History of the Split Attraction Model and Concerns in Chronological Order
Asexual application, ace/aro origins
The split attraction model debuted in the asexual community. When the asexual community was first becoming noticed in mainstream discourse the general conceptualization of an asexual person was an individual who was entirely uninterested in relationships with other people– they had no desire to have sex, to commit to anyone romantically, they just wanted to live their life without people thinking they were broken for not wanting relationships. In addition, they also wanted recognition that it was alienating to have those intimate relationships be the foundation of family structure, of most fictional narrative, in advertisement, of life expectations, etc. That experience of being disinterested in relationships, however, proved inadequate for those who were interested in relationships but otherwise identified with asexual identity. The split attraction model was thus created to describe the experiences of asexual people who still did want relationships with people, they just did not want sex to be a part of said relationships. This contingent of asexual people did not want their relationships to have that expected sexual component, but they still fell in love.
The creation of the split attraction model divided, in an ideological sense, the attraction one feels into two categories: sexual attraction and romantic attraction. If someone identified with asexual experience but fell in love with people or otherwise experienced what was interpreted as romantic feelings, they could identify as, say, “asexual heteromantic”. Once this model was constructed in the asexual community, this led to the creation of the “aro” or aromantic identity in (somewhat) mainstream discourse. The aro identity became used by those who did not identify as asexual, but did not feel that they experienced romantic attraction – essentially the inversion of the ace identity. These two identities became interrelated in the same community because of their shared use of the split attraction model to describe their identities.
Once the split attraction model gained traction, the original identity of “asexual” to mean “not interested in relationships at all” became “aroace”/ “aromantic asexual” because asexual no longer meant what the asexual community (at this point known as the ace/aro community) originally intended asexual to convey. The -sexual suffix remained the same, but instead of encapsulating a wholistic experience w.r.t. attraction (or lack thereof), asexual came to be an explicitly sexual term.
Then “demi” and “gray” modifiers were introduced to describe those who identified with aro and/or ace identity, but these terms were placed on a spectrum where some level of sexual attraction and/or romantic attraction was experienced, but extremely infrequently, or for people who thought it might be possible for them, but only in theory.
Ace/aro LGBT and non ace/aro LGBT application
Following the split attraction model’s popularity in the asexual community, there came a gradual push to apply the split attraction model to non aro/ace identities. This created pressure for LGBT individuals to separate out their attraction into sexual attraction and romantic attraction– despite that model not being an accurate one to describe the experience of most of us (see: scientific accuracy). For most people outside the ace/aro community, the experience of attraction is not as distinct facets of desire– there is just attraction. For instance, I might be attracted to others infrequently or have less interest in sex and/or romance, but that does not have any meaningful significance in how I understand my orientation.
Pushing this model onto LGB identities also created the implication that when LGBT individuals talked about “sexual orientation”, they were talking about who they were sexually attracted to, which is not what that word means, or what the -sexual suffix means, in an LGBT context. Instead, it refers to the gender of who one is attracted to. It doesn’t describe how one is attracted, it describes who one is attracted to.
For LGBT ace people and aro people, there also came a push to use the split attraction model, which has proven popular and useful for this intersection of groups but poses the risk of prioritizing ace/aro identity over LGBT identity, which is problematic for a lot of people because it creates a barrier between, for instance, bi women who identify with the aro/ace community and bi women who do not by casting them as “asexual biromantic” vs “bi”, despite both women being equally bi. The model has the potential to create artificial divisions that are harmful in the same way that essentialization is harmful, because many LGBT people, and marginalized people for that matter, feel as though they are never really x identity – the same asexual biromantic woman, for instance, may believe herself to be a “watered-down” version of the bi identity.
In response to all the aforementioned concerns, LGBT ace and aro individuals pushed back and began using ace/aro as modifiers as an alternative to the split attraction model. For example, “ace lesbian” rather than “asexual h*m*romantic.”
While this discourse was taking place, the tension in the overlap between aro/ace and LGBT communities over how to talk about and conceptualize attraction (because there is still no consensus in the ace community about where the line b/w ace and aro actually falls, see scientific accuracy bit) began to take a toll on non-aro/ace LGBT spaces. This is where the application of the split attraction model became particularly harmful, because suddenly young gay people with internalized homophobia started being pressured to identify as “h*m*sexual biromantic” or “heterosexual h*m*romantic” or other variations that stunted an unknowable number of LGBT people in their understandings of themselves while inadvertently validating their self hatred and internalized homophobia. Lesbians, particularly survivors of sexual trauma and those struggling with compulsory heterosexuality, were pressured to identify with these long chains of identity modifiers when they needed to be helped through their psychological trauma and simply be told it was okay to be a lesbian. For my personal anecdote, see the last section.
