ideals of female beauty.

Well, I don't mean to imply that you can't care about what's between people's legs. You obviously can. If you find one set of sex organs attractive and the other not so much so, then potential partners who don't have your preferred naughty bits will be a legitimate source of disappointment. In the interests of clarifying what I do mean, consider instead the example of a transgender individual who has had sex reassignment therapy/surgery and is both convincingly and attractively their gender of choice. You could, and many people would, choose not to have sex with that person because of their biological sex. But I think labelling that as a matter of sexual orientation is misguided - it's just a response to social norms and taboos completely outside of sexual attraction.

Sexual orientation very obviously isn't the only input into sexual behavior, and working backwards from "not all heterosexual men want to have sex with male-to-female transexuals" (or equivalents) to "being attracted to transexuals is a sexual orientation on its own" does not really make sense. It's pretty hard to find statistics for, but smart money says the primary demographic for transexual (male-to-female) porn is men who identify as heterosexual.

I am arguing that being attracted to transgender/intersex/androgynous individuals is compatible with a sexual orientation that fits the gender binary. I am not arguing that all people whose sexual orientation fits the gender binary will be attracted to those individuals (sometimes because of genuine physiological non-attraction and sometimes because of social factors outside physiological attraction). I am not arguing that all people who are attracted to those things have sexual orientations that fit the gender binary (pansexuality still very much is a thing that exists).

You know what, I give up on DSM.

Radiant, you asked what pansexual means. I answered, as a genderfluid pansexual. DSM can blather all he wants, but the basic meaning of pansexual is that people who identify as pansexual feel that bisexual is often trans-exclusionary. Also, there are identities which are not male or female, and the bits between a person's legs do not invalidate those identities, nor does any possible change in what those bits are. There are a bunch of gender identities, and bisexual typically means one is attracted to cismen and ciswomen, and possibly transmen and transwomen, but that's not a certainty, especially if we're talking transgendered rather than transexual.

Prak wrote:If you're into men and trans men, you could conceivably call yourself bisexual perfectly legitimately. You could also call yourself gay (as a man) or straight (as a woman) perfectly legitimately.

Prak wrote:Pansexual, basically, means that one is able to be sexually attracted to people who do not cleave closely to the Male and Female ends of the gender spectrum.

Prak wrote:DSM can blather all he wants, but the basic meaning of pansexual is that people who identify as pansexual feel that bisexual is often trans-exclusionary.

Prak. I do not mean to be a dick to you, or tell you that pansexual is not a valid sexual identity. But I am trying to tell you that your definitions of pansexuality (and pretty much all the definitions everywhere, as an aside) are kind of ass. You've said that being attracted to men and trans men can be perfectly heterosexual/homosexual/bisexual (I agree), while also claiming that pansexuality as a term exists because people feel terms such as bisexual are trans-exclusive (I disagree, and it looks like you do too). But you've also said no, pansexual means being able to be sexually attracted to people who do not match closely to the male and female genders (again, agree, but note that some trans individuals do match closely to one gender or the other, so that is at odds with your comments about trans-exclusiveness).

A much better contrast between bisexuality and pansexuality (and the one you were almost at when you first responded) has nothing to do with whether or not the person in question feels an attraction towards the various types of nonstandard sex/gender configurations (because many of those nonstandard sex/gender configurations do come out as something non-pansexuals might be very attracted to for their attractiveness as a female or attractiveness as a male), and everything to do with whether or not their sexual orientation is rooted in the gender binary at all (i.e., not being attracted to things for their 'femaleness' or 'maleness' to begin with).

And, incidentally, that means bisexuality and pansexuality will have substantial behavioral overlap.

When it's X-sexual though, and not X-romantic, it is a matter of sexual attraction, and that largely is dependant upon their physical body. So really, being hetero/homo/bisexual does cover transsexuals: if they "don't look the part" (or are pre-op) then that will affect whether the person fits their physical idea of attractiveness. If they only discover afterwards and freak out, that's just the homophobia/oh-no-now-I'm-gay thing, but they clearly were attracted before.

So long story short, it seems to just mean "I'm attracted to whatever physical sex, including half and half", and is just bisexual+ or something, and basically adds a x5 multiplier to the pretentiousness. Sorry Prak, but you're actually the supporting evidence here.

Koumei wrote:So long story short, it seems to just mean "I'm attracted to whatever physical sex, including half and half", and is just bisexual+ or something, and basically adds a x5 multiplier to the pretentiousness.

In my experience, "pansexual" means "bisexual, and knows what terms like 'cisgender' and 'genderfluid' means and wants to convey that fact." All of the bisexual people I know (which, granted, is a statistically-insignificant sample of a dozen or so people) would bang anyone a pansexual person would bang, but they either don't know enough about sexual/gender identity to state that fact or didn't care enough to change their label when they found out about all of it.

Prak, how are you both transgender and genderfluid? If genderfluid is flipflopping gender every now and then, are you only transgender some of the time?

genderfluid is a subset of transgender. Transgender basically just means that one identifies as other than their birth gender.

At the core of it, I basically identify as both, and there are a goat load of terms for that (bigender, genderqueer, genderfluid, etc). I think I've mentioned this somewhere here before, but basically my preferred sex would be hermaphrodite. This is part of why I have not, and likely will not, actually have SRS for the foreseeable future, unless some enterprising scientist wants to work something out for us tiny subset of a tiny subset of a tiny subset of the population.

Prak: I'm sure they'll get around to it. Demand for that isn't insignificant. Unless you want the parts to be functional as well as aesthetic though, in which case it'll probably take a while.

