Redefining the Sexuality Spectrum

Today, I'm going to write about something I don't think I've ever publicly discussed much - sexuality. It's a first for me so bear with me. Anyway, the topic is sexuality and the ways people measure it. Key word: "measure". More on that later.

So before I share the thoughts that I've had recently about rethinking the ideas of sexuality, I should probably say what already exists to measure sexuality. Well, for starters, there was the tertiary system (gay/lesbian, bi, straight). All fine and good. What about more complex gender identities? Well that was fixed when we added 'T' to 'GBLT'. At this point, we have a quarternary system where 'T' is kind of an other category. In fact, adding letters to this acronym (or whatever you want to call it) represents including more people into this quartnerary system rather than adding more dimensions. So in reality, there doesn't seem to be a clear understanding of "the rest" of the letters.

Another proposal that was introduced was the Kinsey scale. This was a simple two-dimensional scale to measure what a person is attracted to (men, women, or something in between). This was rather revolutionary because it showed that more people are "in between" than we imagined. Not all straight people have scores of 0 and not all gay/lesbian people have scores of 6. So, naturally, the "in between" people were informally declared bisexual, declaring that most of humanity was somehow bisexual. Very valid point! What's wrong with this? It still lumps a bunch of different people into a single category. Though profound, saying that almost everyone is a "version" of bisexual doesn't really help anyone - especially when we clearly don't understand what bisexual really means. (For a better discussion of bisexuality, visit this blog.) It's true. We may think that bisexuality is defined by one person who is attracted to both men and women, but even then we run into trouble. We get the questions like: "So would you marry gay or straight?" "What are you attracted to most?" "If bisexual isn't just 'gay + straight' in varying degrees, then are you pan-sexual or something?" "What are you attracted to? What aren't you attracted to?"

Here is something that I thought up that might help with these issues. It also might do the exact opposite, but I'm willing to at least share what I have. And if someone likes it, I've helped one person.

I propose a scale for both sexuality and gender simultaneously; a scale that isn't two-dimensional and distinguishes individuals with a single letter and explores similarity among the different letters. So on the sexuality scale, one would assess which sex(es) they are physically attracted to AND would assess their own sexual identity (sex in both cases meaning anatomy). Then on the gender scale, one would [similarly] assess which gender(s) they are physically attracted to (mental-sex extroversion) AND would assess their own gender identity (mental-sex introversion). When I say "mental-sex" I mean to say the sexual personality that the person either displays to their environment (extroversion) or what they identify with (introversion). The important thing to understand about these scales is that any scale can be ignored because it is not a factor in physical attractiveness. So if someone doesn't factor in one or more parts of the gender scale, they are saying that they don't care or think about that when assessing physical attractiveness.

To better understand this scale, let's look at a few [fake] case studies:

Name: Sam Smith

Sexual identity: Male

Sex attraction: Female, Male

Gender identity: Feminine

Gender attraction: Masculine

Name: Gene Gildeschter

Sexual identity: Female

Sex attraction: Male, (Female)

Gender identity: Feminine, (Masculine)

Gender attraction: Masculine

Name: Leslie Lane

Sexual identity: Female+

Sex attraction: Female+, +Male, Male, +FM+, +Female, Male+, Female, +MF+

Gender identity: Masculine, Feminine, Third, Elvis "Leslie" Presley

Gender attraction: Masculine, Third, 2-Spirit, Feminine

If you're confused already, good. You're supposed to be. Here are some notational uses that I used which might explain a few things:

For sexuality, I only use variations of Male and Female:

Male: has male anatomy

Female: has female anatomy

Male+: mostly Male, transitioning from

Female+: mostly Female, transitioning from

+Male: mostly Male, transitioning to

+Female: mostly Female, transitioning to

+MF+: intersex, transitioning MTF

+FM+: intersex, transitioning FTM

For the gender scale I use a range of values:

Masculine: rugged, typical of the male stereotype

Feminine: curvy, typical of the female stereotype

2-Spirit: both rugged and curvy, both stereotypes

Third: neither rugged nor curvy, neither stereotype

Self-defined: emanating a certain personality (e.g. Elvis Presley)

You may have noticed that there is also a set of parentheses. This denotes any sub- or alter-identity. This can be used anywhere on the scale. I should mention that though the parenthesis can be used in the "Sexual identity" field, it wouldn't make sense to have more than one sexual identity without parenthesis. This is because, generally, people are born as one sex or the other. Even if they are born with both, there are only variations of two sexes. That's just how biology works (X and Y chromosomes). Nonetheless, biological sex is often disregarded when considering physical attraction - and especially when regarding gender identity.

