[greenteaandtattoos]

I am THAT stereotypical aro because apparently two friends have been heavily flirty/dating for nearly two months now and I only JUST NOW learned about it when they literally spelled it out for me.

[melovibes57]

[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.

[franknfurterstriangulardinosaur]

ages ago, I posted an aro positivity post that got a lot of bad replies. “This isn’t aromanticism, this is mental illness”. People don’t realise you’re allowed to be mentally ill and aromantic. You can have a personality disorder and be aromantic. You can be depressed. You can be bipolar. You can be mentally ill and still not want to be in a romantic relationship. It might not be connected but it might be. If you are aro because of mental illness or trauma, then that’s still aromanticism. If you just happen to be aro and mentally ill, you’re still aro. Aromanticism is not mental illness itself but of course, there’s mental illness within the aspec community. There’s mental illness in all communities. It doesn’t deter from aromanticism. Mentally ill aros are valid!

[franknfurterstriangulardinosaur]

ages ago, I posted an aro positivity post that got a lot of bad replies. “This isn’t aromanticism, this is mental illness”. People don’t realise you’re allowed to be mentally ill and aromantic. You can have a personality disorder and be aromantic. You can be depressed. You can be bipolar. You can be mentally ill and still not want to be in a romantic relationship. It might not be connected but it might be. If you are aro because of mental illness or trauma, then that’s still aromanticism. If you just happen to be aro and mentally ill, you’re still aro. Aromanticism is not mental illness itself but of course, there’s mental illness within the aspec community. There’s mental illness in all communities. It doesn’t deter from aromanticism. Mentally ill aros are valid!

[genderfluid-rat-god]

i dont want kids. "well you might change your mind!" no i wont. "well you could help infertile parents and do surrogacy" pregnancy is a part of why i dont want kids. i dont want that. "then do adoption" still dont want kids. "but what about your partner" im aromantic. "but if you had a partner" im aroace. "you might still change your mind" no i wont. "you might meet that one person who'll change your mind. trust me" I! AM! AROMANTIC! AND! ASEXUAL!

"how can you have dated people if you're ace" shut up shut up shut up shut up

[aro-ace-chaos]

Good god, amatonormativity is everywhere and it's so fucking annoying

I was having a normal conversation with a coworker, and she happened to ask something along the lines of "and then what about when you get married and have kids?"

I just really casually said "Oh, I don't think I will." (because I was not coming out to random coworker as aroace because like nobody irl ever even seems to know what that means, and I don't exist to educate everybody everywhere about the SAM, asexuality, aromanticism, and all that.)

And she reacted like she had never heard anything like that in her life. This woman genuinely asked "How?" How was I going to not get married? How was I going to not have children? Like... I'm just gonna not do those things. You can just not do a thing.

Why is the default state of being in society's mind for an AFAB person "in a straight marriage as a stay at home mom with multiple children?"

Fuck allonormativity. Fuck amatonormativity. And fuck patriarchy, too, because in the end, that's a huge role in a lot of aphobia imo. Maybe I'll write out my full thoughts on that one sometime

[genderfluid-rat-god]

i dont want kids. "well you might change your mind!" no i wont. "well you could help infertile parents and do surrogacy" pregnancy is a part of why i dont want kids. i dont want that. "then do adoption" still dont want kids. "but what about your partner" im aromantic. "but if you had a partner" im aroace. "you might still change your mind" no i wont. "you might meet that one person who'll change your mind. trust me" I! AM! AROMANTIC! AND! ASEXUAL!

"how can you have dated people if you're ace" shut up shut up shut up shut up

[oneheadtoanother]

[seashellronan]

guys i’m so sorry to say this but exercising and indulging in hobbies rather than scrolling on your phone for 200 hours actually does improve your mood and overall mental health, this has deeply upset me more than anyone

[sluttyquarantinetheory]

It is incredibly exhausting that every discussion about sleeping with people outside of committed monogamous relationships is met with a presumption that you must blatantly declare your intent is not to fall in love/have a relationship. Especially when the discussion is centered around aroallo people. Like obviously open honest communication blah blah blah. But in my experience most people aromantic or not have no rigid ideas of what they're looking for.

This weird presumption that you have to contractually line up every aspect of what you want from moment one otherwise you're leading someone on is such schlock. It relies so heavily on the assumption that everyone is looking for romance and an especially weird assumption that people who participate in and seek out casual sex are by default also looking to catch feelings.

[oury-boros]

a fun little thought experiment: when a character in a story says theyre uninterested in or dont relate to love/relationships/whatever, try trusting them. see how the world interacts with them through that lens. when/if the narrative withdraws the character's disinterest, notice how that happens and what the implications are

when a character is having sex and expressing a lack of need for a long term romantic relationship. when a character is apparently in a relationship but insisting they feel differently about their "partner." when a character demonstrates a complete lack of interest maybe with a lack of understanding. its worth noticing

[creekfiend]

ppl use crab bucket metaphor to describe the lateral social violence of oppressed people, but tbh I think it's more like how sometimes when chickens are kept in such abysmal horrific close quarters conditions with no ability to make decisions or control any aspect of their lives, they just start violently attacking each other, to the point where some factory farms where this is a problem simply cut or trim parts of their beaks off so they can't do as much damage. because this is more cost effective than providing them with more space, species specific enrichment, appropriate lighting, etc, and the system we live under prioritizes cost effectiveness over the well-being of alive creatures.

it would be a mistake to think that this represents the natural behavior of chickens.

it would be a mistake to think that the social displacement harms we do to each other as marginalized people under a great deal of stress, under capitalism, represents the natural behavior of people.

human beings, however, possess the ability to learn to identify when we are engaging in this type of lateral social violence, and the ability to prioritize developing alternate coping mechanisms that cause less harm to the other people in our communities, and leave us with more energy to address the actual causes of our suffering.

[aro-ace-chaos]

I’m so tired of the “why do people hate aspecs, they aren’t doing anything?” argument. I know that it is an attempt to support us, but it fails so spectacularly to understand aromanticism, asexuality, and any other aspec identity that it’s actively frustrating.

We are doing something. We’re rejecting allonormative ideals and that’s a massive thing to do. We’re actively fighting not just to help other aspecs, but to help everyone, because amatonormativity (and allonormativity as a whole) hurt everyone. Single people who want to find a partner but can’t also deserve to be able to exist.

There are so many issues with the expectation of marriage, including:

A single income isn't enough to get by anymore

Having a spouse is almost necessary under the current medical system

Society shames and pressures people who are single to get into relationships constantly

Rejecting allonormativity means fighting against these things that hurt everyone.

So, no, aces and aros and other aspecs aren't "doing nothing." We're doing quite a lot.

[aroaceenjolras]

We (aros and aces who don't like fictional sexromance) need to be calling fictional romantic/sexual relationships boring more.

"Oh... they're going to have sex to show that they're ~official~ now? That's fine, I guess, but I feel like the writers only did that because they think they're expected to."

"The leads end up as a romantic couple? No thanks, I actually find that kind of derivative."

"These characters are too freaky for their main form of intimacy to just be fucking. I think they have something way weirder going on."

Most people don't understand romance and sex repulsion. They do understand artistic snobbery. Use that to your advantage.

[lizardsfromspace]

"Sex is what makes us human" is stupid. Almost every species fucks. Humans are the only species that jumps motorcycles over school buses that are on fire. Some other things too probably

[jeremysometimes]

no i don't have "romantic feelings" for them i am platonically yearning wanting disiring longing craving aspiring aiming hoping coveting for them