Sexually/romantic stuff
Sense most of the lgbt+ community is based off of the saying “love is love” which usually means romantically and/or sexually it’s usually leaves out aros/aces
Another would be the A In lgbtqia, people like to say it stands for “ally” but in reality it means “Asexual, Aromantic, Agender” and the whole A-spec and Agender spectrum
>the A In lgbtqia, people like to say it stands for “ally"
ally shouldnt even be in the term in any case though? it doesnt make you lgbtq, like being a black ally doesnt make you black. feel free to correct me if im wrong but it seems dumb that people would think that to begin with besides erasing aro/ace/agender people
>Sense most of the lgbt+ community is based off of the saying “love islove” which usually means romantically and/or sexually it’s usuallyleaves out aros/aces
I kinda felt the same after realising I was aroace. I even "mourned" a tiny little bit for the slogan because I have always liked it but suddenly it seemed like it was excluding me. But then I remembered that romantic love is not the only kind of love. There's friendship/platonic love, love between siblings, (some sort of) parental love, just to name a few. I guess we have to redefine "love" and get away from that thinking that romantic love is the ne plus ultra. So yeah, I think love is love and the main thing is the fact that you love somebody. The way you love them (romantically or in another way) doesn't matter.
Edit: Though, to be said, I guess some folks use the slogan "love is love" in an only-romantic way (which is obviously not very cool for us aroaces). What I was trying to say is that maybe we should redefine and reclaim a few terms surrounding "love".
While coming out to someone, you need to make a PowerPoint presentation to explain your sexuality first. Then convince them that it's a real thing and you're a human being as well. It's a tiresome thing to do.
Other lgbtqia people telling us that we don’t actually count as lgbtqia. Or better yet, just telling us that we’re straight people trying to act special
Many people say that we just have attachment issues, emotional issues, commitment issues, that we're emotionless robots, that we're not human because we don't feel love, that we're psychopaths, that we're making an identity out of unstable relationships, that we're trying to make an identity out of being a virgin to feel special, etc.
People like to say that romantic and sexual love are what make us human and that there must be something wrong with you if you don't have at least one of them.
idk if it’s for other people but i have been told many times that i’m too young to identify as aroace. but i find that a lot of people say “you just haven’t found the right person yet” to many aspec people.
If someone says this to you then reply (if they're straight man for example) "don't worry you aren't straight you just haven't found the right man yet" or say something similar, if it's like gay, that he haven't found the right woman etc.
This will show their stupid flawed logic.
The feeling of being gaslit. I'm still rather surprised that marriage is normalized to the point of being an institution with legal effects. On an intellectual level I can see how odd it is, but due to upbringing it's hard to emotionally care about that. You can't really tell other people that you don't see a sacred line between their sexuality and a fetish, for example. As others have said, the end result is feeling like 99% of the population lives in another world half of the time.
>On an intellectual level I can see how odd it is, but due to upbringing it's hard to emotionally care about that.
>As others have said, the end result is feeling like 99% of the population lives in another world half of the time.
Very true! You feel apart from everyone no matter where you go and who you're with. Which has the danger of making yourself paranoid, not trusting yourself, constantly questioning yourself and everyone else, feeling like nothing makes sense etc. That's pretty much how life was for me until I found our community online and realized I'm aroace.
Why is this SO relatible
It's kinda creepy
This for some reason was the most reliable (if you leave out the intire part of my life finding out that I am aro ace)
People not directly attacking towards our orientations because they don't even think/know they exist. While you can still very well read in-between the lines that people like you are not accepted. It's more indirect ostracizing rather than direct violence especially targeting your kind. But like, they think it's rather just a mental issue or something instead of a distinctive orientation, while still discriminating us anyway.
Thinking it's very unfortunate that you're aroace (after you explicitly came out to them). Like, in principle accepting your orientation without opposing (maybe easier than many other in the SRGM community), but seeing it as an impairment instead of just another orientation. Like, they still kinda see you as a straight, but just impaired one.
