Asexual, aromantic, and 100% anti-nazi

Hey :) I'm an aromantic asexual and I'm here to run this blog about asexuality and aromanticism. Despite the name, this blog is not just for aro aces. Romantic asexuals, sexual aromantics and anyone on the asexual or aromantic spectrum are welcome. Even if you're not ace or aro you can still follow and reblog posts to spread support for your a-spec pals. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask :)  This blog does not post about politics but will not accept followers who support or tolerate Nazis.

[nat-20s]

sorry y'all but I think Not Dating kind of rules actually. I well and truly can in fact do whatever I want forever

[serregon]

I know we make jokes about the proverbial asexual pervert who has written hundreds of thousands of words of smut on ao3, but also shoutout to the aces who aren’t perverts. to the aces who skip the sex scenes and wince at sex jokes and awkwardly leave the conversation when your friends start talking about sex. your boundaries aren’t childish and fuck anyone who says otherwise.

[specialagentartemis]

my petty gripe about anachronism in historical/fantasy/spec-fic worlds is attraction language.

We’ve all heard the “should you use modern queer labels or not” argument but honestly even when people go “true, they wouldn’t use the labels ‘aromantic’ or ‘asexual,’” so often the characters describe their experiences as “I never felt romantic attraction” or “I don’t feel attracted to anyone” in ways that makes me go. You are stilllllll thinking about this in an extraordinarily modern online way. That 19th century steampunk detective man will NOT be angsting about having never felt romantic attraction, he would be angsting about being unable to feel moved by the beauty or charm of a woman, or something. And I do think that “attractiveness” language is different from the identity-level idea of experiencing attraction—Sherlock Holmes does not talk about not experiencing attraction, but when Watson says “What a very attractive woman!” Holmes responds “Is she? I did not observe.” (And then Watson calls him an inhuman automaton and calculating-machine and Holmes calls Watson’s judgement biased). Never swayed by the attractiveness of a man or woman, never desirous of marriage, never charmed by the delights of love, all of these feel like some of the variety of ways that someone in this milieu might describe an ace- or aro-spectrum identity more than “never felt attraction” does. Mostly because, like the terms for aromantic and asexual themselves, nailing down an exclusively attraction-based definition of a-spec identities is a relatively new and extremely post-AVEN thing. And yet in fiction everybody knows to articulate their experience as feeling sexual/romantic attraction. And I always want to go nooo how would THIS character think about it?? Not how you think this character SHOULD think about it, how would THIS person in THIS context articulate their feelings?

[cosmicredcadet]

Sometimes...characters being in a romantic relationship is worse.

[awesomestarfighter]

#I feel this #stolen tags: #sometimes it's the most boring way to have characters interact #sometimes it's worse than the chemistry they have as literally any other kind of relationship #sometimes their platonic dynamic is better #sometimes their hostile dynamic is better #sometimes their dynamic is better if it's anything other than romance #because maybe them falling into generic romance is how you ruin their characters.

[aromanticofficial]

official aromantic post

[elexuscal]

Something I've noticed over the years is that I get very similar reactions when I tell people I don't drink or that I'm ace.

A sort of initial surprise, a need for clarification. And then some selection or combination of a) an insistence I'm wrong/lying, b) defensiveness, or c) anger.

And I think there are a lot of underlying reasons for those responses, many of which are probably difficult to untangle But I think some part is that people feel judged, even when i'm just neutrally stating my own preferences.

This can probably happen any time someone admits they're not interested in something you are, even stuff as innocuous as a sports team or media genre. But alcohol and sex in particular... These are topics with very strong but contradictory associations within society. To be cool, you're supposed to have sex/drink-- but only the Right Way, with the Right People. Otherwise it's "cringe" at best, "immoral" at worst. More than that, what counts as the Right Way, and the Right People, will vary from (sub-)culture to (sub-)culture, which means you're trying to adhere to a set of "rules" that is ever changing, ever shifting.

I do not believe that. I believe that both sex and drinking are, in of themselves, morally neutral acts. I believe that you can do immoral things with(in) them (e.g. Sexual assault, driving under the influence). I think there are possible health impacts you should be aware of before engaging with them (e.g. the risk of STIs or liver disease, etc), and that there are precautions people might want to consider to minimize those risks. But that's the true of frankly every activity, to a greater or lesser extent.

