Ace, Aro, and Agender Visibility Blog

I’d count it as social dysphoria, if the feeling hinges on knowing your voice causes others to read you as female. and if it’s based more in preferring to sound a different way, then I’d count it as physical dysphoria?

hmmm. honestly romantic orientation is a pretty nebulous business, and the distinction between platonic and romantic feelings is something I feel is best left up to the person experiencing them. so the short answer here, I think, would be that if you want to continue describing those feelings as alterous/queerplatonic in nature, there wouldn’t be an issue!

my grey-romantic ass was probably Not the best choice to answer this, I’m afraid, since in examining my feelings towards my datefriend and towards a couple of my other friends, most of the actual differences are hard to describe? like, I would only want to kiss my datefriend, but out of the two other friends they’re both aromantic and one already has a partner. and I do believe sensual attraction can be a separate Thing from romantic attraction, so it can be hard to rule one out because of the other.

I’d probably talk to the person in question a little more, see if they’re able/willing to elaborate what romantic feelings are like for them?

het aces and aros absolutely belong in the community! I’m contemplating deleting that post, actually, because heteroromantic aces (and heterosexual aros) aren’t straight, sga is a shitty term to use anyway, and allosexual is absolutely a valid and useful term.

as a rule of thumb, cisgender people don’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether they might be trans, or if they’re faking it. and straight people, likewise, don’t spend a lot of time thinking they might not be straight! contrary to what gatekeepers would have you believe, people in the societally-accepted in group don’t try to think of reasons they might actually belong outside the group that’s accepted as normal and most routinely treated as human.

likewise, heterosexual, heteroromantic, and cisgender aren’t the default; just as asexual, aromantic, and agender aren’t null identities unless the person in question wants them to be! being asexual and/or aromantic and/or agender doesn’t mean someone is secretly heterosexual/heteroromantic/cisgender.

finally, just as being asexual, aromantic, or agender is valid, being heterosexual, heteroromantic, or cisgender is also valid. if you explore yourself and find that you’re not what you initially thought, that’s okay! if you turn out to be bisexual, aromantic, and cisgender, or aroace and genderfluid, or asexual, grey-aro, and genderqueer… there are lots of possibilities, and none of them make you a “special snowflake”! whatever you decide fits you best is ultimately just part of the many elements that make you who you are!

well, technically, demiromantic falls under the greyromantic/grey aromantic umbrella. I don’t see any issue with using both terms to describe yourself, except that it might be a little redundant.

honestly it’s almost never impolite to ask a question like that. when someone asks me first about my gender i’m always stoked that they’re taking the initiative and also i usually find it silly how often the “i hope i’m not wording this wrong” is totally unnecessary. just a simple “hey, i noticed your facebook gender related changes and was wondering what your gender is?” or something along those lines will be fine.

i just read their faq because i was not aware of this blog’s existence. i think they have some valid sentiment in that not all oppression/negative treatment by society is equal. i’ll be honest, i don’t know for certain where i personally stand with this recent argument about whether otherwise cishet ace or aro people should be included in the community or not. there’s valid points on both sides of the argument. but i do have some thoughts:

oppression isn’t a contest. if it were, a trans person who was accepted by nobody and treated the worst possible way from it would be More Trans than someone who has a supporting community. that just doesn’t seem right to me. our goal is all inclusiveness and an end to oppression so it seems weird to me that it has to be required to be considered mogai/lgbt+ (for the record, i’m trans so i’m not just defending myself or something)

also, the person who wrote the faq (is there more than one person running the blog?) seems to think there’s no negative consequence to being ace spectrum or aro spectrum at all. i’ll quote from a scenario in the faq: “Same person: I am only romantically attracted to people after I establish an emotional connection *noone has a problem with this or cares*”

like yes, most people might accept this, but even learning that about yourself in the first place is incredibly difficult. y’know, there’s the whole deal of feeling left out when you never have a celebrity crush (i’m demisexual) or forcing yourself to make your affection fit the standard “crush” model romantically (i’m quoiromantic), all while thinking everyone must be just like you because that’s all you know. you might not get denied a job for being acespec or arospec, but these things don’t exist in a social vacuum either.

it’s a complicated issue, and i can respect the opinion that the community shouldn’t include people who are Only acespec or arospec for the reason that they don’t share all the common sufferings we do, but in my personal opinion the community shouldn’t revolve entirely on that. i like the model where “trans is a feel and everyone can know it”, i like the model that encourages self exploration and welcoming circles because it just might help the general public realize we’re not so different from them. and besides, there can still be subcommunities for those who don’t want to include Everyone and only those with similar experiences. that’s valid and would be useful for a lot of people, myself included.

so this is super long and i could try to overexplain and ponder about this topic more but i think that’s enough to answer your question. i’m speaking only for myself and not the other mods of course. (and i’m also up for further discussion on specifics because why not.)

you might be agender! you might also be a different kind of nonbinary, by the sounds of it. if you haven’t already, i’d recommend looking at gender identity lists to see what fits you best. but yeah it definitely sounds like you’re not cis if she/her pronouns make you uncomfortable and they/them would make you happy. good luck!

--stellan

not really, actually-- bi just means attracted to more than one gender, and has nothing to do with dmab/dfab. same with poly, that’s just usually defined as “many” genders instead of two or more. pan is all genders though, yes. dmab/dfab should never be a requirement for attraction, even for straight and gay ppl, since it’s transphobic and doesn’t even say anything about people as a whole besides original birth assignment. 

to be agender means that automatically you can consider yourself transgender if you so choose to identify that way (some people don’t). they aren’t mutually exclusive, since trans is an umbrella that covers everything that isn’t cis.

either of those aro spectrum terms sounds reasonable to me, and i mean there are plenty of people whose aroness or aceness doesn’t affect the other. some people might not get that but that’s their own problem tbh. being open with anyone you’re interested in is always a good bet, too.