#i love my aro community

[aroaceqoutes]

Need people to BACK OFF non-partnering aros ‼️‼️ let us be we are not sad lonely emos

#aromantic #aroace #asexual #aspec #aro #aromanticism #ace #i love my aro community #arospec #asexuality

[dollopheadsandclotpoles]

Due to that post I made re: why it's hard for aros/aces to imagine a future for themselves because society tells you a romantic partner will always take priority, a lot of people (aros/aces and allos alike) are sharing stories about how they have been discarded by their close friends and it's breaking my heart. But allos and aspecs coming in and sharing how they have the same amount of love for their partners and their best friends/siblings is healing it.

Still, there are people in the tags saying that aros/aces can "never offer their partners the kind of intimacy they need" and so they shouldn't be "surprised" when they feel closer to partners than their friends. You guys are missing the point.

The point is that we should NOT be ranking our relationships. People aren't there to be ranked on a scale of "This person is my number one and this person comes after that." The point is that you need multiple people in your life. One person cannot - and should not - be responsible for giving you everything you need. Different people will give you different things that you need in life and you should value all of them.

The idea that a romantic partner will give you every single thing you need in life is a toxic idea in itself and puts undue pressure on said partner and the relationship as a whole. A best friend won't give you everything either. You NEED multiple people in your life and they will all give you a part of what you need, but there is no one perfect person out there who perfectly gives you exactly what you want. We need multiple people and they should all be valued by you. Love is not limited.

#aro stuff #ace stuff #aroace tag #aro #ace #aromanticism #asexuality #aromantic #asexual #aroace #This idea that a romantic partner comes before everything and everyone else is a very Western idea too #I'm grateful that I live in a culture where family and community are important parts of life. #I'm lucky that my best friend considers me as important as her husband #i'm lucky that I'm close to my family and have unconditional love from them #why do I have to rank the relationships in my life #a mother with two kids can love and prioritise them equally #as my own mother does #why is it impossible for some of you to imagine doing that with other relationships in your life? #(i wrote this when I was sleepy and wrote unrequited love instead of unconditional love i'm so dumb lol #i do return my family's love)

[lovequeerindigo]

i’m not a loveless aro but i agree with their beliefs

#like. technically speaking i do experience love #but loveless aros just Get Things #idk how to explain it #my post #aromantic #aroallo #actually arospec #alloaro #aromanticism #aro #aromantic allosexual #aromantic community #actually aromantic #aromantic thoughts #loveless aro #loveless aromantic #aro humor #aromantic humour #aro community #aromantic spectrum

[devil-town-system]

The aromatic and asexual community and positivity is so strong on this app it makes me so very happy I never want to leave

I love all of you so much ♡ aspecs deserve the world and more

#aromantic #asexual #arospec #acespec #aroace #aspec #aro pride #aro positivity #ace pride #ace positivity #ace community #aro community #aroace community #aroace pride #aroace positivity #i love my community

[triopsarecute]

Going to your grandma is like a perfect trap for asexuals/aromantics

You are given free homemade food, delicious pies... THEN BAM!

DO YOU HAVE A BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND

COME ON YOU ARE SO YOUNG YOU SHOULD FIND SOMEONE TO MARRY AND HAVE CHILDREN WITH

I CAN DIE AT ANY MOMENTS OF COURSE I WANT TO SEE MY GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN

I am ashamed to admit that it works every fucking time

#i love my grandma but damn #asexual memes #asexuality #asexual #aromantic #aromantic memes #aromanitc #aromantism #ace memes #ace #ace community #aroace #aro memes #aroace memes

[sebcosmothetransguy]

question for fellow aces (and aroaces)

do you think i would still be able to identify as oriented aroace if i were to use an ace-spec label that included zero sexual attraction experienced (specifically the label pseudosexual, https://asexuals.fandom.com/wiki/Pseudosexual#:~:text=Pseudosexual%20or%20senssexual%20is%20a,attraction%20which%20mimics%20sexual%20attraction.)?

to me, it would make sense that i would be able to still identify as oriented aroace, since i don’t experience sexual attraction whatsoever and i know that FOR SURE.

but i know that the oriented aroace label is specifically for those who identify as both strictly aromantic and asexual.

i just feel the oriented aroace label is so myself, and it feels incredibly comfortable, and i don’t want to lose that label if it means that i use a label that is more specific than just saying i’m asexual.

the pseudosexual label describes my experience as an asexual, but i believe i can also identify as just asexual and have that experience with the label if it means that i can keep the oriented aroace label.

so, what do you all think?

