Okay, I have been waffling so much about whatâs the best place to write this and whatâs the most interpersonally responsible way to voice a criticism of whatâs ultimately a widespread community ideology, but.
I think ultimately I just need to say this as its own post and not a response that would get distracted from the actual point by coming inherently framed by a preexisting statement.
Asserting that someone canât be aromantic (and instead has to identify as some other type of aro-related label) because they âexperienceâ any amount/type/frequency of âromantic attractionâ is gatekeeping, counterproductive amatonormativity.
Itâs saying that involuntary, nebulous and personal and poorly-defined emotions - regardless of frequency, interpretation, context, or significance to the person in question - ultimately override any other concerns that a person may have, in how they want to contextualise themself internally and socially-structurally, via identifying with a given label.
And when it comes particularly to romance, and this concept weâve created of romantic orientation, that is extraordinarily dangerous, and extraordinarily reinforcing of the notion that romance is not only more significant than other relationships to others and oneself, but also organically real instead of socially constructed. Whether you âfeel romantic attractionâ or not - why is this the defining factor? What is âromantic attractionâ, but another form of the idea that romance, is, again, biological rather than cultural? What exactly makes something âromantic attractionâ when you feel things that another person might call that, but that you actively refuse to contextualise as being âromanticâ at all? Why is this supposed to be more important than, for example, how amatonormativity has shaped oneâs life and understanding of relationships and sense of self, and how one wants to push back against that network of ideas? And so pushing people out of one identity, essentially saying âeven in this community where the point is that romance is not essential or the most important, the fact that you are in some fashion `closerâ to the ideal of a person acceptable to amatonormativity, means you have to take on an identity specifically highlighting that greater degree of closenessâ - that is not okay.
Identities that blur the boundaries between being alloromantic and aromantic are extremely valuable, clearly useful to so many people, and philosophically important in weakening the notion that romance is a single unit of feeling and action, something you either have or donât have and that is easily understood and defined. But defining them in part by whether one merely experiences an emotion, and positing no choice for whether people want to conceptualise themselves and said emotions in that way as opposed to in some way that would make simply âaromanticâ more sensible or appealing, is not how to build a strong sense of what aromanticism and anti-amatonormativity even is.
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