Asexuality and aromanticism being defined as "little to no sexual/romantic attraction" is crazy to me. Imagine if they redefined being a gay man as "little to no attraction to women" and you had to, like, figure out for yourself that liking men was a part of it.
Personally, I define my aroaceness not as a lack of romantic or sexual attraction, but as an orientation towards relationships that are neither romantic nor sexual. Redefining my orientation this way has helped me find a lot of peace I didn't have before.
hey so there's been some confusion here and there in the tags about exactly what is meant by this post and I feel like I should clear it up.
Every time I make a post about how "little to no" is an inadequate definition, I get more than a few variations of this response:
"but I don't feel attraction, so little to no attraction is an important part of the definition!"
I don't feel attraction either. Like, at all. And I never said it wasn't an important part of the definition, or that it was irrelevant. I said that I was unable to find peace within myself while my orientation was based on lack, and that I have learned to focus on what I want rather than what I don't.
I think it is an injustice that I had to figure out for myself that there were any positives to being aroace at all, and that for a while, every time I tried, someone came out of the woodwork to abuse me for it.
Two things can be true: "little to no attraction" is an important part of the definition, AND the focus on lack and absence to the exclusion of everything else is psychologically harmful to many of us.
All I'm saying is that maybe, instead of only asking "What's missing from the way we relate to others?" we should also ask "What possibilities become visible when you take those things off of the table?"
So I get thst this is a definition that brings joy to whole lot of you, but I would like to ask what's the part the uniting quality to all ace ppl or all aro ppl? Is it the presence of other forms of attraction or is it the lack or one type of attraction? I understand you are proposing everyone adapts a new way or defining asexuality and aromanticism so in that sense it's pointless for me to even say this, but I wanted to still point that out. Not all aroace folk have interest in relationships that are neither romantic or sexual but all aroace folk have limited interest in relationships that are romantic or sexual.
As for homosexuality that you used as an example: it is often defined through exclusion rather heavily. I'm not saying I agree with exclusion based definitions when it comes to orientations that are defines by varied, gender based attraction, but it's what a lot of people do. It's not something I have to imagine as a hypothetical.
I'm not suggesting anyone do anything they don't want to do. I'm offering one alternative definition among many for those who want it. I'm sorry it makes you feel attacked but with all due respect that's neither my fault nor my problem.
I'm not offended. I'm simply very into semantics.
That is also neither my fault nor my problem. Please leave me alone.
Okay, I see my first response has a shit ton of typos and it SHOULD say "I understand you are NOT proposing" and the missing word changes the tone of the whole response 🫣 I'll leave you alone, I just wanted to correct that part because I'm not trying to argue here nor do I oppose people using whatever definitions bring them joy.
