@ale-arro - Tumblr Blog

This pride month I need every aromantic to get more annoying about being aromantic

#i fear i've gotten way too not annoying about being aromantic :/ i need to step it up

and like to a large extent the ambiguous relationships i have with other aromantic people in my life can only exist in the form that they do because there isn't language to describe it, but also not having language to describe it makes it really inconvenient to talk about it with other people

#but also part of me feels like i'm struggling with RA praxis with this one #like our relationship is not inherently transformed bc we kiss sometimes #blah blah linguistic relativity when we call something a friendship we set expectations for what happens in that relationship #and it's self-fulfilling #ideally i'd be calling All of my relations. relations #or another term that isn't friend or partner or situationship #um but that's difficult to implement. i'll say it #I guess I fluctuate in calling it friendship or not #and i also fluctuate in feeling like it's a relationship that has some physical affection in it #vs. it's a relationship that is characterized by being physically intimate #and i guess the whole deal is that relationships are more gradient than is represented in our cultural ideals is represented in our language #aromantic #relationship anarchy #t tag #j tag #l tag

pukicho

Im hopelessly in love with someone I’m not physically attracted to

I don’t give a fuck

something that being more open about being attracted to people while being aspec has taught me is that people (even other aspecs!) are incredibly quick to suggest what is, in the end, conversion therapy. the baseline assumption is that my aromantic view on relationships holds me back from my sexuality. has it occurred to anyone that my sexuality holds me back from my aromantic view on relationships? has it occurred to anyone that a normative view of relationships holds people back. not being in a normative relationship is not a deficit, not having sex is not a deficit, it is not an inherent good to be in normative relationship and have sex just because you experience attraction, i do not owe it to the attraction that i experience to compromise my aspec worldview in the name of exploring it

#i ammmmmm angryyyy #aromantic #asexual #alloaro #notes

i've been thinking about this lately and i just remembered that when i was a kid i had the the thought that in some ways murder is preferable to rape because the victim doesn't have to live with the trauma. horrifying thought for a girl to have! that SA is such an inherent transformative experience that it's worse than being dead. we don't conceptualize other assaults that way, not unless they're particularly brutal. and this was my perspective as a girl in a relatively progressive environment, with explicitly sex-positive parents, with no direct religious influence, etc., critical of the objectification of women, critical of valuing sexual purity

#cw rape #cw murder

been getting into khalid lately and learning that he has a song called "please don't fall in love with me" and then listening to it and realizing it's not about what i foolishly assumed it would be about was tough

#aromantic #one would assume it's a out not loving someone.#um but it turns out that's not what it's about at all.

beautiful trans woman i'm talking to but she's leaving my city before my schedule lets us meet up. kicks rocks

reading Gender Trouble by Judith Butler (the literature that developed the idea that gender is a performance) for research and you really can just directly swap "gender" out for "romance" and it remains true without having to change anything

#aromantic #relationship anarchy #theory stuff

somehow i had no idea that this is an actual initiative undertaken by the US government since 2003. holy amatonormativity! holy racism!

#aromantic #relationship anarchy

bloggingboutburgers

So recently I got an ask from a Mexican teen who shared some life experiences that put right back into perspective how brutal this kind of reaction is, even if it comes from people who feel they mean well. I'd kind of tuned that out of my brain due to force of habit over the years, but... Yeah, it does feel like that, doesn't it.

I don't think I've done proper justice to this ask at all, it's mainly a reality it reminded me of point-blank and I encourage you to read the full thing as it's more interesting than this, but... Yeah. I hope this was OK to draw in response, though.

ale-arro

from Minimizing Marriage by Elizabeth Brake (the book that coined the word amatonormativity!)

#this just came up in what i was reading today. fortuitous timing

bloggingboutburgers

#thinking about that post that was this person saying that when they don't like potatoes people always are like #OH but you're missing out on french fries and mashed potatoes and hash browns and pierogis #and the person was like. i'm not “missing out” if i don't LIKE THEM comma

bauhinia-sky

Aromanticism in Cantonese

This is a (late) submission to the February 2024 Carnival of Aros on the topic "the meaning of romance across time and space".

Is the English-centric concept of romance and aromanticism useful in Hong Kong Chinese culture? Let's start with weddings.

Weddings

Traditional Chinese weddings emphasize honouring your elders. The couple would kneel and serve tea to their parents and other older relatives. This is in contrast with western weddings, which focus more on the couple. It's common now for people to have both a traditional ceremony and a western one. Chinese wedding dresses, called 裙褂 (kwan4 kwaa2) are usually red and gold, compared to white being the main colour for western wedding dresses.

Rather than a romantic proposal, when a couple wants to get married, the man may ask the woman's parents for their blessing to marry their daughter. This is less common now, though, and much of the younger generation has western-style proposals.

An interesting note on language is that the phrase for "marrying" is different for women and men. There's「結婚」(git3 fan1), which means "get married". In addition, for women, they 嫁畀 (gaa3 bei2) a man.「畀」means "give". Men 娶 (ceoi2) women;「取」means "take" and「女」means "female". So women "give themselves" to men, whereas men "take" women.

Growing up with both Chinese and western culture, I saw marriage not (only) as an expression of (romantic) love, but in some ways an obligation. I used to feel that getting married was something I had to do. With the changing times, there's less pressure from parents to get married, and I'm grateful for that.

