#agender aro ace but specifically in the autism way

[toffee-biscuits]

wy is too insecure to pick up flirting so cin decided drastic measures were needed smh (2/3)

[Cinder | she/her] [Wyatt | they/any]

[wtowingedtragicobsidian]

BDS Gender & Orientation HCs pt1 ADA

~if a character/commentary is not included I’m just assuming they’re cis/straight~

Atsushi:

Orientation:|Aro/Ace| (I’m claiming this one as my quota per show) Doesn’t consider romance/sex often, only ever really thinking about it when he does something that makes him go ‘oh shit that might have crossed a line that had the wrong implications or made someone uncomfortable.’

However, he wouldn't protest much if somebody (regardless of gender) wanted to having a dating relationship. It would take him a while to adjust but he’d eventually enjoy it, he just wouldn’t seek out those kinds of partnerships on his own and wouldn’t be completely shattered if they ended.

*I like to think (b/c it makes me laugh and it seems like something Dazai would do) that Atsushi’s tie clip is a bisexual flag Dazai gave him and he just wears it b/c he doesn’t know what it means. (tbh, I think Atsushi’s mostly ignorant of sexualities, not in the way of being bigoted, but in the way of never having realized that there’s different ways to categorize them. He just thought if you like somebody you asked them out, gender was never even considered.)

Dazai:

Gender: |Agender-unrealized| Goes with male but doesn’t actually strongly identify with any gender. Uses masculine pronouns but will also use neutral or impersonal pronouns when thinking (and sometimes talking) about themselves.

*in some of the aus we see she either transition or is born female, but she still feel similarly detached to gender.

Orientation: |Bi| Attracted to both binaries but compulsively gets with women more often, tending to only fantasize or on occasion entertain men flirting with him—he rarely goes past that unless it’s a power play or for a mission.

*real talk I think he probably has a fucked up relationship with sexuality, but that has less to do with who he’s attracted to and more to do with his own personal complexes surrounding sex and meaning.

Kunikida:

Gender:|Transwomen-unrealized| Identifies as male and uses masculine pronouns. BUT, when someone refers to him femininely instead of debating, he just pauses—it doesn’t feel as incorrect as it should, making his heart clench and then soften in a way that steals the words of rebuttal out of his mouth. (in another life she might realize, but in canon no such luck.)

Orientation: |Straight(?)| Interested in women, more specifically interested in finding The Perfect Woman™ according to his Ideals’, but alas. He’s fine with men flirting with him (he finds it strangely flattering, making his heart flutter with warmth) but he just politely informs them he’s straight.

However, he isn’t opposed to being an a qpr with a man—he would never seek it one out, but if he found himself in one with somebody he REALLY values it wouldn’t be much of an issue.

Ranpo:

Gender: |Transman| Uses masculine pronouns.

Orientation: |unspecified| Not super interested in relationships and has distaste or confusion over certain aspects of them (but I’m tempted to say this might be more related to his autism than his sexuality). If the transition into the relationship was natural and subtle, he'd be ok with it.

*Ranpo likes running bets with the ADA (read Yosano, Dazai and sometimes Fukazawa, the others stopped betting with Ranpo over anything a long time ago b/c they’d never win) over who’s with/going to get with who and what happens between the relationships. (sfw or otherwise)

Tanizaki:

Gender: |Transmasc, Demiboy| Uses masculine and neutral pronouns

Orientation: |Bi-curious| Finds men attractive (bi panics) but isn’t sure if it’s romantic interest.

Yosano:

Orientation: |Lesbian| Likes women and wine and having a good time.

Fukuzawa:

Orientation: |Aro| Doesn’t clock advances well (like he’s REALLY bad at it, Ranpo has to point it out for him) and when he does, he just chuckles and says he’s flattered but no, none for him thanks.

[ericvilas]

Okay I am incredibly curious - I know there's a correlation between queerness and autism but I'm starting to wonder about something specific.

Surely it's not 100% but I want to know whether people who are aro+ace+agender are basically all autistic.

