I don't understand why people say things like "gender/sexuality is a social construct!!!" and then proceed to create one bizillion microlabels and identities. The thing is, I agree that these things are probably just constructs, but responding by creating MORE constructs, defined by even MORE rules and classifiers, is kinda like when a dog hears a firetruck siren and starts howling like crazy, because maybe my loud noise will cancel out the other loud noise.
I know there's a human desire to label and categorise our experiences at play here, but it still perplexes me. I'd much rather call myself "a weird chick who would only really have sex with or date another chick but isn't super desperate to anyway" than an "aegosexual grayromantic lesplatonic demigirl", because the former is just me, whereas the latter feels so much more constraining and pedantic.
sorry for autism it's late and I'm bored
There was definitely a point in time when this shift away from "love has no labels, we're all unique" happened. I don't know when it happened exactly, but there was a huge influx of people now wanting a bajillion different self-identified labels to describe every single minutia of their lives. You aren't a supportive and kind friend, you're an empath. You're not weird/autistic/have literally any abnormal trait, you're
neurodivergent. You don't want to fuck someone until you've gotten to know them? That's weird as hell, bro, you're clearly a
demisexual!
Why? There are a few reasons, imo.
The first is something I don't see discussed a lot, but a lot of teens (and adults who never grew up) love to self-identify and label themselves, even outside of lgbt stuff. Hogwarts houses was a big one, but also fandoms/subcultures like emo/goth/undertale fan/etc. It's sort of an identity-exploration part of a lot of peoples' lives, so finding pre-existing identities to slot yourself into is comforting and easy for teens struggling to discover themselves.
Autismgender/Faesexual/Demiqueer are just an extension of that- teens and arrested-development adults looking for meaning, identity, and direction from external sources since looking inward and forming their own vocabulary on who/what they want to be is scary and requires a level of self-confidence they lack. Like for me, I rarely feel romantically or sexually interested in someone aside from rare occasions where I attach very strongly onto a man I like. Does that mean I'm semihomosexual or allosexual or whatever? No, it means I'm exactly what I said I am- I don't need there to be a flag, special name, and community around what I am for validation, because I don't need validation. I'm me and I don't care what anyone else thinks. I'm not saying I'm some brave sigma male for not needing outside validation- the opposite, actually: my feelings on my own identity imo was the norm for a while, it's just that a lot of people now lack that sense of self to feel content without a community of seal-clapping austists cheering "you're valid!"
The second is that a lot of these people lack interests, skills, life experiences, etc that make them interesting, so they substitute labels and in-groups for that. If you don't have anything that makes you special, you need to invent something. So you'll say you're, I dunno, an aegosexual grayromantic lesplatonic demigirl like you said. Now you're cool, you're hip, and most importantly- you're now even more oppressed and important! This goes double for straight women (men too but it seems like it's more often women) who bend over backwards to call themselves anything other than a straight woman (see: "i'm bisexual but i have never and will never sleep with a woman.")
Third is the whole "oppression olympics" going on. Even being homosexual isn't oppressed enough if you're not trans, you have to get even more insular, even more specific, or else you become an oppressor too. This isn't just in the lgbt groups, of course ("straight black men are the white people of black people" comes to mind.) Hence why you get gay men (who ten years ago would've left it at that) now calling themselves they/thems or whatever.
That's my (somewhat incoherent) guess, at least. Make of that what you will
Luck to you as well!
