#i may scroll the aro positivity tag for a while

[feelingthedisaster]

amanormativity's been hitting hard lately, anyone got some aro positivity? idk, a meme, happy life update, anything really, quick reminder you can live aro happily

[aroallo-culture-is]

I’ve been scrolling through the aroallo tag for a while and I’ve seen a lot of your posts. I guess I’m looking for advice or to see if anyone has had a similar experience…. I ID as aroallo and my friend just confessed to me that he has a crush on me and I feel so bad so I’m trying to reassure myself that it’s not my fault and my identity is valid.

Personally, I haven't had this issue, so any followers of mine that have had this issue are free to add on. That said...

The emotions of others are not your responsibility. It is not your job to reciprocate feelings. If someone has a crush on you, that is their responsibility to manage, not yours. The only thing you need to do here is decide how you feel about it. Do you not want a relationship? Are you okay with a relationship but it's complicated because you're aroallo? Give it some time, try to figure out how you feel, and then communicate that to him. If you reject him and he can't accept that, it's still not your job to change who you are for one person who just happens to feel a certain way about you, nor are you a bad person for setting boundaries.

Your identity is not decided by the feelings or actions of those around you. In rare cases it can be influenced by those around you, but you are the one with the final say on how you identify and what you're comfortable with. You're still aroallo even if someone has a crush on you, and even if you're uncomfortable with that.

I don't know if you ID this way, but perhaps looking through some romance repulsed positivity may cheer you up, as I've seen romance repulsed aros who have had similar experiences in the past. But no matter what, anon, you are welcome in the aroallo community, and you needn't feel bad for being yourself.

[aro-culture-is]

I'm questioning whether or not I may be aromatic, and was referred to this blog. The reason I'm questioning is I'm not sure if I feel romantic attraction "correctly"? I like doing things people may see as romantic, like kissing and cuddling and going on outings with others, but in all honesty it doesn't feel special. I'll happily kiss or cuddle any of my friends, and don't see the difference between a date and doing something with a friend. I've had partners, but really only date them because it's more socially acceptable to kiss a partner in public and not a friend. Is this what it means to be romance-favorable aro, or is there another identity I haven't heard of before?

[empty paragraph in case tumblr eats it]

hi! sorry it took me a while to get to this, I always have a LOT in my inbox (577 submissions/questions right now).

I can’t tell you for sure if you’re aro or not, but that sounds pretty intensely like an aro experience to me. You definitely could be a romance favorable aro, though I’d also recommend checking out the term romo aro @a-romantic--aromantic might be a good resource there via the tag “romo aro”.

I’d also like to recommend that you may find it useful to scroll through my tag “am i aro” for other questioning perspectives and my answers on a variety of subjects. some will certainly be more applicable than others, but the gist of it is that if you feel like the term will help you label your experience and/or give you a safe and comfortable community, I’ll never turn you away, and most aros agree.

- mod kee

disclaimer under readmore:

Hi. I'm an internet stranger. I am one person. I will speak from my personal perspective. I happen to be more visible in the aro community than some, and this puts me in a unique position where I am asked many types of questions. I will do my best, but I am not representative of all aromantic people, or even my specific identities of non-sam or loveless. Sometimes, I might say something and later disagree with that stance. Treat me as the unqualified stranger I am.

[thedreadvampy]

Like idk what you want from me here. If you want to engage me in a specific question about ace/aro identities, as I've said several times and nobody has ever actually done, then ask me the specific question. Don't fuck around with vague gestures at Points of Discourse and then get cross with me because I haven't answered the Exact Question you Didn't Ask But Expected Me To Intuit.

Preface: If you don't want to answer any of these because you are allo/allo and don't have a say because its not your place, say that. In fact, I'm asking these because you seem to do have opinions on things you shouldn't based off things you have said in the past.

I also want to state that I agree fully with your points about Martin- minus the blatant aphobia. Not just acephobia, arophobia as well.

1. Do you think qprs are problematic? I believe you once made a post saying roughly that qprs are just normal friendships, or something like that, that has since been deleted. What is your current opinion?

2. Are het aros lgbt?

3. Are het aces lgbt?

4. Cis aro/aces lgbt?

5. Cishet aro/aces?

6. Do the spectrums and micro identities exist? You've implied in the past they don't, in the post about how they were supposedly created from sex positivity

7. Can aros be in or desire romantic relationships?

8. Can aces have or desire sex?

9. Does the split attraction model exist and does it benefit people?

10. Can teenagers identify as aro/ace or do you think they're too young?

11. Can you be, say, an aroace lesbian, or an aroace gay, aroace bi, etc. Idk how to phrase this one but like can you be aroace and still id with another orientation?

I could send another anon detailing the aphobia in the post, because I at least am certainly not upset about Martin being sexual, rather it was the very blatant aphobia. It could have stemmed from ignorance, and if that's the case I don't mind explaining it.

Ok this is a lot of questions, some with quite involved answers, so I'm gonna answer them chunk by chunk so it's a bit more manageable, and then I might come back to some of the surrounding message. This isn't gonna be an immediate bang bang bang, but I'll try and work through them over the next couple of days.

