#arospec discourse

[flip-flopping-frede]

How do you advocate for something that doesn’t even exist, lol. How do you advocate for awareness of an identity that gets no awareness? I have no statistics, oppression, or evidence of erasure because there is no awareness in the first place. So far, I have believed I need community organization and community support/community unity to accomplish anything, but…how do you organize and foster support for a community that hates itself?

Lithros, frayros, and fraysexuals, you have to want awareness too.

Self-pity, hating yourself, hating being lithro/fray is not going to result in change. It is ok to not like being lithro/fray. It is ok if you can find 0 good things about being this way. However, please understand that we are misunderstood and lack community because people with platforms who can raise awareness for us choose not to. They blatantly exclude lithros/frayros from awareness, which hurts us. Awareness is essential for education on our label (people discovering themselves) and acceptance (which is seems our community desperately needs—to be ok with being lithro/fray).

Please care about this.

[flip-flopping-frede]

This again, is a reflection of how much awareness these labels get, NOT how many people exist who use these labels.

Poll Two:

ive included the arospec identities that i see used most frequently, unfortunately i am limited by the number of poll options

reblog for sample size!! (and yes, I <2 sampling bias)

[kazbrekkerfast]

shoutout to the aromantics who don't feel love at all. shoutout to the aromantics who feel love deeply but not in the way society wants us to. shoutout to the aromantics who are repulsed by romance. shoutout to the aromantics who are romance positive. shoutout to aromantics who have conflicting feeling about romance. shoutout to aromantics that are neutral about romance. shoutout to aromantics in qprs. shoutout to aromantics who aren't in qprs. shoutout to aromantics who are also asexual or aspec. shoutout to aromantics who are allosexual. shoutout to aromantics with conflicting identities. shoutout to aromantics who are questioning. shoutout to aromantics who are in relationships. shoutout to aromantics who are happy not in a relationship.

shoutout to every aromantic person reading this because you are valid and a welcome part of the queer community no matter who you are or what you identify as. you are so loved and appreciated <33

[wizardly-weirdo]

To adress this recent discourse I saw

Cishet Aromantic men ARE LGBT!

No other way around it, they are queer and if you disagree go fuck yourself

[daybringersol]

gotta be honest, i hate the whole oppression contest between romance-favorable and romance-averse aromantics that’s going on right now. both of those groups are pressured to act like the other. you know why? because people just don’t like us being aromantic. that’s it. nobody’s more privileged than the other, at least not in this context.

if you’re alright with being in relationships, then you’re told you’re not really aromantic. the goal is to make you doubt you’re aromantic.

if you don’t want to be in relationships, then you’re told that aromantics can date, so you should! the goal is to make you more palatable, to make you romance-favorable so then, they can gaslight you into thinking you’re not actually aromantic. or they just straight up call you heartless (shoutout heartless aros, love you guys <2) and/or inhuman, but thats just their true colors showing. they think that of all aros.

and the aromantic people who says shit like that? they’re trying to throw the group they’re not part of under the bus to make themselves either more palatable or less ‘confusing’. they’re scared.

nobody’s winning here. let’s all just shut the fuck up for a second and recognize that these people just don’t want us to be aromantic. that’s it. doesn’t matter if you’re romance-averse, romance-favorable or anything else. they just want us to conform. and if you’re accusing the other side of being responsible for your oppression, you’re playing right into their game.

[flip-flopping-frede]

Another poll that is a good reflection of how much awareness arospec labels get. Is anyone else concerned why 41x discovered demiros were able to answer the poll versus discovered frayros? This seems like it should be a sign that there is a blatant inequality in the amount of awareness the frayromantic vs demiromantic label gets, despite both of them being opposites of each other.

I think that is enough tumblr for today. I went through the frayromantic hashtag and had to report a bunch of aro posts with the frayromantic tag as spam. I found 3 fray accounts that have been dead for years. There’s no fray community because there is no fray awareness. If there was more frayromantic awareness and education on the frayromantic label, people would be able to discover themselves, build community, vote in polls like this, etc. instead, frayros have to deal with seeing the frayromantic hashtag flooded with aro pride, aro awareness week, low effort posts by uneducated people, yada yada. And, when those same uneducated people have the perfect opportunity to raise awareness for the frayro/lithro label, keep those labels in the tags and take advantage of the frayro/lithro community for likes and engagement. If they wanted to raise awareness, instead of saying “aro people can experience crushes!” They could say “aro people can experience crushes! Two arospec labels off the top of my head that experience romantic crushes are lithromantic and frayromantic”

I’m guessing it will be this painful tomorrow to look through the lithromantic and fraysexual hashtags. Frayromantics looking for frayro pride, and being flooded with aro pride spam, is not frayro pride. Tumblr isn’t a good place for the frayro community so far. Any place that tolerates hashtag spam and flooding a hashtag with irrelevant content is going to result in marginalized voices being drowned out by dominant voices.