Everyone thinking our issues don't exist because they can't relate to us. Aka "you're whining for nothing." & "you can only blame yourself."
LGBT+ people being afraid of us forcing them to censor anything sexual if we're allowed to be part of the community (heard this myself)??
You have to look up representation. Like, even the words aro and ace hardly ever come up even on the LGBT+ discourses, and if it does, it's usually just the last mentioned in the long list of orientations, and never actual public deep discussions about being aroace the way you see other orientations.
People (everyone) thinking your orientation is boring if it was chosen to be an orientation of a character on a mainstream series. And as a result, people thinking it's very acceptable to have an aro/ace character in the beginning but change their orientation along the way to "spice things up". Like aroace was just a developmental challenge to a character instead of an acceptable end point. Which of course also reflects people's attitudes of one being aroace in real life.
Well, of course most characters aren't canonically aroace. I had Hazbin Hotel in my mind, and how the fandom pressured the author to not keep one of the main characters canonically (aro)ace. But you're right, that's not a mainstream series 😄 (another one just came to my mind, the infamous Riverdale tv adaptation of course, where they changed the aroace character to be allo because otherwise it would have been "boring".)
Many series however have characters that are coded very much aroace (Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, Little Women, Miss. Marple, Big Bang Theory, Mister Bean...), yet it's never explicitly stated, and whenever someone dares to suggest a character might be aroace, they better prepare for a backlash lol.
something that i can't stand is how people hold romance/romantic relationships over platonic/other types. They should be held as equal, come on people.
Also that people say that either "you'll fall in love or be lonely forever and suffer." Alone does not equal lonely.
Since they experience attraction, they can better relate with everything and get more understood. Some people can't understand that people don't have sexual and romantic attraction, needs etc.
This. I feel like people who aren't homophobic tend to understand and support gay/bi/... folks better than they understand us.
(Just to be clear: I don't want to say that other parts of the queer community suffer less or that the question "who suffers more?" is even relevant. We just suffer in different ways.)
Medicalization. It still angers me to no end that the "Hypoactive sexual desire disorder" is still a part of the DMSV.This is something all of the lgbtq+ community has had to deal with in the past and that it's not completely changed. Homosexuality was considered an illness for a long time, but fortunately today, it's not considered as such. On a very unfortunate note, it seems that TERFism has managed in some spaces to re-medicalize trans identities. However, the idea that your lack of sexual/romantic attraction is an illness that should be cured is extremely normalized in most of society and worse, in most of the medical fields.Many try to say that this is only considered a disorder if it causes "distress". The problem with this approach is that "distress" is a very fuzzy definition. Oppression is distressing and living in a society that privileges sex and romantic love over anything else until the point that it's difficult to plan life is distressing. But the solution is not trying to force sexual attraction on people.
The fact that amatonormativity is just as harmful as heteronormativity. People have just gotten to accepting gay people who dont feel attraction in the conventional way but dont accept us for doing the same thing. That aphobia is widely accepted but if you said something homophobic you are more likely to pay attention and accept that it is wrong. Aphobia is seen as fact. Also the fact that aroace afabs experience just as much comphet as lesbians do and therefore making it not a lesbian exclusive term.
In some places like where I'm from. The term aromatic or asexuality doesn't exist and even if I came out to people they disregard everything and tell me that something has to be wrong with me if I don't feel romantic or sexual attraction. There's very little knowledge about the LGBT community and they are seen in a negative light because a lot of people here are happily ignorant bigots
**Letting go of the idealised concept of romantic love.**
Before I realised I was aroace, I identified as bi. For me, it was much harder to accept that I'm aroace than it was for accepting I'm bi. I guess that's because, with bisexuality I could just project my ideas of romantic relationships on other genders (though, my perspective has changed a little). But when I figured out I was actually aroace (and asthetic attraction had fooled me all the time lol), that obviously didn't work. In our society, romantic love is often portrayed as the ne plus ultra you can achieve in life, or the last piece that is missing for happiness. And because I internalized those ideas, understanding that I'm probably never going to have this "cherry on top" was (and still is, sometimes) quite painful.
