loveless-aro

[loveless-aro]

Remember loveless aroallos when you discuss loveless aromantics! Not all loveless aros also identify as asexual. The loveless aromantic experience varies from person to person and based on what definition you personally use or like. If you, like me, are a loveless aroallo, you are part of the community the same way I and any other loveless aroallos are. Like any other aromantic identity, don't assume it's followed by asexuality, or that people have to also use the asexual label with their aromanticism.

#loveless aroallo positivity

[loveless-aro]

me: the word love aint shit

me after scrolling on my tumblr dash: they’re making love every positive emotion

my loveless mutual, pacing: the posters are lying to us

#memes

[loveless-aro]

@fixing-bad-posts Here's one I made!

#for all my loveless ppl who have been personally victimized by the original post: here's a fixed version

[loveless-aro]

one of my things with love is that i think it's probably like colors. yeah we have a thing that we all sort of agree is red. but we have no way to know if other people see red the same way as us. your red could be totally different from mine and we would never know because it has functionally the same relation to all of us and so we all just call it red. i have no way of knowing if anyone else on earth feels love the exact same way in which i do and in fact i think most people probably don't...

#im loveless and apl and this is how i feel about love and emotions in general. also gender lol #so yes this post loveless approved! 👍

[loveless-aro]

Love as a word is like slang to me. It's very useful for getting across what I'm trying to say but very rarely do I use it literally (and even then I bend the understanding of it as an emotion). Oh I love the weather today. I love my hobbies. I love this art. Sometimes I get annoyed with how love is used as a synonym for practically every positive emotion under the sun, but other times I get it. It's all just slang.

#REALLL #on love

[loveless-aro]

loveless people. You agree. Reblog

#memes

[loveless-aro]

i feel like people often forget that "love" is just a word humans made up to describe a certain set of feelings (that's not even well defined). because a lot of ppl's the first reaction to the concept of lovelesness is to ask "but don't you love your pets? don't you love the world around you?"

get this: i simply do not label my feelings as love. others might've if they were in my shoes, but i don't. is it *that* hard to understand?

#on love #loveless experiences

[loveless-aro]

This pride month remember that aplatonicism can be a beautiful thing. Aplatonics are not 'missing out' on friendship if they are plato averse or repulsed, or nonfriending, or indifferent. Aplatonics are not being 'insincere' or 'fake' if they are plato favorable and/or want friends. Aplatonics who only experience platonic attraction conditionally or infrequently or in a non-traditional manner are an important part of this community!

Aplatonicism is not inherently miserable or lonely. One's value does not depend on whether they have or want friends. Aplatonicism which is romance favorable and/or alloromantic is not 'amatonormative'. Ask yourself why you have double standards about friendship and romance and why you can't comprehend that amatonormativity is a societal mindset ( not something that people can be just by being into romance but not friendship lol) if you think it is.

Another person's preferences with regards to friendship or socialising (or lack thereof) is also not something you need to comment on or pathologise. It is not necessary to hold everyone up to alloplatonic standards. That is platonormative and yes platonormativity does harm people. And so does aplphobia/aplmisia.

#aplatonic #aplatonic positivity #not technically loveless ik but theres a lot of overlap so i figure this can go here

[loveless-aro]

hearing someone say they don't feel love and scrambling to prove them wrong like noooo haven't you ever seen a bee land on a flower!!! you know perfectly well that's not what love is. existing in the world and experiencing joy isn't love. wanting to help strangers isn't love. if someone says they don't feel love, believe them. it's not a bad thing and if you think it is you have some internalised stuff to unpack, and that's fine, but you don't have more authority over their feelings than they do

#literally this

[loveless-aro]

I wish a very happy aromantic spectrum awareness week to everyone on the aromantic spectrum! To me aromanticism is an orientation, a life philosophy, a political stance and a big fuck you to heteronormative and amatonormative society and I think that's beautiful! So shout-out to all aros, your experiences are worth sharing and your aromanticism should be celebrated!

[loveless-aro]

Happy Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week Everyone!

Learn more about aromanticism and upcoming community events on the ASAW website.

[Image description: A square graphic with a white box of text in the middle. The text is green and black and reads “Feb 18th -24th. Happy Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week! We are proud to promote the acceptance and inclusion of aromantic identities! Learn more about ASAW at arospecweek.org”. To the top right of the text is clip art of a brown hand waving an aromantic flag. Beneath the text, there are graphics of the AUREA logo and the ASAW website logo. Behind the textbox, there are two diagonal aromantic flags stretched across the top left and bottom right corners of the image, with a darker shade of green in between them.]

[loveless-aro]

yeah, but you do mean 'loveless' like 'romanceless' right? Just cause you're not interested in a romantic partnership, and you're never attracted to anyone romantically, that doesn't mean you can't love your family and your friends. Am I understanding wrong? I feel like it's a widely accepted concept that 'love' isn't just romantic, it's about caring about someone, no matter if they're your family or platonic friend or your pet.

