#oh and clarification: by having been in that position i mean that i was aro all along but realized i was more repulsed than enjoying it

[aro-culture-is]

Aro culture is not understanding why someone won’t break up with their so when they lose feelings

.

#aro culture is #aro #aromantic #actually aro #actually aromantic #ask #mod kee #having been in that positiom it was complicated #there's always something more behind the scenes imo and usually you're looking at someome who is #... hmm how to phrase it... potentially hyperempathetic / hypersensitive to other's emotions for a variety of reasons including trauma #and / or just concerned about how the other will handle it #and those are all v common #like... personally i had a bg of emotional abuse and my partner was very into me... and i was worried how she'd respond #and she responded very poorly!! i was afraid of her responding with emotional abuse tactics and... she did. #and i know you might be thinking 'well yeah obviously if there's abuse... but im not talking about that' and the thing is: #how do you know? do you know intimately both people to not have a history of abuse? do you know that abusers groom their social circles? #they don't beleive their in the wrong - and they dont associate with people who do or would likely believe that #in all genuine and awful honesty: most people escaping from abuse find that ppl don't want to believe they know an abuser and excuse it #oh and clarification: by having been in that position i mean that i was aro all along but realized i was more repulsed than enjoying it

[starsandwriting]

Happy Asexual Week!!

Shout out to that aphobe insta blog i stumbled across in 9th grade that managed to convince 14 year old me,who had just discovered she's aroace, that asexuals aren't a part of the lgbtq+ community😌 Esteemed stranger i hope i find your account again so we can have a Talk.

Please be wary of fake ace positive people like these. I had actually seen a post of theirs that explained, in a very educated tone, how aces were 100% valid but not lgbt. And i was very confused because??? Everyone on tumblr says that aces are lgbt?? What is the truth???

So i commented on their post asking for clarification (which was kinda a big deal for me, my parents are overprotective and absolutely forbid me from contacting strangers on the internet in any way)

Here's the general gist of a long conversation. Seem familiar to any of you?

Me: excuse me, could you explain your post a bit more please? Im confused

Them: Sure! Basically there is a huge discourse on whether ace people can be considered lgbt or not. The lgbt community was formed specifically to help opressed and marginalised queer people have a safe space. While aces definitely aren't straight, we haven't experienced the same opression and hatred that gay, bi, etc people have experienced, so we can't really count ourselves as members of the lgbt community

Me, still confused: uhh i thought anyone not straight was lgbt? And I've seen many posts who say that aces are lgbt???

Them: Yeah but they're wrong. Which is why i made this post. Im ace too. We simply haven't had to deal with the same life problems as actual lgbt people. We can definitely have our own separate community tho! Hope i cleared it up!

This person was making a lot of sense to 14 year old me and i believed their logic without a doubt. I was pretty disappointed tho, because I'd been so excited to find out that i can call myself a member of the lgbtq+ comunity. Then i suddenly perked up because hey! This post is about ace people, not asexuals! (Yeahhh i was still new to these terms at the time) but im asexual which means im still a valid member!

Me: sorry for disturbing again but is ace and asexual the same thing?

Them: no problem :) yes they are the same thing

Me, disappointed: oh ok

Me: I think i got it now! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain!

Them: You're welcome! Always happy to help :)

......yeahh.

In case you didnt catch it, everything this person told me was absolute bs. I somewhat knew about aphobes back then but the thing was that this person was so genuinely nice and polite to me that i believed them wholeheartedly, which just confused me about my sexuality even more.

Unfortunately when i first had the delightful accident of stumbling upon the word asexuality (and aromanticism! there were two words to describe me!) and went on social media to look up posts about them, everything i encountered was either aphobe bs like this one or ace discourse posts. So i pretty much spent the first half year thinking 'ok i ain't straight but im not lgbt either. Wtf am I?' But since then all the lovely ace positive people and posts on tumblr have reassured me over and over that people like me absolutely belong in this community!!

Which is why I'll always prefer tumblr over instagram. Insta can kiss my ass

To all my lovely ace, aro and agender pals: you all are 1000% a valid part of the lgbtq+ community and anyone who tells you otherwise is a blubbering idiot

#please be careful of people like these especially if you're young and new #thats said #happy ace week y'all!! #asexual awareness week #asexual #aroace #ace #lgbtqa #lgbtq+ #take that sucker i actually tagged this as lgbt come correct me now #the more i think about that encounter the more i want to talk to them again becaude BOI #asexual week #aromantic #agender #asexual pride #ace pride

[arotechno]

Intracommunity Thoughts

Okay, now that I’ve had a few days to reflect and move past my own visceral reactions, here are my Thoughts. This is mostly directed towards my fellow aroaces in response to this post by @arotaro, who very graciously took the time to clear things up regarding the latest alloaro/aroace discourse, but I think it can apply more generally toward intracommunity discourse in general. Please read her post first; I have no intentions of speaking over her, only of addressing my own complicity and hopefully helping to contextualize this discussion and push it forward. Under the cut, because I rambled.

