#hearless aro

[fountainpenchess]

If you cannot love through not experiencing attraction and/or desiring relationships, my community says, lovelessness offer glorious refuge. Reducing lovelessness to a lack of attraction, however, is no different from (and no more radical than) reducing love to attraction; it does nothing to question or challenge love’s omnipresence as a social construct. It fails to recognise and examine sex negativity and allo-aro antagonism. It only strips away loveless aros’ diversity in favour of a narrative that looks awfully similar to amatonormativity. The corollary is difficult for me to overlook: only certain kinds of aros are permitted the rebellion of lovelessness.

— love and attraction: yet another shape of allo-aro antagonism written by k. a. cook (follow @aroworlds)

[fountainpenchess]

Aromantics follow differing roads to loveless identity. Many, after hearing “love” too often mean only “romantic love”, decide their aromanticism can’t or shouldn’t encompass it. Aplatonic aros may find lovelessness through enduring the aromantic community’s emphasis on desiring platonic love and relationships (often expressed as an alternative for or even improvement on romantic love and relationships). Some loveless aros celebrate their own love while rejecting the belief that ability to love designates goodness. Some of us know that we don’t or can’t love; some of us haven’t the least idea if we do! In experiences of attraction, a desire for partners/family, and personal relationships towards sex, romance and friendship, we are as wonderfully diverse as any other group of aros.

— love and attraction: yet another shape of allo-aro antagonism written by k. a. cook (follow @aroworlds)

[fountainpenchess]

When I reclaim the word “loveless” as an allo-aro, I do so because my society’s fear of my aromantic allosexuality is carved deep into my bones, omnipresent and unforgettable. Meanwhile, the a-spec community rewrites lovelessness by equating love and attraction so that aro-aces become truer inheritors of this rebellious identity. Will you dare ask yourself why?

— love and attraction: yet another shape of allo-aro antagonism written by k. a. cook (follow @aroworlds)

[fountainpenchess]

The problem isn’t just that loveless allo-aros are denied recognition and inclusion in general conversations about loveless aro identity and experiences, although our ongoing erasure is something the a-spec community must correct. Loveless allo-aros (along with loveless aros who desire partners, experience love, are romance favourable and/or experience some shape of attraction) deserve better than to be overlooked and pushed aside when we are equal contributors towards and members of the loveless aromantic and general aromantic communities.

— love and attraction: yet another shape of allo-aro antagonism written by k. a. cook (follow @aroworlds)

[fountainpenchess]

When I say I’m loveless, I’m declaring my human worth in a world that thoughtlessly venerates love. Any ugliness lies in your eyes, not mine.

— love and attraction: yet another shape of allo-aro antagonism written by k. a. cook (follow @aroworlds)

[fountainpenchess]

So let us begin here, with the basic lesson that attraction and love are no more always the same than attraction and behaviour/relationships. This association may best speak one’s own truth, just as the association between loveless aromanticism and being non-partnering speaks my own, but it should never be reckoned a universal experience. Furthermore, our community will keep failing to celebrate all loveless aros until we halt our conflation of attraction with love, because we use this conflation to erase the lovelessness of attraction-experiencing loveless aros.

— love and attraction: yet another shape of allo-aro antagonism written by k. a. cook (follow @aroworlds)

[fountainpenchess]

Western society and my mother’s religion, Catholicism, demand that I love to be decent, deserving, good. Lovelessness is a casual shrug. Really? Do I have to?

— love and attraction: yet another shape of allo-aro antagonism written by k. a. cook (follow @aroworlds)

[fountainpenchess]

Loveless allo-aros know another truth: never have these defensive declarations of love conquered sex negativity. They only force us all to kneel at love’s altar.

— love and attraction: yet another shape of allo-aro antagonism written by k. a. cook (follow @aroworlds)