for a more inclusive aro flag (+ maybe ace too)

(You can skip to the paragraphs below the empty gap if you don't have time or the energy to read it all.)

I apologize for the long absence. I was a bit overwhelmed with the amount of interactions I've been receiving. I have good, or bad, news (depending on the individual and the diverse feedback you all have left):

Unfortunately, Ashabi, the creator of the Uni Ace Flag that prompted me to start this blog and project to update the aro flag, has made it clear that they're not interested in learning about loveless folks and how her flag is discriminatory towards them.

Actually loveless people have commented and messaged her, expressing the realness of their exclusion and hurt, but they just. Didn't care. Didn't address it.

What cemented this distrust I have in them now is that, in one of her latest posts, she shows how totally and utterly she's misunderstood what our issue with the pink stripe is. They think it's about "amatonormativity and romantic love". We've been telling her in no unclear terms that it's about *Love in General*, about loveless people, about how problematic it is that so many loving aces try to justify their humanity on their ability to "still love, like Normal People!!". But I guess she's just too alloro and loving to get it.

I was hoping she wasn't one of those, but their silence (and not silence, i.e. what they said in that post I mentioned) is speaking very loudly about what she believes matters and is worth being acknowledged in their flag and what needs to, essentially, be tone-policed.

I do not appreciate how she's been brushing off any and all criticism (the one that's not actually just cruel flames towards her person at least) by telling, for example, other neurodivergent people that they "just need to get over their fear of change", or not listening to other POC when they tell her she's not actually consulted with them at all. It's cruel and dismissive. It's not "inclusive" at all.

Also, so much for them allegedly having researched for 3 years in advance for this. They didn't even originally include aromantic experiences on that flag. And they thought they fixed it by now including "all forms of love: self love, Romantic, Platonic, QPR, Aromantic". The hell is "Aromantic" as a type of love??

Anyway, I was giving her patience and the benefit of the doubt, but following that post, I'm done associating with her and their redesign. These are all my issues with them, finally out.

That said!

We still have that issue with the white stripe in the OG aro flag. Just as a refresher: it currently represents "the platonic stripe" which of course isn't very inclusive of aplatonic aros. We still need to change it.

Therefore, I announce that I personally don't intend to update the look of the aro flag anymore.

If you all are still on board, I encourage us to keep the aro flag as it is, but update the meanings of the stripe or of the stripes.

This also solves youse's concerns with my yellow-striped redesing looking too much like the aroallo flag, and then the blue-striped redesign I followed it with looking like the non-SAM aro flag instead, lol.

And also!! While we're at it, what do you think about taking the opportunity to update the meaning of the OG ace flag's stripes as well?

When I have the spoons (and once I get an idea of whether or not we want to expand this to the OG ace flag as well), I'll create a new form so we can decide what meanings to assign to each stripe together, just like before. Open questions.

I apologize for wasting the time of everyone who's already responded on the first form, but I'll still take those answers into consideration even though I'll need to take some creative liberties with interpretation given the extra stripe.

AND I'll also take advantage of my hopefully decent enough language skills to provide the form (and associated post explaining what I'm doing) in a few other widely-spread languages beside English as well. Because I'm just a white person and I'm sure if Ashabi, a Black person, was lacking insight about what other POC needed, I'm really not equipped to go in it alone without consulting.

Was thinking of Spanish and French, which would cover most of Spanish-speaking central and southern America and French-speaking Africa, Portuguese for the same areas which I can't speak but can read enough to understand with the help of a translator (I'm Italian just for context), and Mandarin for China and some of SEA but I'm rusty and it will require a lot of spoons and grace from all you Mandarin speakers.

I want to thank all that have participated or left feedback of any kind for this lil project. So far we've gotten 61 responses!

I think it's overdue to address some concerns:

1. Eyestrain

I had a feeling the flag was eyestrain-y and should have listened to my gut; sorry to any photosensitive folks! I updated the original post and the form so they should now be safe to see.

2. Copycat flag

I've gotten some feedback encouraging us to not have the flags match as it would create further confusion between asexuality and aromanticism. I get it; we don't want more aro invisibility under the ace label and flag…

Now, I know I am biased as an aroace, but I've always wanted the two flags to match for ease of stacking them together. But I ALSO think would help create mutual recognition (i.e. people would see the two flags and recognize the aro flag as what it is even if they only knew the ace flag, so like… increasing visibility).

Some people agree and some do not. You are free to use the original flag; this is more for me than it is for others hehe. It's entirely self-indulgent (although the form shows me a significant number of people would enjoy this flag). I'd also like to remind you all that the lesbian and gay mlm flags also match (and that to me is just fun)!

