More Arospec asks!!💚🖤

have aromantic headcanons. ship ppl queerplatonically. absorb media through a lens other than shipping. write gen and queerplatonic fic. unlearn amatonormativity. make fandom spaces not only accessible but welcoming of aromantics. or else 🔪

(this post must be reblogged by everyone but alloromantics if you clown i will fucking end you)

Hey guys I made a meme that I can use in 90% of all conversations

I saw the opportunity and I couldn’t resist

 it might not make as much sense but I will still be using it in 90% of my conversations

[ID: The you’ve got 24 hours meme. In the first panel, Doc Ock, labelled “Loveless aros”, gives a presentation, labelled “And that’s how "Love is what makes us human" alienates and dehumanizes us”. In the second panel, Peter B. Parker, labelled “Older members of the community”, looks at Miles Morales, labelled “Newer members of the community”, and says “This is pretty standard stuff, watch someone’s going to say "Love doesn’t have to be romantic"”. In the third panel, Kingpin, labelled “Someone in the notes”, tells Doc Ock “Love doesn’t have to be romantic”. End ID]

This year, right before before pr*de, I reconnected to an old friend. She's ace. She lives with aces, is engaged to a lesbian ace. She's also demisexual and the way she talks about romantic attraction she's most likely demiromantic, too, because she doesn't fall in love without a strong emotional bond first. Her roommate that's not the fiancée is aroace.

I talked to her about my aromanticism. About how I identify as aroflux or maybe grayromantic. She did not know what grayromantic was, asked me if I meant graysexual or gray asexual. What she said exactly was, "Grayro is on the ace spectrum?" She didn't differentiate "grayro" apart from gray ace or asexuality in general because she didn't know? She and her aro roommate are in the aromantic spectrum, she lives in an aspec household, and she didn't or couldn't differentiate the aro identity out of the ace spectrum. I had even clarified that I was allosexual by using the exact word, allosexual, in my paragraph. And she still asked if I meant ace when I told her I felt I was an aro identity.

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Look. I'm not posting this after avoiding this blog for over six months to come back and even to really say anything to start something. And this is bad time in the world, that's why I *-ed up in my first sentence, I don't want tumblr algorithms to pick up that word and take away timeline space for posts that are more important right now.

But I don't have anywhere else to voice my frustration.

And it has been so good to reconnect to this friend!!! I have missed her so much, we used to talk a lot and she was the first to validate my difficulty with romance and even introduced me to asexuality that lead me to aromanticism. I ordered her and her household june stuff, some of it specifically demi and ace, because they've been out helping those who need it and doing good stuff but were sad that they felt the shouldn't post anything june related because of the sad bad and important stuff. Like I know that she would never try to hurt me because we were just today talking about some acephobic asshole earlier and how frustrating that is. She would never meaningly say something to be arophobic.

But.

I'm not ace. I. Am. Not. Ace. None of my identities are asexual identities. I am arospec. I may be grayro, meaning gray aromantic. I am aroallo. Aromantic allosexual.

I've been sitting on this for a few days to decide if it was actually bothering me and it is.

No where is there a place that understands aro only identities. Not on tumblr, and apparently not irl with irl aspecs lol. Seriously, in a household of all aspecs, it wasn't common knowledge that the not asexual version of gray- is just the aromantic one. Like why did she ask me it like that? "Grayro is on the ace spectrum?" No lol, grayro is an aspec identity, but it is on the aro spectrum.

Why is it like this? Why am I constantly stuffed into the ace spectrum when I am not ace? I can't even be a non-sam aro because I still get stuffed into the ace identity when I do not belong there. And I even clarified that I was allosexual and bi questioning and I still was questioned if I was identifying with an ace identity.

Nothing has changed. It's still this stupid fucking mentality that if you're not ace or not aroace, then what are you???

I'm fucking aroallo. I'm aroallo. Aromantic allosexual. I am just ARO.

Please see us, for fucks sake. I know there's other aroallos out there, there are aroallo voices speaking still. We are aro. We are aspec. We are not ace, but we're still aspec. Please see us.

akhsdjasdjhdjkhasjdasdkj 

So anyways stop supporting things that are blatantly arophobic.

If y’all wanna be good allies then, yes, this is all the things you need to stop doing/supporting.

I see you non-aros doing this shit, I see it and it hurts.