Cause so far, every single one I've met has been, and as someone whose autism interacts with their gender in the standard nonbinarification way, and who has weird relationships with both their sexual and romantic orientation, I think the autism has gotta be a major factor in why the triple-A identity is so common, right? Sensory issues making sexuality feel weirder than it "should" (for allosexual standards), emotional shenanigans making people form relationships weirdly, combine that with that weird catlike sense of touch-based intimacy that autism brings and you have the starting point for being very confused about what the fuck people mean when they talk about romance (been there), and of course the classic "I do NOT feel like a [man/woman], when I think of those terms they SO MUCH do not represent me" that is brought about by the sense of otherness that living in a neurotypical world brings.

As an autistic person who thought they were asexual until they were 20, who still feels kinship with the aro flag because of how differently they experience romantic relationships, and who is basically only not agender due to a technicality, I'm really curious.

Should the triple A identity be a quadruple A one?

[evergreenwitch]

I think I should make a 'State of the Gender' post - because I bet its going to be interesting to look back on in a couple of years hahaha

Or it might be completely unchanged and this sort of boring - but I kind of doubt it, my gender identity as of right now feels kind of liminal in many ways.

Ok for context - I've more or less always identified as a cis woman. I was a ~quirky girl~ as a kid; occasionally attempt to lean in to the tom boy thing, but that was definitely more of a 'not like other girls' thing then a 'pro masculinity' thing, and also I was bad at it hahaha - catch 10 year old me saying things like 'im a tom boy but I love dresses and makeup' sort of big ann of green gables vibes (ie it was the ADHD/autism weirdness not really gender weirdness)

Cut forward to.... Idk I guess in high school I realized I was bisexual and didn't really come out so much as stopped telling people I was straight (not that I had done that much prior)... I did spend a bit of time considering my gender but settled on 'no issues, carry on'

By the end of college I think was when I settled on 'Woman For Political Reasons' - or that is to say Agender cis woman: I realized I just don't get gender? It's not a significant factor for me in like any way - I started IDing more as pansexual then bisexual, etc. Being a woman was still sort of significant to me but for purely social reasons - volunteering with Girl Scouts was important to me, I was getting a degree in a heavily male dominated field.... It felt important that I continue to be an unambiguous example of 'woman-hood', but I was beginning to realize I don't really grok gender. I also started firmly IDing as autistic at this point lol

It's been roughly a decade since then and nothing too significant has changed wrt my interior gender, externally a lot has changed! - I've gotten married, I've learned a lot more about trans perspectives on gender and ace perspectives on sexuality, I started playing roller derby......

I currently identify as somewhere on the aro/ace spectrum (specific labels TBD for like 8 years now I'm not in a hurry to pin that down haha) somewhere in the bi/pan/omni sort of sexuality cloud of labels (again I don't really give a fuck about the specifics) and still in that cisish female, Agender woman, demigirl** sort of gender space - firmly She/They pronouns.

Derby has really made me think a lot about it - I definitely am not a woman the same way people who definitely are women are women.... But I feel like I *do* belong in spaces that are exclusively for women... Yea Agender woman continues to be the most accurate term, but I'm not really satisfied with it, you know?

** I have issues with demi girl mostly because while I sort of feel a lukewarm acceptance/begrudging fondness for 'woman'/'lady' I feel a deep fundemental sense of wrongness about being considered a 'girl'. Various compound phrases are fine - 'girlfriend' doesn't really bother me, 'adjective Girl' is.... Probably more or less fine (tech girl, derby girl).... But being called just generically a 'girl' is bothersome...... Might be part of why I was so insistent on 'tomboy' as a kid now that I think about it....

[actuallyschizoid]

Do any of you guys experience concerningly low empathy? How about limited emotional range, like a spectrum? What about sensory process meltdowns, similar to autists? Do you feel almost no emotion until hit with intensity? How about falling inlove and a best friend? Any previous ddx of anxiety or depression or adhd? Ever made stock friends for the sake of benefits? Rather One night stand than relationships or is it all to disinteresting? Any comorbid SzPD and APD out there? How did you get diagnosed? Views on religion? Im sorry for asking alot, recent ddx and idk what this means for me, never met the average schizoid to paint the picture. Some of these questions have to do with relatability to my symptoms, I guess.

