aspec people are amazing

DO NOT SCREENSHOT MY BIO. pm me for my main. lucy. adult. bi/pan angled aroace. nonbinary woman. callistian (nlm, nlw, wlw, wlm). fae/faer, mew/mews, bay/bays/bayself, or auxiliary she/her pronouns, please. any potential trigger warnings will be blanket tagged as #tw for ts. warning - i use swears pretty frequently. this is my sideblog for posting lots of aspec things; i will reblog positivity and also discourse, and the occasional non aspec post, which will be tagged #not aspec specific. discourse, aphobia, and other such things will be tagged #discourse. i will tag anything on request with no explanation needed. queer will be tagged #q word (i may forget this tag on occasion, however); please do not tag any of my posts as q slur. i often give out advice under the #aspec advice tag, and my messages/ask box are always open, although my activity on this blog is sporadic at best.

[officialaspec]

[Coiner of the term quoiflux.]

Please don't reblog this post.

DNI if you fall under any of the following:

Exclusionist of any LGBT identity (I am a critical inclusionist, meaning I support aspec and pan inclusion, neopronouns/MOGAI genders/etc, and mspec gays and lesbians)

If you are against she/her gays, he/him lesbians, and other people whose pronouns don't match their gender or presentation (ie if you believe pronouns = gender)

Anti MOGAI, anti neopronouns

If you don't believe in other aspec identities or microlabels (like gray, demi, etc) or are anti microlabels

Anti queer, queerphobe, or tag queer as "q sl*r"

Anti bi/pan/m-spec gays and lesbians

MAP, (no)MAP, pedophile, or support or ship anything with that content

Incest supporters or shippers. Adopted siblings are still siblings and that counts as incest

Racist, sexist, anti any religion, ethnicity, or culture; basically if you're bigoted in any way

Kink, gore, nsfw, p*rn blogs

DDLG, littlespace or nsfw age regression (the only exception is if you are part of a system or you use it as a coping method in a sfw way)

Important things about me:

I am neurodivergent (ADHD, severe general anxiety, and medical PTSD/trauma)

I am relatively gullible and have trouble discerning tone over text. I fall for things pretty easily, so expect me to respond to things that seem positive only to delete the response later, after I realize it's not meant to be nice.

I am disabled (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, Complex Congenital Heart Defects)

Please do NOT screenshot my bio or this post. It makes me extremely uncomfortable and is a trigger for me, as it sets off my anxiety very badly.

As a follow up to the above, please don't vague me. If you have a problem with me, PM me. Don't post about it and go behind my back, because it sets off my anxiety.

I would also appreciate not being called words like freak or weird.

Do not call me cishet. I am asexual, arospec, and not cis.

I don’t have many triggers, but I ask that you respect the few that I've listed.

[swampgallows]

"tbh we might have clowned on [aros & aces] a lil too harshly" bigotry. the term you're looking for is bigotry. denying communities their vocabulary and ability to safely exist because you think you're the personal arbiter of which identities are "valid" is bigotry. minimizing and infantilizing and harassing entire groups of people based on their orientation is bigotry. aphobia isn't some forgettable phase of being cringe as a teenager, it's bigotry that inflicted long term damage to these communities.

[swampgallows]

These notes are heartbreaking. There are hundreds of aspec people describing in detail how they went back in the closet or lived in denial or in fear because of the malice, harassment, and ignorance toward aromantic and asexual people. Aspec positivity tags used to be full of porn and gore. This included pictures of the corpse of a teen girl who came out as asexual the day before she was brutally murdered—and Internet strangers responded by debating her orientation.

Aphobes tried to argue that only lesbians could experience corrective rape, or that it was somehow appropriating a term exclusive to South Africa, or that an asexual person willing to have sex could not be correctively raped. They insisted any evidence of oppression was either misdirected or fabricated. Being an entry in the DSM until 2013 and developing medication specifically for treating the condition didn’t count. 

They told us all of our words were either stolen or stupid: allistic people tried to say that “aspec” was specifically about people on the autism spectrum; “zucchini”, squash, and other innocuous aspec terms and motifs (black rings, playing card suits, cake, space, dragons, etc.) got ridiculed to death; QPRs as a concept are derided as “just friends” and irrelevant to anyone but aspecs, who themselves are deemed irrelevant. In fact, the “clowning” quote in the OP was in the notes on a post of mine about the importance of recognizing queerplatonic relationships. 

