aro-queer

[aro-queer]

Take Me to Your Nerdy Leader is 99 cents today and tomorrow (3/8 and 3/9)! I’m excited to share it. This novel is just so special to me and personal and I hope everyone who reads it is able to take something positive from it. This book is something that I really needed to read in high school.

Here’s the blurb:

Paige has always been scared to be herself. The real Paige- the nerdy Paige- who just wants to have real friends, talk about anime, lose her virginity, and share her art- doesn’t exist at school or to her friends. Only quiet Paige does.

Her new school in Bowden is full of opportunity. There’s Revolution Recognition where she can share her art. There’s confident and enigmatic Shawn who she just feels drawn to. The anime club poster is only icing on the cake. She sees her chance! If only she can reach out and take it. And the cute boy she keeps running into is definitely on her radar.

Insightful, bold, relatable, and raw. This twenty-first century, coming-of-age story brilliantly explores the anxiety of standing out and the thrill of fearlessness.

Featuring an aromantic protagonist! No romance here!

[aro-queer]

Researchers from The University of Queensland and AUREA are collaborating on a world first project exploring what it means to be aromantic or romantically diverse! This research is interested in understanding your perspectives as an aromantic, arospec, or romantically diverse person and how connecting with this identity influences areas of your life. The survey uses open-ended questions so you have free reign to say anything and everything that comes to mind. Importantly you can give as much or as little information as you feel comfortable providing. Due to ethical considerations, this survey is open to people aged 16 years or older only. Take the survey here!

[Image description: A white box that is framed with the aromantic flag. At the bottom of the white box there are logos for AUREA and the University of Queensland and a QR code. Under the QR code is the URL tinyurl.com/arouq1. The rest of the box is filled with 5 blocks of text reading "Do you identify as aromantic, arospec, or romantically diverse? Researchers from the University of Queensland in partnership with AUREA are working on a world first project exploring what it means to be aromantic or romantically diverse. We invite you to participate in our open-ended survey to provide your experiences as an aromantic, arospec, or romantically diverse person. Eligible participants are required to be aged 16 years or older and identify as any identity outside of alloromantic. Scan the QR code or follow the link to find out more and take the survey. Got more questions? Contact James at james.fowler@uq.edu.au."]

[aro-queer]

I feel like allo aros in particular have been demonized and hurt by amatonormativity. wanting sex without romance makes you heartless, a player, just overall a bad person according to most people. they’re told they can’t do anything even remotely sexual unless they’re in a relationship or there’s romantic intention behind it. this of course leads to a lot of allo aros feeling bad for wanting to have sex without being in a relationship or feeling that romantic attraction. 

to allo aros: You’re not a bad person, you’re not using people, and your orientation is not bad. wanting sex or experiencing sexual attraction without experiencing romantic attraction (or experiencing different levels of romantic attraction in the case of arospecs) is valid, whether you want a relationship or not. 

[aro-queer]

Shout out to aros with a really weird relationship to the concept of love that don't quite fit into labels like loveless or lovequeer. I think we're neat.

[aro-queer]

alloaros deserve to be loveless sluts n i think tht makes them more attractive tbh

[aro-queer]

Casual reminder that there’s nothing wrong with having one night stands, casual sex, or lots of sex while not experiencing romantic attraction. 

And that when writing aro positive posts the solution isn’t to simply assure people that aros mostly have sex in stable committed relationships (ie not slutty and heartless), but point out that sex without romantic attraction (of any type and amount) can still be fully consensual and totally considerate towards the aros partner(s).

[aro-queer]

Any other disabled/chronically ill aros feel like they have conflicting needs from those things? I’ve been helping my friend hunt for a rental recently so I’ve been thinking about my  housing needs, and I think that more than anything I want to be live alone. Even living with the people I like the most sounds like it’d be suffocating after a few weeks at best. I’m someone who needs to be left alone for long periods of time, partly because of fatigue but also just because of being very introverted.

But I’m not sure that would be doable for disability reasons. I currently live with my family, so that cuts back a lot on the amount of work I have to do at home, but even while only working 1-2 days a week I struggle to even get laundry done and do the dishes twice a week. Between chronic pain and a sleep disorder I rarely have the energy to do much more than that and spend half the day in bed more often than not. Not to mention the costs of living alone being so much higher than splitting them, I doubt I’d be able to work 9-5 5 days a week when my body thinks it should be asleep from about 3am to midday, especially when my current commute is over an hour by car, over 2 on public transport, which is how I have to travel most days.

