#this is not very alloromantic of me

[contagious-watermelon]

i think a lot of the reason i don't really feel connected to the mainstream (""mainstream"") aro community is due to the fact that it seems to be always subordinated to asexuality. there aren't even any aromantic informational posts that aren't just a second thought on an ace one — or that don't include asexuality in any way at all. and so many people seem to view themselves as (aro)ace that i simply can't relate to them at all

bc really i feel like my sexual orientation doesn't matter at all when it comes to discussing aromanticism — and obviously being aroace or aroallo have different struggles and may experience their aromanticism differently (and aroallos are consistently ignored due to the very thing I'm talking about) — but everyone seems to think of aro issues as some sort of mirrored version of ace ones

and i can't ever seem to find anyone advocating for or even discussing our rights when it comes to navigating society. for all people complain about amatonormativity, it seems the extent is just "my friends won't believe that i don't have a crush." which yeah, is a problem, but I'm not in high school anymore. I'd like to be able to afford a house on one person's salary. I'd like to be able to choose to have kids one day, if i want to (which i think i do, but I'm lowkey way too young to even think about that right now).

people talk about aro issues as if its a lack of awareness (which isn't helped by their immediate grafting of it onto asexuality), or point to the (small amount of) statistics on ace people and assume it applies to us too, or that those are the only issues aro people deal with. someone who's ace and alloromantic can still get married and enjoy those benefits from society, even if they have a harder time of it. when anyone does speak up about the lack of rights that aromantic people (and single people — but we tend to be perpetually single) experience, the immediate response from the community is that QPRs need to be more recognized. ... am i the only one who sees that that's a band-aid over a problem that doesn't even give a good solution? that it's just an extension of societal amatonormativity to nominally include (SOME) aro people?

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

thinking about what if data were aromantic. even after he gets the emotion chip put in, he still just doesn’t feel romantic love, and doesn’t understand what other people are feeling when they talk about it. and he’s really upset at first because he feels like after everything he’s been through to get here he still isn’t fully human. there’s still a piece missing. he’s tapped into every work of art humans have ever created and romance seems so ubiquitous that he thinks you can’t be human without it

i’m imagining this as like a b or c plot of an episode. maybe he’s been working with a crew member who turns out to be aromantic and they commiserate about how alienating it can be to hear everyone talk about romance all the time. everyone comes together at the end to help him realize that he feels so many different kinds of love, and no human’s experience with emotions is exactly the same and your humanity doesn’t depend on what emotions you do or don’t feel anyway

i think this would be a good episode. i would enjoy it

[sgkjd]

i hate feeling like an object of someone's romantic interest. because to them i'm just that. an object.

[uncanny-tranny]

Maybe the weirdest good that has come out of my aromanticism is that I just... appreciate how alone I am. I've learned to really evaluate how I view my time and how I spend it with myself, and it has enabled me to slowly try more and more things out of a desire to enjoy my own company and myself even more <3

[finrays]

I didn’t realize just how much romcoms as a genre bum me out until I was having a good therapeutic rage-spew into my Vent Document this morning and it hit me hard.

It’s basically a whole genre centering around a plot of “Someone who lives a life like yours and is happy with it gets ‘fixed’ or ‘made complete’ by a romance.”

I had to really stop and think about it. A whole genre. An entire class of movie, dedicated to essentially pointing out that people like me are fundamentally broken or missing pieces.

And it’s not even malicious! It’s not because of bigotry. It’s entirely casual. Unconscious, even.

But that doesn’t make it suck any less. It’s just a reminder that, to huge parts of society, an aromantic person is fundamentally not a person worth knowing. We’re not the sort of characters the audience is supposed to identify with. And I don’t think society will ever really evolve enough to the point where we will be.

You just kind of have to make your peace with it and continue to live regardless. I’ll grow scales over the sore spot, eventually.

But still.

Wack.

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads

Adrift In Starlight

space opera adventure romance

a courtesan is hired to seduce the soon-to-be-wife of a famous actor

a historian who’s focused on her career & has no idea her marriage has been arranged by her rich parents

after a museum tour they and two co-workers accidentally resurrect an ancient alien artifact and end up on the run from the law, traveling from planet to planet

pan nonbinary transfemme MC, touch-averse ace MC

[littlebirdy0301]

I’ve been single for 4 months after a 3.5 year long relationship & I just now realized an exciting development of my singleness!! I’m into people again!!!! I find people cute without feeling the need to distance myself!! I’m attracted to more than just fictional characters & people I’ll never meet!!! There’s cute people everywhere all around me!!!!!!! & thinking about dating doesn’t make me feel exhausted!!!!!!

