#polyamorous aro culture

[aro-culture-is]

poly aro-spec culture is feeling invalidated as an aro because you still have some level of romantic attraction or desire to date and are in relationships, and people see aros as entirely loveless or haters of romance. while thar may be true for some esp for us with romance repulsion, its not true for all and kinda hurts..

.

[polyam-aro-culture-is]

PLEASE SPREAD TO ALL AROACE AND POLYAM BLOGS THAT YOU CAN

Hey guys just so you know there’s a aphobe and polyphobe going around and leaving hateful messages. Just go ahead and block aphobic-polyphobe before they come harass you.

[bilesbianblog]

bi lesbian culture is being a multigender aro bi lesbian who is polyamorous and having cute partners and we are all doing genderfuckery and queering the fuck out of our relationships and loving so much and having more fun than any exclus would ✌️

🌈

[arowitharrows]

These are some links to recourses on different topics, mostly things I want to be able to find again so I'm collecting them here. Please be aware that many of these articles include discussions of queerphobia, racism or abuse. I can't put warnings on every link, so proceed with caution. This is not meant to be a complete or final list, I will most likely be editing it as time goes by.

Aspec terminology / Flags

Queerplatonic coining post on dreamwidth (x)

Sunset aroace flag original post (x)

A History Of Words Used To Describe People That Are Not Asexual (x)

Discussions of aphobia

Note: I am still waiting for the day when aphobia can be discussed without aromanticism being treated as a subcategory of asexuality.

Stonewall report on asexual discrimination, UK 2023 (x)

Scientific America article on medical stigma against asexuality, USA 2023 (x)

Article about the religious right attacking sexless marriage, USA (x)

Podcast about the religious right attacking platonic marriages and general analysis about why the religious right hate asexuality (and aromanticism), USA part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4

Amatonormativity

Website of Elizabeth Brake, the coiner of the term Amatonormativity (x)

Amatonormativity in the law: an introduction, USA 2022 (x)

Opinion: I grew up in a culture that embraced physical touch. Then I came to America, Ethiopia 2023(x)

'I Dont Want To be a Playa No More': An Exploration of the Denigrating effects of 'Player' as a Stereotype Against African American Polyamorous Men (x)

Romance is not the only type of Black love that matters by Sherronda J. Brown, USA 2018 (x)

Relationship Anarchy

Relationship Anarchy, Occupy intimacy!, Spain 2020 (x) also available in Spanish and catalan

The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy (x)

Tumblr post with multiple links about relationship anarchy (x)

Marriage and being Single

Ted talk: how romance and capitalism could destroy our future, 2014 (x)

The escalating costs of being single in America, USA 2021 (x)

Unmarried equality, many articles about discrimination against single people. USA focused (x)

No Shelter for Singles: The Perceived Legitimacy of Marital Status Discrimination, USA 2011 (x)

Loveless Aro

I Am Not Voldemort: An Essay on Love and Amatonormativity (x)

Aroworlds loveless Aro friendly fiction collection (x)

Loveless Aro experiences and explanations (post0 aurea article post 1 post 2 post 3 post 4 post 5 post 6)

[our-alterous-experience]

i love you alterouses who are still in the egg. i love you alterous teens just figuring out yourself. i love you adults who are starting the process or have been in the process for years. i love you people who are confused as to what this feeling is and are trying to figure it out. i love people who have an alterous crush or squish or equivalent preferred descriptor and are falling for someone. I love you people who are so happy they aren’t dealing with alterous feelings rn bc they are happy where they are. I love you people with alterous feelings who can never tell the person /people you feel it for. I love you people who are figuring out how to tell the person/people they feel alterous care for. I love you people who are in a happily committed alterous relationship. I love you alterous monogamous people. i love you alterous polyamorous people. I love you aro alterous people. I love you allo alterous people. I love you relationship anarchy alterous people. I love you trans alterous people. I love you cis alterous people. i love you het alterous people. I love you the relationship between alterous feelings and adding that as the subtext to your sexuality (i.e. bialterous, homoalterous, etc). I love you allos happily breaking the cycle and destroying amatonormativity in their lives. I love you people of color who are coming to terms with how their culture was influenced or impacted by amatonormativity and patriarchy and trying to deconstruct their old thought processes. I love you people who have always known something was wrong but now you have the language. I love you people who are deconstructing what they’ve been taught a relationship is “supposed” to be. I love you allos who happily come and enjoy an aro spectrum term. I love you aro’s digging deep in our community finding new terms to understand their feelings by. I love you people who are in love, and I love you people who are so grateful for their life with their alterous partner. I love you people who relate alterous more towards platonic feelings. I love you people who have alterous sexual feelings. I love you people who relate alterous more towards romantic feelings. I love you people who don’t relate their alterous feelings to any platonic or romantic feeling. I love you people who experience this in a flux or fluid state. I love people who experience it in a specific grey area. I love you people who experience alterous attraction, who have had the confusion haunt and hurt other relationships before they found alterous, who have found so much honest joy in realizing these are their feelings. I love you the ups. I love you the downs. I love you the joys. I love you the happiness. I love you the sadness. I love you the loss. I love you for giving me something special. Something that’s sometimes temporary but beautiful. Sometimes dangerous but giving me the opportunity to stand up for myself and express myself. I love you feeling like icarus far too close to the sun. And the blush that comes when you don’t die immediately. First you hold the suns hand. I love the wide vast beautiful experiences so many people have, and all the kind souls that come together here during these trying times.

