#non-amorous aro culture

[aro-culture-is]

aro culture is feeling like a math problem because i'm non-amorous but also polyamorous but never monogamous

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[nonamorous-culture-is]

Alloromantic non-amorous culture is thinking you're aro then finding out about nonamory and just being so happy that you *flappy hands*

<2

[tertiary-culture-archive]

Shout out to non-amorous and non-partnering folks!

Not wanting a amorous partnership of any sort does not make you lesser.

It does not mean you are missing something.

You are still whole and complete.

You are valued and you matter.

You have as much capacity for joy and happiness as everyone else.

You have a unique perspective on the world that is vital if we want to change it for the better.

[nerdygaymormon]

I don't know if aromantic/asexuals' places need to be stated. I admit we're a very amatanormative church, but you don't have to get married or have kids to live a full and righteous life in the Church. Look at Sheri Dew. As for ace/aros who feel the need to get married and have children, attraction doesn't have to be a factor. Marriage can be between platonic friends. Children can be adopted. To view this as lesser is a cultural issue, not a reflection of the Church's stance on non-attraction.

You taught me a word. Amatonormativity is assuming exclusive amorous relationships are normal for humans and is a universally shared goal. 

You’re correct that there are examples of single women in leadership, both at the local and the highest levels of the Church. But single people do not complete the “covenant path.” Elder Oaks says people who don’t complete that path are a distraction to the Church and can spend eternity in a lower kingdom. 

I know ace/aro people who are married and find a way to make their relationship compatible. They come to understand that sex is important to their spouse and it’s something they work out together so their marriage works. 

You suggested some ways a non-traditional marriage could work, and in one sense it works. But what you’re describing is counter to what the church teaches about the nature of a marriage relationship, the God-given nature of attraction, the idea of sexual reproduction into the eternities.

Of all the various sexual orientations and gender identities, ace/aro should be the easiest for the Church to work with, especially given what the apostle Paul wrote in the New Testament. 

A lack of teaching or theology on the topic does leave people wondering where they fit in, what their purpose is, are they broken? 

[aro-neir-o]

A-Spec Experiences of Relationships

I came across an excellent research article today that I want to share with you all. It’s by Phillip L. Hammack, David M. Frost, and Sam D. Hughes: Queer Intimacies: A New Paradigm for the Study of Relationship Diversity. It came out in 2018 and you can view the abstract summary here. For a full copy, you can contact any of the lead researchers or you can send me a private message (PM) and I can hook you up. I have access to the journal in which the article is published via my university.

The article talks about a number of queer identities and how queer relationships subvert the relationship norms in Western societies. They included a section on Asexual and Aromantic people and what they had to say really resonated with me.

“The fifth axiom of a queer paradigm for the study of relationship diversity is that intimacy may occur in the absence or limited experience of both sexual or romantic desire.”

The authors make clear that, regardless of your a-spec identity, you may still engage in relationships (including romantic, sexual, “close relationships that resemble friendships” which I took to mean QP or alterous or otherwise distinct relationships). They support this notion with documented evidence from studies on asexual people as well as with theory.

Intimacy isn’t predicated on sexual and/or romantic attraction. Behaviour and orientation are fundamentally different things and this piece of literature really makes that clear.

Nevertheless, intimacy is fundamentally different for aces, for aros, for queer folks, because our definitions and practices of intimacy challenge sociocultural intimacy norms.

On aces and their experiences with intimacy:

- Several studies have concluded that asexual-identified people are less likely to report being currently involved in an intimate relationship than sexual people (Bogaert, 2004; Yule, Brotto, & Gorzalka, 2014), but at least one study has not been able to replicate this finding (Prause & Graham, 2007).

- Over half of asexual people surveyed in the Asexual Census reported having been in a significant relationship, but not all of them reported that this relationship was a romantic one. In fact, over 34% of people surveyed specified that their significant relationship was not romantic (Ace Community Survey Team, 2018).

- Most asexual people’s partners seem to be non-ace, with a small minority (about 13%) being ace partnerships (Ace Community Survey Team, 2018).

- Almost 13% of asexual people surveyed identify as polyamorous (Ace Community Survey Team, 2018).