Thanks for submission! Interesting questions. For me personally:

Empathy. In fact, it gets better over time. At least cognitive empathy - which is pretty much psychoanalysis on the go, i.e. taking into account what you know about each person and trying to extrapolate what would they feel, how would they react based on those feels, etc. It isn’t really connected to being able to understand their feelings on your own experience, and way more dependent on one’s knowledge of human psychology, experience observing people and just general live experience. It can be trained for anyone with some effort, but for those who lacks natural emotional empathy it generally gets better just due to having a constant reason to practice it. 

As for emotional and other kinds of empathy... eh, mine’s pretty much limited to laughing along when someone’s laughing their ass off. Yeah, tiny bit of mirroring is all I get, it’s pretty useless. Though, I must say, I do get easier time to relate to feels of other schizoids, autistic people and pretty much anyone who struggles relating to average kind of people.

Emotions. Now that I’m 32, it’s probably not as limited as when I was in my 15-to-25 years, but less of a mess than it was before 15. Still those are pretty... uh, alternative emotions. I still don’t often get the “correct” one triggered on same triggers as most people. My natural tendency is to rationalize stuff, analyze it from system POV instead of getting sad and emotional. 

Like, yesterday there was a plain crush, the whole local internet was buzzing about how terrible it was. I can’t say that was exactly what felt, but instead we were casually discussing the technical nuances of it with a fellow schizoid. Like what effects this kind of event might have had on this or that system, how it might have been made better, what mistakes happened there and what were the means to prevent some of those deaths. I.e more from a system design point of view, where people are just numbers in statistic rather than dead kids who won’t have live, sad parents, etc etc. 

I mean, all that’s sad and all, I get it, but there’s nothing I can do to be sad about it. To me it’s no different from knowing the fact that every day on roads in my country horribly dies about the same amount of people and no one gives a single flying fuck about it. But then same people die in a plain crush and it’s a nation-wide tragedy for some reason. To be honest, if I try to dig into actual emotions I feel about stuff like that, I can find out this kind of feels look rather... wrong to me. I know people can’t help but to feel whatever way they do, and there’s no such thing as “wrong emotions”, I definitely won’t be the one to judge them. But from my POV, it’s really hard to understand this negative hype around it.

Meltdowns. Not sure I ever had an actual meltdown, perhaps as a kid. But I might not even get the idea of what it is well enough. Heavy sensory stimulation actually causes me lots of discomfort. Like, neighbors drilling their walls almost on daily basis is an utter nightmare for me. I still stick my fingers into ears like a kid, yeah. And then try to poke at my macbook’s touchpad with whatever I get left - elbows, tongue, toes... To find at least some distraction from the noise. Eh. Not sure what’d happen if I wasn’t protecting myself from this kind of stuff, tbh, I never neglected this kind of safety measures to find out if I’d be able to handle it.

About no emotions until being hit. Hmm, maybe, not sure. To me it’s more often just no emotions from one specific trigger until.. well, until the trigger is gone lol. It just never occurs if it’s not there, yet when it’s there - it’s there. 

Being in love and having best friends. Never was in love. Seriously, I doubt I’m capable of it. And not sure the best friend thing relates to me either. I had some friends, but never the kind of friends whom I could entrust much about myself. Like, the schizoid person I still consider best friend doesn’t even know I have this blog lol. Or that I write a book, for example. I feel uncomfortable with the fact that people who knows me would also know... well, me. Knowing some part of my life is ok, but no way someone would have access to everything. And the better I know people, the less I feel like sharing. Yet I have absolute no issue with writing this kind of personal stuff anonymously and hundreds of people potentionally reading it.