[our-polyam-aspec-experience]

Hey everybody!

My name is Oryn and I wanted to create a space for people who are Aspec and also polyamorous!

This blog can be for anything relating to that.

I also run @polyam-aro-culture-is

You might have seen me mention a discord so if you are interested let me know! (Though I’m aiming to have it be 18+)

I might do a proper intro post later but I am 23 and my pronouns are he/they.

[thebirthofvenusfly]

i love that ISAT is not just that gay/bi/pan and trans people exist but also ace/aro people exist. but also polyamorous people exist. i love that ISAT is not just that people of color exist but also mixed people exist. but also the diaspora exists, and not all of us have direct ties or connections to all sides of our cultures outside of blood but that's okay. we are not any less than anyone else.

[entropy-sea-system]

Because not many people are talking about it, I'm making a post on what constitutes platonormativity!

Platonormativity here refers to the idealisation of friendship and viewing friendship as essential and mandatory.

Im putting this under the cut as this is a long post

[If this personally offends you or you're an exclus or think I am not aware of how friendship is also deprioritised, etc. honestly this post is not really for you lol]

Things that can be platonormative:

-Assuming that everyone has friends, and viewing it as a red flag or a sign of mental illness if someone doesn't have friends, and/or expecting them to be actively looking for friends

-Claiming that one must be 'friends first' before a romantic or sexual or other relationship in order for it to work out

-Treating friendship as inherently more stable and long-lasting than other relationship types

-Using the term friend for people without considering whether they actually are okay with that term or whether they actually want to be your friend, or otherwise considering someone your friend when they are not explicitly okay with that

-Claiming that aros and aces must "at least have friends" or experience platonic love or platonic attraction because of their 'lack'

-Claiming that everyone should have friends

-Profiling people who don't seem to have friends as a "suicide liability"

-Being ableist towards people whose ability to make or keep friends or want friends or otherwise engage in social bonds is diminished by their (physical or mental) disability and/or neurodivergence

-Assuming that everyone is alloplatonic and friending and plato-favorable

-Assuming that no one is monogamous for friendship

-Considering it inherently "unhealthy" or "increasing risk of abuse" if someone has a partner(s) but not friends

-Forcing friendship as something mandatory even when people are toddlers or very young children

-Assuming a couple/other partners are solely "friends" due to them being polyamorous, queer, or other reasons

-Assuming that people who interact in certain ways must be friends

-Treating friendship as something inherently more "wholesome" or as something that can never be used for harm unless it was a pretence

-Blaming a lack of friendship rather than the harmful behaviour itself when it comes to 'pickup artists' and other people who act entitled to sex, romance, or other things

-Calling aplatonics with a connection to romance "amatonormative" for existing

-Treating the dismantling of amatonormativity, relationship anarchy, and aro activism as an excuse to enforce friendship as something that is mandatory

-Claiming that 'aro culture' is basically (insert alloplatonic and/or plato favorable experience)

-Assuming that ALL demiromantic and/or demisexual people must require friendship as the bond after which it is a possibility for them to experience attraction

-Assuming that every alloaro must want a 'friends with benefits' type of relationship

-Assuming that anything thats nonromantic and/or nonsexual has to be platonic(friendship)

-Reinforcing a platonic-romantic binary

-Claiming that friendship cannot involve sex or romance ever

-Assuming that queerplatonic relationships are friendship or always involve friendship

-Looking down on others for not giving priority to friendship or not engaging in friendship

-Media being saturated with friendship and not many media existing without having friendship in it

-Not understanding that people can be repulsed by friendship and/or platonicism

[namisweatheria]

