Tree Hugging Dirt Worshipper

chris/23/aro/pan/ca they/them INFP flower power wild child, heathen, feminist, anarcho-communist, witch, geek, queer, science, space, cryptids, vulture culture, nature, art just a naked soul trying to be as wild as they can be ✌❤🌻

[compostpile]

no child deserves bullying. even kids who are somehow endangering other kids need intervention from adults, not bullying from their peers. if you’re a grown adult who believes that childhood peer relationships should be some social darwinist free-for-all where the weird kids get the weird beat out of them you’re advocating child abuse, there’s no gray area on this one

[betweenheroesandvillains]

me: wants to be hugged and held, is totally touch starved and needs to be cuddled

also me: allows only a very limited number of people to touch me at all, let alone in a slightly intimate way. barely ever allows myself to show emotional weakness around people. gets anxious when someone hugs me for too long.

[radicalgraff]

Radical Queer posters seen around Brisbane, courtesy of rad queer crew ‘No Pride In Police’

[succubusvenus]

I wasn’t asked to a single dance in high school and didn’t have a serious romantic relationship until I was 22. And like, yeah that shit hurt when I was younger. I had a lot of fears that I was unlovable and that I didn’t deserve to be happy. And every time I would try to talk to anyone about it, the conversation became, “you’ll find someone”, when it should have been, “you don’t need a relationship or a date, you’re lovable & complete & beautiful on your own”.

So yeah, please normalize young people not dating, and please stop shaming them for it. There’s more to life than romance, despite what the media wants us to think.

[aroworlds]

I’m having a conversation in which I got to saying that my experiences with allosexual attraction have little in common with alloromantic allosexual attraction, particularly in terms of behaviours relating to expressions of sexual attraction, and this isn’t talked about.

In a world where it is assumed sexual attraction comes with romantic attraction, it is exceptionally difficult to pursue relationships. I don’t approach people on the basis of my sexual attraction. I don’t have one-night stands or casual sex. Most of the time, my sexual attraction is an experience of feeling attraction with a resulting inability to do anything about it, because how the hell do I have the conversation about being aro? Autism is a factor here in that I struggle with initiating any sort of relationship, I will admit, but my aromanticism excludes me from the dating spaces that alloromantic allosexuals, even otherwise LGBP ones, can access, unless I wish to endure the erasure of my identity by being forced into an alloromantic environment. Even sites based around casual hook-ups are still used by allo people who have unconscious expectations about romance developing if they meet the right person! How many news and advice stories have I read about people having hook-ups and getting angry when the other person won’t develop the relationship into romance? About how an unwillingness to move from hook-up to dating is seen as a sign of immaturity?

My allosexual attraction cannot define me in the same way to the outside eye because it isn’t something I can do anything about for fear of expectations I cannot meet and conversations I cannot safely or easily have. I experience it, but I don’t live it. It has no resulting behaviour demonstrable to others because my behaviours are shaped by being aromantic, not by being pansexual.

To the outside, my days as a pansexual look identical to my days as an asexual, and this is because I am aromantic. I think this is what made it so difficult for me to tell the shifts in my orientation–because my aromanticism doesn’t change, and aromanticism shapes my behaviours and interactions with other people, not my asexuality and not my pansexuality.

We tend to either force ourselves into a romantic mould, often unsuccessfully, or step away from relationships altogether. We rarely have the ability to form relationships, casual or long-term, that honour our aromanticism and our sexual attraction both, and most of us do not feel safe enough to voice our identity and needs to someone not also aromantic.

To paint allosexual aros as people who are unrestrained in our attractions, who move from bed to bed or have a series of one-night-stands, is to disregard the aromantic part of our identities. There’s this assumption that aromanticism just erases the romantic attraction, erases the part that drives us towards amatonormative assumptions of marriage and relationships–so that we have the dangerous thing of sex without love. There’s this assumption that romantic attraction holds us back from being predatory in our desires for others, and without it, we just fuck where and how we please, heedless of our partners’ natural (amatonormative) expectation and desire for romantic relationships.