In particular, one entry in the form said it's inappropriate for me as a white person to copy the work of a Black woman and pass it as my own. I would like to specify that I "copied" the flag on purpose. The whole point was to align myself with Ashabi's intersectionality addition! I'm not claiming it as my own idea, it's literally spelled out that the flag WAS inspired by Ashabi's ace flag. /nm

I also want to stress: it's deliberate for me to have only changed 1 stripe. It's because we're all neurodivergent and we Don't Like Change. /lh Changing one stripe and one stripe only is something I'm purposefully prioritizing.

Another thing that spoke to me was the people who encouraged this project to be independent from the new proposed ace flag. Seeing as it has… the same issue I'm trying to address here but worse lol (I'm talking about the meaning of the pink stripe).

Plus, of course, everyone who said we should just assign a new meaning to the white stripe instead of changing the flag.

On account of these various pieces of feedback, I have a couple more ideas to put forth:

1. Not changing the flag. Just updating the meaning as I said before. This is always an option. I'll be sharing the results of the survey when I feel like we've gotten enough responses, and we can decide together (maybe through a tumblr poll?) what we want it to mean. I don't think the OG flag creator would mind if we all do it together!

I'd love it if we did both actually as I, to everyone's surprise probably, am not too inclined to use the new ace flag, so not having to change the aro flag to match would be good. Yeah I know what the hell am I even doing here—

2. I don't quite remember where exactly I'd seen this first, but at least one person suggested using a blue stripe to contrast with the yellow of Ashabi's ace flag. This way, this proposed alternative aro flag would take a bit of a life of its own (even though the concept is derivative lol). Also relevant: it was brought to my attention that adding yellow makes it look a lot like the aroallo flag.

So here's a couple drafts for a proposed aro flag with a blue stripe instead of yellow:

In the first flag, I tweaked the light green stripe to blend in better between the darker green and the blue. I did not change the top green stripe's specific color for a reason: it wouldn't match the shade used in flags for other aro-spec identities otherwise.

(Don't tell anyone, but that's also a reason I'm doing this project: if we change the aro flag too, we, conceptually, won't need to change any of the ace-spec flags because they'd just follow the same pattern of only using the top/bottom colour…)

In the second flag, I kept the same greens as the OG flag but edited the gray stripe to be a bit more blueish (it looked like shit without this tweak). I tried my best not to make it look too much like the mesi-aro flag, but I might have failed.

I am slightly impartial to the second one because I like me a warmer green. But what do you think? Does it look too much like the mesi aro flag? Is it a problem?

Of course, if you think the shades could be better, I'd love to see how you make them. Post them and tag me if you want! /gen

If you happen to be aro and ace, you may have seen a new ace flag floating around. It look something like this:

NOTE: I had to significantly desaturate it to make this post accessible to photosensitive people! The original colours are very different but this is the general order of the stripes.

This was made by Instagram Black ace activist _aceingrace_ (see their profile here). The yellow stripe specifically stands for intersectionality and multiculturalism (plus joy), something that I think would be a nice addition to the aromantic flag (or any flag that doesn't have that, for that matter).

If you're wondering what was wrong with the original flag, it's the white stripe, which stood for "allosexual partners and allies", something that didn't sit right with many aces for obvious reasons.

Update: it seems that was not the case originally! Do check out the link someone kindly provided in the comments. Still, that is the Commonly Understood Meaning of the white stripe, for better or for worse.

Something similar is going on with the white stripe in the aro flag: it's defined as such:

the ‘platonic’ stripe - friendship/platonic and aesthetic attraction/queerplatonic relationships/family, the importance and validity of all non-romantic relationships and feelings and non-romantic forms of love etc.

That doesn't sit right with me as, without any shoutout specifying it's not a universal aro value and experience, it leaves aplatonic and loveless aros estranged from their own flag.

So I've made an attempt at a new aro flag. Here it is:

I wanted it to match the new ace flag so we finally have the same amount of stripes!

It is not meant to replace the original aro flag, but rather be displayed alongside it for those who find it meaningful.

I just need the community's feedback on what meanings to assign to each stripe! Please, if you're aro-spec, take a couple minutes to fill in the form.

If you're an ally please please please spread this around!

Tagging some blogs for reach, please ask if you'd like to be removed!

@aromanticofficial @aroworlds @aromantic-official @our-aro-experience @our-arospec-experience @our-aroace-experience @aroallo-culture-is-archive @arospecawarenessweek @aro-polls @aro-and-trans-thoughts @aroaceqoutes @alloaroworlds @aro-culture-is @aroapl @aro-positivity @aro-pride-stuff @loveless-aro-culture-is @lovequeerblog @lovequeers @aspecpplarebeautiful @aspecpolls @a-spec-unity-blog @a-spec-community-issues @a-spec-tacular @aroacesafeplaceforall @our-queer-experience @queer-polls