- Van Houdenhove, Gijs, T’Sjoen, and Enzlin (2015) found that asexual men were more likely to be single than asexual women, while Prause and Graham (2007) and MacNeela and Murphy (2015) did not find gender differences in reported relationship status.

- Some asexual people have found that BDSM-oriented relationships have provided them with tools to negotiate and demarcate the boundaries in their relationships, as well as to reject and change dominant scripts of sexual behavior (Sloan, 2015). By organizing these relationships around consensual BDSM, some asexuals have found the ability to experience intense forms of nonsexual intimacy. 

- Others have found that engaging in the community of people who also identify on the asexual spectrum has provided them with the language to “make sense” of their relationships and desires (Chasin, 2015). 

- Other research has cited coming out to partners as a strategy to manage sexual conflicts, although the dissolution of those relationships has sometimes been a consequence of coming out (Robbins et al., 2016).

On aros and their experiences with intimacy:

- Aromantic people find the value of friendships and other relationships bigger than that of romantic relationships and that those bonds are better suited to their needs. (1) (2) Most also agree that they experience distress in romantic relationships and that they noticed a discrepancy between their and their partner’s behavior or feelings in romantic relationships (1).

- Aromantic people that aren’t asexual agree that a “friends with benefits” arrangement would be a good one for them (1). 

- Greyromantic and broadly aro-spec people agree that they’re more concerned about being unwanted or alone, than they are about being single. They agree that they want friendship more than romance and that the activities they like can be enjoyed with friends as well as with a romantic partners. They also believe that relationships other than romantic, such as queerplatonic relationships, are better suited to their needs. Most also don’t want to pursue a romantic relationship, but they don’t like the idea of being single (1).

- Demiromantic, quoiromantic, and broadly aro-spec people agree that they are bothered by the thought of being unwanted or alone. The answers indicate that they enjoy activities with their friends and that their criteria for a romantic partner (if they choose to pursue one) are the same as for a friend (1). 

- Aromantic people seem to be either as affectionate or more affectionate with their friends as compared to their alloromantic peers (2).

- Many aromantic people wish for cohabitation and marriage benefits in a platonic way/without the ‘romantic’ parts attached to them (2).

- Many aromantic people (about 50%) worry a lot about whether their high levels of intimacy in platonic relationships will be reciprocated by their friends. There seems to be a collective fear of abandonment or lack of importance being given to platonic relationships, all in favour of romantic relationships (2).

- Most aromantic people seem to define friendship differently than their alloromantic peers do, citing that they are slower to call someone a friend and/or consider friendships to be deeper emotionally than the average alloromantic does (2).

- Just over 25% of respondents to a recent survey I ran revealed that they considered themselves polyamorous (3).

- A survey was just run by @aroace-people-are-lgtbq about aros’ views on romance, and we don’t have results yet, but when we do, I think they will contribute enormously to this topic. I’ll update this post when I see what’s what.

Further research needed and some Action Items for the Community:

- Examine gender differences, especially beyond the binary of male–female. How do gender expectations/roles play a part in intimacy and relationship expectations?

- Related to the above, what distinctions exist in the experience or expression of asexuality or aromanticism across diverse gender, race, class, and sexual identities? I would also add religion to this area. We have a number of blogs on here who blog specifically about Aro and Ace POC, for example, who I think could contribute a lot to this topic by voicing their experiences. Christina Lang’s BA thesis covering her experiences as an aroace woman of colour is a great resource.

- What diverse forms of asexual and aromantic intimacies exist? To an extent, we have identified a lot of these in our personal intracommunity discussions. It would be great to catalogue people’s different experiences with intimacy and with relationships into a single masterpost or article.

- How do individuals make meaning of these relationships in a cultural context that privileges sex and romance? Again, we have discussed this within our communities a lot. Resources and masterposts about relationship anarchy and conversations about relationships and positivity would be useful to create.

- There is some overlap between [non-amorous] aro experiences and experiences of singles; however, these are fundamentally two different groups and there is a need for research on aros specifically.

- How do partners in asexual or aromantic relationships navigate stigma from multiple sources, including sexual and gender identity minority communities? 