[chaosintheavenue]

Totally random Chaos update that no one asked for:

So...

[sparky-is-spiders]

The funny thing is I have zero interest in either sex or romance but I am obsessed w/ fictional characters engaging in both. Like I am constantly thinking about at least one of those happening to Jon but the idea that it might happen to ME? In real life?? No thanks. I no longer care at all

[frogsdocrimes]

augh. google search how to explain that i specifically identify as either just aromantic/aro with nothing else or as aroace but don't describe myself using just ace or asexual even though i mostly dont experience that type of attraction either because my aromanticism is such a central part of my identity and existence that any descriptor that does not specifically include it feels insufficient

[bloggingboutburgers]

This one is arguably very personal because I have no idea if other aros feel the same – but I've seen too many stories about a character being rejected where the person doing the rejecting is (accidentally or not) implied to be some sort of "bad guy" or "the one who has it easier", so I guess I had an itch to show my side.

Aromantic people and alloromantic people have such different views on what "true love" is that it's not about one or the other being "in the wrong" – it's just one big compatibility issue. All I can say is – as an aromantic, being confessed to romantically IS what leaves me heartbroken, for such reasons. Hopefully there will be a broader understanding of this in the future.

[ceilidhtransing]

I've cropped out the username because I have absolutely no desire to start drama or make a personal “callout” or have people go harass someone or anything like that (and if you take this kind of thing as an opportunity to go and be horrible to another Tumblr user then that is terrible and you should stop), but wow, I have never seen such a clanging example of amatonormativity. I don't think OP necessarily meant it this way, I don't think they meant any harm, I don't think they're consciously arophobic or something - it's far more likely that they're simply unfamiliar with aspec issues, and I always prefer to assume good faith - but I want to talk about this post anyway because it provides a really good and explicit example of the way society just sort of... asserts the centrality of romantic attraction and entirely forgets aromantic people exist.

I do want to first say that I actually agree with the initial point this post is making. Romance as a genre is unfairly derided as some kind of “lesser” form of art, and this derision very frequently comes with generous helpings of misogyny. I totally agree that romance is not at all an unintellectual or superficial thing to write about, and it's bad that it gets treated that way and that readers and writers of romance get so often mocked and condemned. Romance is a totally valid genre and enjoying it doesn't make you vain or stupid or superficial.

HOWEVER. As an aromantic person I find the rest of the post just... I don't know, it's just so perfect as a probably unwitting expression of baked-in cultural amatonormativity. It's brilliant. It's so funny to me. I can almost do a line-by-line breakdown of the way it so completely forgets the existence of aromantic people. In fact, let's do that.

It is so fundamental to us. The issue here should be pretty obvious. The assumption that romance is some integral part of The Human Experience and that it's fundamental to All People is pretty much amatonormativity 101. It reinforces the idea that people who don't experience romantic attraction are “lacking”, forever sitting apart from The Human Experience, and possibly in some way not quite fully human, since we don't experience the thing that is apparently so fundamental to humans.

To want to love and be loved. The post seems to be incorrectly equating “romance” with “loving and being loved”, when in fact there are many people who don't experience romantic attraction yet absolutely love and want to be loved. (And of course loveless aros, aplatonic people, various folks who don't “want to love and be loved” also exist, and it's important to emphasise that this desire, just like romantic attraction, is also not necessarily integral to all people.) “Love” is not automatically “romantic love”, but this post seems to imply that romance is the only, or default, form in which love can exist.

