too-spicy-and-too-queer

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

In your time in polyam communities, have you found any red flags and/or green flags to watch out for? Any advice particularly for queer folks trying to find an inclusive community?

This is a great question, and a treacherous one. Polyamory is just starting to catch a little bit of mainstream attention with a few celebrities beginning to openly practice it and some mainstream news corporations running articles about it. Polyamory has grown tremendously in the past decade. /r/polyamory has 300000 members, but I highly recommend against going to Reddit for anything relationship or identity related. There are thousands of polyamory communities out there, and some of them are not queer friendly or really aren't trying to be intersectional at all, so here are some things to look out for.

First, look out for the usual problems in online or queer communities. Look out for people using racist, anti-queer, anti-trans, ableist, or anti-kink dogwhistles. Look out for tone-policing, highly insular communities, and gatekeeping. Look out for tokenization and a lack of diversity in the community (if you find a polyamory community that is almost entirely middle-aged white cis men, get out fast).

There are several red flags I've seen in my experience that are more specific to polyamory. A big one is framing polyamory as morally superior to or more evolved than monogamy. Extreme black-and-white moralizing is another red flag, often with people saying a specific style of polyamory is morally superior to others. Evopsych is another huge red flag, this is true just in general life but it seems to be particularly popular in polyamory, so stay away from people who use evopsych to guide their personal decisions or construct a concept of personality theory; it's almost always just repackaged gender essentialism, racism, and eugenics if you actually ask that person to give details on their personal values. A common red flag that I haven't seen outside polyamory is framing jealousy as a character flaw; these folks will use rhetoric like "you have to grow out of jealousy to be polyamorous" or "jealousy is your problem and you should deal with it yourself". A lot of virtue-signaling about emotional intelligence is another red flag.

There are some more subtle red flags to look for in polyamory communities. Examine the prominent polycules you see in that community. Are men setting up a de facto One Penis Policy with their partners? Are folks sabotaging relationships with their metamors? Do people respond poorly to criticism from their partners, or do quieter members of polycules never express criticism at all towards the more outspoken members? Are folks expecting all their partners to have similar boundaries? Are people who are new to polyamory expressing hesitations that aren't being addressed by their more experienced partners? Look especially at how young femme women are treated when they first join the community, do they get a lot of unwanted attention or solicitations? Look at how POC and queer people are treated when they talk about the intersections of their identities with polyamory, do straight white people talk over them?

Here are some green flags in polyamory communities. It's diverse and intersectional. People speak freely and respectfully about their kinks and their identities. Members of the community do not use it as a dating or hookup service and instead treat it like a community for education and support. You see members supporting and emotionally engaging with each other at least as and preferably more often than flirting with each other. Many styles of polyamory and other styles of non-monogamy besides polyamory are recognized as valid and it's seen as an individual choice and a matter of personal exploration. Jealousy is treated as a normal human emotion, and it's not deserving of judgment or blame just like all the other emotions. Folks don't get pedantic or prescriptivist about definitions and terms. Folks accept criticism and admit their failures gracefully, apologize, and change their behavior. Boundaries are respected and understood. Folks are expressive and communicative about their relationships. Metamors have active friendships with each other or at least can carry friendly conversations with each other. Folks talk about going to therapy. Safer sex is an open and frequently discussed topic. And most importantly, you feel good, connected, and witnessed when you express yourself to the community.

Good luck, I've heard so many horror stories about toxic polyamory communities, but I've heard many more stories about people having wonderful experiences. There are lots of good communities out there, and I hope you find some of them.

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

This is outside my personal queer wheelhouse, but it’s a really important example of what happens in queer communities with gatekeeping around language and historical revisionism.  Learn your queer history, folks, and don’t gatekeep others based on their language.  Solidarity!

Ok so I like boys and I might be a trans dude but I’m really attracted to the lesbian label idk why but aaa isnsuhsuwnsus Idk what to do what is wrong with me please help me

I have the same problem with the term ‘butch’, I really like it but I’m not a lesbian so I can’t exactly use it

so instead I just call myself a sparrow stag (meaning a sorta low-maintenance masculine nb)

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

This is why I invite monogamous people to my polyamory discussion groups.