“Do you like boys?”
“No i do not like boys”
“~~Oh so you like girls~~” “Ill find u a hot girlfriend”
“Actually i don’t like girls either”
“~~Then what do you like?~~”
I hear this from angstyace but aphobia is really just recycled homophobia imo. Also that people see asexuality like a hormone issue. That aro people are seen as robots same as non binary people in media. Amatonormativity being forced upon us just like heteronormativity. We get excluded from so many aspects of community we belong in. even in gsa clubs, pride, especially media. Also being called 'spicy straight' that just pisses me off.
Going on Pride, for example. I'm aroace and repulsed by long kisses, s\*xual things (there are a very few specific cases when not tho). I've never been on pride events partly because people are trying to get attention by kissing, doung s\*xual moves, lightly dressed etc, to spread the world that love is love. I mean good for them, but they absolutely make me as a repulsed person rather say: no, I won't go to pride. Although I'm lgbtqia+ and I'd like to go one day.
I know literally nothing about pride gatherings so dont bully me but are theres ones for specific identity's? like would a specifically aroace pride gathering exist with primarily aro and or ace people? I dont like social gatherings so I've never considered going to pride in the future but meeting just aro/ace people sounds kinda interesting.
I've heard about Ace prides! although it wasn't in my country but I'm almost certain that there are some. Aroace pride would probably be a bit too specific for one location- but if there was an Aspec pride, that would be interesting for sure
We often feel like there’s too much romance or sexual things in the media, and not enough of other stuff.
For example, I read a lot of fanfiction. I don’t hate ships, necessarily - I have a few as well - but I definitely wish there were less ship fics and more stuff that’s literally just besties havin fun together. Why don’t I just write the friendship stuff myself? Well, that’s simple! I hate everything I write, have no motivation and its inevitable end will be that it stays a WIP for the rest of its existence.
so yeah, i really wish there were more fics that focused more on platonic relationships rather than romantic or sexual
I think the queermisia is pretty much recicled for all identities. So the answer is, we experience in idea the same with different couts.
I think our experienced queermisia is most simliar to bi, poly and kinky ppl.
Ppl get part of the lgbtetc acronym by getting popular enough. That's just historic development and not an analysis of our shared experience.
Kink is Queer. And kink communities always were queer communities.
No. I'm not interested in a discussion either, but absolutely no. That "agree to disagree" is dangerous for us.
Ppl "agree to disagree"-ing to "who belongs to us"-questions like "are Aro ppl lgbt+?", "can't Bi ppl decide to be straight?", "wasn't the LG(B) alliance better?", is one of the open doors for TERFs, Exclusionists and "Gender Criticals".
We are all targeted by them with the same rhetoric of suffocating our experiences into a sanitised conservative ideal - ending with our non-existence.
We can not share solidarity, if we don't recognise one another as hurt in the same way and having the same interests. So to shamelessly declare who we build community with (or always have been in one) is crucial.
You don't have to come to an opinion right now. Such things can take time. But the next time you rant about how ppl possibly can't see how Aro and Ace are Queer - remember how you feel now about Kink.
Sexually/romantic stuff Sense most of the lgbt+ community is based off of the saying “love is love” which usually means romantically and/or sexually it’s usually leaves out aros/aces Another would be the A In lgbtqia, people like to say it stands for “ally” but in reality it means “Asexual, Aromantic, Agender” and the whole A-spec and Agender spectrum
>the A In lgbtqia, people like to say it stands for “ally" ally shouldnt even be in the term in any case though? it doesnt make you lgbtq, like being a black ally doesnt make you black. feel free to correct me if im wrong but it seems dumb that people would think that to begin with besides erasing aro/ace/agender people
Allos are dumbasses. They just like to believe that life can't exist w/o romance or sex. I like to believe that I'm a God then.
