Hello, aros and a-specs of tumblr. Long post, but please stick around for a bit, this is important.
(You can skip to the paragraphs below the empty gap if you don't have time or the energy to read it all.)
I apologize for the long absence. I was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of interactions I've been receiving. I have good, or bad, news (depending on the individual and the diverse feedback you all have left):
Unfortunately, Ashabi, the creator of the Uni Ace Flag that prompted me to start this blog and project to update the aro flag, has made it clear that they're not interested in learning about loveless folks and how her flag is discriminatory towards them.
Actually loveless people have commented and messaged her, expressing the realness of their exclusion and hurt, but they just. Didn't care. Didn't address it.
What cemented this distrust I have in them now is that, in one of her latest posts, she shows how totally and utterly she's misunderstood what our issue with the pink stripe is. They think it's about "amatonormativity and romantic love". We've been telling her in no unclear terms that it's about *Love in General*, about loveless people, about how problematic it is that so many loving aces try to justify their humanity on their ability to "still love, like Normal People!!". But I guess she's just too alloro and loving to get it.
I was hoping she wasn't one of those, but their silence (and not silence, i.e. what they said in that post I mentioned) is speaking very loudly about what she believes matters and is worth being acknowledged in their flag and what needs to, essentially, be tone-policed.
I do not appreciate how she's been brushing off any and all criticism (the one that's not actually just cruel flames towards her person at least) by telling, for example, other neurodivergent people that they "just need to get over their fear of change", or not listening to other POC when they tell her she's not actually consulted with them at all. It's cruel and dismissive. It's not "inclusive" at all.
Also, so much for them allegedly having researched for 3 years in advance for this. They didn't even originally include aromantic experiences on that flag. And they thought they fixed it by now including "all forms of love: self love, Romantic, Platonic, QPR, Aromantic". The hell is "Aromantic" as a type of love??
Anyway, I was giving her patience and the benefit of the doubt, but following that post, I'm done associating with her and their redesign. These are all my issues with them, finally out.
That said!
We still have that issue with the white stripe in the OG aro flag. Just as a refresher: it currently represents "the platonic stripe" which of course isn't very inclusive of aplatonic aros. We still need to change it.
Therefore, I announce that I personally don't intend to update the look of the aro flag anymore.
If you all are still on board, I encourage us to keep the aro flag as it is, but update the meanings of the stripe or of the stripes.
This also solves youse's concerns with my yellow-striped redesing looking too much like the aroallo flag, and then the blue-striped redesign I followed it with looking like the non-SAM aro flag instead, lol.
And also!! While we're at it, what do you think about taking the opportunity to update the meaning of the OG ace flag's stripes as well?
When I have the spoons (and once I get an idea of whether or not we want to expand this to the OG ace flag as well), I'll create a new form so we can decide what meanings to assign to each stripe together, just like before. Open questions.
I apologize for wasting the time of everyone who's already responded on the first form, but I'll still take those answers into consideration even though I'll need to take some creative liberties with interpretation given the extra stripe.
AND I'll also take advantage of my hopefully decent enough language skills to provide the form (and associated post explaining what I'm doing) in a few other widely-spread languages beside English as well. Because I'm just a white person and I'm sure if Ashabi, a Black person, was lacking insight about what other POC needed, I'm really not equipped to go in it alone without consulting.
Was thinking of Spanish and French, which would cover most of Spanish-speaking central and southern America and French-speaking Africa, Portuguese for the same areas which I can't speak but can read enough to understand with the help of a translator (I'm Italian just for context), and Mandarin for China and some of SEA but I'm rusty and it will require a lot of spoons and grace from all you Mandarin speakers.
If anyone knows any Arabic dialect and wants to help translate into it, that'd be awesome. Or any other language you care about that doesn't speak much English.