This is why I invite cis people to my trans discussion groups.

This is why I invite binary people to my nonbinary discussion groups.

This is why I make a point to learn about kink.

This is why I make a point to learn about disabilities and discuss my own disabilities with my friends.

This is why I listen to literally anyone who isn’t me who is sharing their experience.

Solidarity helps us all.

When the North Carolina state legislature tried to pass hateful anti-trans legislation, you know what were the biggest groups of activists I saw supporting the protests?

Cis people from the NAACP, and cis people from the Unitarian Universalists.  There were more cis people from these two organizations at the protests than there were trans people at all.  They get that solidarity helps us all, and they know how to put that into action.

I think about those protests a lot when I think about solidarity.  And I think about how many personal experiences people have shared to me like the one above about how exploring and learning helped them in ways they couldn’t have even imagined before they began.

just wanna say that as an enby, bi & polyam person the ace & aro communities and the very very important discussions + critique of mainstream views on sex & romance that these communities have fostered has been instrumental in helping me figure out my own personal/unique relationship w/ sex, romance, platonic vs. romantic vs. other attractions, and also how i view my own body + heart in these contexts and im rly rly so eternally grateful for that. queer solidarity helps us all, queer solidarity forever

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

people forget that there are literally no rules to being queer. if you feel queer, congrats, you can be queer. its not my or anyone else’s job to investigate or interrogate you. you are the sole authority on your identity 

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

Ive seen your post on how you dont experience attraction as these many separate types but only one thing, and Id like to ask whether thats an aro thing? Because me and all of my friends talked about this once and we all agreed that theres no separate 'sexual' 'aesthetic' or 'romantic' attraction for us. Theres only attraction. Im pretty sure were all alloromantic. At least i definitely am. Is there something weird with us?

I can’t answer if there’s something “weird” with you, only you can do that.  The most commonly used definition of aromantic is “experiencing little or no romantic attraction”.  But I’ve met dozens of aromantic people like myself who don’t really use that definition and instead experience attraction quite strongly, but not at all in a normative way.  I find it helpful to use the aromantic label because I would not ever label my attraction as romantic, but I still engage in romantic or intimate relationships, often with people who would label their own attraction as romantic.  For me, the label “romantic” only applies to my relationships because of the boundaries that are in place in them, not because of how I feel.  Also, I experience some of the things a lot of other aromantics experience, like romance repulsion, and I find a lot of other queer labels quite useful.  And I relate to a lot of experiences other aromantics share, and in general I think challenging normativity is good for everyone.

I’ve also met alloromantic people who would not separate their attraction into discrete categories.  Many of these people end up finding relationship anarchy very appealing because that model of relation fits their experience of attraction and intimacy better than normative models.  Some of them even find a lot of aromantic experiences relatable and compelling, but they say the label isn’t right for them for a variety of reasons.

The thing about queer labels is that there is inherently a lot of gray area around the edges, and you don’t have to exactly fit every piece of a definition of a queer label to claim it as your own.  Similarly, you can fit most of the definition of a queer label and still decide that label isn’t right for you.  The point is, labels are tools.  Is “aromantic” a helpful tool for you?

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

Hi, I have to say I love your posts, they help a lot. I'm almost 30, and just realized that being aromantic is a thing. And everything makes sense now but I'm also having a bit of a meltdown. I hope I'm not bothering you, I need someone to talk to that knows about this and you seem nice. The thing is, a close friend is getting married and I'm happy that he's happy, but I don't get it, and I can't be excited for him, so I feel terrible about it. I understand having a partner, but not weddings.