Previous diagnosis. At early childhood I was suspected to have autism, actually. Or, well, it was long time ago so it was more of a “some development malfunction” diagnosis. I started speaking way too late, but by the time I was able to hack into this speech thing, I already was rather fluent at it, could understand more than my peers, etc. Same happened with reading. And from then on any language, be it human or programming, I can pretty much grab and use, if I want. I can turn in some youtube video on whatever language I’ve no idea about, turn in automatically generated subtitles translated to English and understand most of it, and after few hours getting the basic structure and matching a few common words with their meaning by ear. It might be related to that “could’ve had autism”, but not sure, it’s still not something I explored much with professionals as adult. And yeah, ADHD in some of its (subtile and inactive) forms could be the case too.

Stock friends. Eh, probably? I mean, some kids used to stuck on me now and then in school or college. I didn’t care much, but I tolerated them as long as they weren’t too annoying at least for the sake of dragging at least tiny bit less attention to my own weirdness. It felt like a safer option, yet most time I still have spent alone. 

Relationships and one night stands. Well, I’m aro ace agender, so... Actual romantic relationships were always out of question for me, tbh. Never tried, never feel like trying in the future. Had somewhat of an experimental semi-relationship with a friend, but it wasn’t romantic much and never was intended as long-lasting (at least, not on my part). We’re still friends, by the way, there was no “break-up” (coz there wasn’t much to break in first place). 

As for one-night-stands thing - yeah, that’s pretty useless for me either. Not that I’d had anything against it, were I in need to have sex. Perhaps, if I had that need, it would be the way to go for me. But since nothing really drives me for this shit, I’m fine without it.

Religion. Atheist down to the bone marrow. There was never really a dilemma for me, I knew it’s all utter BS the moment I’ve heard what the fuck is the fuss about this “God” thing people are talking about. Mind you, my mother is kinda religious (not in actual practice way, but she sees no logical issue with the idea of religion, that’s for sure). But she never dared to bring me to church for that orthodox christian initiation practice, what’s it called? Probably was afraid I’d yap about what idiots they are to believe it right in the middle of being shoved in a bucket of “holy” water lol.

Ok, that’s about it. :) And what about y’all? Feel free to add, I’ll reblog.

[alas--pringles]

oh my god i’m the worst i felt so weird about getting a longass message about the OP of a post i reblogged from someone i didn’t recognize in the slightest but who had apparently followed me for 5 years i blocked them oh my god i’m trash.

but also the first post on their blog seemed not great so that makes me feel  not so much like The Worst

[aroworlds]

@aromantic-official: Pride Week One, Aromantic Identity

It’s still the first week! We’ll just ignore that I’m posting this on Saturday, okay?

How did you realize you were aro/arospec? How long have you known?

It’s been a few years now, although I’m not sure on precisely how long, since I realised it at a time when I was too ill for blogging, so there’s no internet record of my realising it. I don’t even remember when I happened across it, as my memories of that period (thanks, clinical depression and dissociation) have more holes than Swiss cheese. I have this vague sense there was a lightbulb or eureka! moment after reading something online, but it wasn’t until long after that I put it into words or labelled myself that way.

There wasn’t much conversation outside asexual spaces on being aromantic as separate from asexual until relatively recently, and as someone who didn’t feel myself to be asexual at the time, I didn’t know this was a thing I could be. (I’ve decided since I’m abrosexual, shifting between pansexual, greysexual and asexual.) I had asexual and aro-ace friends and I still didn’t know I could be aro without being ace! For years I was writing so many posts in frustration about how my pansexual and agender/trans identities were only framed in media by romance narratives. I was dreaming of starting a LGBTQIA+ genre fiction press that published non-romantic pieces (it was one of my stated goals in doing my writing course, actually). I was tired and frustrated and alienated by an amatonormative, alloromantic world, and everything I said and wrote was just waiting for the word “aromantic” to identify it.

Have you come out to anyone? Share a coming out story (coming out to yourself also counts)!

