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Lumifer comments on Open thread, September 15-21, 2014 - Less Wrong
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It's not self-evident to me that they are separable.
When my heterosexual male friends tell me companionship isn't about sex I ask them how many male companions they've had. Not many, I've gathered from the silence.
For hetero males the usual term for male companions is "close friends". I bet the great majority have some.
But go ask some hetero women whether they think sex and companionship are well-separable :-/
Also I get the feeling 21th century Americans have fewer close friends than the historical human norm.
I don't know what the "historical human norm" is and I suspect there is a lot of variation there.
Try reading literature written before the past 50 years and preferably before the 20th century. That will give you an idea.
I am afraid Victorian England is not all that representative of the historical human norm.
I wasn't primarily thinking of Victorian England. Also "before the 20th century" isn't just the 19th century.
In Finnish the connotations of "companion" are more obviously sexual I see, at least in my circles.
It's probably a language issue, in standard English the word "companion" has no sexual overtones.
More to the point, this subthread is explicitly about separating sex from companionship.
Ah, but it's quite likely that they're heteroromantic as well as heterosexual.
Perhaps, but why haven't I come across any homoromantic heterosexuals or heteroromantic homosexuals?
AFAIK people with mismatched romantic and sexual orientations, though very much existent, are quite rare and the -romantic terms are most often used by asexual spectrum people to describe their romantic preferences.
Asexuals with romantic orientations came across my mind too. I can't imagine romantic and sexual orientations as separate, but the stakes aren't high enough for me to commit the typical mind fallacy so I'll keep my mind open to the possibility :)