I'm sorry you're having a hard time. I definitely understand how you feel. When I was a little younger than you, my friends all started getting married, and it was hard on me. I didn't know I was aro yet, but I had hoped that with all the conversations we had where they agreed with me about social norms and monogamy and the expectations of relationships all causing harm for some people, some of them would live differently and deconstruct those norms in their own lives. But they didn't, because those norms were built to benefit people like them, even if a little bit, even if they were also harmed in other ways. I felt abandoned and betrayed for a while as I watched all my friends marry and stop putting any effort into their friendships with me.

Mostly I've gotten over taking this as a personal betrayal (even though it is in a way) as I've built new friendships with queer people who actually have deconstructed some of those norms in their daily lives. I realize my older friends were acting in a way shaped by powerful social forces and that it's really difficult to break away from those norms for many. Still, the end result is harm to me and people like me, and the damage to those relationships is real, and the damage to me is real, and I've had to cope with that.

As for finding someone to talk to, have you joined any aro communities? I've had pretty good luck with those, and people there will understand what you're going through. There are a lot of aro Discord servers and aro forums with people willing and able to help you.

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

Hi, so I've just been liking a lot of your posts to find them again later, hope that's ok! I don't really think I'm aro (I experience romantic attraction, not often, but not, like, winning-the-lottery rarely) but I find a lot of posts about aro experience really relatable because I don't think I relate to romance the same way many alloro people do? Similarly with polyamory - I've never had a serious relationship before (i'm in my late 20s) and I don't know what kind of if any relationship I would want, but I also find the monogamous relationship model as societal default too restrictive and I like the idea of building relationships around individual needs rather than societal norms, regardless of whether I identify with any specific label. So your blog's been a great resource, thank you!

I'm glad my blog has been helpful to you even though you're not aro. I think that's how understanding the fundamentals of identity works, even if it's not about you, it can still help you personally, in addition to making you a more understanding and accepting person overall. Good luck figuring out what you want, and thanks for sharing your perspective!

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

Addendum To The Basics Of Relationship Advice

I’ve been an organizer in queer and polyamory communities for several years now, and a lot of my focus is on helping people learn how to build relationships, including friendships and community relationships.  I get a lot of the same questions over and over, and a lot of the discussions I participate in are about the same handful of topics.  Every polyamory or queer relationship blog or book out there talks about consent, identity basics, alternative relationship models, dealing with jealousy and internalized oppression, and the fundamentals of interpersonal communication.  So I want to go over a few of the things I don’t see talked about as much that are just as essential to interacting with humans in any personal capacity.

Know Yourself

Devote time to getting to know yourself.  Make a commitment to understand yourself as much as you try to understand your favorite hobbies or closest people.  Learn what makes you feel secure and insecure.  Learn what makes you feel appreciated and unappreciated.  Learn what turns you on and what turns you off.  Learn what it looks like when your needs are fulfilled and unfulfilled.  Learn your own trauma and how it manifests and how to care for yourself.  Everyone gives advice about how to communicate in relationships, but communication skill can only get you so far if you don’t know enough about yourself to communicate to others.  Also, you will change over time, so it’s important to make this a continuous practice so you learn new developments about yourself.

Ask For What You Want

One of the most common reasons I see relationships fall apart is because people assume that other people will inherently understand what they want and will automatically make effort to give it to them.  This just isn’t the case most of the time, and it’s not fair to expect something you haven’t asked for.  If you’re frustrated about someone close to you not understanding something about you that you think should be obvious, then it probably isn’t obvious at all.  Figure out what exactly you want in a specific relationship or specific situation, then ask for it clearly and directly.  Yes, this risks being rejected, that’s a fundamental part of how relationships work and it’s necessary.  People won’t always give you what you want, but having this communication process lets you know what to expect.

Love Others The Way They Want To Be Loved

It’s often easy to love other people the way you want to be loved yourself, and this works fine when you meet people who share similarities with you in that regard.  A great way to broaden your connection with someone, and connect in ways that don’t depend entirely on what you share in common, is to learn how they like to be loved in ways different from you, and if you’re comfortable doing those things, become an expert at giving that love to them.  Every time I’ve done this I learned something very significant and profound about the other person, it strengthened our connection a great deal, and I grew in unexpected ways.