Polyamorous fans 🤝 Aro fans

Feeling alienated by fandom separating all the characters into Typical Romantic Pairings instead of splashing around in all the joyous canon connections between all of them that are explicitly counter-cultural and not-defined by normalized terms

[dreamsofanenbysapphic]

arospec

a poem(?), a collection of ideas, things i have been thinking about, about relationships and the platonic/romantic binary

some citations:

arospec wiki sources, amatonormativity, instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy, my favorite poem by alok vaid-menon, aromantic manifesto, amatopunk

full text below the cut:

screenshotted text from various sources over a galaxy background, spread across two images:

arospec, is an umbrella term

People on the aromantic spectrum may feel little to no romantic attraction, or feel romantic attraction differently, more rarely or

Loveless Aro describes someone who is some way disconnected from the concept of love, rejects the idea that they need to experience love

Quoiromantic (also called WTFromantic experiences may include:

Finding the concept of romance to be inaccessible, inapplicable, or nonsensical.

the questioning itself

becomes the identity

Disidentifying with the concept of romantic attraction - either as a social construct or as something potentially applicable to oneself.

a disidentification with the romantic/nonromantic binary,

They may consider themselves relationship anarchists.

Amatonormativity

to describe the widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship.

[elizabeth brake]

Due to the ambiguous nature of romantic attraction, sometimes defined by the actions that one takes during a relationship, such as holding hands, kissing, or cuddling. However, none of these activities alone necessarily indicate romantic attraction.

The prefix nebula- comes from the Latin word nebulous, meaning "clouded" or "unclear".

Queerplatonic relationships (QPR) and queerplatonic partnerships (QPP) are committed intimate relationshisp which are not romantic

This way of thinking is also one that places certain relationships above others, such as Romantic relationships being viewed as 'above' or 'superior' to Platonic relationships. If two people are dating they are 'more than friends'. If they aren't dating then they're 'just friends'.

Amatonormativity prompts the sacrifice of other relationships to romantic love and marriage and relegates friendship and solitudinousness to cultural invisibility.

Amatopunk!

challenges amatonormativity, and how society views aspec people, polyamorous people, and others who do not fit into the "right" mold.

Relationship Anarchy (abbreviated RA) is the belief that relationships should not be bound by set rules, aside from the rules the individuals involved mutually agree upon.

sensualarians have relationships that are often "in between" typical relationships categories, whereas relationship anarchy completely breaks down all relationship categories

Relationship anarchy questions the idea that love is a limited resource

i want a world where friendship is appreciated as a form of romance. i want a world where when people ask if we are seeing anyone we can list the names of all of our best friends

[alok vaid-menon, friendship is romance]

queer liberation must abolish romance as its long term goal aromantics aspire to:

view queer intimacies as web-like counter-publics that reinforce rather than compete with and enervate each other.

transform queer intimacy into political solidarity and action.

[aromantic manifesto]

Relationship anarchy (sometimes abbreviated RA) is the application of anarchist principles to intimate relationships. Its values include autonomy, anti-hierarchical practices, anti-normativity, and community interdependence. RA is explicitly anti-amatonormative and anti-mononormative and is commonly, but not always, non-monogamous.

With one's relationships starting as a blank slate, the act of distributing physical intimacy, sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, etc. is according to one's desires rather than preexisting "rules"

Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.

[josé estabon muñoz, cruising utopia]

[nonamorous-culture-is]

nonamorous culture is doing the “bi to Aro pipeline” but instead it’s polyamorous to nonamorous

.

[aro-culture-is]

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

.

[polyam-aro-culture-is]

sorry this isn’t a culture ask but do I count as a polyam aro if I’m aroace and have multiple queerplatonic partners?

Honestly, it’s whatever you feel comfortable with. If you want to call yourself polyam because of having multiple QPRs then great! If you don’t feel comfortable with that you don’t have to use the label.

Personally, 2/3 of my relationships are QPRs and that’s part of why I call myself polyam. The other part is because I am open to the idea of having another romantic partner. However, due to my flavor of aromanticism I feel like it’s fairly unlikely that I will have another romantic partner. But I still call myself polyamorous because that is what I consider myself.

Long story short, use whatever label you feel most comfortable with, it’s your identity after all!

[queerquaintrelle]

My personal Turn: Washington's Spies blorbos and their queer headcanons (updated version).