[aroworlds]

First off, I loved your ask post about erasure, Scrooge, and representation. Anon, if you’re reading this, you’re a legend. Second, I haven’t read A Christmas Carol in a while, and I was curious how Scrooge is coded. In what ways do you see him as aro-ace? Thanks bunches!

First, I’m going to @ mention @thatmrgold, because I think they’re also a fan of Scrooge, additional to the original asking anon (or at least I’ve seen a reblog on one of my posts that suggests this–many apologies if I’m mistaken). I have read A Christmas Carol several times, but it’s many years ago now–my most recent engagement with the story is The Muppet Christmas Carol adaptation, seen last year! For this reason, I encourage anyone more familiar with the source material to expand upon my answer. I don’t have the detailed familiarity with the canon to answer save in broader strokes.

The main points where I think thatEbenezer Scrooge can be coded or seen as coded involve a previous failed romance (it’s depicted that he comes to love money more than hisfiancée, for which she leaves him), his long-running single-man-in-the-world status (he lives on his own, no partner, which is meant to indicate his hatefulness) and his isolation/disconnection from the world around him (demonstrated in a lack of compassion for his tenants, a refusal to allow his workers their Christmas, etc).

I’m going to explain why these points are effective coding, because written in a paragraph like that, they don’t seem like much. Thing is, they don’t have to be!

I’ll stress that much of this ties into long-running antagonistic aro-ace (and often autistic*) coding shared with other characters. A lot of a-spec coding is less about certain qualities suggesting a character’s being a-spec and more about those qualities being part of a broader literary canon of similarly-viewed characters. In other words, characters where people read those qualities together as having associations with a-spec identities, not because those character qualities are always inherently associated with being aro-ace or a-spec. In this sense, Scrooge is a-spec coded because Sherlock Holmes is a-spec coded and Clariel is specifically aro-ace and early The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon Cooper is aro-ace coded, and all these characters have commonalities in how they see the world, how they connect to the world and, most particularly, how the rest of the world views them. Viewed in isolation, Scrooge isn’t necessarily aro-ace-coded. Viewed in a social and historical context of other characters interpreted as aro-ace, on the other hand, he is.

I’m going to use The Big Bang Theory to explain my point, because I think Sheldon Cooper is the most recognizable character, and despite not liking the source material, I’m quite familiar with it. The Big Bang Theory doesn’t properly describe early-seasons Sheldon as aro-ace; it compares him to aliens, to plants and the scientific understanding of asexual reproduction. I think it does once or twice use “asexual” but it’s never in the current understanding of “lacking sexual attraction” and more like “a being without sex”. He’s constantly dehumanised for the aro-ace qualities the show won’t name. He talks, though, in ways that clearly demonstrate a lack of sexual and romantic attraction, and because of amatonormativity, they later give him a slow-growing romantic relationship as part of character “progression”. (Which is handled so disrespectfully and antagonistically, but that’s another post.) When people first hear the words aro-ace, they’ll commonly think of early-seasons Sheldon, because that’s the undercurrent of his character compared to characters like Scrooge or Sherlock. Even people who’ve never heard words like asexual or aromantic have an idea of what they think it is on first listen, because they’ve been exposed to so much unlabelled coding: in a world lacking intentional and meaningful representation to properly educate audiences on lived experiences, coding instead forms the basis of understanding.

(And it’s unexplored amatonormativity and aro/ace antagonism, of course, for why negative character traits are so often a-spec coding.)

This is why we end up with a character being aro-ace coded for things like not having a relationship and not connecting with people. These things do not inherently mean anything about the aro-ace experience, but they’re part of a social context where qualities indicate identities. Only the people who have a true need to understand–either as allies working with us or because they’re a-spec–go to a-spec communities to learn the diversity of experiences associated with our words, to look beyond the clumsy outline of coding.

(In fact, they have no concept of coding as distinct from representation.)

