/inactive/ the arospec initiative

Beautiful

Aroace boys are

Amazing

Nonbinary Aroaces are

The thing about being aromantic, asexual, or on the spectrums that a lot of people don’t seem to get is that compulsory sexuality exists.

Not just compulsory heterosexuality. Compulsory sexuality. Period. The idea that every person on the planet feels some kind of sexual and romantic attraction.

I grew up watching media, same as all of you, and how are people that are interested in purely sexual relationships depicted? As cold people. As cheaters. Usually it’s a straight man looking to use women. His character development almost always includes settling down. And people that don’t experience sexual attraction? Characters like Data from Star Trek or Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory. Androids and characters coded as having a very specific type of autism. And even they have sexuality forced upon them by the writers at least once. With Data it happens in the second episode.

And then we try to explain this to people. Why we hurt ourselves and put ourselves in dangerous and uncomfortable situations trying to fix ourselves. Make ourselves feel sexual and/or romantic attraction. We bring up the bullying we endured. The things our therapists tried to fix about us. We talk about our trauma related to compulsory sexuality and you all just don’t hear us.

I’m so tired of it. I’ve been fighting the fight to be seen since I was fourteen! I’ve given talks in GSAs. I’ve written essays to educate. I’ve comforted other asexual people on the internet and irl. I’ve scraped and grabbed for community. I’ve done my very best to fight to be seen. I’ve healed from the trauma I put myself through in trying to fix myself. I’ve realized that I don’t need to be fixed. I’ve been as goddamned involved as an asexual person can be with the resources we have. I may be young but I have been fighting longer than most and I am so protective of the people just realizing that they’re aro or ace or demi or anything else. No matter how much older or younger they are than me.

And then some people on the internet decide that they get to undo everything I and so many other asexual and aromantic people have done. They get to decide that their trauma is more real than mine. They get to push me and my brothers and sisters and siblings out the door because they don’t see invisibility as oppression. They’ve held up their little sign that says “must be this oppressed to enter” and then held it up higher so that we didn’t fit.

Some of them told me “oh you can come in because you tick these boxes but that other box doesn’t count”

No. That box definitely counts. That box is just as much a part of me as any of the others and it is the one I have fought for the longest. Our community won’t be made invisible again. Invisibility is crushing. It is suffocating. Abuse and hatred of all kinds thrive in silence.

I feel alone sometimes. Like I am the only soldier holding a banner in front of a stone wall. But I am not alone, and you aren’t either. I’m tired of being casual. I’m tired of being seen as a rarity. A novelty. An android. A nuisance. I am none of these things. I, like every other arospec or aspec person, am a friend of dragons. Something that was hidden for so long, protecting itself and what it loves, but has the ability to be loud, dangerous, firey.

Asexual and aromantic people have been polite. Quiet. Because that’s what we feel we have to be. We can’t protest by kissing someone in front of a picket line. What can we do then? Talk. Write. Wear our colors. If we have to keep being polite and quiet about it, fine. That’s how we do. But let’s not be invisible. I will continue to let everyone that knows me understand under no uncertain terms that I am asexual. I will point to our aromantic siblings, sisters, brothers. I will tell you to look at them. Look at us. We exist. We are wonderful. We belong. In queer spaces, in the media, in the public eye.

If you are aro or ace people will tell you that they don’t care. They will ask why they need to know. But being yourself is a radical act. I know it is. We are often polite in this community. We don’t rally. We don’t look to change the world. We don’t depict ourselves as radical or challenging the establishment, but we are. We are. We have been from the moment we realized we exist. Our history is small. We are creating the early stages of it as we speak, but it is still rich. It is still beautiful. Even if we are spread out, I love this community so deeply. So completely. I probably won’t ever be a leader in this community or any other one. That’s not where my talents lie. But I will continue to push for us to be seen. I will write literature for us. I will talk. I will be as visible as someone like me can be. I will fight to make the words ace and aro and demi and grey just as well known as gay, ace, lesbian, bi, trans.

