#having feelings of.....allosexuality.....

[styrofauxm]

On aroace flags...

I want to be very clear, I am not criticizing anyone specific, but rather the current ways of combining the asexual and aromantic flags into a cohesive flag.

But I've had this floating around my head for a while, and I saw a post similar to it today, so I thought I'd throw in my two cents.

Cut because it got long.

In the ace flag, black means asexuality, gray means gray/demi sexual, white is for allosexual allies of asexual people, and purple means community. (I lost the link to the AVEN post, but someone dedicated can find it. Otherwise you can just look up the meanings on the internet to verify).

In the aro flag, the green and light green stripes are for the aromantic spectrum, white is for non-romantic attraction, and black and grey are for the sexuality spectrum. (Post by the creator saying this here: https://www.tumblr.com/cameronwhimsy/102698477928/whoops-yeah-i-just-realised-i-never-actually-made?source=share).

So black, grey, and white all mean different things for each flag, yet in most combination flags, they only appear once. Do they mean what they mean on the aromantic flag or what they mean on the asexual flag?

The light green and green don't have any arbitrary separations for people who do and don't feel romantic attraction, and the grey and black of the aro flag don't have that for sexual attraction either, while the asexual flag does. Cutting out one of the green stripes or moving the black and grey away from each other don't make sense in the context of the aromantic flag.

I've also seen some that add an extra purple stripe. It doesn't mean anything, it's just aesthetic.

Whether or not you like the sunset aroace flag, it is a good example to look at when trying to create a flag to represent aroace people. It keeps the association with asexuality and aromanticism, without using the original colors in ways that don't quite fit. (Color meaning breakdown by the creator here: https://aroaesflags.tumblr.com/post/181034758671/revised-aroace-flag-after-some-conversation-among).

The whole point of having pride flags is to have a meaningful symbol to represent our communities. For aroace people, mashing two together keeps the association with asexuality and aromanticism, but loses the deeper meaning behind each flag.

Honestly, as an aroace person, I think the only way to really design an aroace flag is to depart from the imagery of either flag. That ensures the meanings are solid, and it ensures no one in accidentally excluded (which is, to my understanding, why the sunset flag was created originally - to have a community symbol that included the whole community inherently). But I understand not everyone shares the sentiment.

So, from one aroace person to another, if you are going to design an aroace flag that's based on the ace and aro flags, please keep in mind what those colors mean in the context of each flag, and don't put them in just to have them. And be sure that your design properly includes everyone you are trying to represent.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

going to format this like a reddit post because it’s the only way. i (transmasc) don’t know if i’m sexually attracted to the girl (transfem) im having sex with. i’ve known for a while that i’m asexual and fuck for fun, and when i see my friend who i’m fucking, i don’t have any immediate overwhelming desire to have sex with her, unless we’re like, in the moment yknow? like i totally forget that it’s even an option bc i could just sit there and talk to her for hours as my friend bc i love (platonic) her dearly and we have a lot of stuff in common. my only quip is that like, is that sexual attraction ???? being in her bed and having our hands on each other and kinda feeling it then? but not at other times? is sexual attraction constant?? maybe im bisexual and aromantic. or maybe i’m regular bisexual and i just dont like romantic relationships. makenzie why are human minds so goddamn difficult to parse the emotions of? i want to be her friend but im confused by my emotions towards her. how am i consistently having sex with someone im not literally sexually attracted to? and liking it? i mean that kinda has to be sexual attraction right? idk. help girl (gender neutral)

hi anon,

have a seat. drink some water. take a deep breath. we're wildly overthinking this.

what you call yourself - asexual, aro bi, bi but not into romance, whatever - that doesn't actually matter.

here are the things I'm worried about here: are you feeling at all pressured or coerced here? given the choice would you want to stop having sex with this person? do you feel comfortable setting boundaries and saying no when you have sex? you don't need to be overcome with raw sexual yearning for your sexual buddy, but do you enjoy and look forward to having sex with her? is this a positive experience for you?

it's fine to have sex even if you don't walk around thinking about it drooling like a horny cartoon wolf, whether it's because you're asexual or just allosexual without a particularly vigorous sex drive. (the line between those things can be pretty blurry and is pretty up to you to define, by the way.) sex can be fun and feel great; it's fine to want to do that even if you don't have a longing in your loins for it.

think of it this way? I don't particularly like most vegetables, but I like how my body will feel when I eat them, so I make a point of doing that as much as I can. and when I cook them they'll usually come out pretty tasty, and I'll enjoy or at least fell neutral about them. and still doesn't mean I like vegetables, or at least I don't particularly identify as someone who likes vegetables, but I did. eat those vegetables.

the sex is vegetables.