People who get uncomfortable about my asexuality and non-drinking rarely ask me my attitudes, and won't be particularly receptive to my attempts to clarify them. I suspect that's because they haven't actually interrogated these attitudes themselves. They are still harbouring internalised guilt, that sense on some level that drinking and sexuality are wrong.

In other words, they're feeling judged, but not because I am judging them. But because my simple act of abstaining from them is making them suddenly acutely aware that engaging with sex or alcohol is a Choice. In doing, it confronts them with a fact that it's a choice they're making. And if on some level they think they should be making a different one... they get defensive, angry, or judgemental in turn.

[selkaycik]

I legit thought everyone felt the same

[variousqueerthings]

do think when people say "we know marriage is a social construct, but it's a legal way to be able to take care of someone else and vice versa" as if those of us making a point about marriage (i would say, a lot of us being aromantic people especially) don't know this fact, are missing a bit of the point about why this is stressed and potentially not giving enough grace to (again especially aromantic) people who say this.

when it's framed as a "so just get married for legality reasons" and im like. you mean like how gay people married/marry people of the opposite gender for legality reasons? and that's considered to be a symptom of a problem, not the solution? you want people to "just" get married against their will because it's the only solution this system has available?

if people cannot or will not get married for whatever reason -- not just for being aromantic, but, say, due to inefficient disability support measures within marriage, because of having had bad experiences with marriage in the past, because of being polyamorous, because some element of marriage is ineffective, unwanted, limited, discriminatory, or hell, because you can't find somebody to marry or nobody wants to marry you, or maybe because you just plain don't want to without there being a distinct Reason -- then it's a problem that this is the only framework in place for people to be afforded certain legal and social protections.

i am glad for others that more people can get married, but it's a flawed institution with gaping holes that isn't for everyone and builds social structures that leave so many people behind and unsupported. this is abundantly obvious in the way that we saw why people pushed for the need for equal marriage in the first place.

that's what's said when making a point that it's a social construct. and also what's meant (partially) when pushing against the idea that "love" as concept isn't at the core of queer (amongst others hinted at in this post) activism, because it's about building better structures. if the only people we care about are those we "love" within a family unit, or those who successfully manage to pretend that unit without actually really wanting it, and if not being in that unit for whatever reason means that care isn't going to be/is no longer afforded, then are we really doing any better than heteronormativity?

more people need to read up on "amatonormativity" from the original source (this is a summary from the same person written in 2012 and so doesn't include aromantic, but it's all in there) before they start pushing marriage as the ultimate goal of queer liberation, or indeed any liberation.

[limbel]

we have to thank our brave soldiers in fandom who write gen fics. we have to thank our brave soldiers in fandom who write character studies and stories with no focus on romance or sex. we have to get on our knees and thank the brave soldiers in fandom who write about minor characters and friendship and family with no focus on romance or sex. i know it’s hard to care about characters in a world that seems to only revolve around ships but i see you. and i love you

[ryebreadedd]

happy aromantic visibilty day to one of my fav fandom wiki comments

[aromanticsky]

allonormativity is so pervasive. “A computer can never be horny and thus can never make good art” I have never been horny in my life, is my art fundamentally bad? Is horniness the only emotion that can fuel good art? Is everything I put into my writing and drawing and painting negated by the lack of horniness? I am a person and I am an artist and I am a writer and I am not horny. Piss off.

[papercranesandpride]

I think if you want to understand bigotry against aromantics, I have a good case study. Let me talk a little about my dad's family.

My dad has 4 half siblings and two step siblings. They're all a decent bit younger than him. When I was a teenager, we went to a family reunion, and I realized something—my dad did not respect his siblings. He looked down on all of them. He saw them as fuck-ups and overgrown children. My dad had the American dream: well paying management job, suburban house, wife, and three kids. My aunt and uncles did not. Excluding my aunt, none of them were married or in serious relationships. They hadn't really settled into long term careers. Several of them were working the kind of jobs that get called "Unskilled labor." So he looked down on them because the youngest one was in his thirties (and several were much older), and yet none of them had "settled down" into what he saw as lifelong, permanent careers and relationships and lives. He was polite to their faces, sure, but I heard how he talked about them behind their backs, to my mother.

