I can see how it would be wrong to claim that someone else is a MSM or a WSW, but I don’t see how it could be wrong to give someone the option to self-report that way since they won’t use the label if they disagree with it, and especially since this data won’t be used for anything. Can you elaborate on what sorts of problems you think it would cause?
At any rate, I agree that sexual identity should be self-determined, and therefore relative to one’s gender identity rather than one’s biological sex. To that end, perhaps the question on sexual orientation should include the option to identify as androphilic, gynephilic, or ambiphilic, or perhaps there should be separate questions for identifications of orientation that incorporate gender identity and those that do not.
Can you elaborate on what sorts of problems you think it would cause?
MSM is a confused category with multiple edge cases. Does “male” refer to sex or gender? It has somewhat troubling connotations with promiscuity that don’t always make sense, as it is sometimes applied to otherwise asexual males in homosexual relationships. It’s not at all clear that the demographic it was designed to apply to (otherwise straight men who have specifically anal sex with other men) feel more comfortable identifying as MSM than gay or bisexual.
I can understand that you feel this is the correct label for your situation, but it is somewhat fraught with historical baggage.
especially since this data won’t be used for anything.
I wasn’t aware of these controversies, but I don’t see how the historical baggage is relevant at LW. I think that most everyone here is going to realize that a ‘man who has sex with men’ is a person who self-identifies as male and has sex with others whom they identify as male. Furthermore, people will only be applying the label to themselves. You just implicitly gave me the option to use it, so I guess I should ask: Is there anything that makes me different from anyone else, or any reason that you wouldn’t give everyone the same option simultaneously?
I don’t think we actually know this.
I concede that point. It’s also true that those who don’t want their data to be used have the option not to take the survey or to have their data removed from the public results. On the other hand, I’m not sure how many people that would discourage or how much it would skew the results.
Also, I missed this:
The KSOG also seems plagued by this conflation.
I agree. I see that this is the case in its use of the terms heterosexual, homosexual, etc. We could fix this simply by modifying it to use the the terms androphilic, gynephilic, etc., and including a term each for gender identity and biological sex. It would make no such conflation while preserving the information provided by the existing labels, and thereafter provide even more information. Furthermore, if people want to interpret the data using the previous labels of heterosexual, etc., one could derive that from the data produced from the scheme that I just proposed, or there could be a separate question with the original labels. (Separate questions or the use of both gender-loaded and gender-neutral terms in the same question would also implicitly provide data on the respective popularities of gender-loaded and gender-neutral terms for sexual orientation, though it would be skewed by people whose usage patterns are changed by the question itself. That could be rectified by a follow-up question asking what term one used to self-identify before reading the previous question, if you want to go nuts with it. LWers often do.)
Lastly, it looks like someone bombed this comment thread and then proceeded to bomb the shit out of almost all of my posts, so just so you know, that wasn’t me. I’ve compensated by upvoting your comments even though I didn’t in the first place and still don’t agree with them in entirety. Nevertheless, I don’t want people to see negative numbers and then dismiss this thread, or either of us, completely.
Lastly, it looks like someone bombed this comment thread and then proceeded to bomb the shit out of almost all of my posts, so just so you know, that wasn’t me. I’ve compensated by upvoting your comments even though I didn’t in the first place and still don’t agree with them in entirety. Nevertheless, I don’t want people to see negative numbers and then dismiss this thread, or either of us, completely.
I don’t normally bother to vote in threads that I participate in, but I’ve decided to cooperate and upvote your comments as well.
It’s not really surprising that it was downvoted. The minutiae of queerness is not exactly interesting to most people.
As long as you’re cooperating with my debiasing efforts, the karmabomber downvoted my original comment as well. Even if you disagree with it, upvoting it is the impartial way to go, as I have done.
On the topic, do we still disagree, or have we reached a common conclusion? Like many aspiring rationalists, I like to actually resolve things. To be clear, my current conclusions are: 1) people should be allowed to self-report as MSM or WSW, and; 2) the KSOG should be added but slightly modified to include the ‘-philic terms’ instead of the ‘-sexual terms,’ and to include gender identity and biological sex. Using this modified KSOG would also consolidate some existing questions into the KSOG. (Not necessarily mutually exclusive) alternatives to #2 include: adding the -philic terms to the existing orientation question (possibly along with another question asking what one’s self-identification was before the previous question to account for the influence of the question itself); adding a new separate question using the -philic terms, and; including a modified or unmodified version of the Kinsey scale.
It’s not really surprising that it was downvoted. The minutiae of queerness is not exactly interesting to most people.
I can dig that, I don’t like to have my time wasted either, but it was necessary to understand my suggestion (like I said, it comes with the MSM territory, everyone has a different reason for using it, and those unique reasons are the whole reason that including the term could potentially yield more detailed and interesting data; preferences about sexual preferences? That’s one example that sounds to me like something LWers would be very interested in. Maybe you personally are just not interested in sexology. I’m not talking about sharing anecdotes or something like that). I put a ‘long anecdote warning’ so that people can skip it if they want. (Now that I’ve thought of it, next time I’ll put a TL;DR at the end as well, and I’ve added one.) Whoever did it obviously didn’t do it because they really care about curating the site, because they downvoted a bunch of other unrelated stuff of mine, much of which other people had upvoted, thereby biasing people’s perception of it. (Obviously you agree with the biasing part because you’ve cooperated with me.) If they really needed to communicate to me that the stuff I write is not concise and on-topic enough, then they could have just downvoted a few of my most upvoted posts and comments. (Even if there aren’t that many, there are enough.) Or better yet, actually say something about it.