If anyone can help me out that’d be great:

I’ve know the way I felt attraction was different ever since elementary school, and for a while, I identified as demiromantic. However, while most of my romantic attraction work in the way being demiromantic does, In some extremely rare instances, I’ve felt primary romantic attraction too. Sometimes it’s purely just a one in a million chance where I am romantically Interested in someone when having known them for short periods of time, sometimes my romantic attraction is mixed with varying ratios of aesthetic attraction, sometimes it fades away after a short period of time, and sometimes I simply just don’t feel the need to act on it. So while for the most part I do almost exclusively feel romantic attraction the way demiromantic people do, sometimes it varies. All I know is that I feel romantic attraction rarely, and in some rare instances the way I feel it varies. Can anyone help me with this? Ive been trying so hard to find something that defines where I fall on the aroace spec, but I can’t seem to find anything. I’ve been using grayromantic and demiromantic to define myself in the past 2-ish years, but I’m finding that it doesn’t define me entirely either. Overall finding out the way one’s own attraction works is extremely frustrating and confusing and I just want to feel like i at least know what I am

It sounds like you’ve experienced a lot of different things on the aro-spectrum (freyromantic and litromantic come to mind besides the ones you mentioned). If grey-romantic doesn’t really define you, I would also recommend looking into aroflux, which is where someone experiences multiple aromantic spectrum identities (ie being freyromantic for awhile, being aro a bit later, being demiro for a time, etc

I saw this version of the flag recently, though i don’t remember exactly where it came from. If someone knows who made this, the credit goes to them

but I’m more familiar with this one. though I think I prefer the top one lol

anyways I hope this helps! 

Stop treating aromantics as an afterthought.

Stop treating us as “Ace Lite™”.

Stop assuming all aromantics are also asexual.

Stop making pride posts that don’t include aromantics.

Stop using aromantic and asexual as synonyms.

Stop ignoring aromantic, especially allosexual aromantic, voices.

Do you ever just get idk like romance tired instead of full on romance repulsed when it comes to it in media sometimes?

As an aromantic trans man, I’ve seen misogyny accusations weaponized against men like me enough that I’m starting to examine every concept for how it can be used against other marginalized folks and how to shut it the fuck down when I see it.

And it worries me that people can take things like this and use them against others so easily when doing so can delegitimize real and genuine accusations for just causes. I do not want to one day see people having to question every accusation of bigotry with “okay, is the accused person a member of a marginalized group that the accuser is not?” We’re not at that point yet; let’s not get there. (Or maybe we are and I just haven’t seen it? I hope not.)

But look, misogyny is real and it’s a problem. And it’s real quick and easy for anyone who isn’t a transphobe to see the problem with “you’re not a man, you just have so much internalized misogyny that you hate yourself for being a woman,” and it’s real quick and easy for anyone who isn’t an arophobe to see the problem with “you’re just a chauvinist pig who wants to sleep around without actually caring about the women you fuck if you seriously wanna have sex without dating anyone ever.”

But do you know how anxious I am about calling out transphobia when the abortion debate comes up? Of course a bunch of cis men are doing it because they want to control women’s bodies, but they’re transphobes too. If trans people get fucked over by them banning abortions, that’s just a bonus to them! And the cis folks protesting abortion bans while forgetting that trans men and some nonbinary people can get pregnant too, they get their opportunity to perpetuate transphobia with cute little “if men could get pregnant, abortion clinics would be like Starbucks” statements that pretend we don’t exist, and if we call it out, “shut up, this is an attack on women, it’s not about how you ~identify~”. Asking to be included in the pro-choice movement is treated like an act of misogyny even though we’re affected by it too. We’re expected to either go back in the closet or shut up and let everyone pretend we don’t exist. How the fuck am I supposed to advocate for my own issues if I’m not allowed to be myself in the process?

As for being aro, well, most people don’t even know aros exist and when they find out they often resort to either hating us or just not taking any of our concerns seriously. After all, we’re invisible and to some that’s not even, like, real oppression so who cares? And the ones who hate us or don’t even know we exist think statements like “men who want to have sex with women but don’t want to date them are misogynists using women for sex” are perfectly reasonable in all situations. Trying to explain that aro allos exist and we just don’t get romantic feelings towards others while still being attracted to others sexually just gets you “is there something wrong with you” and “do you feel anything at all” and “so you don’t care about anyone”. We’re regarded as sexual predators for our orientation and descriptions of us by people who aren’t us use the most harsh language possible (“he just wants to fuck without caring about anyone”). Surely you can see how hurtful it is to claim someone is a bigot for something they did not choose and cannot control? Surely you can see the problem with saying someone is objectifying women by being attracted to them the wrong way when they can’t control that? (Didn’t talk about aroaces for this because tbh I don’t know how someone could utilize accusations of misogyny against them).