I have no idea how to work both of these issues into something that wouldn’t become stressful either physically or psychologically (or both)

[aro-queer]

Actually, bi women who love sex, threesomes, kinky stuff, partying, and drunk make out sessions with other women are essential to the lgbt community. Die mad over it.😁

[aro-queer]

Welcome to the sixth edition of #AggressivelyArospecWeek!

#AggressivelyArospecWeek (#AAW) is a week-long event promoting the creation of arospec fancontent by arospec creators.

Our event aims to create a space where arospec creators are free to explore their identities through fanwork. We believe that fandom is a great way to share our passions, our interests and to empower one another in our arospec identities. All while having loads of fun!

Please join us from June 20 to June 26 2021 and enjoy a small explosion of arospec fancontent. You’re welcome to submit any type of content for the event, whether it be fanfic, headcanons, mixtapes, fanart,… Anything goes!

Any content you submit has to be centered around a character’s arospec identity (whether that character is canonically arospec or you headcanon them as so.) Content can be about any fandom whatsoever!

To submit, please make a new post during the event week and tag it as #AggressivelyArospecWeek, or submit your work directly to our blog through the ask and submission boxes. Your post will then be reblogged on the Aggressively Arospec blog.

We also have a Twitter account, so use the hashtags #AggressivelyArospecWeek and #AAW21 if you tweet about your work on there. You can also mention us in your tweet to be sure we don’t miss it and can retweet it. Do submit through tumblr if you can, however, since that is the best way to get your contribution archived with all the others.

Lastly, a collection will be opened on Archive of our Own to round up all the fanfics posted on there.

We can’t wait to see what you have in store for us this year!

(For more information, check out our About page or our FAQ section. If you need some inspiration, you can also check out the content that was created during out previous events in our #AggressivelyArospecWeek tag.)

[aro-queer]

For real tho, where are the rest of my romance-favourable but still loveless aros at?

The two main narratives I'm used to seeing are:

'Aros can still feel [other kinds] of love' from well meaning aros who are sick of their friendships, familial bonds and QPRs being treated as lesser than romantic relationships, as well as arospecs who are sick of their identities being ignored, erased or misinterpreted.

And

'Aros don't have to feel any kind of love/have a QPR' from well meaning loveless/aplatonic aros who are sick of people just replacing romance with QPRs on the amatonormativity pedestal.

I so rarely see people talk about the strangeness of being in the middle of these, and what it's like to enjoy romance/love while never actually feeling it.

[aro-queer]

I wish there were more alloaro posts that were like, about alloaro-ness and not reassuring non aro aces and and allos that we aren't predatory. I don't like that making sure allos and non aro aces felt safe was prioritized over actually being alloaro, and what our experiences are.

[aro-queer]

the blurriness between nonamory and polyamory

It seems like the overlap and connections between polyam and aro communities is being talked about more and having a spotlight shone on it. And I love it!

It’s making me think about my relationship with polyamory and where I fit in the nonamorous, monogamous, polyamorous spectrum.

I don’t consider myself monogamous. The exclusivity of it doesn’t make sense to me. I understand monogamy as more than just saying ‘I have one partner’ but more saying ‘I have/want to have only one partner’ and that isn’t true for me. Also because monogamy feels like it’s a large part of amatonormativity and I do/want to exist outside of that.

But I don’t know whether to consider myself polyamorous or nonamorous. At the moment I don’t consider any of my relationships to be partnerships. Maybe that will change one day. Maybe I’ll build a partnership or multiple ones. It’s not something I’m going to seek out but it’s something I’m open to. By some definitions that makes me polyamorous.

At the same time I feel nonamorous. I have no plans of actively seeking partnership in the foreseeable future. Because of the very strong boundaries I have around romance and sex I’m not betting on any of these relationships being sexual or romantic. Which for so so so many people is the defining feature of a partnership.

I have some fantasies of living in a little queer commune. Living with a group of friends who all have some commitment to the group. But would those friendships be a partnership? Would that be nonamory or polyamory?

I think the blurriness between polyam and nonam (can we start using that abbreviation? is it already a thing?) is in the idea of what a partner even is.

Solo polyamory is a great example of it. To me, solo polyamory and nonamory can look and feel almost the same. In my understanding, you could have two people living virtually identical lives with the same relationships and one would be solo polyam and the other would be nonam. The only real difference would be in what the people decide to call a partnership. 