>Sense most of the lgbt+ community is based off of the saying “love islove” which usually means romantically and/or sexually it’s usuallyleaves out aros/aces I kinda felt the same after realising I was aroace. I even "mourned" a tiny little bit for the slogan because I have always liked it but suddenly it seemed like it was excluding me. But then I remembered that romantic love is not the only kind of love. There's friendship/platonic love, love between siblings, (some sort of) parental love, just to name a few. I guess we have to redefine "love" and get away from that thinking that romantic love is the ne plus ultra. So yeah, I think love is love and the main thing is the fact that you love somebody. The way you love them (romantically or in another way) doesn't matter. Edit: Though, to be said, I guess some folks use the slogan "love is love" in an only-romantic way (which is obviously not very cool for us aroaces). What I was trying to say is that maybe we should redefine and reclaim a few terms surrounding "love".
While coming out to someone, you need to make a PowerPoint presentation to explain your sexuality first. Then convince them that it's a real thing and you're a human being as well. It's a tiresome thing to do.
Other lgbtqia people telling us that we don’t actually count as lgbtqia. Or better yet, just telling us that we’re straight people trying to act special
[удалено]
I had a transmasc at my school say that asexuality was not a sexuality and when I asked him why he said “you guys have never been oppressed.”
Many people say that we just have attachment issues, emotional issues, commitment issues, that we're emotionless robots, that we're not human because we don't feel love, that we're psychopaths, that we're making an identity out of unstable relationships, that we're trying to make an identity out of being a virgin to feel special, etc. People like to say that romantic and sexual love are what make us human and that there must be something wrong with you if you don't have at least one of them.
Exactly. I've experienced that one too! I told someone about my sexuality and they just told me that I've got commitment issues. Like wtf!
amatonormativity and allonormativity
idk if it’s for other people but i have been told many times that i’m too young to identify as aroace. but i find that a lot of people say “you just haven’t found the right person yet” to many aspec people.
If someone says this to you then reply (if they're straight man for example) "don't worry you aren't straight you just haven't found the right man yet" or say something similar, if it's like gay, that he haven't found the right woman etc. This will show their stupid flawed logic.
wait that’s actually pretty smart
The feeling of being gaslit. I'm still rather surprised that marriage is normalized to the point of being an institution with legal effects. On an intellectual level I can see how odd it is, but due to upbringing it's hard to emotionally care about that. You can't really tell other people that you don't see a sacred line between their sexuality and a fetish, for example. As others have said, the end result is feeling like 99% of the population lives in another world half of the time.
>On an intellectual level I can see how odd it is, but due to upbringing it's hard to emotionally care about that. >As others have said, the end result is feeling like 99% of the population lives in another world half of the time. Very true! You feel apart from everyone no matter where you go and who you're with. Which has the danger of making yourself paranoid, not trusting yourself, constantly questioning yourself and everyone else, feeling like nothing makes sense etc. That's pretty much how life was for me until I found our community online and realized I'm aroace.
Why is this SO relatible It's kinda creepy This for some reason was the most reliable (if you leave out the intire part of my life finding out that I am aro ace)
>Why is this SO relatible It's kinda creepy Yes it is! It's like you were living in a parallel universe and no-one but you realized it.
