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I think being aro allows you to unlock levels of haterism that most people can only dream of reaching

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"not romantic or platonic but so devoted the lines blur" rolls my eyes so hard they fall out of my head. you know that there's nothing about platonic relationships that limit them to a certain amount of devotion, right. you know this is an incredibly obnoxious and shitty way to talk about platonic relationships and makes a lot of weird and implicitly arophobic assumptions and assertions right. you know you can just enjoy the way you interpret or depict a dynamic without implying or outright saying that other interpretations (particularly specifically and explicitly platonic ones) are less interesting/complex/devoted/interesting/whatever. right. right.

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"Queer and trans" TRANS PEOPLE ARE ALREADY QUEER.

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ID: reblog by pixiecaps: #"what do you do in ur free time if u dont have a partner?" you know the killings

Reblog by soup-child: #"oh your aro you must have so much free time on your hands" no the killings. End ID.

being a non partnering aro is great because we have way more time for the killings

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writing is hard when you’re a person with thoughts and emotions and also executive dysfunction and also a deep fear of being perceived

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Asexual people who feel pressured into having sex when they don’t want to and queer people that are afraid or ashamed of having sex even though they want to are actually being repressed by the same societal forces but nobody seems to want to talk about that

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you can instantly make a cool female character if you just take any stereotypically masculine character type and make him a butch lady. easiest trick in the book. you can try this at home

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I've come to the conclusion that the way asexuality (and by extension aromanticism if we're being real) are pathologized now is similar to how homosexuality was pathologized in the 80s.

Because, if you don't know, when homosexuality was taken out of the DSM in 1974 it was immediately replaced by a new disorder called ego dsystonic homosexuality. This "condition" basically stipulated that homosexual desire was a disorder, but only if the patient was distressed by their sexuality. This compromise disorder was obviously introduced because while they couldn't go on pretending homosexuality was intrinsicly disordered, they couldn't let go of that idea completely and it wasn't removed until over a decade later in 1987. But asexuality and aromanticism are still seen this way. Asexuality is still in the DSM under the name hypoactive sexual desire disorder, which stipulates that lack of sexual desire is a disorder, but only if the patient is distressed by their sexuality.

Both disorders' diagnostic criteria warn that people who are happy in their sexuality should not be considered disordered, but this only serves as tacit admission that it was never a disorder in the first place. A true disorder is a disorder regardless of how the patient feels about it. Anorexia is a disorder even if the patient is adamant that they're happy and healthy. Chronic depression is a disorder even if the patient says they're fine. And while this has been acknowledged with regards to homosexuality, it still hasn't been acknowledged with regards to asexuality.

And this perception of asexuality is imbedded within the wider culture as well. When people hear someone, be it a fictional character or a real goddamn person, say they're not attracted to anyone or interested in sex or romance, often their immediate thought is "Oh, there must be something wrong with you." Some of them will back off if you say "Actually I'm aro/ace" but some of them won't, and even for the ones who do, their first thought was still that there's something wrong with you that needs fixing. And they only thought your lack of interest was acceptable with the excuse of labelling yourself asexual/aromantic like it's a necessary hall pass.

Because fundamentally people can't let go of the idea that asexuality and aromanticism are disordered, even if they nominally support aro/aces, so they have all these excuses, like "Well maybe they're just repressed maybe they're just traumatized maybe-" yadayadayada. Because they can't simply associate lack of attraction with being aro/ace, they can only think of being aro/ace as one possible explanation. We're literally just stuck in "Oh you say you're into the same gender not into anyone? Well maybe you're traumatized or were abused as a kid or you're going through a phase or a late bloomer and you'll find the right person someday." But it's fine because if you use your hall pass then maybe they'll back off but if you don't have it because you don't know or accept you're aro/ace yet, tough luck. It's no surprise that asexuals have the same conversion therapy rate as gay people.

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Curious, I haven’t really seen any real trend among aspec people and the ship tropes they do like, however I think I kinda seen a trend in what they dislike. So in the tags tell me if you’re aspec (ace and/or aro) and if you dislike soulmates, and I mean the most straightforward romantic non subverted kind (but if there are versions you like feel free to elaborate)

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sex neutral gang rise up or stay limp it doesn’t really matter

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Do you actually ship them or do you want them to be trapped together in a cave-in where one of them is injured and they have to talk to keep them distracted and stay sane while they wait for help, and end up opening up about their vulnerabilities and bond and then grow desperate as one starts to slip from consciousness while the other begs them to stay awake—

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I think a lot less people would feel threatened by the prospect of a character being aroace if they learnt how to conceptualize and write character relationships and dynamics outside of sex and romance. Because as long as people think no longer being able to write both characters in their favourite dynamic being sexually and romantically attracted to each other means a loss in intimacy and closeness, they're going to see any aroasexuality as an attack on character dynamics they care about and get upset when characters are confirmed aroace, unless those characters are unshippable side characters they never really cared about so they never accidentally get invested in an aroace character.

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"Aroace people aren't against shipping" I am. Learn how to write close and deeply weird friendships.

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Media: Here's an aroace character! We didn't use the word aroace because it didn't exist when our media was made but we did explicitly say this character has never been attracted to anyone and does not possess any emotional feelings attached to sex or relationships.

Fans: Well actually since they didn't use the word aroace (which didn't exist when the media was made) this means that their lack of attraction is somehow not innate and can be fixed by meeting the right person (please ignore how this perfectly mirrors homophobic "you're not gay you're just struggling with same sex attraction and you'll meet the right one someday" rhetoric) and that right person is (looks for closest friendship this character has) is someone of the same gender so this character is gay and if you disagree you're homophobic.

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Do you ship them or do you like their character dynamic and you can't think of another way to express that because non romantic/sexual connection has been so totally devalued you can't even imagine a platonic relationship like that?

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A lot of you don't want queer liberation, you just want in on allonormativity and amatonornativity.

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I swear there's a popular "characters who were queercoded but weren't allowed to be canon" post every month where all the examples people put in the comments are characters who were only ever meant to be friends but people felt denied because they didn't end up together. Guys, I'm sorry but "character I wanted to be queer" ≠ queercoded.