aro-enigma

[aro-enigma]

Hate to break it to the exclusionists out there but my aromantic identity is just as vital to my queerness as my transsexuality and bisexuality are. It has a hell of a heavy impact on how I interact with and view the world

[aro-enigma]

Straight trans people deserve to be proud of our sexuality, btw. It's not at all the same thing as homophobes going "where's our straight pride month?" A lot of us have struggled with our identity as trans and straight and once we reach a point where we accept ourselves, we deserve to celebrate it.

[aro-enigma]

I wanna say it's funny but it's honestly just disappointing when the people who agree that gender is a social construct and you can do whatever the fuck you want with it are super strict about labels and orientations....like you know we made those up too, right? Labels are a social construct and they're going to disappear if we also ever manage to deconstruct gender as a social construct.

So seriously, what's the issue with fucking around with them? I don't personally use any "contradictory" labels, but what's the actual harm done by people using them? Bc y'all, I see more harm in further dividing our community via exclusion than I see harm in letting people with contradictory labels exist as themselves.

[aro-enigma]

i keep seeing misinformation about this, so: queerplatonic relationships do not have a set definition. the name comes from the idea that it's "queering" the platonic relationship, tailoring it to the individual relationships' own desires. it isn't necessarily romance lite, but it also isn't necessarily whatever definition you want to impose on it. the point of queering the platonic relationship is to break away from strict allonormative views on friendship, romance, and sex, not to make a new categorical box to fit in.

the answer to "what is a qpr?" is "whatever you want it to be." sometimes that is romance lite. sometimes it's a deeply committed friendship. sometimes it's friends who have a sexual relationship. sometimes it's based on an entirely different mode of attraction. sometimes it's fluid and impossible to put into words. it's whatever you want it to be. it's queer.

[aro-enigma]

“why do you think it’s ethical to hide your trans status from your partners” the guy i’m hooking up with spent half an hour worshipping my tdick last time we were together so tbh i feel like u are on a different planet than me.

[aro-enigma]

Not so friendly reminder that trans people are also queer, no matter their orientation. Queer is not a term exclusively referring to one's orientation. Queerness includes trans people

[aro-enigma]

Something that's good about engaging with more aromantic spaces online is that I think it's genuinely helped me finally get past that shitty grief stage. That whole bit where you're just sort of mourning the future society told you that you had to have; the future that you now know will never suit you. I'm finally at a point where I actually don't hate being aromantic. It doesn't make me feel like I'm losing out on anything anymore. My life has just as much potential to be rich and fulfilling as anyone else's. Finally realizing that and actually feeling it is quite nice.

[aro-enigma]

Been seeing a lot of anti-cis-men centered discourse n lemme just tell y’all that not a single one has factored race into the perpetuation of the patriarchy. When will y’all white tumblr queers learn that cis white men are the folks benefiting most from systems of oppression, NOT the Black and Brown men who are being villanized and victimized by the hetero-patriarchy. Get your head screwed on right and realize that race solidarity is solidarity w poc cis men, too. Especially our working class siblings. Go read Will to Change by bell hooks and watch a conversation between James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni and try again. Black feminism has always included cis men. Black feminism has always held cis men accountable without abandoning their liberation. Come on, guys.

[aro-enigma]

Actually there shouldn't be a default at all!! People saying that "the new default should be [insert label]" are fundamentally missing the point of why the current default is bad. It's not bad bc it's allo cishet, it's bad because there's a default at all. The solution to being put into a box is not to just make a new box to put everyone in

petition to make the new “default” aroace because who the hell is coming out of the womb with a crush and sexual feelings for someone

[aro-enigma]

JFC CAN WE STOP PUTTING RELATIONSHIPS INTO A SOCIETAL HIERARCHY MAYBE???

"QPRs are deeper than a friendship🥺" HUSHHHH YOU NEED TO HUSHHHH

a QPR is whatever the fuck you want it to be!! And trying to put them on a higher level than friendship in society reminds me so much of how people have basically made nonbinary into a third part of a trinary instead of a deconstruction of the binary.

It's like making a trinary of relationships lmao

[aro-enigma]

It's rly annoying seeing people try to describe QPRs in a detailed way that will make sense to everyone. Like, I'll see people explain it as this intense commitment and I'll even see people say that it's prioritized over all other relationships (and that totally may be true for some and that's totally fine!!)

BUT THAT JUST ISN'T TRUE FOR EVERY PERSON'S VIEW OF A QPR. A queer-platonic relationship can be a deeply personal and different thing from individual to individual

As an aromantic with no connection to romantic attraction whatsoever a QPR is just any relationship that is outside of what is considered societally "normal". Ffs, I'd consider a noncommittal friends with benefits relationship to be a qpr for me.