Aphobes insisted that aspecs couldn’t speak other languages, that it’s a “white people thing”, that teenagers are just trying to feel special, that it’s a side effect of SSRIs, that we’re “basically straight” (straight-passing, i.e. erased). Anything to deny us our existence. Anything to minimize us, to keep us invisible and silent, to blame us for intracommunity issues, to invalidate us. 

I got attention for getting angry in 2018, and I’m still angry now. This has been happening on tumblr for over a decade. It’s been known for a long time (and even admitted by terfs themselves) that aro/ace exclusion and trans exclusion go hand in hand and contribute to terf rhetoric. When you hurt us, you are hurting your own community. Arguing that aspecs do not belong is not “discourse”. It is bigotry.

[deadliestpieceontheboard]

I don't think younger/newer users fully grasp the shit show that ace discourse was around 2014-17

It was so hostile that, to this day, discussions that begin to derail just enough can make me physically nauseous, some specific mockery trigger crying sessions years later. We lost most accounts with any sort of ace positivity. There was no information, no support, and all this damage was done predominantly by other queer people.

All this to say that you, however you identify yourself, should be engaging with aphobic comments the same way you do any hate. We don't sugarcoat or try to be comprehensive with people who are blatantly racist, homophobic or terfs, so why give it a pass just because it's coming from a queer person? I see how this tolerance goes and it's done enough damage as it is.

[bumblebeerror]

I’ve met new aces who know nothing about ace culture. We had rings, black for ace, white for aro. We had dragons and space and cake and all of it. All of it got mocked and erased and bullied so completely that it’s not on the site anymore. I still follow the aro/ace positivity tags and sometimes someone brings them up again and I flinch. I honest to god flinch.

Hell, I came out as aroace at the same time as that discourse - and AVEN got so thoroughly smeared that I’ve never gone looking for it. There’s culture I don’t know. It kills me.

[starlightnecromancer]

I used to run a blog for ace rep in books, I deleted it out of fear that I was going to get harassed.

When ace folk talk about being forced back into the closet we are not joking. Anyone on the ace spectrum were so violently harrassed that it was legitmately safer for them to not ID as ace publicly. Literally anything would get you death threats.

Anti-ace folks were in bed with terfs and I'm sorry if that upsets people but yall really gotta understand that literally every anti-ace talking point was the exact same that is given to bisexuals, pansexuals, and trans women.

They talked about how we were "stealing resources", about how we were "predators" because we "sexualized children" with our identities as being asexual, about how we are "invading LGBT spaces".

There were multiple anti-ace "memes" that were just straight up death threats. "Take the shot Jessica" followed up with "Target Sighted" is one that still haunts me to this day.

Some of the biggest "exclusionist" discourse blogs all ended up being white women, several of whom race faked. One even claimed to be a Half-black half-jewish intersex trans woman who would become half of whatever race she was arguing with. It took a massive amount of people all pouring evidence into what she was doing for her to finally get dropped because oh yea, maybe its a bad look to have the white christian perisex girl be the "face" after all of this.

Ace people were routinely told that their sexual assaults didn't happen. People routinely told us that we can't have words to describe our oppression because it "groups gay people with straights". Ace people were routinely told that because we aren't sent to conversion therapy that we weren't "actually LGBT", and the people who did let it clear that they were sent to conversion therapy because they're asexual? "Oh that didn't happen." "Actually that was homophobia, not aphobia"

The "exclusionists" likewise, would REFUSE to not tie anything into conversion therapy. They'd literally use conversion therapy doctrine to dictate if you're gay enough.

The Acecourse was also around the time "queer is a slur" really started to gain traction, and guess what the exclusionists were doing? They were calling aces and our allies "Radikweers" without a fucking hint of irony while screaming about how queer is a slur and you need to tag everything with Q Slur

There was a DEDICATED sect of "exclusionists" who were lesbians obsessed with the idea of making the existence of asexual women a lesbophoic problem. I'm not even fucking joking. Same group of people would then claim that if you didn't have sex with them then you're abusive because you're "Witholding sex, which is an emotional need".