It should also be noted that each field entry is ordered by preference of the individual. So, for example, Sam prefers women over men but is physically attracted to both. Meanwhile, Leslie prefers masculine identities over feminine and 2-spirited identities but is physically attracted to all of them.

There is also an arrangement of preferred field. So the individual can choose to place gender attraction in an hierarchy with sex attraction, and gender identity with sexual identity just the same. (I did not order the fields in the above [fake] cases.)

It should also be noted that this is only a scale of physical attraction and is subjectively arranged by the individual. It is not a scale of measuring what someone is personally attracted to. For example, someone might be attracted to a certain physical structure that is sexually ambiguous, or to an activity that has nothing to do with a person's sex or gender.

What's in a Tweet?

Would an @-reply by any name smell as sweet?

For those of you who know, one of my graduation requirements is to write a senior thesis. I am performing research about the usage of Twitter with respect to it's genres and registers. Meanwhile, when choosing my dataset, I considered the components that make a tweet effective and viral. So, I am asking "what's in a tweet?" Seeing as how I constantly run into the point in a conversation where someone says, "I hate Twitter" or "Isn't that just a bunch of status updates?" I would like to present Twitter in a way that Twitter fails to do explicitly. And to do so, I need to point out that, because it is so primitive, Twitter is not defined by it's interface, but by how it is used. So, let's start with the basics.

What can [read: do] people do on Twitter?

Tweet: Well, duh. Named the Word of 2009 by the American Dialect Society, the tweet is the essence of Twitter. If I have to describe in 140 characters what a tweet is, I would say the following; "A tweet is more complex than can be assumably understood. There's no way I can describe it in 140 characters. Something about Netspeak. LOL." There are some key words that I think I should explain. Because, let's face it, 140 characters really isn't enough to describe Twitter.

1) public - At first this seems like a really uninteresting word. But if you consider that text messages are around $.10 a message, then you might start to realize the significance of free mass communication. Still sound too much like [free] spam? Though complimentary meat-in-a-can is certainly hard to pass up, there is more. Not only do followers see this message, but anyone who visits their page can also see it (assuming their profile isn't locked). That's essentially how people gain followers and eventually credibility.

2) broadcast - This is where the idea of mass communication comes in. Because tweets are public, they can essentially be broadcast to all of the Internet - more directly to all of one's followers. So what is significant about broadcasting? Content. (Think about news stations.) Whenever I have to speak to a crowd I constantly think about this one element. What I say to my followers has to be relevant, concise, and accurate in order for them to maintain interest and to influence others to follow me. Many will argue that there are tons of tweets out there that do none of these things. I totally agree. But those people either cater to a different audience or they just don't know how to use Twitter effectively. My good friend, Mattt, said it best. Chances are, if someone tweets something that you don't understand or find irrelevant, it wasn't meant for you. In the same vein, there's a reason why everyone doesn't follow everyone. That would just be silly. Followers choose who they follow based on content, genre, and register. And [effective] Twitter users constantly have their followers in mind when composing a new tweet - whether they like to admit it or not.

3) followers - I keep mentioning this word. What's up with all this following business anyway? Well I'll get to that. Be patient.