In no particular order: Sarah Livingston (bi), Martha Washington (poly), Anna Strong (pan), Mary Woodhull (sapphic - she only likes men depending on the hour, she likes girls and queers all the time), Abby (sapphic), Peggy Shippen (token straight ally but also poly - Peggy for all her 'not nice' qualities has immense capacity to love so she is heterosexual but polyamorous to me - to some that makes her just queer cause a lot not all poly people don't follow conventional relationship dynamics cause patriarchy being the absolute worst and screwing people over since always -- never rests -> and you can quote me a bi poly sapphic ace but mostly bi person on that), John André (pan), Benjamin Tallmadge (bi), and John Graves Simcoe (aro or unlabelled queer).

Romantic female friendship in the 18th century.

18th century queer culture and dandyism.

18th century classicism & queer culture.

Bi manifesto.

Why queer people seek out queer history/representation matters by Kaz Rowe

Why 18th century queer history matters.

[ultimatecubetournament]

WELCOME TO THE CUBE TOURNAMENT

@prokopetz made a post about how every poll tournament can include a cube and it would make it to the semi-finals, so let's see how they fare againt each other!

the only cubers already in pre-nomination are the companion cube (portal) and the perfectly generic cube (homestuck)

everything else is up to you!

link for nominations: https://forms.gle/CyKq35y6AMBkJw9z8

tagging other tournaments for attention under the cut

@green-character-battle @queerprotagonistshowdown @thedilftournament @aro-culture-competition @smallartistocbracket @sailorscoutshowdown @the-stickman-ever-comp @blorbopoll2 @losersbracketofficial @indieswag-competition @otherkinswagbracket @cringefaillosershowdown @catgirlgames @ultimatepinkgirl @alloarocharactershowdown @polyamorous-swag-tournament @divorcewars @autismswagsummit @coolesthscharacter @transgenderswagcompetition @nonbiney-swag-competition

[charmixpower]

Here's a version with no bg! And under the cut imma explain my hcs!

Going in order;

Tecna: Nonbinary Flag cape, Aro and Ace belt clips, Transfeminine pin, and Autism pin

Tecna doesn't really care about figuring out what her exact gender is because that doesn't affect the happiness she experiences in her life so she uses the macro label of Nonbinary and Transfeminine, and was very happy simply socially transitioning to being more feminine

She uses She/He/They pronouns, and doesn't actually care which one people use for her. Since magic is a very female dominant field and because she's transfeminine most people just assume she only uses she/her and she honestly doesn't care enough to correct them

She experiences no type of attraction, but isn't repulsed. She's completely neutral but is very much interested in not participating

She's very autistic. She experiences shut downs, takes things very literally, is like aggressive sincere bc not doing that never occurred to her, can't read others emotions to save her life—people on Zenith usually keep to themselves and have a extremely straightforward culture that very autism friendly so Tecna never noticed she was different until she left

Aisha: Lesbian Flag, Demi aro ace pin, and that's the Pride flag in her bag

Aisha is exclusively attracted to women and only experiences attraction after knowing someone well. Additionally, Demi people have different amounts of time for when they feel attraction and for Aisha they have to be at the very least good friends before any attraction can develop

Musa: Bisexual jacket

Musa is bisexual with a preference for men. She figured out she was bisexual after watching the world's shittest romance movie and wished she was dating both of them. She is the most disastrous of bisexuals. Shes never had a crush on a normal person, that or it's another straight girl. Someone pray for her

Bloom: Omni Flag cape, and Autism pin

Had a friend describe Omni as being between Pan and Bi, where gender plays a role but not as big and it really fitt the way I see Bloom so here. Bloom experiences attraction differently based on gender but has no preference, so she's Omni. I genuinely think Bloom would like and use micro labels, she just comes off to me as a "I need to find the perfect word to decide my experience" girlie

Bloom's autism is all in the sensitivity, being easily overwhelmed and wanting to process in a safe place, complete lack of understanding of danger, and huge special interest baybeee. Also her complete inability to express empathy without filtering it though her own life experience but eventually she figures out how to just express empathy and sympathy without doing that XD

Stella: Pan dress, ADHD purse, and three different Polyamorous pins

Stella is pan "because I can't deny any gender a shot" - Stella of Solaria

That's a real quote. She told me herself. Yeah but she's pan and thinks everyone is hot. Shes our Combined type ADHD queen. Bow down. The three different polyam pins are because there're two different popular flags, the most common really ugly one and the redesign so I used both so people would understand and the new polyam symbol. If she and Brandon met someone they wanted to date there would be no question if they tried to bring them into the relationship. Only when

Flora: Bisexual dress, Pride belt, and Pride earrings

Flora is bisexual with a preference for women. She has no clue she was into men for a little while, primarily bc she finds femininity the most attractive so it was until she saw a gnc guy and couldn't stop staring that she realized she was bisexual. The distinguished bisexual to Musa's utter disaster