Exclusionists were by and large, white gays that were pissed off that they couldn't do assimilation and respectability politics because the rest of us were too weird rocked the boats too much to be able to slot neatly into the whole 2 kids white picket fence.

[bumblebeerror]

^nailed it. “Piss your pants” replaced “kys” and “up the road not cross the street” but we all knew what it meant. Most of the people targeted were like me - 18 and under who dared to like being aroace, ace, or aro. Almost all of us weren’t even “straight” (as in heterosexual or heteromantic). All trying to defend ourselves and our orientations while being attacked by people who proudly called us “kweer”s and “mogai trash” and told us to die. Told us we should be put in concentration camps, once. That we weren’t hurt or struggling or erased, we were just white kids trying to be different and quirky.

Edit: by the by, the reason they changed to piss your pants was because we were mass reporting their blogs for harassment for telling aces and aros to kill themselves. They changed it to piss your pants specifically because you can’t really report that to tumblr and expect a takedown. But again. We knew what it meant.

[agentduckorico]

You'd go into the ace positivity tags and you'd see shit like "Trump ace moodboard uwu" from exclusionists. You'd see it regularly with all kinds of filth like him: Trump, Thatcher, fucking Hitler.

You'd have blogs PROUDLY TOUTING their aphobia. Blogs had titles like "aphobicrosequartz" (who was a fucking mess and a half), You'd have big name blogs reblogging from known aphobes, and when people asked "hey, are you aphobic/an exclusionist," they'd be like "uwu I don't want to get involved in discourse" and like, the post below that ask is a reblog openly making fun of aces.

You know how "lgbtpn" was briefly a thing? Yeah, that's because aphobes used it to explicitly exclude aces, while trying to appease people and include pans and nbs.

There was graphic porn and gore regularly in ace related tags from aphobes. That's how fucking bad it was. Even now I don't venture into the asexual tag. It really was horrific, how aspecs were treated. And a lot of aphobes never stopped, they just became quiet about it and started saying "I don't wanna get involved in discourse" while they openly rb from aphobes and never reblog anything written ace stuff, even in multi sexuality queer posts.

[basic-bamboo]

Yeah the whole "i don't want to get involved in discourse" while having urls that are (if you know what to look for) explicitly aphobic and continuing to reblog aphobic jokes and from other aphobes

It really sucks to follow someone new and scout their blog for any hint of where they stand, how they feel about you, and often there isn't any hint, so you think it's safe and for a while it is! And then you get one of those jokes or shitty moodboards and realize what they think about you

[redbeardace]

2022's Ace Week Proclamations are starting to roll in! Pennsylvania is back for the third time, joined by first timer Wisconsin!

[officialaspec]

Thinking of coining a new label: arofog / acefog. I'm not super sure of the name yet, so I'd love any suggestions! I was going to base the name on fog, due to the foggy, misty, or cloudy feeling of one's attraction. I may also just call it quoiflux if that term doesn't yet exist. Please let me know which you prefer!

EDIT: I'm definitely leaning more towards quoiflux, which can be used as a definition for arospec or acespec people.

Definition:

Basically it's kind of a mixture of quoi- and -flux, wherein the user feels like they are on the aro or ace spectrum, but their feelings are hard to pin down and determine. They may feel as if they fluctuate between different labels, like -flux, but are not always able to describe their feelings or say what labels they are. Quoiflux people may also feel like they identify with multiple labels all at one time, with varying levels of intensity. This can fluctuate rather quickly, sometimes with multiple labels feeling right in one day. Essentially, it would be used by people who have strong aspec feelings that can be hard to pin down and describe and may vary depending on the day or one's mood. These terms do include gray- and demi- labels, as someone who is quoiflux can experience romantic or sexual attraction at some point, just like with these two identities.

Please let me know what you guys think! I need feedback for this, and any help would be wonderful!

!!!Exclusionists/Aphobes Do Not Interact!!!

[officialaspec]

Quoiflux flag! Here are the color meanings:

Green - taken from the aro flag, and stands for aromatic people, either on the spectrum or who are aromantic and quoiflux

Teal - for fluctuating arospec feelings and identities

Blue - taken from the quoi- flag, meant to represent the unsurity of one's feelings

Indigo - for fluctuating acespec feelings and identities

Purple - taken from the ace flag, stands for asexual people, either on the spectrum or who are asexual and quoiflux

Please reblog this version instead, and let me know what you guys think! Let me know if there's any way I can make this flag better in any way!