Aromanticism

Aromantic is translated as either「無浪漫傾向」or「無戀愛傾向」.「無」(mou4) means "no", and「浪漫」(long4 maan4) is a transcription of English "romance".「傾向」(king1 hoeng3) comes from「性傾向」, a translation of the English term sexual orientation, literally meaning "sexual tendency".

「戀愛」(lyun2 oi3) roughly translates to romantic love, usually used in the Mandarin phrase「談戀愛」, meaning "dating/in a romantic relationship". The Cantonese phrase would be「拍拖」(paak3 to1).

I prefer the second term,「無戀愛傾向」, for aromantic; at least it's likely to be understood as "not dating". The first one,「無浪漫傾向」, doesn't quite make sense unless you know the English "aromantic".

However, if I were to translate "romantic love" into Cantonese, I'd simply say「愛情」(oi3 cing4). This would be translated back into English as "love", but it's used exclusively to refer to romantic love.「愛」isn't a word that's used often. Maybe the younger generation would say "I love you" in English more, but it's still used less frequently than in English.

For this reason, I don't find "loveless" to be a concept that's useful in my culture. "But you still love your friends" isn't something that would be said in response to someone coming out as aro because you don't "love" your friends. For familial relationships, you'd probably say that you "care about"—「關心」(gwaan1 sam1)—them. You can't "love" your hobbies or a TV show; that would come across as quite an odd sentence.

Attraction

"Sexual attraction" has been translated from English as「性吸引」(sing3 kap1 jan5), with「性」meaning "sex(ual)" and「吸引」meaning "attract". However, this is not a term used in everyday conversation. If I wanted to describe someone as attractive, I would use "charm". Yes, in English, because there are many English loanwords in Hong Kong Cantonese. "Charm" (from English "charming") is used to mean "attractive" more generally. If it was specifically sexually attractive, "sexy", either in English or「性感」(sing3 gam2), would be used.

There isn't really a term for "romantic attraction". If I wanted to express "I've never experienced romantic attraction", I'd probably say "I've never liked anyone". Trying to directly translate "romantic attraction" doesn't work too well. I've seen「戀愛吸引」used, which is, once again, not understandable unless you already know the English.

The term for gay (or rather homosexual; they're the same) is「同性戀」(tung4 sing3 lyun2).「同」indicates "same",「性」is "sex(ual)", and「戀」usually refers to romance as mentioned above. In this way, the word for homosexual, which in English is considered to be a sexual orientation, is usually understood to mean romantic and sexual orientation as a unit.

A tangent on Japanese

This is similar to Japanese, which has「アセクシャル」(asekusharu; a phonetic transcription of English "asexual"), but it doesn't mean only asexual, it means both ace and aro.「ノンセクシャル」(nonsekusharu) means "asexual", and its English translation would be "nonsexual".

It may be easier to visualize this using kanji, which are similar to Chinese characters. Japanese「アセクシャル」(asekusharu) is 「無性愛」(museiai), which is similar to the Cantonese 「無性戀」(mou4 sing3 lyun2). As「愛」(Japanese: ai, Cantonese: oi3) and「戀」(lyun2) both refer to romantic love, it makes sense that these terms tend to evoke the interpretation of romantic orientation, in contrast to the English "[blank]sexual" format. I don't have any issues saying I'm 無性戀 (correlates to English "asexual"), whereas I wouldn't say I'm asexual because of the English term's emphasis on sexuality.

Conclusion

I'm not sure how I feel about most aro (and queer) terms being translations of the English. There are ways to name a concept that's more intuitively understandable for native speakers. One of the translations for aromantic is somewhat understandable; I have many issues with non-binary, but that's a topic for another day.

#awesome post thanks op #altho my own experience in japanese aspec spaces is that nonsexual is kind of dying out as a term #and asexual is mostly similar to english asexual in being mostly used for sexuality specifically but occasionally extended to include aroace #mostly bc aroaces are the overwhelming majority i think. but i Mostly see “aro/ace” not just “ace” when relevant

tbh i think a lot of the way we talk about virginity as a construct also applies to how we discuss experiencing romance (or various forms of intimacy associated with romance), even though we don't have an analogous word to "virginity" for it. going on a date or kissing someone is seen as transformative experience the same way that having sex is, despite not actually materially changing anything.

on a personal level, i've discovered an annoying pressure to play up my own relationships as something approximating romance for the social cachet of being seen as a person who does those things. i've had someone be surprised when i talked about kissing people because they thought i was a "turbo virgin," as though having had those experiences is something that should be detectable in my mannerisms.

i guess there's some rhetoric surrounding first kisses, though not to the same extent as losing your virginity, which i imagine is because it doesn't overlay with misogyny in the same way. still, it feels under-discussed to me.

#aromantic #theory stuff #t tag

shaethecrow

The Aromantic Zine is complete!! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-vgIktgk3J5GI1qBcSCmC2HQm8Wp8zYl/view?usp=sharing

Aromantic Experiences-Zine.pdf

Everyone should check it out!

(My submission)

@morb1dcan1d <-creator of this incredible project!

#aro media

watching your trans friends get more comfortable with their expression is one of life's beautiful things

#t tag #j tag

"oh what if you find The One someday" i actually think it would be a considerable loss if someday experiencing romantic attraction made me abandon my philosophy towards life and community in favor of a The One. the romantic attraction part is whatever but your question presumes a model of community that would actually be a downgrade to adopt

#aromantic

elsa-viktoria

Me whenever I make a new friend who's slightly attractive

#lots of asterisks but i like the energy

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