Question 1

1. No, I don't think qprs are problematic. I don't necessarily understand them but I don't need to understand them to understand and respect that they're a thing that's important to a lot of people. I don't know what post you're referring to, but I'm surprised that you say it was deleted, because I very rarely delete posts except, occasionally, reblogs where people have flagged up misinformation or dogwhistles or which I reblogged by accident. tbh I'm the messiest online presence I'm way too lazy to delete past posts or block people even when I probably should bc I don't like to feel like I'm ~hiding evidence~. So I'm not saying you're wrong, you're probably totally right, but I'm surprised.

I'm thinking about what posts I've made that you could be thinking of, and obviously I don't remember everything I say on here bc I say A Lot and I actively post to get things out of my head so 🤷‍♀️ but I do remember making a post a while ago where I said that it was a normal expectation of friendship to have some friends close enough that you'll live with them, raise kids with them, etc, and I'm wondering if that was the post you're thinking of? I did have qprs in mind while writing that to a degree, but only because I think 'you wouldn't do this with your friends' is a very common argument people put forward about qprs and I think it's a weak argument, because many people have different definitions of friendship, and the only argument I think is needed for any sort of I Have X Emotional Relationship To This Thing is...I Have X Emotional Relationship To This Thing. Like you can't offer a universal materialist definition of the differences between romantic, queerplatonic, sexual and platonic relationships, because the boundaries are very personal and it's really an emotional and experiential difference. so if that is the post you're thinking of, I wasn't criticising The Concept Of QPRs as much as saying that I thought trying to put hard lines around What Friends Do Vs What QPPs Do was a) counterproductive when arguing with someone who thinks QPR is Just Normal Friendships bc. if they do those things with their friends then saying NO THIS IS A QPR THING just reinforces their existing belief that you're talking about the same thing as they mean by friendships and b) to me seems to set a painful expectation to young people that you can only get these kinds of close friendships occasionally and in the form of a QPR and it will be stigmatised and misunderstood (and depending on how people talk about it, is only accessible to aspec people and allo people should only expect it to come through romantic/sexual relationships), when in fact most people of most ages I know have friends with whom they can share things like housing, deep feelings, futures, finances, who they miss if they don't see for a few days, who are mutually supportive and vital to their wellbeing. I don't think that's mutually exclusive with the existence of QPRs though - like I personally don't know what the difference is between a QPR and a close friendship, but I also don't know what the difference is between a romantic relationship and a close friendship but I know there is one and I know it's not a question of What You Do but a question of How You Feel And Interact, and that's pretty hard to define in unambiguous terms.

Like generally I don't Not Think QPRs exist, and I think it's a dick move to try and tell people they're wrong about how they experience and define their relationships because???? how are you meant to know that better than the person whose relationship it is??? but I do think the way people talk about QPRs (both from the perspective of defending them and from the perspective of attacking them) is pretty rife with problems and I don't think it's invalidating the reality of QPRs to talk about where the arguments and language around them potentially falls down or has unexpected consequences.

On the other hand, I don't know if that actually is the post you're referring to - the reason I'm calling back to that is that that and a few resultant asks are the only time I remember talking about QPRs on here in the last year or so. So like, several of these questions reference past posts, which is very fair, but I do need it to be clear that, since I don't really tag anything and I don't have a great memory, I can only really speak to What I Think Now In This Context, not to what I posted in the past and what I was thinking when I posted it. Like, this isn't too deny responsibility - I reckon I'm responsible for what I post even if I don't still agree with it, which is why I don't tend to delete my own posts on purpose - but just to deny capacity, I guess? I don't really KNOW what I've posted so if you talk about it in vague terms (and I do understand that if it's been deleted there's not a lot you can do but that) I may not necessarily be responding to the part of it that's worried you, so if I'm not speaking to something specific I've said or done, it's not because I Don't Want To, I just don't necessarily know to.

I'm waffling about this because looking through your messages there's a lot of "you said X" and like. given that the intended message of the post that's kicked this off was very different to the message people have taken from it, it feels important to me to know whether if I looked at the posts you're referencing I'd be like "ah yeah I did believe that but now I believe X" or if it's more a situation of "oh right I can see how you took X from that but my thinking was more Y".

(also sometimes when people say "you made a post" they mean "you reblogged a post" and I am a compulsive discourse scroller so sometimes I reblog a random post to bookmark my place on someone's discourse blog or I accidentally longpress the reblog button while scrolling - I try to delete reblogs that I don't agree with but sometimes I miss some, all of which to say if there's a post on my blog that doesn't seem to reflect what I say in my original posts then it doesn't necessarily mean I'm a crypto-whatever so much as I'm very lazy and messy with my blog. Doesn't mean I shouldn't be held accountable for reblogs but it's useful to know if we're talking original content or reblogs bc I'm unlikely to fully accidentally make a post. but I quite often accidentally reblog stuff. I doubt this is the case with this sitch just bc of your phrasing but I want to cover my bases)

anyway tl;dr: no I don't believe that QPRs themselves are inherently problematic, nor do I think I have at any point believed that, but I do think that a lot of the language and ideas used to talk about them are based in miscommunication or absolutist ideas about relationships and can have damaging knock on effects.

