#aroblogging

[astriiformes]

Might actually cry a little bit (in a good way) - the new bill that just passed here in Minnesota granting paid medical leave to people caring for sick family members has such an intentionally expansive definition of "family" that biological and/or legal ties are not actually a prerequisite to qualify for the program. In fact, there's a portion of the bill that specifies anyone designated as family by the incapacitated party can receive the benefits.

Apparently this was done in part to make the policy as inclusive as possible of queer family structures and I am absolutely floored; as someone with a seriously chronically ill queerplatonic partner I worry a lot about my options as a primary caretaker, seeing as the fact that we are not legal partners bars us from so many other benefits, but the fact that this particular one would be inclusive of us (and poly partners, and single queer people with no ties to their biological family but close friends willing to help them out, etc) has given me more hope that may change someday than I think anything ever has.

This is how you do policy that benefits the entire queer community, including poly, ace, and aro folks for whom same-sex marriage has never offered the same legal rights (and plenty of other folks besides, like disabled people or people with terrible biological families -- you don't have to be LGBTQA+ for it to be a seriously important option). This is genuinely incredible. I was excited to see this pass even without knowing it would potentially apply to me, too, but now I'm a total grateful, emotional mess.

[unionize-aromantically]

are you having an aromantic day everyone?

[transmasculinearomanticism]

my sister has been complaining to me that her meds are causing her to gain weight thus making her feel ugly and i don't want to sound insensitive to her so i can't tell her this but i really do not want to hear it as someone who's been fat xyr entire life. idk just cope and use your experiences to dismantle the systematic hatred of fat people ig

[bogkeep]

lounges across a chair with a cup of tea. you know, i could do a little bit of aroblogging. for old time's sake. for new time's sake? 'cause there's a thought i've been rotating for a bit, something i've been wanting to knit into a piece of poetry - maybe some day, just not today. it's something i've not seen discussed very much, or at all, really - probably because i haven't been looking in the right spaces, or looking at all. probably because it's going to make me sound kind of pretentious or arrogant, but i'm used to that, so: it's just - the strangeness of being an aroace person people keep falling in love with. i think "kind of person people keep falling in love with" is just something that happens if you're a person who's comfortable with yourself, or when you have a lot of interpersonal relationships, or if you just share much of yourself with other people. just, having contact with people around you in some way. feelings happen when they have the opportunity to grow! i don't know how it works! but i've been that person, at least a little bit, you know? it kind of happened as i grew older and grew into myself. it was very confusing, too, because like okay, i like myself, but i'm not necessarily expecing others to like me, it's great when they do but i wasn't banking on it! what!!!! it's very sweet and all but it also means - facing the conundrum: do i Want this, or do i just Want to Want it, or am i just Curious about what it would mean to Have it? i've Tried, and i still don't know. personally, i'm glad for having tried, because otherwise i'd be asking myself for the rest of my life what it would be like to Try, and that's a me thing. i'm not immune to the yearning! you'd think being aroace would make you immune to the Yearning. i want my money back? it also means - that no, i'm not aroace "because i can't get some," i promise, but it's not an argument i should have to make in the first place. it's such a strange spiral of an accusation, because in the world i live in there's nothing shameful about being single or a virgin regardless of orientation. to me it's a relief to not have to have sex with another person, but apparently i live in a society and in that society that's such a fundamentally alien notion i'm impossible to relate to. sorry about that.

it also means - i have to be the person who rejects people, and there's always so many stories about being the person who gets rejected, and there's mountains of sad songs and sympathy for being the Rejected One, the Lonely One, and of course, learning to handle rejection with grace is an important, painful thing. never got many saturday morning cartoon lessons in how to reject, though. not just in romantic pursuits, but in general. always running the treadmill of the scarcity mindset and You Must Never Hurt Anyone For Good Reason and there i was, crying my eyes out at my childhood friend's trampoline in the sunset telling him i'm sorry i can't love him back that way, and there i am, replying to the kindest social media DMs with i'm sorry i can't be your friend but it's not something i can force - i know it hurts, and who would we be if it didn't hurt, and if i didn't hurt you i would have to be the one to carry the pain. it's hard to make relatable, i guess? always the fucking relatability! i know a lot of people can't Relate. because we're young and lonely and yearning and starved, because we're social animals, even if we're fiercely independent or enjoy the solitude. not to make assumptions! i know we're all different and want different things from life! but there's not a lot of frameworks for how to fill our cups when every beverage we're offered is the wrong flavor. i know coke makes my teeth feel weird but there's so, so many commercials for it, and it looks tasty in all of them, and i haven't had a drink in forever, how do i not crave it? i'll still show up to the party asking for a water and everyone is gonna give me the weird looks. am i sure? am i sure? i'm tired of feeling like a wrecking ball, i say. uhhh okay idk what that is about, they'll say, but water? that's a little boring, isn't it? we have so much soda, though. there's coke, coke, and vanilla coke. just tap water, please and thank you. hope i don't ruin your party.