EDIT: thank you all to the bunch that answered this, that was so helpful and i’m glad that i can continue to use the oriented aroace label (and i do have significant other attractions that i use along that label btw :3)

#aroace #oriented aroace #i really don’t know cuz i love the oriented aroace label #but the pseudosexual label describes my experience perfectly #so im not sure #what do you all think? #aroace pride #aro pride #ace pride #ace community #aro community #aroace community #oriented aroace community #queer #queer community #queer pride #lgbtqia #lgbtq #lgbtqia community #lgbtqia pride #lgbtq community #lgbtq pride #queer crisis #important #aromantic #aromantic asexual #asexual #aromantic pride #asexual pride #asexuality

[iammissingautumn]

i love you lesbians questioning their gender identity. I love you sapphics who encourage their partners to test new pronouns. I love you wlw and sometimes the journey to and beyond “girls” kissing “girls”. I love you those who can not disconnect their experience of femininity and loving women from their identity. even if it means often times it’s hard to understand yourself or hard for others to understand you. i love you.

#mod caden #lesbians #sapphic #wlw #transgender #nonbinary #gender questioning #i love my community oops #and etc #i have a very intimate relationship with my girlhood #and while i know it will evolve i know they are other flowers just as beautiful #much to say there are some beautiful vast spaces that frankly are not mine even though i’m a frequent lover and kisser of ppl dealing with #this #flower as in we have very unique but beautiful dynamics that aren’t always easy and aren’t always tough. love and hate and expression. #there’s afab aro 🤝 wlw girlhood solidarity

[flutterbruttershy]

it costs 0 dollars to not be arophobic and talk about love like its something universal and all encompassing for everyone and comes in infinite forms so you can always find how someone experiences it. loveless aromantics exist and deserve respect and dont need to abide by your rules of how the universe works

#honestly not sure if im aro maybe #but like. idk. hearing their perspectives did a lot of good for unlearning amatonormative shit #and it takes a lot off my chest to simply remove the expectation that i have to find someone to love #i respect the community if nothin else. solidarity from an ace here

[lostinbooks14]

Tomboys are not always lesbian/trans.

Single people are not always aro/ace.

There should be a word for feminine guys who are not gay/trans (if it's not shameful to be a tomboy, why should it be shameful to be a straight feminine man. P.S. I dont mean men who wear dresses but rather men who like stuff that are considered feminine like cooking, pink, sewing, expressing their emotions etc.)

Changing genders should be illegal for kids below 18 (they are way too young to make such life changing decisions).

#some random thoughts i had on lgbt #id love to hear your random thoughts too #lgbtq #lgbtqia #lgbtq community #lesbian #aromanitc #asexual aromantic #asexual #ace aro #my thoughts #thoughts #society #big facts #tomboys #female masculinity #male feminist

[jacuzziwaters]

What I would give to see 2 (or more) BIPOC in a QPR in any piece of media.

#i mean if y'all got recommendations #my ask box is open #qpr #queer platonic relationship #black love #queer love #queer relationships #queer bipoc #bipoc #jay's attempts at communicating #aromantism #asexuality #asexual #aromantic #aro #ace #black ace #black aro #black aromantic #black asexuals

[aroaceqoutes]

When your aromantic and worried abt continuing the bloodline when your fam says this 💚💚

#aromantic #aroace #asexual #aro #aspec #aromanticism #ace #i love my aro community #arospec #asexuality #live your best life #message to myself #message to all aromantics

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads

Wren Martin Ruins It All

YA contemporary romcom

student council president proposes to cut the school valentine’s dance because it's expensive and alienating for queer/single people, but instead the vice president (who he adamantly hates for being perfect) suggests they get sponsored by a popular friendship app

he decides to secretly give the app a go to “know his enemy” but ends up making a friend, and starts to catch feelings for him...and maybe realises the guy he hates isn't actually so bad either...

ace mlm MC, aro-questioning side character

I loved this so much! great MC with a funny internal monologue

despite the title most issues or misunderstanding are sorted out pretty quickly rather than drawn out for the drama and plot. which is refreshing

I was a little nervous about the concept of ‘ace hates the school dance and wants it shut down’ - there's a bit of a stereotype of aspecs being boring Fun Haters - but I think it did a really good job of showing the specifics of why, not dragging it out, and also that he’s just a snarky fun hater in general with not much weight behind it.

There’s also no discovering of sexuality or big coming out (just one-on-one) - he already knows he’s ace, and it comes up naturally a bunch, talking about how dances etc can feel isolating, the way the friendship app called buddy being called ace-friendly can feel infantilizing, avoiding dating because of the stress of having to check upfront if people about it, etc.

I would have liked to know more about his relationship with his mum? Though I understand that it’s clearly something he avoids thinking about - going too deep into his relationship with his parents might have changed the tone a lot. but still.