Bonus quoiflux ace and quoiflux aro icons

[pinkdiamondprince]

Trying to figure out if you’re ace or aro can be so goddamn hard because it’s like, trying to find the absence of something. Imagine you’re at a pond and you want to know if there are any turtles, or fish. Say you find a turtle and you’re like “great! Now I know there are turtles.” Or a fish, now you know for sure there are fish. Or you find both, and now you know for a fact there are both turtles and fish in the pond.

But like, if you don’t find any turtles it might be that there are no turtles or maybe you’re just really shitty at looking for turtles and maybe you THINK you saw a turtle over there or maybe it was just a stick. Maybe there are only a few turtles. Maybe you need to do something special to find the turtles. Maybe a bunch of these rocks are actually turtles but you couldn’t tell them apart. Maybe there are no turtles. You have no idea. Meanwhile some people are saying “Oh there have to be turtles! You’ll find them eventually ;)” or “How many turtles have you found in your pond?” or “Try planting some vegetables at the shore to attract the turtles.” Or “Oh no! What disaster happened to your pond that there are no turtles?” And you’re just standing there wet with an empty net and a tired expression.

But whatever because whether there are turtles or fish or not your pond’s ecology works just fine without them because that’s what eco-communities do they form a system around what they have. You aren’t missing anything if you don’t have turtles you just have a pond system without turtles. If someone tried to change you by pouring a bunch of turtles into your pond it would probably fuck something up.

So you don’t have to be entirely sure. You don’t have to search every inch of the damn pond before you can decide there are probably no turtles. If you want to take the aro or ace label because you think it fits go for it. And if you do find your turtles you can rename the pond. That’s fine.

[aroaceenjolras]

my problematic aro opinion of the day is that that trope where romance focused queer media has the one aro character whose main interests are shipping/matchmaking and who exists to provide perfect fixes and advice for the romantic leads then disappear as soon as they’re no longer needed is literally just the gay best friend trope but applied to a different part of the community and it is not, in fact, good representation

[makingqueerhistory]

So you said queer history didn't start with Stonewall, which is not even surprising at all. However, that's all I've ever been told, so I don't know anything about the time before Stonewall. Do you have a tag, a masterpost, or some articles or something for me to read so I can learn about queer history before Stonewall? And I'm sorry if this comes off as rude or anything; I just genuinely want to learn the untold history of the community I'm a part of. Thanks 😊

First, thank you for coming to us, you didn’t come off as rude at all. 

Well, we don’t have a tag or masterpost, but I can create a list of articles we have up at this point (May 14, 2018) that focuses on queer subjects from before Stonewall.

Sappho, the Poetess

Kristina, King of Sweden

Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum, and Occam’s Razor

Josephine Baker, a Woman with Eclectic Talents

Queer Women and AFAB People During the Holocaust

Magnus Hirschfeld, the Founder

Institute of Sexology, a Place of Learning

San Domino, Gay Island

The Bitten Peach and the Cut Sleeve

The End of the World War 2 Series

Vita Sackville-West: Creating a Legacy

Langston Hughes: the Poet

The Marriage of Jane and Paul Bowles

Bjornstjerne Bjornson, the Advocate

Osh-Tisch, the Warrior

The Trials of Oscar Wilde

Sir Ewan Forbes, the Doctor

Frida Kahlo: Lover of Self and Others

Albert D.J. Cashier

The Golden Orchid

Queen Christina, Queer Codes and Queer Coding (Part 2)

Queen Christina, Queer Codes and Queer Coding(Part 1)Different from the Others, the Beginning

The Story of the Ladies of Llangollen

Wilfred Owen: Dating Your Heroes (And Writing Through Hard Times)

Virginia Woolf: Struggling (And Never Being Perfect)

Tamara de Lempicka’s Legacy

Tamara de Lempicka’s Life

Federico Garcia Lorca: Words that Scared a Country

Bricktop, and the Happy Ending

Bricktop, the Fabulous

Frank Kameny

Sophia Parnok, Russia’s Sappho

Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Alan L. Hart, Part 2

Alan L. Hart, Part 1

Defining Identities in North America, Part 2

Defining Identities in North America, Part 1

Alan Turing

Hatshepsut

Hamish Henderson

Elagabalus, the Empress

Billy Tipton and the Question of Gender

Takatāpui

Yukio Mishima

Kitty Genovese

Catherine Bernard: A question in studying asexual history

György Faludy

Edward Carpenter

Dawn Langley Hall

Zimri-Lim, King of Mari

Coccinelle

Lesbia Harford

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs

Frieda Belinfante Part 2 

Frieda Belinfante Part 1

Eleanor Rykener

Redefining the Dandy: The Asexual Man of Fashion

I hope this helps! 