If you don't think every great work of literature. philosophy. metaphysics. was ultimately about romance. I don't think you were paying enough attention. OK this is the line that elevated this post from “sigh, more casual amatonormativity to scroll past” to “I just have to respond to this”. Where to even begin with this assertion. This is a level of “assuming romance is central to everything humans ever do and ever create” that I've almost never encountered before. It feels like a manifestation of the tendency for alloromantic people to declare that, because romance is very central for them, it is thus central to Everything. And I'm homing in on “romance” because the post doesn't say “ultimately about love” - which would still be a reach, but less of a reach - it specifically says “ultimately about romance”. As an aromantic person who is an academic at heart and highly educated in the humanities and social sciences, the idea that my ability to understand literature and philosophy and metaphysics is somehow greatly hampered by the fact that I don't experience or relate to romantic attraction is just... what??? This idea is really very funny to me but also genuinely pretty insulting, even though I'm sure it wasn't meant that way. Not only does it feel like the summation of every patronising “oh, you couldn't possibly understand” directed to aromantic adults who are, in fact, entirely capable of understanding, but it also flattens the incredible breadth of human intellectual experience into “being about romance”. I sometimes find myself wishing that alloromantic people would peak outside the bubble of amatonormativity and realise that actually, there is an enormous swathe of human experience and intellect and creativity and expression that has nothing at all to do with romantic attraction and romantic relationships. And no, stating that, I don't know, the Book of Job is not actually about romance has nothing to do with our society's misogynistic denigration of romance as a genre; it has everything to do with the fact that the Book of Job is not actually about romance. (And if you aren't familiar with Job or for some reason don't consider it a “great work of literature”, replace with whatever other example you can think of; there are many.) It's insulting to imply that aro-spec and/or ace-spec people are somehow less able to participate in art and literature and philosophy etc because we might bring a perspective that doesn't include romance or sex at all and we're just not capable of understanding that Actually Romance And/Or Sex Is Central To Everything. It's genuinely absurd to argue that all the pinnacles of human intellectual achievement really, at their core, come back to romance, and it speaks to our very blinkered society's tendency to declare things like “everything is really about sex” or “everything is really about romance” or “everything is really about breakups” or whatever and then look at aro-spec and ace-spec people like we're aliens and go “but like... how do you even live?” Newsflash, there is so much more to life than romance and love and sex. You can live an entire, very fulfilling, very meaningful, very thoughtful life without these things being at all relevant to you. That's not to dismiss those things as minor or unimportant - they are indeed very central to a lot of people's lives, and they're not “dumb” or “shallow” or whatever - but they're not central to everyone's lives, and they're hardly The Only Things In The World.

And if your response is something along the lines of “well OK there's a tiny minority of people who don't engage with romance and/or sex, or relate to it in the same way most people do, but that doesn't mean that romance isn't still at the core of humanity, or that all the most important things don't still have romance at their heart”, imagine telling a woman that “well, you can focus on a career if you want, but what's really fundamental to being a woman is being a wife and mother - in fact, motherhood is the most important thing in the world, it's fundamental to women, it's what all women's literature is about”. Or, hell, telling a person of any gender that “parenthood” is the central pillar of all of humanity and that every great work of art ever produced is ultimately about parenthood and obviously parenthood is fundamental to everyone's being - forgetting that actually some people will never be parents, and implying that their childlessness makes them less able to understand The Human Experience. That might give you some small idea of what it's like to be an aspec person and be repeatedly told that feelings you don't experience and relationships you don't have and attractions you don't relate to and acts you don't engage in are somehow Fundamental To Humanity and are what lie at The Core Of Everything: how excluding that is, how alienating that is, how oppressively stifling that is.

Feeling that love and/or romance and/or sex are very important to your own life is totally valid, but I wish alloromantics and allosexuals could be more capable of opening their minds and imagining and empathising with an existence for which these things aren't central. Our lives aren't lesser, or emptier, or sadder, or shallower for lack of romance or sex. Our experiences are part of The Human Experience. Our perspectives on art and life and relationships and philosophy and humanity and everything else are just as valid. We are just as capable of profundity, of creativity, of insight - because romance and sex aren't “at the core” of any of these things. We are here, and we're tired of being forgotten, ignored, sidelined, dismissed, erased, talked over, talked past. It would be great if society at large actually remembered we exist once in a while, and that our lives are just as beautiful and important as anyone else's.

[i-am-the-matt]

Today is the second Aromantic visibility day in history.

It's ironic how the first one was in the first year that I identified as aromantic.

We do exist, among all the amatonormativity and romantic stuff that are shoved into our eyes everyday.