No, "loveless" means love-less. Another anon also asked me to explain as well so:

"Lovelessness" in the aro context comes from the essay I Am Not Voldemort by K.A Cook. The essay confronts normative ideas on love, its inherent positivity and what it means to not love. From the introduction, which brings up the question of non-romantic love:

This June, I saw an increasing number of positivity and support posts for the aromantic and a-spec communities discussing the amatonormativity of “everyone falls in love”. I agree: the idea that romantic love is something everyone experiences, and is therefore a marker of human worth, needs deconstruction. Unfortunately, a majority of these posts are replacing the shackles of amatonormativity with restrictive lines like “everyone loves, just not always romantically”, referencing the importance of loving friends, QPPs, family members and pets. Sometimes it moves away from people to encompass love for hobbies, experiences, occupations and ourselves. The what and how tends to vary from post to post, but the idea that we do and must love someone or something, and this love redeems us as human and renders us undeserving of hatred, is being pushed to the point where I don’t feel safe or welcome in my own aromantic community. Even in the posts meant to be challenging the more obvious amatonormativity, it is presumed that aros must, in some way, love. I’ve spent weeks watching my a-spec and aro communities throw neurodiverse and survivor aros under the bus in order to do what the aromantic community oft accuses alloromantic aces of doing: using their ability to love as a defence of their humanity. Because I love, they say, I also don’t deserve to be a target of hatred, aggression and abuse. But what if I don’t love? What if love itself has been the mechanism of the hatred and violence I have endured? Why am I, an aro, neurodiverse survivor of abuse and bullying, still acceptable collateral damage?

The author criticizes the idea of "true love" that is incapable of harm. Ze questions why we construct love in that way, and how it ignores and simplifies the experiences of victims of abuse ("It’s comforting to think that a love that wounds isn’t real love, but it denies the complexity of experience and feeling had by survivors. It denies the complexity of experience and feeling that makes it harder for us to identify abuse and escape its claws. It denies the validity of survivors who look at love and feel an honest doubt about its worth, as a word or a concept, in our own interactions and experiences.") Ze talks about being forced to say "I love you" to transphobic, abusive parents whose feelings of love was the justification for their abuse.

The core of what "loveless" as an concept is about is summed up in this quote:

There is no substantial difference between saying “I’m human because I fall in love”, “I’m human because I love my friends” and “I’m human because I love calligraphy”. All three statements make human worth contingent on certain behaviours, feelings and experiences. Expanding the definition of what kinds of love make us human does nothing but save some aros from abuse and antagonism … while telling survivor and neurodiverse aros, who are more likely to have complex relationships to love as a concept or are unable to perform it in ways recognised by others, that we’re still not worthy.

Lovelessness is against any kind of statement which quantifies humanity (and implicitly, human worth) in the ability to feel or act or experience certain things. Humans are human by virtue of being human, and nothing else. And, it is socially constructed! "Love" has no natural definition! Some people are not comfortable using "love" to describe positive feelings and relationships, and some people do not feel those positive feelings in general. And those people deserve the right to define their own experiences and their own relationship to the social construct of love.

In essence, lovelessness is both a personal as well as (in my opinion) a political identity, born from aro and mad experiences that challenges not just amatonormativity but all ideas that associate personhood and worth with the ability to feel certain things.

& as a note, there is also the term "lovequeer" which describes using the term "love" in ways which contradict mainstream understandings of what it means to love, and which kinds of love are considered worthwhile.

#on love #loveless info

[loveless-aro]

since valentines day is tomorrow (or already here for some people), i just wanted to give a shoutout to my fellow loveless aros. shoutout to those who are still alienated when people do that whole "valentines day is for all kinds of love you can still celebrate it yippee!!!" thing. i'm holding all your hands

#loveless positivity

[loveless-aro]

yes ofc! and if i find myself back there i will try and take a better photo lol

Not the best photo since I only noticed once I was on the escalator, but apl pride flag at the metro station!!

#mod talks #i looked for pics of it online but maybe its just like a temporary mural or something bc nothing showed up #it's not a part of the city that i go to that often but if i'm there again i will definitely take a better pic lmao

[loveless-aro]

#asaw

[loveless-aro]

anyway here's your random reminder that it's perfectly fine if you never feel love (any kind, not just romantic) and you can still be happy without love. Love isn't what makes us human and you're not a bad person or broken if you've never felt love in your life

#loveless positivity

[loveless-aro]

being loveless does suck sometimes but less bc of some "ohnooo I'll never be able to loooove what will I ever doooo" bs but because how the hell do you tell the ppl around you that you view all relationships as business transactions where the currency is care and support and the reward is trust? How do you tell someone "hey so I could not care less about you as a person but also I enjoy every second we spend together and I'd fight the universe for you if you asked and if you ever disappeared I probably wouldn't miss you but I'd still cry for all the things we never got to experience together" without being the asshole?

#LITERALLY!!! YES!!! YOU PUT IT INTO WORDS!!!! #been thinking around this a lot bc. yeah #loveless experiences #aplatonic #(tagging that bc i think this also falls under that but correct me if i'm wrong)