Was doing research for an Aromantic Awareness Month post, and I compiled some info on Aromantic History. Thought I should post it here too
13th century - Beguinage: to house religious women who lived in community without taking vows or retiring from the world
Qing dynasty (17th century) - The Golden Orchid Society: included women who married other women and women who did not wish to marry, have romantic, or sexual partnership
Late 19th century - early 20th century - Boston marriages: the cohabitation of two women who were independent of financial support from a man. Some of these relationships were romantic in nature; others were not
1979 - Dorothy Tennov spoke of “non-limerant” people in her book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love, and recognized that romantic and sexual love were not necessarily linked
2002 - Possibly the first use of the word “aromantic” on Haven for the Human Amoeba
2005 - Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz discussed that historically marriage wasn’t originally about a relationship between a man and a woman, but about making ideal relationships such as having desirable in-laws, strong alliances, and increasing that family labor force.
2006 - the word "aromantic" used on the AVEN forums
2010 - The term "queerplatonic" was coined by S. E. Smith and Kaz
2011 - National Coalition for Aromantic Visibility founded
2011 - First flag proposal
2012 - Professor Elizabeth Brake defined amatonormativity as "the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship" in her book Minimizing Marriage
2014 - Aromantic Awareness Week suggested (later becomes Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week)
2014 - Second and third (current) flag proposal
2016 - Arocalypse created
2017 - Aromantics Wiki created
2018 - “Aromantic” added to the Oxford English Dictionary
2019 - Aromantic-Spectrum Union for Recognition, Education, and Advocacy created
2021 - Aromantic Awareness Month first observed
2023 - Aromantic Awareness Day and Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Day first observed
Collected the info from: Wikipedia, AUREA, sennkestra on Arocalypse
Mainstream society: Love is so important especially on Valentine's day, therefore it must be so sad and lonely to be alone and without a partner on it oh nooooo....
Aro and arospec people in the meantime on valentines day: (this)
Let's make a ritual dance to make the amatonormativity go away!
There is an aro-spec forum called Arocalypse, and while it's kind of lacking in members, I'm hoping we can change that! I've also got an account on there under the same name as here if anyone wants to chat! It's a pretty cool place full of other aro people, and I think anyone who feels like it should check it out!
This is especially useful so close to aro week so people can have a solid place to plan meetups with groups of fellow aro people in their area to celebrate!
Can i ask what the difference between ace and aro is? If not thats totally fine! I was just curious, have a lovely day ♥️
Of course!! I hope you are having a lovely day as well, nonnie. Thanks for the ask! I’m not an expert but I have done a lot of research since realizing I was both ace and aro but I only recently realized this within the last six months so I’m going to give kind of broad terms and they both definitely have more definitive terms depending on the person using them. Ace is short for Asexual. Aro is short for Aromantic. (As I type this Aromantic is showing as a spelling error, and if that doesn’t tell you anything about how underrepresented that community is idk what will). This got a bit long, so I am putting it all under the cut.
Asexual people feel little to no sexual attraction. The opposite of this is Allosexual, meaning you do feel sexual attraction. Asexual is an umbrella term and there’s many micro labels under it as well. This doesn’t mean aces don’t have a libido though. Some people have high or low libidos and are still Ace because it’s about sexual attraction. Asexual people sometimes define themselves as one of the following, sex favorable (does enjoy sex, but possibly won’t initiate it themselves, or they could live without it but are happy to partake as far as I understand), sex positive (this can mean the previous, or, like me, they encourage others to have sex if they want it, and believe safe sex should be taught, etc.), sex neutral (they might enjoy sex, but eh, that’s cool if they never do it again, or ever), and sex repulsed (might get nauseous at the thought of it, never wants to partake, depending who they are they might not want to see it, hear it, watch it, etc even within media, nothing). Back to feeling or not feeling sexual attraction, for example, I have never once looked at, say Chris Hemsworth or Zendaya, and thought “Yeah, they turn me on, I’d have sex with them.” (Honestly the fact that I really had to think to come up with names there, which I think it very telling, I’m laughing at myself). *oversharing probably but trying to help people understand, sorry* Despite the my lack of sexual attraction to anyone, I do feel things, for example, when I read smut or something similar. Ace people might get themselves off, have sex, or never do anything of the sort down there. That kind of thing is about feeling good, you don’t have to think your partner or whatever is sexy in order to do that. If anyone wants to do their own research, AVEN.com (Asexual Visibility and Education Network) is probably a good starting point, or I can rec some blogs here.