Being aromantic, though, is not a lack or absence in the way it is so often conceptualised. That part in us is filled–filled by amatonormativity, filled by misunderstanding, filled by a world that has no positive concept of sexual attraction without romantic attraction. What others see as an absence is filled by something the world doesn’t understand and won’t acknowledge.

Aromanticism separates us from the people to whom we are attracted. We are not liberated by it in our interactions with others as the conventional Chad the Frat Boy narrative suggests; we are hobbled by it. We are either forced to pretend to be something we’re not or we avoid connections with others, and neither response allows us to live an authentic life as an allosexual aromantic.

People need to stop talking as though aromantic allosexual attraction and alloromantic allosexual attraction are the same thing, because doing this dismisses just how big an impact aromanticism has on sexual attraction.

[hella-aro]

Thank you very much for this post, OP, it’s something I’ve been thinking about as well for a while now. It’s frustrating how allosexual aros are painted as people who just sleep around with everyone, when it would be a lot easier to act on our sexuality if we weren’t also aro.

A thing I would also like to add is that when people talk about allosexual aros, they also seem to take away a lot of normal sex-related emotional responses. For example, one can become very emotionally vulnerable during sex, or desire a partner they are familiar with because they don’t trust or want a stranger to touch them in an intimate way. There’s a lot of reasons one may not want casual sex that have nothing to do with romance, and yet people talk as if they don’t apply to allo aros at all. As if we’re some kind of, I don’t know, sexual machine who can only experience the purely physical aspects of intercourse.

I suppose this could be a part of the Cold Emotionless Aro stereotype, but I feel nobody really talks about this specific thing.

[hunterinabrowncoat]

I think a huge part of the ignorance about aromanticism is that people fundamentally misunderstand aro relationships because they simply do not have any frame of reference for what it would be like to live without romantic feelings. Non-aro people completely miss the point when they imagine their life as exactly the same, but with the romantic feelings and relationships removed, and extrapolate that that’s what aro people’s lives are like, because for a lot of people… it’s not.

It’s the same misunderstanding when cis people try to imagine what it would be like to be trans by thinking “what if I wanted to be a boy?” and straight people imagine their partner and their relationship as exactly the same, just another gender.

That’s why we get all this bullshit where allo people act as though all relationships must fit neatly and obviously into either ‘romantic’ or ‘platonic’ categories, because… their relationships do. That’s why we hear stuff like “lol what you are describing is a friendship!” when aro people talk about QPRs, because for them, any relationship that lacks romantic affection is a friendship. Because they are not imagining their life without a relationship that is committed, incredibly intimate, exclusive, and prioritised above all others.

Aro people can still desire a level of intimacy and commitment with somebody that everybody else gets from romantic relationships, without wanting a romance: sharing everything - space, money, belongings, time - having a level of emotional and even physical intimacy that is not common in friendships, being committed to one another, making that relationship a priority above other things in your life, basing major life decisions around that relationship… these are all things that most people fulfil through romantic relationships, and aro people can desire that kind of intimacy without feeling or wanting romance.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand QPRs or the aro experience. You don’t have to understand it to respect it. At some point you have to acknowledge that you don’t understand because you have not experienced it, you have no frame of reference for it, and you will never really know what it’s like because those are not one of those people. The validity of aro people’s experiences does not hinge on whether or not non-aro people understand or accept them.

[astriiformes]

Controversial opinion maybe, but I feel like people should really let up on pretending that “romantic attraction” is something that’s ever going to have a one-side-fits-all definition. 

There’s absolutely a distinction between romantic and platonic relationships, but I think saying that the line exists, and that it exists in the exact same place for everyone, is really different – and the source of a lot of pain and confusion for people who are trying to figure out their identities, or even just understand other people’s. It’s why the distinctions between close friendship/queerplatonic relationship/romantic relationship are very blurry and often sound the same, and why people tell each other that someone else’s name for what they have or want is wrong, because it looks like the other kind of relationship that they have or want – because one of those things can look a lot like another, depending on the participants. And it’s also why there are people who say they can’t figure out what their orientation is due to people keep giving them different or contradicting definitions – because unlike, say, sorting out which gender(s) you’re attracted to (which is still complex, but more empirical), figuring out the category or strength of attraction is a lot less objective and a lot more personal.