And there are so many of us out there doing the same. We are not alone. We have never been alone. And these people trying to make us alone won’t succeed. I know this. I feel it in my gut.

Aromantic-spectrum Union for Recognition, Education, and Advocacy (AUREA) is happy to announce the website - aromanticism.org - we’ve been working on has been launched! We assemble general information and community updates. The website includes FAQ, vocabulary, research, news feed, online resources, links to in-person groups, and printable educational materials. Our aim is also to be a contact point for researchers and media looking to explore the aromantic experiences.

Aromantic-spectrum Union for Recognition, Education, and Advocacy (AUREA) is happy to announce the website - aromanticism.org - we’ve been working on has been launched! We assemble general information and community updates. The website includes FAQ, vocabulary, research, news feed, online resources, links to in-person groups, and printable educational materials. Our aim is also to be a contact point for researchers and media looking to explore the aromantic experiences.

For the 1000001th time, it’s in itself not shocking or somehow telling that the “majority” of aces from the US who responded to that survey are white. Like do you think the majority of ppl in the US are PoC and that white ppl are a minority??

Also the survey was done by AVEN, a site/forum a ton of aces (and aros) of color left early on due to the racism going on there that along with other -isms was supported by the mods

But hey let’s keep shitting on aces and aros of color, while the anti-ace/aro crowd on here spews racist crap at every turn.

We know you all don’t give a crap about us lol.

Bogaert, A. F. (2004). Asexuality: Prevalence and Associated Factors in a National Probability Sample. Journal of Sex Research, 41(3), 279–287. 

Here is the demographics table:

As you can see, the percentage of white asexuals is lower than the percentage of white non-asexuals, with a p value of less than 0.001

Do you have complaints about the ace community?  Do you want people in the ace community to actually see these complaints, and respond to them–accepting the risk that people will respond negatively?  I have the power to make it happen, so please message me about it.

For the last few months, I’ve been keeping tabs on some aro tumblr blogs, and I see people complaining about the ace community a lot.  But most of the time, hardly anyone in the ace community actually sees these complaints, unless I choose to link or reblog them.  I think a lot of the complainers prefer it that way, and are just trying to vent.

This presents a problem, because I can’t tell when you’re venting.  I worry that I will bring unwanted negative attention to bloggers, or perhaps I’ll systematically highlight only complaints of a certain kind.  If you’re not just venting, and you want your complaints to actually get somewhere, please tell me.  Help me help you.

Who am I?  I’m the admin of The Asexual Agenda, a popular ace blog meant to enable high-level discussion.  I can do several things, such as including you in our linkspam, start an open thread, host a guest post, or simply reblog your post on my personal tumblr.

The final round is here, everyone.

We’ve narrowed down the top five community-approved acronyms from the 348 responses from our previous rounds.

It’s happening! Don’t feel pressured to donate but anything you can contribute would be incredibly helpful. The high price is because we don’t intend to use shared hosting (we want to make sure our site won’t be targeted by anti-aro or anti-queer people).

We’re very excited.

If you have any general questions, you can contact any of our team members.

If you have questions specific to this Paypal pool or about payment options/fund security/etc., contact me. 

Our core team members for this website include: - Tost (from @arospecinitiative) - Magni (@aromagni, who you may also know as a casual Mod on @aromantic-official) - Ramen (on Arocalypse forums and member of various aro communities online) - Sea (@aroacepagans) - Scoop (on Arocalypse forums and member of various aro communities online) - Me! We also have a few consultants and intend to slowly grow our team after the website goes live.

Website Info

Our website intends to be an official space for aros who can be contacted by media outlets to talk about everything related to our community. Essentially, a resource for all things aro. We will be including:

- intro to aromanticism - FAQ - term glossary - pamphlets/resources - news and aro-related events - media contact (for interviews, guidance, etc.) - volunteer contact (for those who want to volunteer with us) We’re also thinking of adding the following once the site is live:

1. never once thought they had a crush, never understood romantic attraction, thought crushes were a myth, have only recently realized that romantic attraction is a real thing that happens to people in real life

Alright y’all, so only a month and a half after this post and I finally have some information to give you about one of the aro activism topics I suggested.