4) 140 characters - This is something I'm still trying to fully understand. But I think it has to do with the human attention span. If you ask someone whether they would rather read a best-selling novel or an amusing text message, you would probably find that most people would read the text message and go as far as glance at the cover of said book. They might read the back of the book, but even then, it's a shortened version of the full text. Humans are apparently not hard-wired to read large texts or for long periods of time - at least not in their current evolutionary stage. Also, short messages are much easier to remember and recall than a novel. There's also a unique difference between either genre-type that I like to call "idea-mass" which is essentially the quantity of thoughts in an utterance. In a book there are hundreds maybe thousands of ideas; in a tweet, maybe two or three. Though they usually all go together somehow. If they don't it's probably an ineffective tweet or won't obtain a captive audience. Either way, it's so much easier and more enjoyable to absorb one or two ideas than a cryptic bible of them.

5) links and mentions - Links are portals to worlds beyond 140 characters. And in these lands there are fewer limits, longer texts, and multimodal dimensions for those who like to actually read (or for those who don't). Mentions do just that with people. They provide an opportunity to see who you are tweeting about by giving a link to their Twitter profile and their most recent set of tweets. Not to mention (no pun intended) when using this structure, the person mentioned also gets a little nudge about the mention, depending on their client. (Clients have their own completely different story to tell.) There are also different types of "mentions." There's the reply mention that sends a public message to that user in reply to something they tweeted. There's the tweet that merely mentions the user's handle to refer to them publicly. Then there's the debatable third type which is public but not clearly a replied or directed message or a broadcast giving a shout out. The perfect example of this is the retweet. (That's a whole topic on it's own. No really, keep reading!) Then, of course, people use multiple mentions of different types within the same tweet.

Retweet: This has a history. It all started with the simple RT syntax which usually precedes the user's handle with their original message (though their handle sometimes goes at the end depending on the client). Some people retweet this way with their own short commentary at the beginning. This commentary could be anything from an addendum to a straight reply to the original author. Either way, the comment is public and often adding commentary makes a retweet more interesting and/or unique. Then, in November of 2009, the new retweet was set loose. Now all you have to do is click a button and the tweet would be "echoed," preserving the original author's message in it's entirety and their icon. Personally, I think this new feature has a much different connotation than the older version. In a way, it is less selective because the user is unable to alter or add anything. But on the other hand, the old retweet still exists. One might re-coin the old retweet as a "quote" or a "reference" or even a "call-out." With this new retweet, the retweeter is further removed from the message and misuse and spamming become potentially more common. Nonetheless, there are several different purposes of the retweet: quoting, referencing, calling someone out, or echoing what someone tweeted; there are almost certainly others.

Direct Message: If you recognize [and ever used] "DM" then you're probably with me in saying that direct messages are pretty specialized. For one, they're private. So it has to be either unworthy of or too personal for a public audience. They are also limited to a conversation between only two users. And to use this feature most users utilize special client mechanisms or the website itself.

Follow: This is pretty straight forward. Users can follow what other users tweet. This might be because they are interested in what they have to say or in what they represent. Either way something about them brings the user to click the "follow" button. It's probably important to note that following is not equivalent to friending. Friending implies that you both know each other (this is cyberspace so that's the only requirement for cyber friendship). But for following, the target user may not even know you exist or that you are following them. Follow is to Twitter as subscribe is to the blogosphere. And it's not uncommon for users to have personal "unfollow" sessions where they sit down and determine who is still worth reading and who is now considered spam. (I should know. I just lost three followers the other day.) Ironically, I find it more socially acceptable to unfollow someone than to unfriend them on Facebook. This might be evidence to suggest that Twitter is less of a social network and more of a reader's network or an amateur publisher's network.

In the context of following, there's something I like to call "Twitter affluence" which is reflected, most explicitly, by the ratio of followers to following; The higher the ratio, the more viral the user appears to be. It can also be explicitly reflected by the amount of retweets that person obtains. This idea of affluence is also greatly dependent on a balance between personality and product. Is the Twitter user more interested about telling their followers about their life by the minute? Or are they trying to sell their personality and experiences as a literary product? If you haven't guessed already, one of the main arguments in my thesis is that there is a distinction between public communication and personal broadcast; the former being quasi-standard communication (and often illocution), the latter being the unique adaptation of interesting thoughts in relation to the user's environment and experiences which is also relevant to their audience.

So maybe Twitter really isn't just 140 character updates of someone's mundane activities. Maybe there's a little more than that inside the tweet.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/powerpig