And then a few years ago, we visited his brothers again for Thanksgiving. And I realized something again--he respected them now. He saw them as equals. Why? Well. All of a sudden, every single one of them had serious, committed romantic partners. They didn't even need to still be with those partners—one of my uncle's fiance passed away from cancer before they could marry—just having had one showed that they matured into a real adult participating in society. In fact, at one point, my aunt was telling my mom about how one of my uncles was no longer living in an apartment she owned, but instead, after having a steady girlfriend for about a year, he moved in with her. And my mom literally said to my aunt, "wow. Look at that. He finally grew up."

One of the lines that frequently gets repeated about anti-aspec sentiment is "why would anyone hate asexuals/aromantics/etc? They aren't even doing anything." And that's exactly it. In the eyes of amatonormative culture, we aren't doing anything. Adults are supposed to do things. That's how you become a member of society.

I know that my father will never see me as a successful adult. He will never approve of my life. And I think most people would assume that that's because I'm trans. And don't get me wrong, he sure as shit doesn't like or respect that, but I do think if given enough time, he would get used to it. He would eventually realize that it isn't going away. And if I settled down with a spouse and a respectful job and a few kids, he could see me as a successful adult that he could be proud of anyway. But of course, that's not going to happen. Because I'm aromantic. So I'm never going to do that one thing that signifies that his job is complete, and I'm officially a full-fledged adult. I will perpetually be that fuck-up kid who won't settle down. In my personal case, that's okay. My dad is a conservative piece of shit, and if he doesn't approve of you, that just means you're doing something right. But on a societal level? This kind of attitude is a massive problem. Aromantics deserve to be treated like adults, and to feel like the accomplished adults that they are. We should feel like we belong in society.

[arowitharrows]

I feel like people struggle to understand that my life as an aorace person is not centered around an absence of relationships. There is no romance shaped void that I am trying to live with, or live around, or which my life's purpose is to fill somehow.

I go to university and I go to work and I volunteer in my community and in the in-between moments I drink tea with my friends and I plant tomatoes on my balcony and there is no need for anything else. There is no room for anything else anyway.

When I am asked how I deal with 'the hole in my life' or what I do with 'all my free time', I know these questions are not about me at all. They are a reflection of the person asking.

[thatsthebirds]

Its kind of asking how you cope with the lack of parking spaces when someone doesnt own a car

[ace-of-bass]

Ooh I love this analogy because not owning a car does come with problems (at least in the US typically), namely that US infrastructure is so reliant on cars that not owning one means that you deal with other problems, like lack of bike lanes, infrequent public transit, people always assuming you can drive places, etc. Aro/ace people do face problems due to amatonormativity in society, such as inaffordability of places to live alone (because it's assumed you'll live with a roommate until you're a "real adult" and live with a partner and also because of capitalism), lack of ways to meet new people that aren't specifically focused on dating, and people always asking when you'll settle down, aren't you lonely, don't you miss having a partner? as OP talked about.

Like, there are problems that one encounters as a carless person, and there are problems I've encountered as an aroace person. But the problem as a carless person isn't lack of parking spaces and the problem as an aroace person isn't lack of a relationship.

[sawed-on-shotgun]

Im glad they made up romance for stories and music but can you imagine how scary it would be to deal with all that for real

[cure-icy-writes]

sexualizing that old man? Oh no I’m asexualizing that old man. Yeah he’s coming to the realization that his sexual activity was performative and compulsory, and he’s much happier now. I’m taking him to pride and he’s a little confused but he’s got the spirit.

[shap3shifter-witch]

Just wanna say how much I LOVE being asexual. Theres so much joy and whimsy to find in life when not worrying about the confines of relationship expectations.I literally cannot imagine myself any other way. I would not be the same person at all if I were not asexual. I understand that a lot of people accept and acknowledge their queerness while not considering it be a core part of their personality, but for me it is So Integral to how I operate as a human being that i consider it a huge part of my personality. Which is a good thing for me!! Just thinking about my asexuality and being confident in who I am brings me such euphoria. I love love love being asexual. I love that this is the way I am. I love existing sometimes it is so great 10/10 would recommend. Asexuals of the world, you are loved.

[louisegluckpdf]

kind of obsessed with this hinge response

[agressivelyaro]

people from this country are so cool

[ID: The Non-sam aro pride flag. /End ID]