I’m out online, everywhere. I’m out to offline friends, but I think they all know me online, or at least enough of me that there was no real coming-out process I had to deal with. I’m not out to my family, oddly enough--or at least I don’t know if they know I am aro, because as a writer, they could easily have jumped on my website and read all about me. My relationship with my family is not the best, and I’ve got a lot of reasons for not trusting them, so I don’t tend to gift them with personal information given how they’ve used it against me in the past. Likewise, if they know things about me, they don’t come forward with it, so it’s this complicated, silent mess.

For being aro, I don’t have any good coming out stories. My writing tends to signal my aromanticism before I have to, be it in my profile, discussion posts on my personal blog or in promoting this blog. For being otherwise LGBTQIA+, most of them are pretty awful, so I’ll stick quite happily with being the kind of person online who doesn’t have to come out.

Sometimes I feel cowardly, for being this person who is so out I’ll never find my way back to Narnia, yet still being so cagey (words like “queer” are useful to me for their lack of specificity) with my relatives. My reasons are good, and my safety matters, but being in the closet, even partially, is a crushing weight. I wish society understood that, how much being in the closet damages you, because it is so tiring to have to talk around my aromanticism with comments like “I don’t like romance much”. I wish I felt safe enough to be completely out.

How/Why is your aromanticism important to you/your identity?

I don’t have a whole identity in the sense of many pieces fitting together to form me; I have more segregated sense of identities that I switch between, although they definitely colour each other (look at the way I can’t not talk about autism here). There are definitely identities more important to me than others, though--autism, agender/trans and aromanticism are definitely the top three identities that come closest to my feeling a sense of me.

I am other things--physically disabled and mentally ill, abuse survivor, abrosexual--but I just happen to be or experience them. Autism, agender/trans and aromanticism are who I am. They’re the words that make sense of who I am in the world and why I feel the way I do. They’re the pillars on which everything else rests, and recognising each one was profound, a relief, so wonderfully sense-making and defining.

What are some misconceptions about aromanticism that bother you?

All the “aros don’t love” and “aros are heartless” nonsense cuts me twice because it draws from a well of rendering aro-specs too inhuman to be allowed, but it does so because we’ve been taught certain behaviours about love and connection, commonly associated with neurodevelopmental disabilities, mental illnesses and abuse survival, are wrong ways to be. As someone who is all of those things and aromantic, it puts me in an untenable situation: I come across as that touch-averse, heartless, love-doesn’t-describe-how-I-feel-about-people, alienated-from-people aro stereotype from a combination of autism and abuse/assault. I see my experiences used to erase or deny me as an aromantic but simultaneously rejected by my own community in their fight against these hurtful assumptions/stereotypes.

The blame for this is squarely on the people who hold these beliefs and use them as a weapon against us, but it is so difficult to experience this sense that I am a monstrous example of everything an aromantic should never be, that I damage my own community just by existing, that my community is fighting back against stereotypes that harm us by rejecting me. Where do I go then, when the autistic community is fighting back against the “autistics don’t love” stereotype by the amatonormativity of insisting on our ability to love romantically? Where do I go as an autistic, mentally ill aro?

Ableism shapes aromisia so very often, and the two twined together as they are hurt me in ways I struggle to describe.

What’s something you like about being aro/arospec? Something you dislike?

I have this profound contentment with this word, this identity, this experience. For me, it’s liberation: I don’t have to shove myself into a box that never fit me. I can just be me. I love not feeling romantic attraction, I love writing aro-spec characters, I love questioning and exploring what constitutes a happy ending, I love the discussions about non-romantic relationships and connections with other people, I love the art other aro-specs are making, I love the way aro-specs are coming together to support each other. I love being aro. There is no way I’d choose not to be aro, just like I’d never choose to have a gender or be allistic.

Everything I dislike is steeped in amatonormativity or aromisia/aro antagonism, not the experience of being aro. I hate, profoundly, how writing characters who are aro like me makes it that much harder to find a supportive and encouraging audience. I hate the lack of categories and visible tags for aro-spec writing. I hate the way gen/low romance/no romance works are seen as childish or uninteresting. I hate the way aro folks are unquestioned targets for hate because nobody wants to listen to us talk for long enough to understand.

I hate how amatonormativity impacts me as a creative so much I made this blog.