I can't tell you if this is sexual attraction. but also it doesn't matter very much as long as you're being safe and having fun.

[thedeafprophet]

@dumpstersoul aight. lets have a little thing about Jamie and being aro-spec.

with Jamie's experience is that they don't know that theyre aro, they dont understand why they do or don't feel specific things, and they don't really get why that is. Complicated further is the fact that they are allosexual, its very easy for them to assume that physical attraction must be the same thing as romantic attraction, right?

and the thing is Jamie loves reading romance stories, they grew up with tales of courtly love and chivalrous knights, and spun away dreaming of what romance is supposed to be. Of how its supposed to feel. Expectations that, at some point, surely they will feel the same way?

and then they never did. Attempts to replicate or pretend or assume that okay, maybe these feelings must be it instead? if they just wait it out? everyone else seems to be able to figure it out, so clearly there must be something wrong with them?

All of this, in turn, bleeds into their writing.

Jamies stories contain a multitude of different angles towards romance. theres many typical explorations of romance in some of them, especially the adventure novels, but over time jamie came to be.... bored, with that.

Combined with their own complicated feelings towards relationships, it became a matter of curosity and exploration to lean more towards complicated and less healthy relationships in their stories. trying to push and pull at the concepts of feelings, of what makes character and relationships tick, what does it actually mean to 'love' someone in the first place

perhaps, if they push at it enough, eventually something will break, and they'll figure out what theyre looking for in all of this

and also, well, its just fun to write more complicated relationships

[uncanny-tranny]

The sheer pity party some alloromantics expect of aromantics is really funny to me. The expectation is that we ought to feel broken or afraid that we will never be worthy of anything if not for a romantic relationship, but as the years go on, I've been so much less inclined to feel those ways.

People expect aromanticism to feel like a prison, and I think that's looking at it wrong. My aromanticism never imprisoned me - amatonormativity did. Being aromantic taught me that I can never and will never be "made whole" through romantic attraction. Amatonormativity teaches that to be whole is to be pursued, to be in love, to be possessed, essentially. Being aromantic has freed me of those expectations because I had to break those chains in order to truly understand what will make my life worth living.

I've been finding more and more that being allo will never appeal to me - I don't give a flying fuck about allo being "normal," and frankly if being normal means being allo, I simply just won't be normal.

[alexclaain]

being asexual, an adult and still never having had sex without wanting to change it, feels fucking lonely at times. Because majority of asexuals I met with similiar experiences as mine were of the sort of "golden star asexual" or whatever and that's just bullshit and I don't want to associate with that crap.

I just feel really really lonely among other asexuals who still, in the end, have more experience than me, because in this society that marks me as the "weird one", the "childish one", because sex is just connected to adulthood and without you're immature in this worlds eyes.

Adding to that, most representation I've seen of asexuals in media has been of the sort that still has (or had) sex - and that's great for them! But I wish people like myself would be more than the weird nerd person or robot sidekick. I wish adults who choose to never have sex would be treated as adults and full fletched humans too.

[misshazelevers20]

Oh yes, the classic " if you're ace and in a relationship you're being selfish if you want your partner to not cheat on you " 😒

[thermodynamic-comedian]

this is such a petty thing to be this upset about, but everytime i see some variation of "○ asexual/aromantic" as the only aspec option in anything, i punch the wall metaphorically.