Deconstruct Your Assumptions

People can be pretty wildly different.  Don’t assume that because something works a particular way for you and the people around you that it works that way for everyone.  Something you and your friends hate may be something a lot of other people love.  Something that turns you off almost certainly turns someone else on.  The more I learn about people, the more I realize that there’s very little we can truly call universal human experience.  Deconstructing assumptions about shared experience make it much easier to connect with and appreciate other people.

Be Patient And Curious, Fail Gracefully

All of the above points are difficult to master.  You won’t get it right all the time, and neither will the people close to you.  When you make a mistake, own it, apologize, offer amends, and accept the consequences.  Being perfect is impossible, but handling failure responsibly and gracefully can strengthen connections.  Most importantly, be patient with and curious about your own struggles and other people’s struggles.  If someone struggles with something, make space for that struggle to continue, try to be supportive, and see if you can learn why it’s a struggle.  Extend this same care to yourself when you struggle.  Not only will this ease the struggle, but you will likely learn something important in the process.

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

“Queerness, to me, is about far more than homosexual attraction. It’s about a willingness to see all other taboos broken down. Sure, many of us start on this path when we first feel “same sex” or “same gender” attraction (though what is sex? And what is gender? And does anyone really have the same sex or gender as anyone else?). But queerness doesn’t stop there. This is a somewhat controversial stance, but to me queer means something completely different than “gay” or “lesbian” or “bisexual.” A queer person is usually someone who has come to a non-binary view of gender, who recognizes the validity of all trans identities, and who, given this understanding of infinite gender possibilities, finds it hard to define their sexuality any longer in a gender-based way. Queer people understand and support non-monogamy even if they do not engage in it themselves. They can grok being asexual or aromantic. (What does sex have to do with love, or love with sex, necessarily?) A queer can view promiscuous (protected) public bathhouse sex with strangers and complete abstinence as equally healthy. Queers understand that people have different relationships to their bodies. We get what it means to be stone. We know what body dysphoria is about. We understand that not everyone likes to get touched the same way or to get touched at all. We realize that people with disabilities may have different sexual needs, and that people with survivor histories often have sexual triggers. We can negotiate safe and creative ways to be intimate with people with HIV/AIDs and other STIs. Queers understand the range of power and sensation and the diversity of sexual dynamics. We are tops and bottoms, doms and subs, sadists and masochists and sadomasochists, versatiles and switches. We know what we like and don’t like in bed. We embrace a wide range of relationship types. We can be partners, lovers, friends with benefits, platonic sweethearts, chosen family. We can have very different dynamics with different people, often all at once. We don’t expect one person to be able to fulfill all our diverse needs, fantasies and ideals indefinitely. Because our views on relationships, sex, gender, love, bodies, and family are so unconventional, we are of necessity anti-assimilationist. Because under the kyriarchy we suffer, and watch the people we love suffering, we are political. Because we want to survive, we fight. We only want the freedom to be ourselves, love ourselves, love each other, and live together. Because we are routinely denied that, we are pissed. Queer doesn’t mean “don’t label me,” it means “I am naming myself.” It means “ask me more questions if you’re curious…“”

—

What Queerness Means To Me « Tranarchism (via docasaur)

I’ve chosen this as one of my first posts as it’s important to me that people understand what I’m talking about when I use the term queer.  

(via hollyloveholly)

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

All queer communities should do these things and it’s a travesty that they don’t.

The aromantic agenda is a good one.

Go and think about what kinds of relationships you want. Don't think about labels like romantic or platonic or sexual, think purely about what relationships would make you happiest.

When I realized I was aromantic, I was asked things like "Would you still date? Would you have a QPR? Will you ever kiss?"

But the aromantic community didn't ask that. Instead, they focused on "What do you want in a world where anything is possible?"

And I realized I want to be alone, surrounded by friends and family I love who are close enough, I can bring them fresh baked scones when I overbake.