In-person groups are something that every community needs before it can do more on the ground activism, and creating in-person spaces is something I actually have some experience with so that’s where I’d like to start. This information is intended to be general, so you can apply it to creating a larger communal aro space, or to creating a smaller space for an aro subcommunity. Please also note that this is certainly not the *only* way to create an in-person space, every organization does things differently. This is just supposed to give basic and overarching information about how an in-person can be run, using the knowledge I’ve gained from working with several long-lasting LGBTQIA+ and religious groups.

Creating in-person community doesn’t have to take a lot of resources, but it can be hard to maintain. With this in mind, I would like to split this post into 4 parts: Creating a community, maintaining community, general advice, and the benefits of putting in the work. Let’s get started!

So what I’m going to do is give summaries of common themes and answers above the cut for people who don’t want to read through a bunch of text, and then I’m going to put individual answers under the cut for folks who are interested. Please note that these are all anonymous survey answers, and they do not necessarily reflect my opinions. I encourage people to have/start discussions around the topics brought up here so that we can work towards having a mutually fulfilling and cohesive community. 

Summary: 

 What are the community needs of alloaros?

More recognition and visibility both within and outside of the aspec community, aro specific spaces where no one will assume that they’re ace and where they don’t have to be bombarded by ace content, safe spaces to talk about their experiences with sexual attraction, and a wider community acknowledgment that ace and aro don’t mean the same thing. 

What are the community needs of aroaces?

Separate aroace spaces, space and language that allows them to express the interconnectedness of their aro and ace identities, a recognition of the diversity of aroace experiences including the experiences of oriented aroaces and aro leaning aroaces, spaces devoid of both sex and romance, and less infighting between the aro and ace communities. 

What are the community needs of non-SAM aros?

New language that doesn’t enforce the use of SAM as a norm and that doesn’t enforce a SAM/ non-SAM binary, more recognition of aromantic as one whole identity, more inclusion of their identity within aro spaces, and having the ability to label themselves as aro without being asked what their other identity is . 

What are the community needs of greyro/ aro-spec folks?

Specific spaces where they can talk about aromantic attraction, more recognition and visibility both within and outside of the aspec community, more greyro/aro-spec specific resources and content, and a larger platform within the aspec community to discuss their experiences.  

What are the shared needs of these different subgroups within the aro and arospec community?

Increased visibility, spaces free from amatonormativity, safe and unbiased shared spaces for all members of the aro/aro-spec community, separation and distinction from alloaces, more in-person spaces, and a building of understanding and acceptance between the different community subgroups.  

How do we meet all of these needs within an online space?

Better and more formalized tagging systems, creating more forums, chats, tags, etc, that are specific to different aro and arospec subgroups, creating more variety in online aro spaces generally, giving online spaces and platforms to all aro subgroups, and having open and polite community discussion about our needs within online aro spaces. 

How do we meet all of these needs within an in-person space?

Use inclusive language, allow for smaller sub-communities within larger aro and aspec groups, provide resources for small, lesser known identities both within groups and at pride, push for more aro inclusion in wider queer spaces and create safe and respectful discussion spaces where everyone can voice their needs  

How do we reconcile conflicting needs?

Civil and open discussions, try to find solutions instead of just arguing, and create separate spaces for subgroups when needed while continuing to maintain larger general spaces for discuison and community building. 