[loveofastarvingdog]

okay say what you will about "comphet" and "settling," and maybe this is my arospec-ness showing, but i don't feel any attraction to women (romantic or sexual) and would still be 100% down with being in a relationship with one and even marrying a woman. i am pretty much entirely gay when it comes to actual attraction, but mostly consider myself bi or pan when it comes to my approach to relationships, and i just? think that maybe it'd be cool if more people recognized that however other queer people approach relationships and sex when it comes to gender, it doesn't negate their identities. it doesn't mean it's comphet. it doesn't mean it's secretly harming them. sometimes people just choose to have sex, or be in a relationship, or whatever, and it might not "align" with what you think their label ought to be, but it sincerely does not matter at all. it's not your sexuality, or your romantic orientation, or your own personal understanding of yourself, it's theirs. and it doesn't make them bad at being queer, it just means that they're human and get to 1. make their own choices and 2. not conform to other people's ideas about themselves

[perennial-bee]

"trans people are only trans because of oppressive gender roles and if we just got rid of the gender roles nobody would be trans" might sound like a hot take, a thoughtful and compassionate take, but unfortunately it is ice cold and does not understand how being trans works at all. meet and talk to and listen to more trans people - preferably in real life - before making assertions like this, especially if you yourself are not trans.

[captain-k8kat]

The thought that I could be allosexual and just confused my asexuality with aromantism is a thought that's been cropping up a lot lately and it's terrifying me.

Like it's easier to say that I'm ace/allo, it's easier to say that I'm simply aro/ace, but saying I'm allo/aro just scares me. Because while I know objectively this isn't true, a part of me feel that the moment I identify as allo/aro is the moment I become morally bankrupt. That no matter my sexual history, I will be this heartless creature who's only ever in it for sex in the eyes of the public. And like, I know that just internal aphobia but it scares me regardless.

[hypervoxel]

Okay some people talk about asexuality in a way that makes me really wonder about their views on allosexual people too. Like. Some of the things people are saying or writing are so weird. This is too vague, oh well. It's the framing of one-sided unwanted attraction or unwanted romantic/sexual actions like they're worse, so much worse because Alastor is ace. Like, you know harassment is still bad even if the victim could be attracted to the perpetrator, right? Even if they are attracted to the person harassing them, it's still horrifying.

[multifandom-garbage-compactor]

How I feel when I see spicy Ineffable Husbands content

[airenyah]

bitch what?? says who????? is there a law that states that every single person on earth has to have sex at some point????

sounds like a you problem tbh!!!!!

lmao WHAT are you fucking talking about!!!!!

YEAH AND???? SO WHAT??? WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK IS THE PROBLEM WITH THAT????????

who the fuck are you to dictate what other people do (or DON'T do) in their bedrooms?????

god i really really really really despise that societal expectation that everyone HAS to have sex at some point. i hate that society thinks that you HAVE to have sex in a relationship

and i also really really really really hate and despise that thing that happens in media that a couple HAS to fuck each other pretty much the day after they get together (if they haven't already at that point). like, even IF we're talking about a relationship where the people involved really ARE going to sleep with each other at one point.... you can literally take your time???? until you get to that point???? you can get to know each other first and figure out other aspects of the relationship first before you sleep with each other for the first time???? like. that's a thing??????!!!!!!! like. you don't even have to be asexual in order to wait until you have sex with your partner??????? do the writers realize that?????? clearly they don't

honestly what's with that expectation that kawi n e e d s to fuck pisaeng right away when they've only just started dating????? let kawi get comfortable in the relationship first please???? honestly what the fuck is up with all that stress and pressure????

ngl i find this particular scene extremely uncomfortable in so many ways

[hazelek]

[craycraybluejay]

He's saying really sweet stuff, and I'm kind of getting concerned/worried he's getting the wrong kind of feelings for me. How do I make it stop 😭 I feel so uncomfortable rn but I don't want to say anything bc maybe I'm just reading him wrong, and this is like within bounds. But I'm getting this antsy feeling like I should run like I usually do when someone's being romantic to me, so I don't knowww.

Advise me:

How do I figure out if someone's catching feelings

And

How do I prevent that

[specters]

i love testosterone sooo much but it has increased my libido to an insane amount this is just horny juice that also makes me hairy