[shinekittenace]

"i'm going to get a bunch of work done and then listen to wtnv before it gets dark!" *proceeds to aroblog for an hour*

[angelofmusings]

just realized i’m aroblogging again. not sorry

[normiearo]

Hey so. Introductory post? I’m an adult aromantic lady who is looking for - I’m not sure exactly WHAT I’m looking for in an internet platform like this, but it has to do with how much I can’t relate to the “aro experience” as described here.

I’m not here to shit on what makes anyone else happy. I am old and bitter, if you’re the type of person who CAN live a live romanticizing independent single life more power to you. That takes a lot of strength. There’s plenty of beautiful posts on this site about that and those are for you!

Me? I CANNOT live on my own like that. I live by myself, in a remote area that I moved to shortly before the first lockdowns. I hardly know anyone outside of my work. I am very lucky to have a job where I leave the house at all, but I am starved for any sort of social connection. I do like my coworkers quite a bit, but it’s not the same as having an actual friend group. I haven’t so much as sat on the same couch as another person in more than a year. Let alone gotten a hug, held someone’s hand or had meaningful human physical contact in any way.

This is nothing special. Millions of other Americans are in the same boat as me. I’m not sure if my extreme caution about breaking lockdown protocols is a good thing, showing my intense restraint and respect for other people, or a bad thing, showing my inability to take the slightest risk to improve my quality of life. Am I just making excuses for not pushing myself out of my comfort zone? Possibly.

But no matter the root cause, be it selflessness or selfishness, the end result is the same. I am so socially isolated and bored and lonely I want to peel my fingernails off. It’s not how people are meant to be.

I’m 30. I am in a low-paying field in a high cost of living area. Living alone is deeply impractical, isolating and just flat out bad for me. But unless I am able to rearrange my brain so that I am capable of romantic pair-bonding (now seeking applicants to hit me over the head with a hammer until this is something I can do), I don’t know how to make things better. Not to be cruel, but we all know what it’s like to be an “adult with roommates.” We all know that the world sees you as a failure, someone in a stage of arrested development, a person who can’t get their shit together. I have life plans and they are becoming more and more inaccessible because I can’t lie to myself and pretend to love some hapless dummy to ensure my own security.

I have already arrived at the stage of life where my family has re-structured itself into new family units, and I’m on my own. If I was someone comfortable like that, life would be perfect. But I need to be around others and as the pandemic goes on, and life in general goes on, and the clock is ticking, the odds of me making it to a place where I feel successful and happy and safe just keep on dropping.

I’m mostly here to accumulate “resources” (aka good posts that articulate my feelings better than I ever could) and maybe occasionally complain. I’m concerned that complaining will make me really just make me more miserable, but you never know.

[gettin-bi-bi-bi]

Hey, does someone know an active aroblog? I really want help because I don't know if I'm an truly grayromantic and maybe I have internalized arophobia :(

I just checked my Queer Advice Blogs Masterpost and realised that all three aro blogs on that list are deactivated. Which sucks big time and reminds me that I need to update that post asap. I’ll ask Jenn if they know any blogs and then try to get to do some research myself as soon as I can. Also, if our followers know any good and active aro advice blogs, please let us know!!!

Maddie

EDIT: You can also send your aro questions to us, of course. Jenn is aro-spec and when they have the time they can reply to it.

EDIT EDIT: okay wait a second.... I think tumblr is glitching because NONE of the blogs in that list work and that cannot be right. Anyway.... I’ll try to fix that problem and update the list asap.

[astriiformes]

Understand that this is coming from someone who is decidedly romance-averse and has been active in the aro & ace headcanon and fanwork sphere longer than many people have even been on tumblr, so I get it, the frustration with shipping culture is real, I have the text posts I've been harassed over to prove it.

But also. If you are so focused on the lens other fans will choose to apply to certain scenes that it totally poisons your ability to enjoy any close, affectionate interactions between two characters you otherwise like, you are.... also kind of falling prey to "This is your brain on amatonormativity" and I promise you there are other options.