💆🏽‍♀️

[lifenconcepts]

hot take but. Before people were fucking about with terms and stuff, old movies had WAYY more deep platonic connections that could be mistaken for romance and stuff. Not that they had romantic or sexual tension but like.. people nowadays look at two characters glance at eachother and think ‘wow. They should fuck’ but a room of guys would stare at some guy tenderly holding another guy on tv because he had a nightmare and think ‘wow. What a very sweet moment with absolutely no other connotations other than deep respect and sincerity.’

just think that’s neat.

[arkancipher]

Happy Aromantic is trending :)

[miitopia-cake]

I wish some aces would stop excluding other aces with complex sexual experiences. like I get why but you have to realize that being ace does not mean they don't enjoy sexual experiences and it's weird when you complain about allo people and boil it down to "people who have sexual experiences" and also shame people for their sex life and kinks as if your own community doesnt INCLUDE those people. because there are other aces out there who still masturbate, who feel sexually attracted to their own body, who barely experiences sexual attraction but still enjoys sex, who like consuming sexual media, who like sfw kink. being ace is so so much more complex than just "disliking sex". and also aromantic exclusionism in the same genre of posts is something i see a lot. especially aro allos. I hate hate hate seeing a community that SHOULD be inclusive boil down sexuality and exclude people.

[knifearo]

"asexual discourse" is so funny cause dude that's not discourse and it's never been discourse. it's not an argument and it's not a conversation bitches are just yelling at us unprompted and then making up people to get mad at 😭

[thatone-churro]

hang on. there’s no way we’re revitalizing “are [cishet] aro people queer” discourse. it is almost 20-fucking-24. no. say sike right now. you’re all fucking ridiculous. how are we not only not over this, but bringing it up for active discourse again. and acting like the things being said are common discussion and not. blatant aphobia. which is homophobia. it’s queerphobia. did we never fucking learn from the many “they want us to fight amongst ourselves because if we’re divided it’s easier to ruin us” type talks that everyone was making a while ago. or was that a phase too. what happened to “anything not heteronormative is what queer is. anything with romance/sex/gender that’s othered from what society deems the “norm” is what we are. we are a community of outcasts because the greater community doesn’t want us either way.” what the shit.

[lgbtransgirl]

Referencing old queer discourse but I'm not arguing anything

I know I post a lot about queer discourse but goddamn, but back in around 2014 I remember the big thing I kept seeing was the Dual/Split Attraction Model where people were saying that your romantic and sexual attraction can't be seperate/different and I was so confused cause like... What about Ace people that liked sex? That seemed like smoking gun evidence IMO

It was all just so confusing because it felt like a "Wait why wouldn't this be the case?" When I was first realizing I was queer

Wait I'm just now realizing this, is that why Ace discourse was so big right after that era of the internet?

[manyminded]

”I’m uncomfortable with (others/myself) shipping aromantic characters” and “I ship aromantic characters because aros can still date” are statements that can and should co-exist.

sincerely, an aro who likes to ship fellow aro characters

[pep-rambles]

While I can't speak for other Alastor ships (but I'll tag you all and you can weigh in). But in the RadioApple/DuckieDeer fandom a lot of those making fanwork, including the smuttier stuff, are acespec/arospec themselves so maybe learn what is actually going on in these fandoms before try to gatekeep in their tags

[ugly-anarchist]

I think there needs to be some kind of bridge between "do what you want forever, labels are made for you not the other way around" and "these labels mean something and the community around them might get hurt if you don't treat them with respect and also some specific experiences deserve their own specific labels"

Like, I get wanting to be accepting of everyone but at the same time treating queer labels like they actually mean nothing and anyone who tries to say "oh hey maybe don't do that" is just a cop who wants to exclude people isn't great.

Like obviously exclusionism is bad and people who just hate anyone who isn't like them shouldn't have their opinion respected but at the same time it's like... These words are important and the people being like "they're just words who cares" clearly don't respect the history and community effort put into them.

[lilyrosegold]

To those who counter any general discomfort people have with aro and/or ace characters being shipped romantically or sexually with “but aro and aces can still date/have sex/be in relationships”- that’s is true but, do you actually care about the complexities and nuance of navigating romance and/or sex as someone who falls on the aroace spectrum or are you just looking for an easy way to not get hate for blatantly ignoring a character’s identity in favor of your shipping?