ARC from netgalley thanks netgalley

#wren martin ruins it all #aroaessidhe 2023 reads #asexual books #ngl as soon as i was like oh this boy is elliot schafer coded i was a lost cause #(re aro character - I have noticed a bit of a trend of “maybe aromantic but I don’t like labels” in YA #contemporary recently that I don’t love - but it’s not an inherent issue with this book) #I’ve read a lot of YA contemporary books where the portrayal of social media and made up apps doesn’t feel right; but this one did to me! #maybe it’s because it’s from the POV of someone’s who’s cynical about it. #(and types no punctuation no capitalisation…I could see my online-communication style reflected back at me…) #Even the confrontation at the end where feelings are confessed isn’t made into some big dramatic thing in front of everyone with no #communication. But it also doesn’t feel emotionally anticlimactic. #(maybe a couple of the reveals in the confession felt unnecessarily dramatic to me? like the story would have functioned without them. ) #but it's common for comtemporary ya to overdramatise silly things for the plot and im glad this didn't #possibly this is just my adult opinion about teen narratives. #The adult characters (even though they’re mostly background) feel like real people. #and it has some good friendships. also he has chickens and they are very good #it did become increasingly obvious that it was the same ppl but also they’re emotionally stupid. and like….it's part of the genre. #we all know this going in.

[nooks-cranny-mogai]

Anyway, as an alloaro, greyromantic, aceflux and non-communal Aro: Happy Valentine's day. You are not "Aro/ace/Aroacephobic" for celebrating your love. You are not doing Valentine's Day wrong if your celebrating your platonic love or love for yourself instead of a romantic and/or sexual partner. You're not hurting fellow LGBT people by enjoying your love and celebrating it. Valentine's Day can mean many things for many people.

And for those who will spend today tearing them down, trauma dumping, complaining, calling people aphobes or other insults for celebrating or trying to claim this day is unnecessary and exclusionary.... I hope you heal. I hope you can learn to love yourself.

And when your done healing, I hope you learn that some things just arnt about you and just because they arnt, doesn't make them bad. It sucks to not feel personally included in a wildly celebrated holiday but many people survive st. Patrick's without being Irish, Easter without being Christian and the 4th of July without being American or having American pride. This isn't any different and you don't have to like Valentine's Day, but understand for many gay couples, interracial couples, trans couples, interfaith couples, polycules and so many other people whose love is oppressed and destroyed, this day is a day for them to show their love.

No one likes a Grinch.

#clover speaks #im trying to be so nice but my fellow aroaces act like fucking christians during halloween or when hannakah is mentioned #it all dosent sound as deep as you think it is and its abit lowkey annoying #they try and pull up thanksgiving to natives and i want to scream as an aro native #not even lowkey high key fucking annoying #i understand your struggles but fr? its not even offensive to us it just dosent include us #and my whole community turns into but what about meeee 🥺🥺🥺 #it aint about us and that dosent make it bad or exclusionary #if valentines day makes you hate yourself thats a sekf hate problem not others #get your shit together in therapy aint no body elses problem #just one block of the reasons why im non communal and its so irritating #you sound self centered and hostile and nothing they put forward as reasons to why the holiday is supposedly #problematic are actual reasons other than it hurty their fweelings they arnt incwuded #grow the fuck up yall act like toddlers at a kissing scene like 90% of the time and its so fuckin annoying #not even in a cringe way just in a completely disconnected from reality not seen the sun in 5 years way #its not cute and you make no sense at best and at worst come off so terminally online i cant stand it #anti fuck anti Valentine's day people all my aro homies hate their pretentious victim complex asses #this blog is pro Valentine's day #honestly im making a bigger deal out of it than it is but the thin veil some aros aces and aroaces wear to hide their #boiling hate for allos in their lives and for love and for other aros aces and aroaces who like love is some puritan ass shit #i see you in there :) #ur being fukin weird :) #you look like you said some questionable shit to lesbians in 2018 :) /neg #the type that think a lesbian icon equals terf or all lesbians are aphobes type shit #i remember that era but i aint gettin into it #no thank you 💀 #that was traumatizing #clover vents #clover hates #i will turn this post into a block chain if need be dont test me

[aro-culture-is]

Aro culture is not feeling comfortable with assigning queer labels to dead people because a) there's only so much you can know about someone without knowing them personally b) it's entirely their business how they categorize relationships and c) more often than not it stems from amatonormative reasons "they couldn't just be friends!! because they did THIS!!!"

I'm not the only one uncomfortable with this, right?

.