[holographicbutch]

Some people will be like "ace people bring up the fact they're ace too much it's annoying blah blah blah" like you realize how you sound right. We all make jokes abt our sexualities/genders on here CONSTANTLY you just don't like it when ace people do it. Maybe you should think abt why that is

[holographicbutch]

Like. How is an ace person going "I'll never be tempted by a vampire's seduction. Rip to you but I'm different" any different from me going "my lesbian swag makes me immune to his attacks". Different wording but similar joke, except I'm sure more people would complain about the first example being annoying

[th3p0rtalmaker]

1. "I'll never be tempted by a vampire's seduction. Rip to you but I'm different" does not sound nearly as cool and witty as "My lesbian swag makes me immune to his attacks" in my humble opinion.

2. I'm a cishet woman who makes jokes about my own sexuality once in a blue moon, and recognizes that a human being is not defined by their sexuality. If I met an ace person and tried to have a conversation to get to know them, and said ace person threw out jokes and references about their sexuality every few minutes, tying it into every single aspect of their personality, I'd get very bored and frustrated very quickly.

I'm not all that concerned about them being ace. I do care about what their current fandom is. I care about what their favorite foods are. I care about what their hobbies are. I care about their career goals. I care about their traumatic backstory, even if I haven't ascended enough friendship levels to unlock it yet. I won't deny that there are toxic, unkind people on Tumblr and in the real world who just want to be mean and nasty about ace people being comfortable with their sexuality. But at the same time I definitely think it's possible to go overboard with the jokes if someone is trying to become your friend.

[ladyliedie]

1. Not a single ace, or even lesbian, person asked you for your humble opinion.

2. What you're describing is a non-issue. I have never, ever met a single ace person who made an overabundance of ace jokes directly to another person, at least not anymore than any other sexuality. That's my experience, anyway, even as someone who follows ace accounts. And even if ace people do make a lot of jokes, good for them. They have to see sex jokes on a daily basis, especially from cishet people, so who gives a fuck if they make non-sex jokes? They probably don't want to be your friend anyway.

3. Replace everything you just said about ace folks with gay or lesbian people. It sounds horrible. Why would you say that about ace people? Would you say it about gay people? Your whole response reads like, "I don't hate ace people, but I wish they wouldn't flaunt it so much", which I'm sure is not unfamiliar to many LGBTQA+ people.

4. You're more interested in someone's traumatic backstory, but not their sexuality? What? I don't even know how to respond to that—like you'd rather hear about anything else including their trauma (which can be largely related to sexuality for many people), but don't want to hear some ace jokes? It's that serious for you?

5. "I won't deny that there are toxic, unkind people on Tumblr [...] who just want to be mean and nasty about ace people being comfortable with their sexuality." Yes, you are one of them.

[yardsards]

i hate how stuff like "op is a homophobe" or "op is a transphobe" or "op is a biphobe" are (rightfully!!!) taken seriously and treated as useful information to avoid giving bigots a platform. but saying "op is an aphobe" is treated as haha funney meme cringe

[number-1-transfem-berdly-enjoyer]

All the bitches who "used to be into ace discourse but are different now" all still think aphobia is a "lesser" bigotry

[holographicbutch]

Some people will be like "ace people bring up the fact they're ace too much it's annoying blah blah blah" like you realize how you sound right. We all make jokes abt our sexualities/genders on here CONSTANTLY you just don't like it when ace people do it. Maybe you should think abt why that is

[holographicbutch]

Like. How is an ace person going "I'll never be tempted by a vampire's seduction. Rip to you but I'm different" any different from me going "my lesbian swag makes me immune to his attacks". Different wording but similar joke, except I'm sure more people would complain about the first example being annoying

[officialaspec]