[aroworlds]

Am I the only one who is really bothered by the lack of aromantic related content in general? Like, so often I go looking for those relatable aro posts and the tag is just. Full of asexual things. I get that they're often connected, but they're definitely not the same thing and just ace posts shouldn't be taking up the aro tags. It's really disheartening.

Anon, I feel fairly confident in speaking for a not-insignificant portion of aro-spec folks when I say that you are absolutely not the only one. Some aros may not feel this way because we’re not a monolith, but based on other posts I see made by aros, you’re far, far from alone.

This is, in my opinion, a community-wide problem, and aro-spec folks have every right to feel uncomfortable, disheartened, frustrated or angry. It’s erasure. These tags are aro spaces. We should have every expectation of going into our space and discovering that we are the subject of that space.

It is awkward for me to talk about the ace part of my identity. I don’t connect to it strongly, and about half the time I feel more pan than ace. For this reason, I don’t think my feelings and experiences of being ace map well to those of all ace-spec folks, so I’m leery of talking about my relationship to being ace as though it is universal. But, as an ace, I do not want to see posts only about being ace in aro spaces. I’m not here for discussions about asexuality alone (as opposed to the experience of being aro-ace). I’m here to be proudly, wonderfully aro, to connect with other aro folks, to celebrate my aromantic experiences and identities. When you’re such a small sub-community, when you have minimal presence in larger LGBTQIA+ spaces and no presence outside them, this leaves you with less and less space to talk about who you are.

Honestly? I don’t go into the tags. There are tags for aro-spec folks to build a community around, but I don’t use them while looking for content for the aro-spec community. I find stuff to reblog by scrolling through aro or aro-spec community blogs (and I follow a couple I trust to only post aro-spec content) and I’m still having to scroll past a great many posts that are asexual-specific or a-spec-but-really-about-aces.

I started this blog because I got pissed off at seeing general a-spec blogs focus on ace creative media while saying just about nothing on the subject of aro creative media. I’m constantly scrolling through posts about aros alone labelled “ace”. I’m constantly scrolling through posts labelled “a-spec” that are just about the ace or feature multiple ace pride images with a single, solitary aro pride image. I’m constantly having to weigh up the amount of acceptable ace, to ignore more ace-pride Jughead that forgets his romance repulsion, to queue a really cool aro pride post while cringing because it was labelled as part of ace awareness week. Finding aro-centric pieces and resources is difficult!

I do believe that this conflation isn’t entirely on ace folks. I see a lot of pride images, resources and visual posts made by folks who are doing all main orientation identities, and I suspect that many of the posts that combine/confuse the ace and aro are made by folks who aren’t a-spec at all. I see a lot of positivity and validation posts made similarly by folks working through all the LGBTQIA+ identities. I see other LGBTQI+ folks latching onto “a-spec” as a way to include us without delving deep into our identities, experiences, issues or communities. I have definitely seen ace-spec folk tag something barely aromantic or not aromantic at all with aro tags, but I think there’s a percentage of this worth discussing coming from outside a-spec bloggers/spaces.

That said? We need our non-aro/alloromantic ace-spec cousins to step up and help. (I do not want to put this solely on the shoulders of aro-aces, who are already doing much of this.) We need our ace-spec kin to link to more posts about aros discussing aro-spec erasure, to boost and promote aro-spec works, to stop tagging non-aro content as “aromanticism”, to treat the erasure of aro-spec identities from aro-ace characters as the problem it is. Non-a-spec folks see the ace before they see the aro, so we need ace-spec folks to help direct that gaze towards us, to learn that there is overlap but also difference, to fight aro erasure alongside us. Aro folks are talking about this, but it’s hard for even other aros to hear these conversations in our tiny, ace-cluttered spaces, never mind folks outside our community. We need our ace allies to help get these conversations about aro-spec erasure into wider a-spec spaces–where they stand more chance of being seen by all a-spec folks.

This is a long post because I don’t do brevity, but anon, you are not alone in being bothered by this, and you have every right to be disheartened by what is erasure. Aro tags are for aro-spec folks. We shouldn’t have to wade through posts not about aros in our own spaces.

Said blogs, for I’d be remiss in not mentioning them: I follow @aggressivelyaromantic, @aggressivelyarospec, @theamazingaro, @notdaily-arospecdrawings, @arohumor. @actuallyaro leans more towards community discussions about aro identity, experience and amatonormativity without getting deep into exchange/response territory with other discoursers.

Please note that I try to avoid aro 101, aro positivity/validation and response-to-discourse blogs, as these don’t serve my particular needs as an aro, so it is a very short list! Some of these blogs will lean a little heavily towards the aro-ace and aromantic-and-asexual posts, but it is honestly difficult to run an aro blog and avoid this.