They asked me "What do you want?" and the question was so broad, I could weigh labels in my hand like queerplatonic partner and nonpartnering and significant other. I could look at these and shrug and say, "What I want is to not worry about questions I don't care about." I could shelve these indefinitely. Maybe even forever. And just enjoy being myself.

The aromantic community celebrates exploration. Tells people asking if they are aromantic, "This is a personal decision. Your personal decision. If this label helps you, take it. If this community helps you, stay as long as you need. You don't have to be labelled anything, aromantic or otherwise, unless it would bring you comfort. You don't have to be anything you aren't."

It's a good community with good philosophies born from a unique experience, not rooted in missing out, but in being forced to consider what you want when you don't want what's expected.

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

This is very interesting for me to read, and I’ve had a very different experience with the way people treat my orientation and neurodivergence.  I think there are three big reasons why I’m treated so differently.  First, I’m AMAB, large, and hairy.  Second, while I’m aro, I’m not ace, and I’m partnering and romance-favorable and have had a lot of partners.  Third, my neurodivergences manifest a bit differently from either of yours.

I’ve never been called immature or infantilized for my orientation or my neurodivergence.  I’ve been called a lot of demeaning (or intentionally demeaning) or dismissing things, but never that.  I think it’s worth examining why, because femme AFAB people especially receive a lot of that kind of thing that masculine people don’t.  I think stories like this, from marginalized people, reveal depths to the insidiousness and harmfulness of misogyny that may not come up with straight white able neurotypical gender-conforming women.

What I have been called, both because of my orientation and my neurodivergence, is unmasculine, unaggressive, stoic, uninvolved, unemotional, uncaring, unsupportive, detached, and aloof.  While those first two are absolutely true and accurate adjectives to apply to me, they were intended to be bad and insulting, but to me they are big compliments.  The rest, though, aren’t even remotely true, and anyone who spends any time getting to know me at all knows I’m the opposite of all of those things.  But because of my neurodivergence, I don’t express being highly emotional, deeply caring, and intensely involved the ways that neurotypical people do, and this comes up in intimate relationships quite a lot.

Interestingly, I also get complimented a lot because of these same traits.  I’m often called wise, “an old soul”, observant, patient, and eloquent because I see things from an outside perspective and take time to think before expressing my thoughts.  People ask me for advice about romantic problems frequently and tell me my advice is particularly insightful, even though most of the time it can be boiled down to one of three things: “Have you asked directly for what you want?”, “Have you expressed your feelings directly and clearly?”, and “Have you explicitly discussed that together or are you making an assumption?”  Neurotypical alloromantic people get really wrapped up in the social scripts of romance and expression and forget to be direct and clear, and that can give people like us some big advantages in communicating and building relationships, at least if we can convince the neurotypical alloromantic people in our lives to challenge their own assumptions and take what we say about ourselves and our own experiences as true and literal.  We can ask them to do that, and if they don’t, that’s their failing, not ours.

Other people have probably written about this, but the intersections between neurodivergency and being aro/ace have been on my mind a lot since I found out I’m neurodivergent. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how the different types of discrimination I face play into each other.

I’ve been infantilised for pretty much my whole life because of my neurodivergency. The way I tend to act, and the things I tend to struggle with, mean I get treated like a weird excitable kid who doesn’t understand how the world works. The fact that I’m also aromantic and asexual is viewed just another facet of this “immaturity”. So the idea goes: of course I wouldn’t be interested in romance and sex. How could I even understand such adult topics? I’m just a kid who gets distracted by butterflies and likes to infodump about history. Isn’t my innocence so endearing?

Instead of my orientation being taken seriously, it’s belittled and taken as a confirmation that I’m just childish and strange. This has led, on several occasions, to people assuming it’s just a symptom of my neurodivergency that needs to be medically addressed.** Aromantic and asexual people already face excessive questioning about our orientations and get told the cause must be [insert diagnosis or symptom of diagnosis here]; being neurodivergent makes this exponentially worse, because the underlying assumption is that I can’t have the agency or the self-knowledge to identify this way. After all, I’m just a weird kid, aren’t I? I need other (read: neurotypical and allo) people to explain everything, even my own experiences, to me.