Koumei wrote:So really, being hetero/homo/bisexual does cover transsexuals: if they "don't look the part" (or are pre-op) then that will affect whether the person fits their physical idea of attractiveness. If they only discover afterwards and freak out, that's just the homophobia/oh-no-now-I'm-gay thing, but they clearly were attracted before.

Hey Koumei, check out these hot girls:

Ha ha, now you're straight!

So, my 3DS has a cracked upper screen. It can still be played all fine and dandy; the crack's just cosmetic damage. Nonetheless, it is hideous to look at, like some great predatory bird is smacking across the screen.

Now, I don't want to get a new 3DS, because I'm rather attached to this current one. Is there anyplace to get it fixed that would be cheaper than sending it to Nintendo for repairs?

Try this or this?

These look promising. Many thanks , Maj. Grazie.

I live with conservatives, so of course the first time the Spider-Man/USPS ad came on, they immediately assumed that the US Postal Service is wasting tax dollars on Spider-man commercials. Because conservatives.

Anyone happen to know how the commercial was actually paid for? I kind of live for telling them their assumptions are bullshit.

No clue. The USPS website says this was a collaboration.

Prak_Anima wrote:I live with conservatives, so of course the first time the Spider-Man/USPS ad came on, they immediately assumed that the US Postal Service is wasting tax dollars on Spider-man commercials. Because conservatives.

Anyone happen to know how the commercial was actually paid for? I kind of live for telling them their assumptions are bullshit.

Because spending money on advertisements is a bad idea and never ever pays for itself...

Hey, like I said, conservatives. 99% of conservatives don't even know how money works.


New question- a friend just purchased a cheerleader outfit "because (she) could." She's now trying to think of a good cosplay to use it for. She has kind of eclectic taste in stuff (preferring dark and fucked up anime over literally any other genre of anime, for example). She likes western comics in general, though. Neither of us watches much high school related stuff, and she's shot down everything I've thought of:

• Satan's Cheerleaders (wrong style, the movie is from '77, so it uses the more modest cheerleader outfits)
• Jennifer's Body
• Jean Grey from X Men Evolution (I'm pretty sure the opening montage showed her as a cheerleader, even if she never did any cheerleading in the actual show)
• Kim Possible*
• Monster High at all (even though that would literally just be "dye uniform black, do monster makeup, you can pick from Sexy Mummy Girl, Sexy pink-skinned vampire, sexy furless werecat, ambiguous dead chick")

*Her only stated objection to Kim Possible is that Kim's white. My friend is black. I said so what, but whatever.

So, anyone able to think of other high school set comics/manga/anime/movies/whatever with cool cheerleader characters, preferably black? I want to say that "High School Full of Monsters" has been done years ago for a more adult audience, but I can't think of names.

http://www.vampirecheerleaders.net/stri ... g_the_line

She reading that one yet?



Also, question from me:
Can it still be considered 'at hominem' if the other party is a troll?

Stahlseele wrote: Also, question from me:
Can it still be considered 'at hominem' if the other party is a troll?

Potentially. ad hominem is when you say someone is a bad and/or stupid person and therefore their argument is wrong. However, you can totally call someone bad and/or stupid while proving that their argument is wrong.

Prak_Anima wrote:I live with conservatives, so of course the first time the Spider-Man/USPS ad came on, they immediately assumed that the US Postal Service is wasting tax dollars on Spider-man commercials. Because conservatives.

Anyone happen to know how the commercial was actually paid for? I kind of live for telling them their assumptions are bullshit.

The USPS doesn't spend tax dollars at all. It's entirely self-sufficient and profitable. Its budget comes entirely from the sale of its services.

hyzmarca wrote:

Prak_Anima wrote:I live with conservatives, so of course the first time the Spider-Man/USPS ad came on, they immediately assumed that the US Postal Service is wasting tax dollars on Spider-man commercials. Because conservatives.

Anyone happen to know how the commercial was actually paid for? I kind of live for telling them their assumptions are bullshit.

The USPS doesn't spend tax dollars at all. It's entirely self-sufficient and profitable. It's budget comes entirely from the sale of its services.

Huh. cool.

Well, it was profitable until Congress told it that they had to pay billions of dollars into a retirement fund each year. As far as I can tell, pretty much so they could destroy one of the best functioning government programs in order to have something to point at for government inefficiency.

So this popped up on tumblr:


Which is, of course, something I've well known and recognized since I first saw the Boy London stuff.

Of course, it can be argued, and in fact, has by the company, that the design is actually inspired by the Roman legionary eagle. They say that it is meant to symbolize decadence and empowerment. I wouldn't, however, be surprised if the nazi eagle was inspired by the same source.


But this raises an interesting question. It's not an uncommon joke that, for all their evil, the nazis looked damned good--which is of course at least in part because they had an actual fucking fashion designer design their uniforms. Notably, that designer has been mostly, well, not forgiven, exactly, but few people pay much attention to it. IBM computers were used by the nazis, and yet few care much about that these days.

So the question is, how far removed does one have to be from nazism for it to not be held against them? Should Hugo Boss and IBM be boycotted today for what they did nearly eighty years ago? Does using a single part of a nazi military rank emblem condemn the company which uses it, even when it is used without the swastika? The company says it's reclaiming the emblem. Since the nazi party took it's symbols from others, how is it wrong to appropriate their appropriated symbols? Not that I much actually personally care, how long before someone can wear a Get of Fenris glyph or a norse thunder cross or ginfaxi without risking being confused for a white supremacist?

Just a topic I always find interesting. Perhaps in part because the nazi party did such an apt job at picking powerful icons to appropriate.