Except it's really not that deep? I hate to break it to you but a huge part of folklore is how stories evolve to adapt with the experiences of the people telling them. That's the nature of oral story telling: every generation who tells it adds something relevant to their time, so over time these stories can mean multiple things. Yes, sirens originally used a person's perfect ideal world to "seduce," but many modern adaptations of sirens portray them as literally seductive in the sexual way, so making jokes referencing that version of sirens is not wrong. Acting like the people who created these stories are all-wise and ever knowing is... sort of weird, because they were literally just people too, and people create stories and monsters to make sense of the world around them and their own fears (fears that, by the way, do in fact change and evolve over time, thus warping and changing the stories that go with them).

Also, saying that aces making these jokes because of common misconceptions and the shifting of folkloric stories is "the height of hubris" is a massive yikes.

[veritasrose]

I really wish people would understand that there are other forms of queer rep besides two same gendered people kissing.

A queer character is queer rep regardless of their romance or a lack thereof even. Ace and aro people exist. Trans people exist. Bi people exist. Queer characters are rep by existing, not just by who they interact with. If a character is nonbinary, they are queer rep whether they kiss someone or not. A bi character in a relationship with someone a different gender is still queer rep because they are still bi. Queer characters can even just be friends with one another. They can be single! And still be queer because that’s who they are not who they do!

This whole trend of deciding if art is valid representation based on romance and ships is reductive and dismissive of identities existing within individuals. And of the communities that we all need.

Just please, stop reducing entire identities down to relationships. Its all good and fun to enjoy your ships, but you have to remember the community is bigger than just romances.

[gayvampyr]

hate when ships get super popular and then become prioritized over aspec headcanons, and i don’t just mean ppl think their interpretation is correct and everyone else is wrong, im talking about extremely toxic and hateful vitriol that pollutes fandom spaces and makes them unfriendly and even hostile toward aspecs. i hate this especially when the character has very clear aro/ace coding and subtext and everyone will just be like “no you’re wrong AND homophobic they have CHEMISTRY” yeah sometimes that’s called friendship. like idk how to convince people that if a character is all but canonically aroace and the only ambiguity is that they just haven’t said the word aloud and you just. erase that aspect of their identity, that’s aphobic. idc if you’re like “yeah they’re aspec and in a relationship” or “i think they’re gay but i respect your interpretation” that’s all fine and good. but im just asking y’all to stop acting like aro-ace characters are somehow lesser or that your interpretation will “fix” them.

anyway im just tired of romantic relationships being positioned over platonic ones. i like shipping as much as the next person (okay, maybe a bit less than the next person) but sometimes they’re just friends. let aro/ace people have some sort of rep and stop acting like all of our headcanons are wrong or bad. you’re ruining fandom for all of us <3

[gayvampyr]

like as a lesbian, if there was a female character who exclusively dated other women and only showed interest in women, it would be canon that she’s a lesbian, right? even if they didn’t say the word out loud. it’s just implied; this character is a lesbian. and if someone started shipping them with men or if they said “actually she doesn’t like women at all in my interpretation” that would lesbophobic, like that’s a fair conclusion to come to, correct? making obviously queer characters non-queer or queer in a different way is an injustice to those characters and communities because it erases their identity.

so why is it so hard to grasp that shipping a character who has no interest in sex or romance, and has time and time again proven to be asexual and aromantic through context like my example of a lesbian character above, with zero regard for their asexuality/aromanticism and erasing their aspec identity, aphobic? why is that so hard to understand? and the fact that non-aspecs are being probably just gonna roll their eyes at this post and call it an overreaction and continue to do this anyway because they think romance and sex is “just the better interpretation” or “improves the character” just goes to show how some of y’all do not actually see aromantic and asexual as real identities or orientations, or aro/ace people as whole individuals worthy of respect and representation in media. that may seem like a stretch but it’s not that far a leap from not respecting characters to not respecting real human beings when the baseline is just respecting queer identities. it’s not that hard to just. not erase ace- and aro-ness.

if you want to ship aro and ace characters, im not gonna stop you. im not the fandom police and i can’t control how you consume media. but im asking you to at least have some introspection about why it’s so important to you that this aro/ace character have a love interest when that’s just not who they are, and whether or not your reason stems from ideas of what relationships and people “should look like” or if you think their lack of interest in romance or sex is wrong, or bad or sad or needs to be fixed etc.