Contents: the origin of queerplatonic, the controversy of QPR as ace vs aro term, what do we take from this

The term queerplatonic relationship seems to have originated here, in comments on a journal entry titled “A/romanticism” (make of this what you will in terms of it being coined as a term relating to aromanticism or asexuality). Context: the OP, Kaz, is a well-known ace blogger posting on their dreamwidth journal. OP didn’t make up the word itself - that was Meloukhia in the comments, but Kaz gives the word some meaning too. Okay, let’s dive in:

Kaz in this “A/romanticism” post mentions experiences of feelings that “didn’t really fit in with most people’s perceptions of friendship, and [were] furthermore pretty damn different from the desires that I’d seen other aromantic people express (which tended to involve a lot of stuff like being independent and living on your own)”. Kaz goes on to say “And, well, what the hell was romantic attraction anyway? I’m still looking for an answer to this question, by the way.”, “recently I’ve met a lot of ace people iding as aromantic who have expressed desires similar to mine - they want a BFF who’s also their life partner, they might want to live together with this person, they might want to raise kids together. I think some of them even mentioned a gender preference. I’m starting to realise I may have let myself be driven away from aromantic based on the fact that the other aromantic people I was seeing seemed very different from me and I assumed that theirs was the “right” way to do aromanticism. But surely aromantic can entail different things.”, “Under this kind of thinking, I am definitely aromantic - I lack romantic attraction. (I sort of deduce this by the fact that it’s only really aromantic people who I’ve seen asking the “but what the hell IS it anyway?!” questions; romantic people seem to know.) I’ve got something else, but that’s not the question.”, “more and more I feel like the whole concept of a romantic orientation is asking me to define myself in terms of boxes that just don’t apply - hence my constant back-and-forth not feeling comfortable with any of the options ending with me making my very own - that asking me “so what’s your romantic orientation?” is simply the wrong question.”. The entry is not tagged and the word queerplatonic isn’t mentioned in its body.

In comments, someone mentions “romantic friendship” as a term Kaz may be looking for to describe their relationship, to which the reply is “b) the focus on the relationship being nonsexual instead of nonromantic makes me wonder if it couldn’t end up being used to refer to asexual romantic relationships which makes me kind of unhappy”. It’s Meloukhia that comments “Although I kind of like queerplatonic as a definer for the attraction I feel to my zucchini; it neatly avoids discussing the gender of either party involved, while emphasizing the idea that it is a deep (almost symbiotic in some ways) emotional connection that transcends what I think of as friendship.” to which Kaz replies “Oh my I liiiike queerplatonic. I think I’ve mentioned before that one of the options I play with is “having a queer romantic orientation” - I really *like* this because I think “queer” works really well for these sorts of “YOUR BOXES, THEY ARE INSUFFICIENT” relationships” and “I think “queerplatonic” sort of evades [reinforcing the idea that heteroromantic aces can’t be queer] because it’s clear it’s about queering platonic relationships”.

This whole conversation is taking place between asexual people, one of them definitely aromantic, the other either greyromantic/aromantic/not making sense of applying the terms to themself, in an ace-focused space, though the topic of the exchange is that of romantic orientation and non-romantic relationships.

Meloukhia later introduces the term queerplatonic on their website and the introduction is preceded by “Asexuality has its own language and terminology, which it would behoove you a bit to explore if you are interested in engaging with the asexual community and understanding what we say and what we are talking about.” It’s where the definition is as following:

Queerplatonic is a word for describing relationships where an intense emotional connection transcending what people usually think of as ‘friendship’ is present, but the relationship is not romantic in nature; people in a queerplatonic relationship may think of themselves as partners, may have sex, may plan on spending their lives together, etc. The ‘queer’ is a reference to the idea of queering relationships and ideas about relationships, not for describing the orientations or genders of anyone in a queerplatonic relationship. Anyone, sexual or asexual, romantic or aromantic, straight, gay, queer, bi, lesbian, poly, cis, trans, etc etc can be in a queerplatonic relationship, can have more than one such relationship, and there can be more than two people in a queerplatonic relationship; couples, triads, quads, whatever. The key feature is the idea of being deeply connected to someone, without a romantic element (though a queerplatonic relationship can be sexual).

I also want to note that there are many different kinds of queerplatonic relationships; we’ve been jokingly referring to them with different vegetables (‘she’s my zucchini,’ ‘I definitely think of ou as my eggplant’ etc.). The point is that this is an umbrella term that encompasses many different types of relationship, rather than being rigid; it’s fluid!