Damnit, I just… I hate that I can be accused of hating women just cause I’m trans and aro and a man. Cause I like to think I’m not a misogynist and I surround myself with people I trust to call me out. I’ve had to watch myself from internalizing this shit, the idea that by my very nature I’m contributing to the oppression of women. It’s making me wary of just how easy it is to weaponize activism against others. And I just wish we talked about this more so people could more quickly spot it and shut it the fuck down on sight.

Even outside of our aro identities, anyone having sex with a woman, without wanting a romantic relationship - yes, even an alloromantic person - isn’t like, inherently a misogynist? As long as you do shit with consent, there’s literally 0 problem. (And if the other person catches feelings and ends up hurt by the situation, then it’s 100% on them, the agreement was clear)

As for aroaces, the accusations of misogyny would be for aroace women? Feminists will argue “you have so much internalized misogyny you reject romance and sex! They’re good! You’re repressed! Sexual empowerment! Sleep with people as you want, but if you don’t want romance, there’s a problem with you, don’t you want happiness, do you think you’re unworthy?” and shit like that. 

I feel like aroace trans guys and non binary people (mostly afab) could be accused of misogyny from both the standpoints of “not respecting their womanhood” and also “hating themselves and not wanting romantic or sexual gratification,” which are pretty closely related and could be combined into “being so repulsed by womanhood they’ve turned their backs on sex and romance all together and changed their gender to help avoid it.” 

Essentially, if you were born female, and you reject something that Radical Feminists and TERFs see as Inherently Female, then you are doing something wrong in their book, and in the case of being Trans, Nonbinary, Aro, and/or Ace, then you are definitely doing something wrong.

But of course the real take here is that they’re stupid and we should support everyone who is something they hate. And for those of us who are something they hate, we should rise up and be proud despite their resistance. 

A concept

All ghost Pokémon are ace culture

A lot of them are purple and are lovely (just like all of us hehe) They sometimes get misunderstood when in reality all they wanna do is goof around, cause some mischief and cuddle friends

Additionally,

All grass type pokemon are now aro culture

because they are green and I like them 

Here is a gif of leafeon because I couldn’t find a gif of a lot of grass types and it is my favorite grass type

And y’all know what that means...

GHOST GRASS :)

I retreat back into the dark hole from which I came

Me: so what’s romantic love feel like?

Someone: you just know

Me:

moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

Also, Frodo belongs to the aros now fite me

I tried my hand at making an allosexual aromantic flag, after some discussion with others; It was fairly well received on Arocalypse, so I thought I’d post it here. Obviously, no one has to use this flag if they don’t want to, and if you’re interested, I’ve created a survey to gather input on the flag: https://goo.gl/forms/PFINgMKNDfa0UDLh2

It was important to me that the flag very obviously look like an offshoot of the aro flag, and I kept the shades of green the same as the aro flag for convenience of use. The color gold was chosen as the second color not only because it looks nice with green, but also because it’s the opposite of purple on the color wheel (with purple being the color associated with asexuality). As for what the color stripes represent:

I’m aroace so my opinion shouldn’t really matter buuuuuut

I have seen lots of aro allos pointing out that our overall flag is just the upside down ace flag with two green stripes instead of one purple one and I think this alleviates that some. So I definitely support this new one as a differentiation of that

I’m… Not really sure I understand what you’re saying here? I’m a little confused as to what you mean… I’m not proposing this flag as a replacement/alternative to the aro flag, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s a flag to represent allosexual aros, not the aro community as a whole.

Oh, yeah I know it’s for allo aros. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear. I think it’s good because the aro flag we use could potentially be alienating to allo aros and this is a good one for y’all to use because it doesn’t feel like a re purposed ace flag and represents more of the things you want to see in a flag.

Again, sorry for the misunderstanding

not gonna reblog the original post because i don’t wanna get into discourse and i don’t wanna put that long-ass bullshit on anyone’s dashes again, but this is an example of the kind of “supportive” responses i’m getting on that post. (url omitted just for the sake of this person’s privacy i guess)

yeah. taking a post written by an aromantic person, co-opting it, and telling young aces that they’re not broken and they’re still dateable because they still have the ability to love. fuck that.

Me, after seeing some quality ace posts: Wow the ace community isn’t that bad and they’re here to support me! Maybe they don’t hate aros at all and I’m just pessimistic and cynical!

The ace community: Bitch you thought.