#Anonymous #aro culture is #aro #aromantic #actually aro #actually aromantic #ask #mod axel #my vibe is that we can describe only what we can observe #ie: shakespeare wrote a love sonnet to a man but also did so to women #and we believe based on this and other details that he likely experienced attraction to both men and women #i also think it's okay to say 'based on what we know this individual *may have* identified as bisexual in modern days' #or 'this individual was identified as female in the early part of their life but at some point publicly presented as male. he requested #to be known as such to his dying days. as such we refer to him with the pronouns he last appeared to prefer. while we cannot be certain #as to how this individual would identify himself in modern days - we strongly suspect he would consider himself transmasc' #things like that y'know? #but also if you consistently and exclusively apply this to particular experiences (cough cough terfs and ppl who were probs trans) #that's a great way to observe that you should listen more to that community and their experiences and how they may relate to that person #(careful in particular with people claiming historical individuals as butch when they explicitly did not identify themselves as women) #(because terfs have a... well. rather intense push for that usually.)

[shmaroace]

sorry but i'm that person who makes their sexuality their entire personality. actually in fact i WILL be obnoxious about being aroace and there's nothing you can do to stop me :)

#i know it's annoying but i'm so proud of being aroace and how far i've come #in the past few years i've gone from #not knowing anything about the queer community and being super closeted #to being a (mostly) out and proud aroace/trans person #like yeah i'll shout it from the rooftops because im finally happy with myself and my labels #isnt self love important anyway? i love myself and i will be obnoxious about it. not sorry #aro #aromantic #arospec #ace #asexual #acespec #aroace #aspec

[thatineffablewitch]

Relating aros to love is like conceptualizing women against men

So we agree that women exist outside of men, right? Saying women can do what men do is still problematic because it assumes we want to be like men, that masculinity is the bar everyone must be striving to achieve. That, as Adrienne Rich points out in her iconic piece on compulsive heterosexuality, a great deal of feminist scholarship still assumes women are innately drawn to men and refuses to examine the institution of heterosexuality. Women and femininity exist in their own right, and don’t always need to be compared against men. Men are not the universal measuring pole that gives something worth.

We’re agreed on that? Yes? Good.

So explain to me why we do the exact same thing with love.

Now, everything I say may not be 100% accurate because I just accepted myself as aro. I’ve learned a lot about myself and this community in the past few months, so if I mis-explain something, please understand it is ignorance rather than purposeful malice/exclusion and kindly correct me (we do basic human respect on this blog).

A (if not, the) main LGBTQIA+ slogan we hear is “love is love.” People justify and sanitize queerness by centering love in the conversation, usually romantic love. This itself probably plays a big role in aromantic erasure when it comes to a majority of queer spaces. People understand love, think of it as this unifying and positive force that brings people together, and assume this feeling is universal and good.

Aromanticism means we innately have a different relationship with the word, “love.” Whether we still experience other forms of love (platonic, familial, love for pizza, etc.) or are loveless, we know the importance of other feelings. A queer experience of romantic attraction naturally shapes our experience with the general idea of love, and what it means to truly experience that. We know there are an abundance of other experiences in this world worth having, and that love isn’t necessarily the only way to care about other people. Love isn’t the only thing to give life meaning, or to make someone whole. Queerness in queer theory means to question to status quo. If love is baked into our amatonormative society, what does “love is love” do to queer this widespread societal ideal? Nothing.

We use love like a weapon, a measuring stick for something or someone’s worth. So to be loveless, if love is what society uses to assign worth and validity, is to be worthless or inhuman. Hence any media representation we manage to scrounge up (or at least be coded as) are either villains, not human, or both. Instead of accepting aromantic existence, instead of being intrigued by lovelessness and allowing curiosity to lead to liberation, society insists on erasing and invalidating aromantics instead.

Well, just as women exist independently outside of men, we can exist outside of love. Love does not measure our worth just as men do not measure a woman’s worth. We can treat people kindly and care about things and be complete, whole human beings without love. This seems to me like a radical flavor of queerness that society as a whole (and some other queers!) aren’t eager to contemplate or try to understand. But whether they understand or not, we are valid and cool as fuck anyways.

Wishing every brave and gorgeous aro a wonderful aromantic awareness week!

#This might make zero sense but maybe other aros will understand what I’m saying #And part of me was nervous to post this cuz I dread the idea of aphobes coming at me #But I sure as fuck don’t want to let fear rule my life either so here we are #Hoping for the best #If you don’t understand that’s ok #I’ve been acquainted with aromanticism since I was like 15 and it’s taken me six years to even begin understanding it and myself #Amatonormativity is a bitch #They really cook this shit into us so I know it’s hard to try understanding this stuff #I admire anyone brave enough to question love #This community is seriously so gorgeous and wise #Happy aro week incredible people #And if you’re angry that you don’t understand #Don’t take it out on me #Go book a rage room or something if you’re mad about it—find healthier coping mechanisms than yelling @ strangers online #Aro #Aromantic #Aro pride #aromantic pride #loveless aro #aro awareness week #aromantic awareness week #adrienne rich #queer theory #amatonormativity #My post