This infantilisation made it particularly hard for me to come to terms with my orientation, because I didn’t want to prove everyone that they were right. For years, I pushed back against the way I’d been treated by seeking out the one thing that would make me an adult in others’ eyes - a romantic and sexual relationship. It hurt to realise I didn’t actually want that deep down. It felt like being told I really was that weird kid, tolerated but ultimately babied. It’s taken a lot of work to accept that the way I am doesn’t make me any less mature and deserving of respect.

There isn’t really a conclusion to this - mostly I wanted to post about my experiences as someone who is both neurodivergent and aroace, and the issues I’ve faced because of it. If any other aro/ace neurodivergent people would like to add to this or share their own perspective, I’d love to hear it.

**A lot of neurodivergent people do consider their experiences of attraction to be linked to their neurodivergency, and that’s obviously cool and valid. That’s not what I’m talking about here. My point is the systematic pathologisation of aromanticism and asexuality and the denial of my ability to define myself.

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

Carnival of Aros - Self-care, Self-love, and Aromanticism

I am coming out of my work-ridden space with some thoughts on self-care and work-life balance, so it seems incredibly fitting that this month’s Carnival of Aros theme is self-care and self-love.

As always, my thoughts are under ‘Keep Reading.’

Aro self-care is something I find to be very specific and different from my other forms of self-care. When I struggle daily with relationship norms and values that I actively disidentify with because of my aromanticism, I can’t help but think that we do need these resources.

Below are some of the ways I have been learning to care for myself when I encounter thoughts that are regurgitations of anti-aro sentiments. Internalized aromisia/arophobia is very real and sometimes we all have to struggle with it. In different ways, too. Being an aroflux person means that sometimes I devalue my place in the aro community for being “not aro enough.” And other times, I devalue my place in broader society because I’m “too aro.” Sometimes I am frustrated I don’t feel any love, including self-love, and other times I’m called selfish for caring too much.

Self-care for me means accepting all of my identity, all of my struggles, my happinesses, and my feelings. That’s so much harder in practice than in theory.

What my self-care looks like

Something I have been reading a lot more about recently (particularly when my therapist also mentioned it) was the idea of being in relationships with everything around me. I recall a First Nations idea of interconnectedness or connectivity, and trying to implement this way of thinking has been helping me understand myself and others in our complex world.

I think of my identity and myself as a collection of selves, and my work with myself is a kind of 'Parts Work,' as my therapist calls it. I try to build relationships with different parts of myself. For example, young parts of me that still exist and express fear when I encounter certain triggering circumstances. Or the parts of myself I'm trying to cultivate and let enter me but am still developing. I work with myself and all of my parts to co-create a self-sustaining system (note: I don't mean system as in plurality; I am not plural personally).

Just like I have parts of me I really enjoy, like my very creative selves, I also have parts of me I struggle with and have often suppressed, like the internal critic that thinks my aromanticism and identity are fake. What has been incredibly important to me in my self-development is caring for ALL of those parts.

That includes caring for parts I don't like and am often frustrated with or angry at. At the end of the day, all of the parts of me are trying to help, even if they don't really do so in an effective way. Just like I wouldn't yell at a child who may have broken my plate when they were trying to help me put away the dishes, I don't want to yell at the parts of myself that make mistakes in good faith.

Things I try to remember to implement in my self-care

Not beating myself up for having internalized amatonormative beliefs, and instead sitting with them curiously. Hearing myself out and comforting that part while also being firm and clear about my boundaries engaging with it.

Not beating myself up for not having the energy to sit with all of my parts or feelings as they come up. I don't have to be ready to work on and parent myself literally all of the time.

I can ask for help or for company when I engage with other parts of me or engage in self-care activities. People are often way more excited to be invited to that kind of personal and intimate experience than they are weirded out by it. If they're weirded out by it, it's not on me, it's more about them and their comfort and that's all valid. We all relationship differently and I need to be aware that my queering of relationship structures isn't universal.