This definition is also used by Meloukhia as s.e. smith (if I correctly deduced they’re one person - I’m not 100% sure about it) on a tumblr blog, preceded by an introduction “An outgrowth of a conversation about aromantic orientations, and the desire to be able to define relationships that are not romantic, that are also not friendships, and that play an important role in your life.”

The post that I’m writing is a direct consequence of the ongoing controversy in whether the term “queerplatonic” originated in asexual or aromantic communities and therefore if it’s an asexual or aromantic term. (Spoiler: I’m not sure if the place where it was coined should translate 1:1 to which community’s term it is.)

The argument for the asexual side is such: Back in 2010 the ace community was most of what there was for aspec identities. Early aromantic communities were too weak to survive or unfriendly and those bloggers who coined the term didn’t participate in them. The bloggers mostly identified as asexual, so this is an asexual term.

The argument for the aromantic side is such: This is clearly a discussion about romantic identity, lack of romantic attraction and relationships that are non-romantic. Considering this, even if it was taking place as an extension of asexual discussions, the term is an aromantic one.

Anyway, make of this what you will, though I’m going to tell you my opinion if you’re interested in reading it.

I think that it’s important not to forget that the talk about it was between bloggers who were mostly participating in asexual spaces. We have to consider the situation at the time though. There were virtually no aromantic communities, but the conversation was (to me clearly) dealing with aromantic spectrum experiences. I think the important things to establish there are: a) how did the situation change between then and now with aro communities now existing,  b) is it the origin that makes QPR an “ace” or “aro” term, c) is it the meaning of QPR that makes the word an “aro” or “ace” term? ( There’s also d) what about people who don’t treat their romantic and sexual orientations as separate?, that honestly I have no idea what to do with…)

How did the situation change? Well, aromanticism is no longer only talked about in ace spaces or thought about as a subset of asexuality and there are aromantic communities now. At the time the term was coined, aromantic topics were brought up mostly in asexual spaces and it could have been thought of as a specific categorization within the asexual identity. Right now we’re seeing separation of aro and ace spaces, which are thought of as more distinct and independent identities.

The origin - a conversation between people who treated queerplatonic as an asexual word because they were asexual, and aromantic communities didn’t really exist outside of asexual ones - would point to it being an asexual word.

Taking into account how aromantic is treated as a separate identity now and the fact that queerplatonic relationships were meant to be specifically non-romantic, it could be considered an aro word. Say if a term related to being wsw/wlw originated in a conversation of two aromantic-identifying individuals, would it be a wsw/wlw term or aro term? This example is obviously not identical, because aromantic and wsw/wlw communities were never treated as one community, but I hope illustrates my point on how this debate changes when aromanticism is not an extension of asexuality.

Anyway, here are the things to consider when you’re arguing whether it’s an ace or aro term. Personally I believe it’s not as easy as saying it’s either of those things. I think it’s important to include the ace history of the word but also the fact it was discussed in relation to aromanticism, now a separate identity.

What do we take from this? Hopefully more willingness not to erase the historical context of the creation of the word (by people who meant it to be an ace term), hopefully more recognition that in the new reality, since it’s defining non-romantic relationships in context of discussion about aromanticism, it can be treated as an aro term. See, on one hand I understand - it wasn’t coined by people who meant for it to be an aromantic term (aromantic as a separate identity didn’t exist). On the other hand though I don’t understand the unwillingness to admit the word is (and always has been) thematically part of the aromantic spectrum side of the aspec discussions.

What it should translate to functionally? I think some phrases may be helpful to illustrate.

NO: Queerplatonic relationship is an ace term!

NO: Queerplatonic was coined by aros!

YES: Queerplatonic is an aspec term. Aspec means asexual and aromantic.

YES: Queerplatonic was coined back when aromanticism wasn’t a separate identity from asexuality by asexual aro-specs and was intended as an asexual term. However thematically it is related to aromantic experiences.