Also, the whole idea of a specific relationship label making that relationship take priority just feels like repackaged amatonormativity. How about we not put relationships on a generic societal pedestal maybe? Each individual will decide for themselves what is most emotionally important to them and I think trying to explain QPRs to people as if they're romance-lite isn't the best way to go about it.

I truly think that pushing "you don't have to understand something to respect it" is soo much more important and useful for our community than making people understand every aspect of an identity

[aro-enigma]

No, but let’s talk about how they sell us romance.

Let’s talk about how romance is packaged as Friendship But Better. Let’s talk about how getting into a relationship is always seen as a positive, and not an if, but a when. Romantic partners are supposed to be caretakers, best friends, personal chefs, cleaners, mothers, lovers. Who wouldn’t want one?

I put myself through terrible, stressful relationships, because no one taught me that romance wasn’t the quest everyone was tasked with at conception. Had I known that my warped perception of romance wasn’t truly romance, I would have realized I was aromantic sooner. I wanted the romance society sold me. That romance isn’t real.

We often blame ourselves for not seeing the signs of our aromanticism, but how could we? When love is packaged as the one thing we can all relate to and experience, of course we would bend definitions to fit.

[aro-enigma]

arospec ask game

when did you realize you were arospec?

how did you first learn about the arospec labels?

do you go by strictly aromantic or fall under one of the arospec umbrella labels?

what is something you wish was more well known about being arospec?

are you partnering or non partnering?

do you own any arospec pride merch? if so, can we see?

do you experience any forms of attraction? i.e., romantic, platonic, aesthetic, sensual, sexual, etc.

what are some of your favorite arospec characters? this can include characters from popular media or OCs.

are you allosexual, or do you fall somewhere on the asexual spectrum?

what frustrates you the most about amatonormativity?

what are your thoughts on platonic relationships and have you ever, or would you ever, be in one?

are you romance favorable, positive, neutral, or repulsed? or is your relationship to romance more complex/complicated than these terms can fully explain?

if you feel romantic attraction, what is your romantic orientation?

what are some stereotypes about arospec individuals that annoy you the most?

what are some things you associate with arospec identities? i.e. frogs, arrows, white rings, anything the color green, etc.

do you have any arospec OCs, if so tell us about them?

are you aplatonic? if so, describe what this is like for you.

do you engage in fandom shipping, or do you avoid it? (platonic, romantic, etc, shipping.)

if you are allosexual, what is your sexual orientation?

if you fall under one of the arospec umbrella labels, which ones do you use and can you define them for us?

[aro-enigma]

how do people form moral codes without actually thinking them through? They'll be like "x is bad" and if you ask why they'll go "bc I think it's bad". HOW DO Y'ALL NOT HAVE STUFF TO BACK UP YOUR CORE MORALSS? (Ofc morals are a subjective thing and if you go back far enough they'll very often come down to some kind of emotional reaction, but still it feels like there's no reasoning whatsoever to some people's morals)

I genuinely think this is one of the reasons so many people equate disgust to some kind of moral failing. Instead of truly forming their own moral codes, they kinda just absorb them from other people and society.

I think a good example of this is when I was going on about the reasons I see incest (and thusforth certain fandom ships) as against my morals and the person stopped me to say "well, you don't really need reasons to see incest as wrong, it's incest". And the thing is, while incest does go against my morals it's not just an "ew that thing is gross". I'm not going into my reasoning tho bc that's not what this post is about. It's just that if you can't back up your unmoving morals with reasons, I don't see the point in having them? I feel like having principles and morals that are nothing more than reactions of disgust or alignments with the greater part of society isn't a very effective way of forming positions.

Also, people need to remember that morals are subjective and do vary from person to person. My morals won't be yours and that's simply a fact of life. Still, if people disagree with like my core principles and morals then I won't fucking associate with them because of how integral those principles are to me but anyways yeah. This is a ramble idk if the point even makes sense.

[aro-enigma]

“you shouldn’t joke about being half lesbian” you do not have any real life problems and all your friends are 15 year old project sekai mutuals . please do not talk to me . we are not on the same level here

[aro-enigma]

not aroallo but i believe in their beliefs

[aro-enigma]

"Stop defining bisexuality that way, define it this way instead!!"

I have a wacky wild idea for y'all. Let's just stop defining bisexuality for other people. Bisexuality is a highly complex, and often fluid label. That paired with how fucky gender is and can be means that pretty much every bi person is going to have a different view of what it means to them. Words, especially labels like this, do not have to have one cookie cutter one-size fits all generalized definition. It's okay if your experience of bisexuality is different from someone else's experience of bisexuality. It's also okay if you're not bi/mspec and you don't understand each individual bi person's relationship with their identity. You don't have to understand everything in order to allow it to exist and respect it.

Honestly think if people understood that last line that there'd be so much less exclusion happening within this community