I have read a lot of definitions of romantic attraction that made me feel very broken, because to me they defined what I want out of platonic relationships. But since I’m very romance-repulsed, and I was being told that was romance, it made me wonder if the relationships I wanted were something I’d ever actually get to have and still be comfortable with. It took me years to break things down enough to acknowledge that those things could exist in platonic relationships too, because I’d spent a long time seeing some them get called romantic. However, I am obviously in no place to tell the (allo) people who wrote those definitions that their idea of romance is wrong – to them, those things do characterize their romantic relationships, and likely are a way they distinguish them from their platonic ones, and it’s okay for them to say so! Our lines just fall in different places. The thing that is less okay is to make blanket statements about what is and isn’t romantic or platonic, because there are pretty much always going to be people that feel differently.

Being a very affectionate person who craves (and I’d like to think reciprocates) a decent amount of intimacy, I know that I have important relationships that some allo people would say have things in common with their romantic ones, even though I never want to have a romantic partnership in my life. Being those things and aromantic, I know that there are probably other aros out there who look at what I want and have and would personally be uncomfortable being in those kinds of relationships, even though I categorize them as platonic. None of us – not me, not the allo people, and not the other aromantics – are wrong. But pretending that a romantic relationship is something that has a solid definition would dictate that somebody has to be, if we’re all looking at the same level of intimacy and seeing different things. And someone’s going to come out of that feeling broken, because they don’t fit into a box that actually varies wildly in size depending on the person. Which is why I think it would be for the best if people started acknowledging that these lines vary for different people. 

[mycroftrh]

My aesthetic is best friends to best-friends-who-have-sex. They do absolutely everything together, share everything, share their food and their clothes and their movies and hey, sex is just another fun activity, who better to share it with? After all, no one could possibly know each other better than them, know their weird kinks and their tickle spots and how to tell when they’re just not feeling it. It couldn’t ruin their relationship because nothing could ruin their relationship.

And it’s not exclusive any more than watching movies is exclusive (although it’s probably better with each other than with anyone else), but romantic relationships are temporary and they’ll always come back to each other.

Just… the idea of being so incredibly comfortable with each other that sex is just a natural inclusion, it doesn’t have to involve nervousness or butterflies or insecurity, you just no longer have any sense of personal space with each other so why treat this one thing as though it’s something weird and special… I love that.

[aro-allo-positivity]

Sex positivity is not limited to people who experience romantic attraction

[depressedaro]

being alloaro is weird because it’s like. i do crave intimacy but Definitely Not That Kind

[aro-to-the-knee]

Aro Crushed

I think the hardest part of being aro is finding someone you genuinely get along with, find attractive and know they like you back but also knowing that any attempt to be with them will be seen as romance.

Like, I want to hold your hand and make out and dance together but I genuinely don’t date and like you in a platonic/aesthetic/sexual way and I don’t want to make things complicated with my weird aro desires so I’m not going to pursue this and I’ll just wait for you to move on even if it hurts.

[cursedcatimages]

[smooththegoofyshark]

OP.. CHANGE YOUR URL OP

[hello-copter]

Sound. On.

[laughconfetti]

Nyooom—

[gingersaurus]

Learning that aromantic was a valid orientation and finding the aro community was so important for the way I viewed myself

[alloaroworlds]

Before discovering I was aro: I’ve never been in love and don’t experience crushes. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I must be damaged somehow

Now: I haven’t experienced romantic love, but I experience other types of love. The way I love is valid.

Before: There’s physical attraction, sexual attraction and emotional attraction. Love must be when you experience all three at the same time. I just don’t experience all those feelings at once.

Now: There’s aesthetic attraction, sexual attraction, platonic attraction, and romantic attraction. Anyone can feel any one or a combination of these attractions for another person. It’s ok if I’m attracted to someone platonically and sexually, or aesthetically and sexually and never develop romantic feelings.