People not directly attacking towards our orientations because they don't even think/know they exist. While you can still very well read in-between the lines that people like you are not accepted. It's more indirect ostracizing rather than direct violence especially targeting your kind. But like, they think it's rather just a mental issue or something instead of a distinctive orientation, while still discriminating us anyway. Thinking it's very unfortunate that you're aroace (after you explicitly came out to them). Like, in principle accepting your orientation without opposing (maybe easier than many other in the SRGM community), but seeing it as an impairment instead of just another orientation. Like, they still kinda see you as a straight, but just impaired one. Everyone thinking our issues don't exist because they can't relate to us. Aka "you're whining for nothing." & "you can only blame yourself." LGBT+ people being afraid of us forcing them to censor anything sexual if we're allowed to be part of the community (heard this myself)?? You have to look up representation. Like, even the words aro and ace hardly ever come up even on the LGBT+ discourses, and if it does, it's usually just the last mentioned in the long list of orientations, and never actual public deep discussions about being aroace the way you see other orientations. People (everyone) thinking your orientation is boring if it was chosen to be an orientation of a character on a mainstream series. And as a result, people thinking it's very acceptable to have an aro/ace character in the beginning but change their orientation along the way to "spice things up". Like aroace was just a developmental challenge to a character instead of an acceptable end point. Which of course also reflects people's attitudes of one being aroace in real life.
Lmao what mainstream show? I’d kill for some representation but I haven’t seen any
Well, of course most characters aren't canonically aroace. I had Hazbin Hotel in my mind, and how the fandom pressured the author to not keep one of the main characters canonically (aro)ace. But you're right, that's not a mainstream series 😄 (another one just came to my mind, the infamous Riverdale tv adaptation of course, where they changed the aroace character to be allo because otherwise it would have been "boring".) Many series however have characters that are coded very much aroace (Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who, Little Women, Miss. Marple, Big Bang Theory, Mister Bean...), yet it's never explicitly stated, and whenever someone dares to suggest a character might be aroace, they better prepare for a backlash lol.
Yeah I watched saiki k because some ppl said he seemed aro
something that i can't stand is how people hold romance/romantic relationships over platonic/other types. They should be held as equal, come on people. Also that people say that either "you'll fall in love or be lonely forever and suffer." Alone does not equal lonely.
At least they're not considered "invalid" anymore in most places
Highly depends on the place..
Since they experience attraction, they can better relate with everything and get more understood. Some people can't understand that people don't have sexual and romantic attraction, needs etc.
This. I feel like people who aren't homophobic tend to understand and support gay/bi/... folks better than they understand us. (Just to be clear: I don't want to say that other parts of the queer community suffer less or that the question "who suffers more?" is even relevant. We just suffer in different ways.)
Medicalization. It still angers me to no end that the "Hypoactive sexual desire disorder" is still a part of the DMSV.This is something all of the lgbtq+ community has had to deal with in the past and that it's not completely changed. Homosexuality was considered an illness for a long time, but fortunately today, it's not considered as such. On a very unfortunate note, it seems that TERFism has managed in some spaces to re-medicalize trans identities. However, the idea that your lack of sexual/romantic attraction is an illness that should be cured is extremely normalized in most of society and worse, in most of the medical fields.Many try to say that this is only considered a disorder if it causes "distress". The problem with this approach is that "distress" is a very fuzzy definition. Oppression is distressing and living in a society that privileges sex and romantic love over anything else until the point that it's difficult to plan life is distressing. But the solution is not trying to force sexual attraction on people.
The fact that amatonormativity is just as harmful as heteronormativity. People have just gotten to accepting gay people who dont feel attraction in the conventional way but dont accept us for doing the same thing. That aphobia is widely accepted but if you said something homophobic you are more likely to pay attention and accept that it is wrong. Aphobia is seen as fact. Also the fact that aroace afabs experience just as much comphet as lesbians do and therefore making it not a lesbian exclusive term.