Additionally, especially because we a-specs are raised in a world where we are not seen or understood, we ourselves often come to relate to those qualities, however negative the coding and context, too. Not having a relationship says nothing about one’s lack of attraction, but many a-specs struggle to have a successful relationship, are pressured into ones we don’t want or are non-amorous. In a world where so few characters are depicted as long-term single in late adulthood, we’ll take that character for our own. Not connecting with society–well, I suspect the majority of aro-specs respect the need for Christians to celebrate their cultural and religious holidays, but when being a-spec is always a wall between us and the rest of the world, we feel and relate to that distance, that disconnect. When Christmas means people pestering us about our relationship status or lack of attraction, don’t we feel a bit like saying “Bah, humbug”? A romance failed by not loving someone else enough–not loving enough has been or will be levelled at many aro-specs, and I know that I’ve felt that because of my lack of romantic attraction, I must have loved something else over the “proper” romantic love for another person. It fits close enough to the amatonormativity we experience.

(There’s a reason why LGBTQIA+ and queer people so commonly relate to antagonistic characters, as their experiences of disconnection and alienation are as close as many of us get to our lived experiences. Only recently has there been, for some identities, anything close to representation, including representation that positively explores our alienation, enough that we might first see ourselves in anything other than antagonist characters.)

Lack of mainstream/broadly recognised representation, too, drives us to forge more intense connections with flimsier points of similarity than would be reasonable for a white, abled heterosexual cis woman connecting with white, abled, female cishet characters. She can be choosy about personality and character type in the characters she deems to be like her; we have the unconscious-but-constant knowledge that there’s few others like us and connect, in relief, just to have someone vaguely like us in the story, even if they’re clearly an antagonist.

On their own, these things are flimsy pieces of connection, but in a social context of coding and lack of representation, they become so much larger.

Does this make sense? A lot of what I see as aro-ace in Scrooge is less about descriptions of lack of attraction as it is broader brush-stroke images that correspond to lived experience or negative coding. Folks more familiar with the source material may be able to offer you more detailed examples, but for me it’s about the type of character Scrooge is in the social context of similar characters seen a particular way by a-specs and allosexual-and-alloromantic folks alike.

* Explanation of why I mention autistic coding under the cut for those who’d rather ignore the tangential murmuring:

A lot of aro-ace coding is also autistic coding because allo allistic writers cannot conceive of autistics being anything but aro-ace and aro-aces being anything but autistic. Both identities are seen as lacking empathy and connection to others, and both are subject to the dehumanising assumptions behind this kind of antagonistic coding, where aro-ace coding is used to show an autistic character as inhuman and autism coding is used to show an aro-ace character as inhuman.

Please note that the tendency for combining the coding does not mean that autistic aro-aces have full representation, as I see too many people argue: most of these characters are antagonists who don’t offer full, celebratory, supportive, intentional and beneficial depictions of aro-ace and autistic experiences. Aro-ace autistics are not positively depicted in the broader literary canon; surface aspects of their experiences are used to tell the audience a character is antagonistic. Given that I’m starting to see a few romance novels with autistic characters, by autistics and allistics alike, the idea that autistic aro-aces (and I don’t know of any autistic allo-aro character outside my own work!) are somehow more represented in fiction is raging amatonormativity. Again, coding is not representation and it’s disingenuous to conflate them.

[a-polite-melody]

Apparently exclusionists are under the assumption that the term amatonormativity is a word that aro people invented in the discourse to make themselves “seem oppressed”?

Yeah, no. Ace discourse started... what, in 2015? Maybe 2014 if you want to be generous? (Edit: I’ve been further educated on this. While more mainstream and widespread ace discourse may not have been on people’s radars before around 2014, ace discourse has been around in some form since around 2010.)

Well, yeah, the term amatonormativity was coined by Associate Professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Philosophy, Elizabeth Brake [x] for a book she wrote titled Minimizing Marriage [x] in 2012.

Yeah, that’s right. The year 2012. Not 2014, or 2015, or 2016, or -17 or -18. At least two years before (edit: mainstream, widespread) ace discourse started, and certainly long before aros became a more prominent target of the “discourse” mid- to late-2017. (Edit: And even if some discourse existed before the coining of amatonormativity, it is unlikely to have been within the consciousness of academics.)