Before: I’m incapable of having feelings for other people, so it doesn’t matter who I fuck.

Now: I still care about my sexual partners and can have non-romantic relationships with them. I want to have sex with people who I like and trust.

Before: I don’t know what I want out of a relationship, I just know I don’t like dating. I’m going to date anyway because that’s what normal people do, and maybe it’ll help me figure out what I want.

Now: I want to have a partner who I can have a platonic and sexual relationship with.

Before: I just have trust issues…? or intimacy issues…? or commitment issues….? I’m not really sure what the issue is.

Now: I just don’t experience romantic attraction.

Before: I’m broken

Now: I’m whole, just the way I am.

So don’t you EVER tell me that aromantic awareness isn’t important.

[systlin]

Look I have no problem with aces being part of the community, but historically queer was never used as a slur against them, so as someone who has been called queer as a derogatory insult plenty of times, I'm pretty uncomfortable with them using it. Reclaiming the word queer is fine, but not if it wasn't directed at you in the first place.

Hey.

Quick tip. 

You are not the Queer Pope. You don’t get to decide who is and isn’t queer. 

Also, get off my blog. 

[damnfool-of-a-took]

Not only is anon not Queer Pope, they’re also factually incorrect. For others champing at the bit to be the next grayface too chickenshit to be wrong with their URL attached: 

Google “the spinster movement”. 1920′s and 1930′s. Ace women considered “queer” by straight society for not complying with the demands of compulsory heterosexuality (i.e. marry, let your husband fuck you whenever he wants, produce hordes of children, probably die of tuberculosis (well, that last bit’s not compulsory heterosexuality, but I digress)). 

Better yet, look up stuff from the research of Alfred Kinsey and/or Magnus Hirschfield (of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft- the Nazis burned it for advancing knowledge and acceptance of ace, trans, and gays & lesbians- all enemies of the State because their existence undercut the Aryan call for men FATHER MANY ARYAN BABIES and to FIGHT FOR THE FATHERLAAAAAND and for the women to manage Kinder, Küche, and Kirche (children, kitchen, church). 

Here’s a nice excerpt from a 1935 newspaper on how asexual women should be barred from teaching (one of the very few jobs a woman could hold in those days) based on their sexuality:  “The women who have the responsibility of teaching these girls are many of them themselves embittered, sexless or homosexual hoydens who try to mould the girls into their own patten.”

In the Victorian era, there was a movement for decades in favor of evicting spinsters (read: asexual and lesbian women) over 30 from Britain, and send them to Canada, Australia, or the United States instead. 

They were at best, “surplus females”, and at worst? Here’s another quote! This one is from Eliza Linton, a Victorian writer quoted in a more modern work analyzing Victorian families, describing spinsters in contrast with “naturally” celibate women, that is, widows: “Unnatural and alien: Painted and wrinkled, padded and bedizened, with her coarse thoughts, bold words, and leering eyes, [the wrong kind of spinster] has in herself all the disgust which lies around a Bacchante and a Hecate in one…. Such an old maid as this stands as a warning to men and women alike of what and whom to avoid.”

TL;DR YOU EXCLUSIONIST SHITHEADS KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE HISTORY OF YOUR OWN COMMUNITIES, LET ALONE BROADER QUEER HISTORY. SHUT YOUR MOUTHS, OPEN A FEW WEBPAGES, AND READ. 

[curspect]

folks be like ,”finding your one true love is what makes life worth living” but according to my calculations this is actually an elaborate social myth designed to segment the population into unnaturally tiny and hyper-dependent social support systems that is asked to stand up to an insane amount of stress & idealism. In this essay I will won’t

[aroace-avenue]

my aromanticism is about abandoning the expectation that my love and care must some in a certain form. it’s about exploring all of the other possibilities. it’s about creating space and value for those.

my aromanticism is about centering friendships. it’s about building community. it about about redefining systems of care.

my aromanticism is anti-captialist. it’s about care not being limited. it’s about mutual aid. it’s about imagining new possible futures.

my aromanticism is about asserting to myself and the world that building a life and a world that cares for me and everyone else is possible

[fanotastic]