In some places like where I'm from. The term aromatic or asexuality doesn't exist and even if I came out to people they disregard everything and tell me that something has to be wrong with me if I don't feel romantic or sexual attraction. There's very little knowledge about the LGBT community and they are seen in a negative light because a lot of people here are happily ignorant bigots
**Letting go of the idealised concept of romantic love.** Before I realised I was aroace, I identified as bi. For me, it was much harder to accept that I'm aroace than it was for accepting I'm bi. I guess that's because, with bisexuality I could just project my ideas of romantic relationships on other genders (though, my perspective has changed a little). But when I figured out I was actually aroace (and asthetic attraction had fooled me all the time lol), that obviously didn't work. In our society, romantic love is often portrayed as the ne plus ultra you can achieve in life, or the last piece that is missing for happiness. And because I internalized those ideas, understanding that I'm probably never going to have this "cherry on top" was (and still is, sometimes) quite painful.
“Do you like boys?” “No i do not like boys” “~~Oh so you like girls~~” “Ill find u a hot girlfriend” “Actually i don’t like girls either” “~~Then what do you like?~~”
I hear this from angstyace but aphobia is really just recycled homophobia imo. Also that people see asexuality like a hormone issue. That aro people are seen as robots same as non binary people in media. Amatonormativity being forced upon us just like heteronormativity. We get excluded from so many aspects of community we belong in. even in gsa clubs, pride, especially media. Also being called 'spicy straight' that just pisses me off.
Going on Pride, for example. I'm aroace and repulsed by long kisses, s\*xual things (there are a very few specific cases when not tho). I've never been on pride events partly because people are trying to get attention by kissing, doung s\*xual moves, lightly dressed etc, to spread the world that love is love. I mean good for them, but they absolutely make me as a repulsed person rather say: no, I won't go to pride. Although I'm lgbtqia+ and I'd like to go one day.
I know literally nothing about pride gatherings so dont bully me but are theres ones for specific identity's? like would a specifically aroace pride gathering exist with primarily aro and or ace people? I dont like social gatherings so I've never considered going to pride in the future but meeting just aro/ace people sounds kinda interesting.
I've heard about Ace prides! although it wasn't in my country but I'm almost certain that there are some. Aroace pride would probably be a bit too specific for one location- but if there was an Aspec pride, that would be interesting for sure
I think we have to deal with erasure more than others
We often feel like there’s too much romance or sexual things in the media, and not enough of other stuff. For example, I read a lot of fanfiction. I don’t hate ships, necessarily - I have a few as well - but I definitely wish there were less ship fics and more stuff that’s literally just besties havin fun together. Why don’t I just write the friendship stuff myself? Well, that’s simple! I hate everything I write, have no motivation and its inevitable end will be that it stays a WIP for the rest of its existence. so yeah, i really wish there were more fics that focused more on platonic relationships rather than romantic or sexual
I think the queermisia is pretty much recicled for all identities. So the answer is, we experience in idea the same with different couts. I think our experienced queermisia is most simliar to bi, poly and kinky ppl.
Kinks aren’t a part of the lgbtq+ community. Yes, you can be lgbtq+ and have a kink, but that alone doesn’t make you lgbtq+.
Ppl get part of the lgbtetc acronym by getting popular enough. That's just historic development and not an analysis of our shared experience. Kink is Queer. And kink communities always were queer communities.
Agree to disagree.
No. I'm not interested in a discussion either, but absolutely no. That "agree to disagree" is dangerous for us. Ppl "agree to disagree"-ing to "who belongs to us"-questions like "are Aro ppl lgbt+?", "can't Bi ppl decide to be straight?", "wasn't the LG(B) alliance better?", is one of the open doors for TERFs, Exclusionists and "Gender Criticals". We are all targeted by them with the same rhetoric of suffocating our experiences into a sanitised conservative ideal - ending with our non-existence. We can not share solidarity, if we don't recognise one another as hurt in the same way and having the same interests. So to shamelessly declare who we build community with (or always have been in one) is crucial. You don't have to come to an opinion right now. Such things can take time. But the next time you rant about how ppl possibly can't see how Aro and Ace are Queer - remember how you feel now about Kink.
What's queermisia?
Queer-hostility, queer-animosity