[arokeithh]

not to be aro on main but the romanticization of love my beloathed

[arokeithh]

like i'm not even against the concept of love? i even usually think love is generally good or cool to experience

but love isn't,, everything. its not the eptimone of moral goodness. it's not the meaning of life.

love can be used to hurt people. love can be unhealthy and screw you over. people can have trauma surrounding love that should be respected. (and respecting trauma means not expecting them to be okay with love overnight.) people can be kind and compassionate and good without loving the person they're being kind to

love is just an emotion. just, chill out. it's fine.

[arokeithh]

also if you think i'm equating romance with love go fuck yourself

[wolpertinger-prince]

No offense but a lot of you guys are fully supportive of ace people and aro people until one of us makes you feel a little bad about how the world literally revolves around sex and romance.

[wolpertinger-prince]

And like I want to make it clear that I'm not against sex positivity or romance. If you like/want that, good for you! But we as a society have to make room for those of us that don't, or at least don't prioritize it. We tend to put it on such a pedestal compared to other human experiences that it gets ridiculous. Little girls don't all dream about their wedding day. Boys don't all spend their teenage years experimenting with their sexuality. Like it's hailed as such a priority that even in LGBT+ spaces debate if we belong there. It's ridiculous!

And so many of you turn on us real fast as soon as any of us points that out or, Heaven forbid, pokes a little fun at it.

[arospec-daybook]

Okay but people really need to realize how wrong it actually is to say ‘you’ll find someone eventually’ when that person clearly said they don’t want to find anyone and that they’re already perfectly happy with their life.

If those same people told me they’re in a happy relationship and I responded to that with ‘you’ll break up eventually’ I bet they wouldn’t like that. They’d literally get so confused and be like ‘Okay sure, there is always a possibility but why bring it up so randomly when it's totally irrelevant right now.’ and that is exactly how we feel! What matters is how we feel and what we want now and not what possibly might happen in the future, especially if it’s not even likely to happen. Why is it so hard to simply accept that someone doesn’t want that change in their life and be happy for them just like they’re happy for you when you’re in a relationship?

Imagine if we told them that thinking relationships make them happy is just a phase and that they’ll realize how being single makes them a lot more fulfilled (just like how they tell us that ‘the one’ will make us change our mind). I mean, I’m sure there are people out there who do come to that realization just like there are also people who eventually realize they do want to date which is valid, of course. What is actually wrong is making unnecessary assumptions and invalidating someone’s lifestyle solely because it’s different from yours. It’s not that they are simply stating the change is possible, they actually think it will undoubtedly happen and change your life for the better because they believe their lifestyle is superior to your current one. That’s the real problem.

Instead of forcing your lifestyle on someone, you just simply need to learn that no lifestyle is superior to the other, so even if it does change it doesn’t mean their previous one was any less valid or inferior to yours. That’s literally all people need to realize in order to respect us instead of expecting the change in our lives that doesn't need to happen.

[officialaspec]

Hey, I was wondering if I fit the definition of quoiflux, and figured you were the best person to ask since you coined it. I'm thinking of identifying as quoifluxomniemotional (if that's allowed, can I combine quoiflux with other terms?) Anyway, I identified as alico-before finding quoiflux, but I think this fits me. I feel like my type of emotional attraction changes. I relate to demi- the most, because I generally fit that. However, I also feel like bits of fray-, akoi-, grey-, flux-, spike-, dello- etc. It seems to change at random, sometimes depends on the person, and is a mix of those identities. The closer the bond I form with someone, the more stable my attraction gets, but I don't think it's ever completely stable. It's all confusing and it's hard to figure out how I feel most of the time. Does this sound like quoiflux?

Sorry if this was asked a while ago, I've been busy with real life things and haven't been on!

To answer your questions: yes, quoiflux can be combined with any other labels or modifiers you wish; and that sounds like you fit quoiflux to me! I created quoiflux to be on any spectrum (romantic, sexual, platonic, aesthetic, etc), so if you feel like you can't pin down your exact label on any a-spectrum, then you are more than welcome to use quoiflux as a label for yourself! To tell you the truth, I myself coined the label because I fluctuate between relating to several different aro labels but never fully identified with them all the time.

I hope this helps you!