You know how white women want black women to fight for abortion and other women’s rights. And black women have been leading and organizing the movement. And now, white women have failed black women by helping to vote for trump, and want black women to help them fight for abortion rights. And some black women have taken a step back and said “this is not our fight”?
I’m a lithromantic who doesn’t experience or see lithro awareness, education, acceptance, pride, positivity, art, representation, or anything for the lithro label. You know what I do see? Aro awareness, education, pride, acceptance, positivity, art, representation, etc. This is especially the case when it comes to the ace side of things as well.
I’ve witnessed how the aro community treats people like me. People who don’t want to feel bad about their ignorance on my identity non-consensually relabel my label as “microlabel” or “sub label” or “variant” or “type of aromantic” or “sub type”. You feel better about yourself when you attach and associate diminishing terms to my label, right? It’s easier for you to justify excluding labels like mine from awareness when my label is just a “type of aromantic” and “aro awareness is the only awareness that matters”.
No. As a lithromantic, I’m not ok with this culture of aros, aces, and aroaces “speaking over” and “speaking for” marginalized labels that don’t get awareness, like lithromantic. If you, as a label that has the privilege of having some awareness, are trying to “put my label down” by relabeling my label as a microlabel, or some other term with diminishing connotation (to boost your own awareness), you are hurting me and the lithro community from getting the awareness we deserve.
Hot take, but lithros deserve as much awareness, acceptance, pride, positivity, etc. as the aro community.
“The aro community includes everyone! The aro community includes you!” Yeah, that hyper-inclusive mindset of making aro the “poster label” is how I did not discover/realize I was lithro until about a year after being involved in the aroace community/aspec side of social media.
People in the Acommunity, especially fellow aspecs, need to recognize how diverse the Acommunity is.
I’m slowly starting to see more awareness and acceptance for being aromantic allosexual, or aroallo. What I’m not seeing is awareness or acceptance for aspec labels that experience romantic or sexual attraction, particularly primary attraction. I would say that even some people who use the demi/grey labels aren’t helping.
There are people who are so desperate to experience romantic attraction that they convince themself they might be demi/grey. Because they suffer with internalized arophobia being aromantic. I’m unsure what the grey label is exactly, but I believe it is experiencing attraction, rarely, weakly, or under certain circumstances. And demis typically only experience secondary attraction. My point is, it is easy for greys and demis to “fit” into the aro, ace, or aroace labels. Especially when demis are able find themselves in a long term relationship with someone they were able to experience attraction to, they can have a “happily ever after”, and no longer necessarily affected by aro, ace, or aroace struggles.
Another hot take is that I feel it can be really easy for demis to perpetuate amatonormativity. Because, for them, it is a matter of finding someone they connect with and being in/entering a traditional allo relationship after that. I have only seen blatant use their identity to perpetrate, justify perpetuating amatonormativity once, however, I strongly think the demi community especially needs to be educated on amatonormativity.
For me, I experience romantic attraction, but I can’t with romantic relationships. Getting romantically involved with someone is usually a very painful experience for me. I understand how bad it is pressure someone into a romantic relationship.
I feel like my experiences as a lithromantic should matter, and I feel like my label, lithromantic, and other labels that experience primary attraction, like frayromantic and fraysexual, are worthy of more awareness. This one sided, inequal awareness for labels that experience secondary attraction (demiromantic/demisexua), or rare/weak/only under certain circumstances attraction (greyromantic/greysexual) is obvious exclusion aspec labels that experience primary attraction. And it’s hurting people/these communities. How are you supposed to accept yourself or your identity when the aro/ace/aroace don’t see your labels as worthy of awareness, and actively try to diminish your identity by attaching diminishing, “othering” descriptors to your labels, like “variant” or “sublabel” or “microlabel”?