Finally, there existed a discourse running parallel to all this as a direct consequence of the aforementioned coercive sexualization of LGB identities in which aro/ace people started applying an “allosexual” identity to LGB people without their consent and reinforcing sex-obsessed homophobia, as well as suggesting that LGB+ people were privileged for their orientations, which exacerbated the resentment the LGBT community had towards the ace/aro community around this time.
This brings us to the present, where many (ace/aro and non-ace/aro) LGBT people have an understandably negative reaction to the split attraction model due to their experience with the recent linguistic and cultural history associated with this model and the risks that have become apparent since its introduction.
The split attraction model has proven helpful for many people to articulate attraction, and that is the function of the model, but that cannot erase the harm that it has been used for, and I cannot advocate teaching the model without teaching the associated risks – and given that we do not have time to give the amount of information I have presented here, I would rather avoid presenting it uncritically during Safe Zone.
In my opinion, it is worth remembering that the split attraction model is a very recent invention, and while it has been useful in helping to articulate specific identities, when taken as a strict set of rules that apply to any individual it may produce incohesive or even harmful results – and an ally just being introduced to the Genderbread Person will not be able to identify the risk potential.
Summary of Concerns
The SAM applied to LGBT vernacular promotes a misunderstanding of sexuality; the myth that the -sexual suffix in bisexual, heterosexual, etc. refers to sexual attraction and/or the act of sex when it refers to the gender(s) that one is attracted to.
Along with this, sexualizes LGB identities by insisting that LGB sexualities are inherently sexual because of the -sexual suffix; sexualizes LGB orientations, rarely with the LGB person’s consent.
Encourages people to use h*m*sexual/h*m*romantic freely without realizing that these terms have been used to medicalized and pathologize gay people’s attraction.
Through dividing attraction, encourages internalized homophobia/biphobia/lesbophobia (e.g. someone who calls themselves “heterosexual h*m*romantic” might really be bisexual); the split attraction model gives people the tools to construct an orientation around internalized homophobia/biphobia rather than confront it. For reference as to why h*m*sexual is problematic: https://www.glaad.org/reference/offensive
Additional Concerns
Encourages people who are not LGBT to freely call themselves q*eer just because they believe they are not “normal” when they label themselves as lithosexual, placiosexual, demisexual, sapiosexual, or other ace/aro community, GSM, or MOGAI micro-labels.
Seeks to contain attraction when in reality attraction is incredibly complex and it is oftentimes not helpful to try to categorize each and every aspect of it; fails to recognize attraction is different for everyone and attempting to micromanage sexuality (and gender) is incredibly counterproductive and confusing for young LGBT people.
Seeks to categorize what is the “normal” amount of sexual/romantic attraction when there really is no way for that to be quantified – similarly, implants a false allo-ace dichotomy that is in no way indicative of oppression in society.
Allows cis straight people to not only deny their cishet privilege, but encourages them to call themselves q*eer due to the conjured idea that not feeling a specific type of attraction makes one oppressed.
Encourages transphobia by offering a means of reducing trans identities to their genitalia, e.g. “I’m panromantic but h*m*sexual because I like both cis girls and trans boys sexually” which in that example is conflating trans boys with the possession of a vagina.
Lastly, the biggest issue I have is the conflation of micro-labels or ace modifiers with terms that denote oppression – the LGBT community has labels that are reflective of oppression (lesbophobia, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, all of which have a shared history under heterosexism), all of which bind us together via gender-based oppression, while the ace community has modifiers that describe how they interact with attraction. The conflation of these contexts, and the creation of aphobia as an abstract concept, happened with the split-attraction model as a conduit, meaning that most sociological ace discourse as we understand it now is a product of this model.
A Potential Concern with Scientific Authenticity
By raising this concern, I do not mean that an orientation or identity has to be studied before it may be considered “real” (I am in no position to argue that as a transwoman and a lesbian), but there is controversy surrounding the idea that romantic and sexual attraction can be a) neatly and universally defined, b) compartmentalized, and c) separated from each other.
My contention with the model also comes with the presumption that sexual attraction is not synonymous with libido. While a strict division between sexual and romantic attraction is easily understood if sexual attraction referred to libido, the way ace communities currently define sexual attraction is generally confusing and frequently overlaps with romantic feelings. Part of what makes ace discourse so difficult to navigate is the failure on anyone’s part to come to an agreement of terms, which is fundamental to communicating ideas, let alone conceptualizing a complex form of attraction.
My Personal Experience With The Split Attraction Model
For several years of middle and high school, I was pressured by a boy about my age to identify as bi so I could become “available” to him, resulting in confusion over my orientation. In order to reconcile my comfort with boy’s friendship and my fear towards what I now acknowledge to be abusive coercion, I conceptualized my platonic comfort with him as romantic attraction and my revulsion towards contact with him as heterosexuality, and I was kept from confronting my discomfort with the situation because my fear was validated and legitimized as an actual sexuality by a popular model of attraction. I know other people as well, who were locked in the closet and kept from true connection with the LGBT community and from the tools we needed to address our healing, by this model.