I sometimes forget that I have a perhaps undeservedly loud voice on aro tumblr; I might feel like my voice is small, but I have a substantial amount of people watching what I say compared to other people I know, and that’s something I have failed to keep in mind from time to time when I open my mouth. So now I’m going to use that voice and say to my fellow aroaces: We’re allowed to have our own complicated feelings towards community issues without silencing the feelings of alloaros and non-SAM aros. Intracommunity issues are inherently emotionally charged, and it’s natural to have a gut reaction to things; however, as people we sometimes (likely unintentionally) let our gut emotions cloud our ability to perceive how someone else is feeling and get in the way of productive discussion. I think that’s what’s been happening here, and I am absolutely including myself in that. Any of my followers have seen me blow up over things that hit at some pressure point that other people coming at an issue from a different perspective could not have known about. I’ve decided I’m past that point right now.

This should be obvious, but everyone in the aro community is coming at every issue from a different angle; each of us occupies a different intersection of marginalization and past experiences that are going to shape our reactions to things. We can talk about those feelings without invalidating the feelings of others. We can process our own feelings of hurt and take a step back and ask ourselves why the other person is feeling hurt, and try to find some common ground.

This isn’t the first time we’ve had this discussion, but it’s the first time I’ve had a voice in it, so on a personal level my gut reactions as an aroace came from a place of fear, a feeling of “Oh god, not this again, this is going to be painful, I’m going to be forced to choose again” that I think others were feeling too. It’s a pretty common aroace experience to feel like you’re straddling a gap between two communities and the burden falls on you to be the mediator. But I don’t think that’s at the forefront of this discussion at all, and I don’t think that validating that experience should be mutually exclusive with acknowledging the very different pain of alloaros and non-SAM aros at all. As an aroace, you can say “I find the rift between the aro and ace communities particularly exhausting and hate feeling like I have to cut up my identity” and still listen when other aros say “The ace community, including many aroaces, erases me by calling my aro identity an ace identity and/or expecting me to either be alloaro or aroace and not treating my aro identity as whole.” Those statements aren’t even getting at the same issue, at least not explicitly. Our natural reactions to situations come from our own very specific experiences, and I think it’s important to contextualize those experiences instead of immediately going on the defensive.

I think it’s safe to say that the aro community, and the larger aspec community as a whole as well as probably a whole bunch of other communities that I’m not a part of, is very very good at being on the defensive, as that’s the position we’ve always been in. I think it’s also safe to say that nobody in this community has the intentions of ever hurting someone else; it’s just only natural that we’re bound to accidentally hurt each other, and we have to learn how to take a step back from our own feelings and discuss things without taking things personally that probably were never meant to be taken that way. It’s all about learning to step back, to ask for clarification, to provide context instead of only our visceral reactions. The bottom line is that even if we have other communities, for most of us the aro community is the only one where we can talk about being aro, and for that reason aro spaces mean a whole hell of a lot to us, which makes issues feel a lot more personal than they otherwise might. The fact of the matter is we only have each other, and if we want to move forward together then we need to learn to empathize with each other and strike a balance between letting ourselves feel and express our own hurt without making others feel prohibited from expressing their feelings too. It is easier said than done, but I think we’re better equipped now to do so than we were pre-discourse--I’m really hoping we are.

I’m rambling and this is starting to make no sense, so tl;dr I have been complicit in this from the start, and while my responses to the alloaro/aroace discourse stemmed from my own internalized emotions as an aroace, that in no way excuses my complicity in making alloaros and non-SAM aros feel unsafe expressing their feelings. The truth is that I was upset and frustrated and took things personally that I shouldn’t have, letting a miscommunication of intent spiral into a nightmare within my own head. Point is, I had a good shower-cry about it, took a step back, and decided to learn from this. To alloaros and non-SAM aros who I may have ever hurt or alienated, I am deeply sorry, and I want you to know that I have always loved you all and have never meant to hurt you or make you feel unwelcome or excluded, not when I know all too well how much erasure hurts. I’m willing to learn if you’re willing to let me.

#aro #aromantic #aro community #intracommunity #long post #op #alex if this was a bad move let me know i'll delete this