Aromantic people feel little to no romantic attraction. Very different from feeling sexual attraction, yes? Basically, take all of what I wrote about being Ace and exchange sex with romance and that’s an aromantic person. I will explain anyway. Just like allosexual, alloromantic people are people who do feel romantic attraction. Romantic attraction is when you want to do romantic coded things with people. Of course romance is a bit harder to define than sex, so it can mean a lot of things to different people. Kissing can be seen as romantic to one person, and another aro person could really enjoy kissing others for example. Personally, I get pretty uncomfortable in romantic situations regarding myself and someone else, which I would probably define as being Romance Repulsed. After learning what this term meant and reading some about it, I really thought of my experiences. I’m pretty sure I’ve never had a crush on anyone, relationships (the brief two that I’ve had) really just felt like friendships. I didn’t initiate anything besides maybe handholding because I didn’t know what to do, or I didn’t even realize that was a thing that most people in that situation would be doing at that point in a relationship. I felt very uncomfortable when a ex tried to take a kiss further than a peck, among other things. Again, being Aromantic doesn’t mean aro people automatically will never have or want romantic relationships. They just don’t feel those feels for people usually. Like AVEN for asexuals, there’s Arocalypse.com for aro people. I have less blogs to rec here, but I can rec some if someone wants it.
There are good examples of different types of attraction, I personally feel platonic attraction which would be the desire to be someone’s friend, as well as aesthetic attraction which is defined below.
People can be one, or both, or neither. I am both, AroAce. People in these communities often use the Split Attraction Model (SAM). Which would be like someone stating that they are Asexual Homoromantic, or Aromantic Heterosexual, or Aromantic Pansexual, among many other combos.
Because I do feel aesthetic attraction, pretty much solely towards women, I define myself as an Oriented AroAce, or Lesbian AroAce. If I ever did end up in a relationship with someone, I can only ever imagine it to be with a woman. Again though, that’s just one microlable among so many that are out there.
This is a huge list of identities and labels, it overwhelms be tbh, but I’m linking it here anyway because it’s very informative.
I assume this ask was in response my reblog here. Yes I get very annoyed when people treat these two orientations as the same thing, despite me identifying as both. As I hope you can now see, they are very different things. A lot of the time, I enjoy reading about romance and sometimes sexual relationships, but sometimes I want to read other peoples thoughts, fics, posts, etc about only one of these and the Aro/Aromanticism tag is flooded with posts about asexuality which really doesn’t help people who are trying to learn about aromanticism or wanting specific content.
One more point before I wrap this up. I read a book because I wanted to see if it’d help me know for sure if I was demisexual (definition can be found in the huge list I linked two paragraphs up, or on google), and it actually made me realize I was aroace and I am forever grateful for it so I will rec it here. It’s called Loveless by @aliceoseman and it has quickly become my favorite book. So if anyone wants to read about a fictional character realizing they’re aroace, this is a fantastic book. I related so much to Georgia, it’s crazy. Also her other works are fantastic.
Remember you are not alone! Experts believe that 1% of the population is ace (and I think it’s the same for aro people) and that might sound like no one but, guys, theres 7.8 billion people on this planet. That means theres 78 million people like us! I ended up finding a lot of ace people to follow on twitter as well by the way.
This might be a hot take to some but the A in LGBTQIA+ does not mean ally! It’s for Asexual, Aromantic, and Agender! And we do belong in the queer community because the queer community is for people who aren’t straight, cis, or amatonormative. Wow, I hope this all makes sense, if any of you are confused or have more thoughts, or I messed something up, UNLESS YOU’RE BEING APHOBIC, add your thoughts, or message me!
Side note: Do please send me recs of people to follow, books, fics, shows, whatever, I am always searching for new content within these orientations!
I’ve been pointed to a thread on arocalypse, on the subject of QPR revisionism—in which people claim, counterfactually and unnecessarily, that the term “queerplatonic relationship” originated in aro communities. Although a lot of the thread consists of established community members making it pretty clear they don’t actually care about the problem.
That’s fair, you care about the problems you care about. But it’s strange coming from a community that wants the ace community to care about their problems.
I run a popular ace blog, and I have a standing offer to promote content from the aro community. I was also part of precisely the community that actually did coin “QPR”. So it seems that we care about aro community problems, but established aro community members don’t care about our problems. I can’t make any credible threats to stop promoting aro content, because the truth is, my offer doesn’t coming from a place of altruism. I promote aro content because I know our readers want to see it--because they care.
But I will say this. QPR revisionism is often incidental, a single sentence in a larger post about some other aro concern. I will silently blacklist these posts. My actions will have no impact whatsoever, but I must do it out of principle, same way I must blacklist posts that incidentally include antagonism towards grayros or alloaros. So that’s that.
Happy news! The terms of service has been updated so that anti-gray statements such as “grayromantic people are actually alloromantic” are now officially banned.
Also, they’re looking for more moderators. Check out this thread for more info.
Some people identity as aromantic, which basically means they aren't romantically attracted to others. Here are common myths and misconcepti
I found this amazing article while scrolling through the forums on Arocalypse. It's a great read for anybody who is confused what Aromanticism is, or want more knowledge on it!