I can say no to others asking things of me, including asking to help and be part of my self-care. Sometimes it is caring for myself to try to practice doing things independently to build up my resilience, while other times even when I could deal with things on my own, it's an exercise in being vulnerable to invite others.

I'm allowed to change up my self-care strategies and routines whenever the hell I want. I don't have to take a bath and do a facial every Sunday. I can play a video game instead, go for a walk, hang out with a friend, spontaneously paint a plant pot, write a shitton of posts for this aro blog (hi, yes, I'm currently doing this).

My self-care doesn't need to look like anyone else's. If it feels good for me to disconnect from everything and everyone to play my piano for five hours straight until my fingers start to get sore, it is no one's right to judge that behaviour as wrong or right for me. If I want cuddles and hugs and intimate time with someone without a relationship structure, it is no one's right to judge that. If I don't want hugs or love from others, even when well-meaning, that's well and valid.

I am not my own judge. I am my own parent. Those are not the same thing. I also don't need to be in parenting mode all of the time. I can be neither judge nor parent.

Self-love is not a prerequisite for self-care.

My relationship with self-love and self-care is inherently queer because I am queer. Because I am aro. That last bullet point is something I think is particularly important as an aro engaging in self-care, and it's something I would personally put on an aro self-care list.

At the end of the day, I am a human being who is flawed and growing and changing all the time. My identity grows and changes with me. I love a lot, but sometimes I don't love at all. And that's all ok. I am not beholden to anything or anyone, and that also includes me.

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

What and who is included in the lgbt/queer/gay(general) communities aren’t always super clear cut actually and like... that’s fine.

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

This is what I mean when I say defining aromanticism as a lack of something is doing a disservice to a lot of aros.  I love kissing, holding hands, being overly verbally affectionate, sweet gentle sex, deep emotional attachment, partnering, and going on dates.  I feel attraction very strongly.  It just isn’t romantic and never has been.  It’s simply how I love.  I love differently from allos.  My experience with romance is “no, but if you watched me with my partners you’d think yes, but it doesn’t at all work like you think it should”.

So many aro memes are like “no thanks” and “leave me alone” and like yes that is a mood but more often than not my experiences are more “yes please just not like that” and “let me do it my way” but that’s a little harder to make memes with maybe. Just something I’ve been thinking about

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week 2021 Events

Overview:

Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week (ASAW) is celebrated the first full Sunday-Saturday week following Valentine’s Day, which is February 21st-27th for 2021.  You can find our page with more info about ASAW here.

As mentioned in our recent blog update, we will not be publishing our own prompts/challenges like we did in previous years.  However, you can browse our previous prompts from ASAW 2019 and ASAW 2020 if you want inspiration for things to post about to participate this week.

Instead of posting our own prompts, we are boosting other events and news pertaining to ASAW.  For this post, we have compiled info about the many exciting things happening for ASAW this year!

Other places for ASAW info:

The official website for Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week is arospecweek.org

AUREA’s page for ASAW 2021 has info about this year’s ASAW

@aroweek helps celebrate ASAW on Twitter

Specific Events:

February 21st: #AroCreatives is a new hashtag for ASAW to be used mainly on Twitter but also on other platforms. More info can be found on tumblr here.

February 21st-22nd: TAAAP Pride Chats is having a session especially for ASAW, in addition to their February session about amatonormativity on February 27th-28th. You can register for TAAAP Pride Chats here. @theaceandaroadvocacyproject​

February 22nd 5pm EST: The Ace and Aro Alliance of Central Ohio is hosting a panel for Aro Week; more details and how to register can be found at their Facebook event page.

February 27th 3pm EST: To celebrate the end of ASAW this year, AUREA is running a fundraiser livestream starting at 3pm(EST) to benefit the Arocalypse Forums and AUREA. More info about the event can be found here and the event will be on YouTube here. @aromantic-aurea​

@arowrimo​ is celebrating February as aro writing month, boosting writing of all forms and posting prompts to encourage writing. More info and prompts can be found here.