I can see how it would be wrong to claim that someone else is a MSM or a WSW, but I don’t see how it could be wrong to give someone the option to self-report that way since they won’t use the label if they disagree with it, and especially since this data won’t be used for anything. Can you elaborate on what sorts of problems you think it would cause?
At any rate, I agree that sexual identity should be self-determined, and therefore relative to one’s gender identity rather than one’s biological sex. To that end, perhaps the question on sexual orientation should include the option to identify as androphilic, gynephilic, or ambiphilic, or perhaps there should be separate questions for identifications of orientation that incorporate gender identity and those that do not.
MSM is a confused category with multiple edge cases. Does “male” refer to sex or gender? It has somewhat troubling connotations with promiscuity that don’t always make sense, as it is sometimes applied to otherwise asexual males in homosexual relationships. It’s not at all clear that the demographic it was designed to apply to (otherwise straight men who have specifically anal sex with other men) feel more comfortable identifying as MSM than gay or bisexual.
I can understand that you feel this is the correct label for your situation, but it is somewhat fraught with historical baggage.
I don’t think we actually know this.
I wasn’t aware of these controversies, but I don’t see how the historical baggage is relevant at LW. I think that most everyone here is going to realize that a ‘man who has sex with men’ is a person who self-identifies as male and has sex with others whom they identify as male. Furthermore, people will only be applying the label to themselves. You just implicitly gave me the option to use it, so I guess I should ask: Is there anything that makes me different from anyone else, or any reason that you wouldn’t give everyone the same option simultaneously?
I concede that point. It’s also true that those who don’t want their data to be used have the option not to take the survey or to have their data removed from the public results. On the other hand, I’m not sure how many people that would discourage or how much it would skew the results.
Also, I missed this:
I agree. I see that this is the case in its use of the terms heterosexual, homosexual, etc. We could fix this simply by modifying it to use the the terms androphilic, gynephilic, etc., and including a term each for gender identity and biological sex. It would make no such conflation while preserving the information provided by the existing labels, and thereafter provide even more information. Furthermore, if people want to interpret the data using the previous labels of heterosexual, etc., one could derive that from the data produced from the scheme that I just proposed, or there could be a separate question with the original labels. (Separate questions or the use of both gender-loaded and gender-neutral terms in the same question would also implicitly provide data on the respective popularities of gender-loaded and gender-neutral terms for sexual orientation, though it would be skewed by people whose usage patterns are changed by the question itself. That could be rectified by a follow-up question asking what term one used to self-identify before reading the previous question, if you want to go nuts with it. LWers often do.)
Lastly, it looks like someone bombed this comment thread and then proceeded to bomb the shit out of almost all of my posts, so just so you know, that wasn’t me. I’ve compensated by upvoting your comments even though I didn’t in the first place and still don’t agree with them in entirety. Nevertheless, I don’t want people to see negative numbers and then dismiss this thread, or either of us, completely.
I don’t normally bother to vote in threads that I participate in, but I’ve decided to cooperate and upvote your comments as well.
It’s not really surprising that it was downvoted. The minutiae of queerness is not exactly interesting to most people.
As long as you’re cooperating with my debiasing efforts, the karmabomber downvoted my original comment as well. Even if you disagree with it, upvoting it is the impartial way to go, as I have done.
On the topic, do we still disagree, or have we reached a common conclusion? Like many aspiring rationalists, I like to actually resolve things. To be clear, my current conclusions are: 1) people should be allowed to self-report as MSM or WSW, and; 2) the KSOG should be added but slightly modified to include the ‘-philic terms’ instead of the ‘-sexual terms,’ and to include gender identity and biological sex. Using this modified KSOG would also consolidate some existing questions into the KSOG. (Not necessarily mutually exclusive) alternatives to #2 include: adding the -philic terms to the existing orientation question (possibly along with another question asking what one’s self-identification was before the previous question to account for the influence of the question itself); adding a new separate question using the -philic terms, and; including a modified or unmodified version of the Kinsey scale.
I can dig that, I don’t like to have my time wasted either, but it was necessary to understand my suggestion (like I said, it comes with the MSM territory, everyone has a different reason for using it, and those unique reasons are the whole reason that including the term could potentially yield more detailed and interesting data; preferences about sexual preferences? That’s one example that sounds to me like something LWers would be very interested in. Maybe you personally are just not interested in sexology. I’m not talking about sharing anecdotes or something like that). I put a ‘long anecdote warning’ so that people can skip it if they want. (Now that I’ve thought of it, next time I’ll put a TL;DR at the end as well, and I’ve added one.) Whoever did it obviously didn’t do it because they really care about curating the site, because they downvoted a bunch of other unrelated stuff of mine, much of which other people had upvoted, thereby biasing people’s perception of it. (Obviously you agree with the biasing part because you’ve cooperated with me.) If they really needed to communicate to me that the stuff I write is not concise and on-topic enough, then they could have just downvoted a few of my most upvoted posts and comments. (Even if there aren’t that many, there are enough.) Or better yet, actually say something about it.