At first, nonamory and polyamory can seem like opposites. But, there is so much blurriness and overlap between them. It’s so cool, interesting and heartening! But, it can make it very challenging to label yourself within those terms. So I just don’t label myself and swim in the fuzziness of it all.

[aro-queer]

some people only approach and understand polyamory as a weird kink and not like. regular ass family planning. financial interdependence, fair allocation of resources, sharing household labor, healthcare, child-rearing if that's in the cards for you.

there's nothing wrong with casual sex, i love casual sex. people get really stuck on the casual sex though. sometimes it's "sex is evil for (x) reason" that creates the stigma around polyamory. sometimes people jump in without know what they're doing and have no hard relationship skills, or notice the community here has the same problems the larger culture has.

it's not really a sex thing, dating more than one person. you don't even need to have sex with your partners to be polyam. some people just have different family structures. a system strictly structured around american individualism and the nuclear family enables abusers and alienation.

[aro-queer]

Me: It's okay to never want a serious relationship.

Person: Idk why you had to use the word serious as if platonic relationships and friendships can't be serious too :/

Me: maybe because not all aro people want serious platonic relationships or friendships and that for many of us, the idea of any sort of "serious" relationship feels suffocating and uncomfortable regardless of what form it takes and yet we still have to deal with even other aro people pushing the idea that "serious" relationships and love are still necessary parts of being human

[aro-queer]

There's a lot of positivity posts for aros which is good and we love to see it, but also, if you're an angry or sad aro, that's okay too. You don't have to suppress any resentment you may feel towards your aro identity or how you're treated for it. You can be angry! You can be sad! You can yell about it and cry about it and feel bad and be enraged at people's hurtful assumptions about you! You're a human being with human feelings and it's completely normal to be sick of people's shit! Let it out! Get bitey when people are rude about who you are, be vocal when people think you're "just bitter", cry if and when you have moments that you wish you weren't aro. Feel your feelings truly and deeply. It's okay! You don't have to be positive about who you are and how you exist in the world all of the time! Sometimes existing sucks! You do not have to hide it!!!

[aro-queer]

Hello aromantic people! I’ve made a survey on aromanticism and polyamory, asking aromantic people some opinions on polyamory and whether they identify as both polyamorous and aromantic. All aros can answer, doesn’t matter if you personally are polyam or not.

As tumblr is notoriously bad with links, I’ll reblog this post and put a link of the survey in the reblog so check the notes for the link. Thank you to anyone who decides to participate!

[aro-queer]

How exactly do I know if I'm aro? I cant exactly remember romantic attraction other than being awkward around people because I look up to them in some way- I'm also having trouble accepting that I even *might* be aro. So that sucks. I hope you're doing well! Drink some water if you havent already!

I think there’s an ineffableness to romantic attraction and romance in general that makes figuring out if you’re aro a bit tricky. Probably the best thing you can do other than the obvious research is read up on aro people’s experiences and them talking about being aro. At least that’s what I found the most helpful when I was questioning. I really recommend arocalypse who also have a really good faq, but honestly any place aros are talking about being aro is good. And that can be other tumblr blogs, r/aromantic on reddit, discord communities, etc. 

If you’re stuck on sorting out feelings and what’s what, you my find this blog’s faq useful, which goes into that in a bit of detail.

For dealing with the idea of being aro, reading aro experiences is still really helpful. So is following aro people in general (especially aro people who like being aro along with positivity blogs). Hanging out in aro-spec communities, even if it’s just lurking is helpful too.

Consuming aro media can also help a lot, and give you characters you can connect to and relate to, and just normalize the idea of being aro. Personally I really love the Jughead 2015 from Archie comics run where the main character’s very aro coded, but it can be any kind of media, even things like fanfic if that’s something you’re into. Personally I’ve found podcasts and books currently seem to have the most a-spec characters, and here’s a good database on books you can sort by a-spec identity (though new books are also coming out all the time), and here’s a page that lists podcasts with aro characters in it.

And this is really good to do even when questioning because the less scary the idea of being aro is the easier it’s going to make things for you. Because when you’re questioning and afraid of one of the options being true, it just makes everything so much harder and harder to be sure if your choices. 

All the best, and good luck! And feel free to ask if you have more questions. (And thank you!)