To quote Elizabeth Brake in her definition of amatonormativity [x]:

The belief that marriage and companionate romantic love have special value leads to overlooking the value of other caring relationships. I call this disproportionate focus on marital and amorous love relationships as special sites of value, and the assumption that romantic love is a universal goal, ‘amatonormativity’: This consists in the assumptions that a central, exclusive, amorous relationship is normal for humans, in that it is a universally shared goal, and that such a relationship is normative, in that it should be aimed at in preference to other relationship types. The assumption that valuable relationships must be marital or amorous devalues friendships and other caring relationships, as recent manifestos by urban tribalists [x], quirkyalones [x], polyamorists, and asexuals have insisted. Amatonormativity prompts the sacrifice of other relationships to romantic love and marriage and relegates friendship and solitudinousness to cultural invisibility.

Elizabeth Brake, Minimizing Marriage (OUP, 2012), Chapter 4.iii

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(Definitions of terms linked with [x] are my addition. It is also worth noting that at this point asexuality and aromanticism were not as separate of concepts as they are now.)

So no, amatonormativity wasn’t made up by aros to try to appear oppressed. Amatonormativity was coined by a philosopher who specializes her research on marriage, relationships, sexuality, and the like, as an academic term to discuss the assumption that everyone desires an exclusive and romantic relationship and how that affects society - particularly polyamorous people, asexual (and aromantic) people, and those desiring non-romantic and/or multiple “primary-level” relationships.

Believe it or not, people study this stuff. Thoroughly. And these concepts are discussed in not just Tumblr “““discourse””” but real, constructive academic discourse.

Feel free to disagree that it’s a useful term, but I’m inclined to believe that there is some merit to the existence of this normative assumption within - at least Western - society if philosophers have been actively writing on the topic.

[aro-culture-is]

This maybe is a very dumb question.

How different is QPRs from a avg friendship? Do people use it because there a tendency to think that acquaintance = friendship and people want to separate their friendship from that of mere acquaintance?

I don't get it, because I am basically squishless (doesn't make the term less valid) but I would like to understand more and if someone helps maybe I will get it.

Or I am just a hopeless case?

hi! i'm not queerplatonic and don't feel super qualified to get into this discussion, so I'm going to refer you to some people who are qualified talking about the subject.

for one, AUREA defines QPRs as follows:

Queerplatonic (quasiplatonic) Relationship (QPR): A committed non-romantic relationship that goes beyond what is the subjective cultural norm for a friendship. Levels of intimacy and/or behaviors between the partners involved often don’t fit the conventional standards set by society. Some QPRs can include sex and elements that are generally considered romantic. In practice every queerplatonic relationship is different. Abbreviated to QPR, and queerplatonic (quasiplatonic) partner to QPP. Another common word for QPP used to be zucchini.

and links to this pillowfort post describing the history of the word/meaning/idea of qprs.

overall, the meaning and narrative of what defines QPRs has changed quite a lot over time. I've been around the a-spec community for most of it and honestly, I've lost the plot other than "it's whatever the hell works for you, as a committed partnership that is not strictly romantic."

AUREA also has an FAQ answer to this question, as follows:

Q: How does a queerplatonic relationship differ from a friendship?

A: Queerplatonic relationships go beyond what is considered the cultural norm for friendship and are not romantic relationships. That means one person’s queerplatonic relationship can look like another person’s friendship depending on the behaviors it includes, the feelings felt, and the level of commitment involved. It can also look like someone else’s romantic relationship in a similar way. What is crucial is that the people in the relationship itself consider it to be beyond their culture’s definition of friendship. What constitutes a queerplatonic relationship is highly subjective.

- mod kee

[aro-culture-is]

non amorous aro culture is wanting to live in an apartment floor with all your friends with all your own rooms for alone time and spacious living rooms for friend time B]

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[aro-culture-is]

aro culture is being so confused if you want to be in a qpr and have a partner, actually just non amorous and desperately needs some friends, or want to be in a queerplatonic polycule so you would not be the sole focus of the other in the partnership/relationship

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[aro-culture-is]

aro culture is being paranoid and afraid of sharing your aro headcanons so you make a sideblog for it but now it just turned into a mix of me yelling about my aro headcanons and yelling about arophobia and yelling about some inane shit and also yelling about my problems and just. a wall of text about how my favorite character is actually aro and non amorous (this is actually just a aro me culture but it is very funny in hindsight andkdklslao)

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