Embrace ambiguity. Have fun with ace and aro headcanons on various parts of the spectrum or imagine characters having messy and complicated relationships with aspec identity. Interpret canon queerplatonically. Ignore the voices of people who insist the "only" way to make sense of an interaction is if two characters are involved romantically and instead do a cool high-five with the ones who like the ship but also like letting you do your thing and can respect someone else who loves the same relationship they do, just in a different flavor. Not only is it less exhausting, but it's decidedly more radical and relationship anarchist than saying "These two characters held hands, so I guess they're basically dating.... sigh"

[unionize-aromantically]

Shout out to the aros today! We're so cool! love loses!!

[treasure-mimic]

I don’t do a whole lot of #AroBlogging or nothing but like,

the other day I was in groupchat and someone was saying like, “Don’t date a person who has the exact same interests as you, you don’t wanna date your clone.” and like, people were arguing whether he was right or not but like,

I was like “Why wouldn’t a relationship be based on mutual interests, what else is there?” and the basic consensus I got back was like “You just know.”

Anyways I just wanna emphasize how much I really truly do not Get It.

[genderqueerpond]

listen i am, indeed, a near-textbook demiromantic, but i’ve never been comfortable feeling like the label accurately conveys my experiences to other people.

part of this is because the majority of demiromantics i’ve met, while absolutely belonging under the aromantic-spectrum umbrella for the ways they relate to others and move through the world, and relatable to me in a lot of ways, do tend to end up prioritizing their romantic relationships, when and if they have one, in a way that tends to be a lot healthier than alloromantic amatonormative prioritizing, but still mirrors it in ways that i can’t. They seem to differ from amatonormative society primarily in how they get there, not in where they go.

like, yes i’m capable of romantic love. no i’m not opposed to having it. but also, i am not capable of prioritizing it above the platonic feelings i have. and the platonic feelings that i have are the strongest feelings i have. i want platonic commitment, platonic life partnership, platonic prioritization. i have platonic squishes and i care about them enormously. romantic love - and also alterous love, a whole other story - can be parts of my overall “love life”, but they can never be the be-all and end-all of it. i could never be satisfied that way.

but amber, you’ve got it backwards! why don’t you just relabel your feelings so your strongest feelings get classed as “romantic”, and the feelings that occasionally develop inside some of your friendships get classed as “strong platonic”?

No.

I agree that makes more sense in the frameworks I am forced to live inside, and the people I am forced to justify myself to, but why should I? Why should I force my feelings into labels that feel wrong, that feel uncomfortable, that feel cheapening to them, just so I can prioritize “romantic love” the highest? Why do I have to prioritize romantic love the highest? Is it because you’re uncomfortable with the idea of anyone prioritizing platonic love highest in their life when they’re technically capable of feeling romantic love? Is it because you don’t truly believe aro-spec queerplatonic love is equal to romantic love, but just the highest form of love those poor emotionally-stunted aromantics are capable of? (even if you won’t admit it?)

Also, many of my strongest and longest-lasting platonic feelings are for fellow aromantics. Why should I force them into something that renders the chance of them ever receiving my feelings impossible, along with being inauthentic and uncomfortable for me?

But yeah, amatonormativity fucks us all, and I have tried to do just that. Multiple times. Constantly, even, except for that brief reprise between my learning what aromanticism is and the discourse condemning us all. I still find myself doing it every time I have strong feelings for an alloromantic. And every time I do, I get uncomfortable with it, and then my feelings fade away. I force myself to class my feelings as romantic, and I convince myself I feel everything that goes along with that, every time I’m attracted to anyone in any way. And it’s always uncomfortable. And it’s always bad. And it’s always motivated more by a desire to fit in than by my true self. Actually, it’s no coincidence that my strongest and longest-lasting feelings are for aromantics.

Why does it scare you so much that someone could feel romantic love on occasion and still prioritize platonic love as their highest form of love?

My gender identity is a confusing mess, and it’s important to me, and I hate it being a mess. My sexual orientation is a confusing mess, and I don’t really care, because it’s not that central to who I am anyway. My romantic orientation, without conflating platonic and alterous love inside it, isn’t confusing or a mess but it’s also not central to who I am, and if I had it my way, I wouldn’t really care that much what it is. The platonic nature of my love, though, is the only thing that really feels solid, despite being completely incomprehensible to pretty much everyone I’ve ever met.

And it feels deeply solid no matter how much I try to convince myself I’m wrong about what I feel, to label it otherwise, to bow to what everyone around me thinks I should feel.

I use the terms for the people I relate to the most even if they’re not exactly the same, because I don’t know why I have to define myself by the things that are least important to me, and I don’t even get to mention the things that are most important to me at all unless I don’t have any of the “default” feelings at all. Platonic love is not a replacement for romantic love. It’s not a backup plan.

[limiculous]

i really... love how radical ace tumblr throws aros under the bus... like... that’s just the cherry on top of the transphobic/homophobic cake that’s being baked