So here’s the thing about the division of “aro” “ace” and “aroace” into three separate identities with three separate flags: it makes no sense to me, personally.
See, I understand the utility of the split-attraction model. I even understand that “romantic attraction” feels like a meaningful category to many people separate from sexual attraction.
But in my personal experience of the world, romance is too much of a construct for “romantic attraction” to make any sense as a coherent thing that I consider myself as having or not having.
And look, everything is a construct, including sexual attraction. But sexual attraction is a construct in the way a brick is a construct; simple, definable, easy to say whether I have it or don’t have it. Romance, on the other hand, is even more obviously entirely culturally defined. It’s a construct in the way a house is a construct. What makes something a house? If I got ten people in a room we could probably cobble together a decent definition of a “brick” that we are all mutually satisfied with, even if it’s not perfect at including all things that are bricks and excluding all things that are not. There might be edge cases but we could do it.
But a house? What defines a house? Is a house that is not currently livable due to damage still a house? What about a house that doesn’t look like an American white picket fence stick built house? Something made of grass or mud or stone. Something for a climate where roofs or walls are a poor choice. What about house boats and RVs?
What defines romance? Is it sex? Non sexual physical intimacy? Emotional connections? Some odd cross sectional grid of the myriad possibilities for human interaction?
Every experience is an edge case when you drill down in it. I have a structure built out of bricks, and there’s a hole in the structure where the brick that is sexual attraction goes for other people. Is the structure a house or not? Could you even tell, without me describing a great deal more about it, its size, its shape? Would you and the person next to you agree, once I did?
And all this means that while I’ll call myself aro and aroace for the purposes of communicating with others, (the size and shape of the brick structure has no bearing on the fact that I do not plan to ever be in a monogamous partnership, and that’s the important thing to convey) the concepts actually have not much real impact on my subjective internality. Being aro or being aroace are not to me separate from my being ace. Or rather they are not to me a reified part of my identity the way being ace is.
So I find it SO WIERD that everyone assumes that they would be. That by default anyone who has an a- identity is going to have a complicated interaction with the split attraction model, that, as @specialagentartemis put it, “the canonical ace is alloromantic and the canonical aro is allosexual, and aroaces are a third thing.”
I recognize it has utility to other people. I like the green aro flag and appreciate having a word to communicate my disinclination to date even if sex weren’t involved. I understand the theory behind the split attraction model. It just doesn’t feel like it applies.
I think that asexuality and aromanticism are a lot like ADHD and autism. Sure, at the end points of the spectrum they describe different things. But in the middle of the spectrum, many people don't have both - they have one thing that can't be divided.
I'm ADHD, which includes so much autistic stuff that I often say I'm autistic for convenience. Am I actually autistic as well? I may never know, and I'm not sure it matters? They aren't really different where I am.
I'm asexual. That apparently includes being so aromantic that I can't actually figure out what romance IS. I've started saying aroace so people don't correct my when I describe "aromantic" experiences as asexual ones, but that's just for audience comfort.
Intellectually, I understand that other people have other experiences, but it feels weird that they consider them to be in distinct categories. I guess we don't all have to be the same group?? I know that some of you guys felt talked over in the early 2010s, so I'm glad you've got your own space now?
It just doesn't make that much sense from here.