(News articles and info about proclamations recognizing ASAW can be found under the cut!)

Keep reading

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

I’ve never identified as ace and have always had clear sexual attraction, but this post is important for a lot of reasons.  An essential component of queer liberation and empowerment is supporting people’s individual choice about what to do about their feelings and identities.  The enthusiasm in queer spaces for exploring sex and romance should be directed at people making their own choices about what to do about their own feelings, and then supporting those choices unconditionally.  A lack of attraction can still warrant just as much thought and exploration as attraction, and a queer person choosing not to engage in romantic or sexual relationships still needs just as much support and encouragement as a queer person choosing to engage in those relationships.  It’s not simpler or easier to not feel attraction or to not engage in those relationships, there are still inner complexities and social consequences to consider.  There’s so much more to being queer than who you date or who you fuck.  When the only positive messages or shared narratives queer communities create are about engaging in romance and sex, they’re making it harder for people to participate in the community and explore themselves, even for people who aren’t ace or aro.

I used to identify as ace, and I don't anymore

I remember a LOT of ace content back when I first started engaging with the community was like “Aces aren’t just late bloomers!” “Stop assuming aces will change their minds one day!” “Stop telling them they just need to find the right person!” And I’m not disagreeing with any of that, it’s still rude to tell someone they’re wrong about who they are. I just want to talk about what happens when you do change your mind, because I’m not the only person I know who stopped identifying with asexuality at some point in early adulthood.

Personally, as a teenager I found the ace community extremely helpful and validating. I was so sex repulsed, I was practically terrified of sex. All I had ever heard about sex growing up was that supposedly it was morally reprehensible in all contexts other than marriage, and also because I was AFAB random men I didn’t know would want to have sex with me and could potentially violently assault me to accomplish this. So of course I deeply and unknowingly repressed any and all sexual feelings until I started to be exposed to some sex positivity and slowly began to unlearn almost two decades worth of guilt, shame, and fear. However, at the time all I knew was I didn’t want sex at all, and the asexual community gave me permission to not want sex under any circumstances. Which I desperately needed.

However, once I got older, things got a little weird. I reached a point where I was having feelings that were unmistakably sexual, but I was by no means ready to give up my identity as an asexual person. I had worked so hard to accept and assert my lack of sexual attraction, how could I now confront the possibility that I was no longer what I thought I was? To be fair, the ace community that I participated in was almost as full of “it’s okay to change your mind about your orientation!” as it was of “aces aren’t just late bloomers”, but I’d never met anyone who had identified as ace and changed their mind. Not directly anyway. I didn’t know any stories about what it was like to discover your sexuality after discovering you didn’t have one. I was alone in a whole new way I had never considered before, even though I knew that theoretically this change could happen. I just never thought it would happen to me.

So, I basically just spent a few years in this awkward limbo between asexuality and allosexuality, trying on different ace umbrella terms like grey-ace, demisexual, etc. Not really feeling a connection to any of them, not really feeling a whole lot of sexual attraction either. I’m still kind of in that limbo, and that may or may not change in the next several years. I’ll have to wait and see. I do know that identifying as a lesbian, first as an oriented aroace but increasingly as a possible sexual orientation, has definitely led to some significantly faster-paced developments recently. So maybe I was just gay the entire time (I mean I was gay the entire time anyways, but maybe my lack of interest in sex was actually a lack of interest in sex with men).

I’m interested to hear if anyone else has experience with the transition from aroace to alloaro. Has anyone else discovered that their sex repulsion was fueled by cultural sex negativity and rape apologism? What does this look like from a non-Christian perspective? Anyone assigned male at birth/raised under masculine social expectations have similar or parallel experiences?

[too-spicy-and-too-queer]

Carnival of Aros - Commitment

November’s prompt is commitment. I just had a conversation with a friend about loyalty, so I wanted to expand on that a little bit for this prompt. As always, my thoughts are under “Keep Reading.”

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