Personally, as an aromantic, I don't expect alloromantic people to fully understand my experience. If they just don't invalidate me, it would be enough.

I wish everyone a very aromanticised day.

💚🤍🩶🖤

(Pic source:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1439374186/aromantic-flag-embroidered-patch-lgbt?click_key=98f980c63f4a6222a3cd2d974a7115db5ea32cac%3A1439374186&click_sum=f9ef6a12&ref=shop_home_recs_13&frs=1&sts=1)

[spitefularoandbi]

Am I arospec for everyone or am I fully alloro for people of genders that don't fall within heteronormative standards and bc I met an opposite-gender-person years ago that I was willing to commit to for my personal, nonromantic reasons and so I comphet-ed myself so hard that I'm nearly middle-aged and not sure what's going on? Hm.

[queer-for-science]

One of my closest friends I aroace, and he's talked to me about the experience of being made to feel like he's missing out on something or getting left behind in a way when his loved ones enter romantic relationships. But it really hit home for me how much he deals with and expects this recently when I started dating someone new after being single for a few months and I wanted to share.

During the months I was single, we got a lot closer and we both relied on each other more to have our needs for love fulfilled. For example, we both have physical touch as a primary love language, so we did a lot of platonic physical affection and cuddling. We became main supports in each other's lives even more than before. But the day I told my friend about my new partner and my friend met him, he seemed to kind of instantly back off a bit. He and my partner get along really, really well too. He mentioned that he didnt expect my partner and I to make the hour drive to visit him as often because "it's not like the nature of y'alls relationship". I'm having difficulty explaining, but it was apparent that my friend expected to be taking a back seat to this new relationship in my life despite the fact that I know my friend way better and that broke my heart a bit. I immediately thought, how many times has he had to deal with that? How many beloved friends has he lost to this situation? That must be so horrible to go through! I still very much consider him one of my closest supports and while I know it would never be a necessary choice I would absolutely choose him over a partner I haven't had nearly as much time with. I really want to find a way to tell him that he isn't any less of a priority to me just because I'm not single anymore and I think it's important for us alloromantics to remind our aro and aroace friends of things like that. It's even more important to stick to that statement and show them we mean it.

My aroace friends, you deserve people in your life that prioritize you and engage in the kinds of intimacy you need. You deserve just as much closeness and love as anyone else and you will find it if thats what you want. You don't deserve being put on the back burner when your loved ones get into new romantic relationships and it's really shitty that so many people do that.

[non-sam-aplatonicism]

In a society where friendship is a stepping stone to a 'next stage' of romance and sex, and romance/sex is not only viewed as a combo package yet also held superior and as the end-goal to all other forms of relationships, it is only natural that 'friendship' becomes a deeply unvalued form of interaction.

Ask any allorose person in your life how they view friendship. I did - it's defined by most as a very casual "i want to hang out more with them; i like them; they click with me" sort of thing. The only people in my former friend group who responded that friendship was about the actual attraction to one another felt were a-spec some way themselves.

Most people view 'friend' as a label that needs no consent to use, to the point where children are mocked for asking if another kid wants to be friends. All throughout my life I've been forced into friendships without ever being asked if I WANTED to be there in the first place. And then once they perceive that "we're" close, they bring on social and emotional obligations I never asked to be burdened with, and then get mad when I don't comply with them, when they never asked how I felt about them in the first place.

I think the focus on friendship in the aromantic community is a double-edged sword. Yes, it is important to value friendship as much as romantic relations are valued! However, the movement from aromantics largely revolves around people not discrediting and throwing out friendships in favour of romance.

I think an addendum is long needed: friendship should be treated as consensual as romantic relationships are. It should be verbally acknowledged and agreed upon by both parties. One of the consequences of amatonormativity is that confessing romantic feelings is seen as this huge important thing, and I honestly don't think it should be that way, but if asking someone to be your romantic partner is a world-shattering all-or-nothing thing like some alloromantics treat it, so should asking someone to be your friend.

And if I didn't make it clear enough, asking someone to be friends before treating them as such should be viewed as mandatory.

TL;DR "friendship and romance should be viewed as equally important" and "friendships should be treated with the same amount of seriousness and consensuality as romance" are statements that can and should co-exist

also this post is explicitely about aplatonicism and the aromantic community. don't derail kthx