No Romance Please

Sharing a recent commission that holds a very special place in my heart 🥹🫶

[ID: art of Stan from Gravity Falls. First drawing shows him wearing a sweater in the aromantic colors, which reads "Love loses." Stan's grinning, and his beanie has a bi pin.

Second drawing shows him holding aro and bi flags, while his beanie has an aroallo pin. He grins and exclaims: "Love is a scam!"

Last, he's in his suit, holding up an aro flag with a surprised expression. He says: "So that's why all my relationships are terrible." End ID.]

Missed Ace Day

Amatonormativity is the idea that everyone wants, needs, and would be happier in a long term, monogamous, romantic and sexual relationship, and that that is the ideal end goal for everyone to achieve in their life.

Romance is great, but it isn’t everything. And it’s not for everyone, and that’s okay (and you don’t have to be aromantic to not want a romantic relationship, which a lot of people seem to forget or straight up don’t realize). When you put romance on a pedestal, you place it above other forms of relationships. You are taught to prioritize romantic love above all else, because if you don’t have a partner, you’re going to end up all alone, right?

Wrong.

This society tells you if you don’t have a partner you’re doing something wrong. If you don’t have a partner to make you whole, you’re broken. You can’t be a person on your own, you need someone else to make you complete. You need exactly one other person to share your life with, to be your one support system, to be everything to you.

That’s not good.

It’s not healthy to depend on one person for everything, one person can’t sustain you. Yet the idea that your partner is your everything is so…romanticized, for lack of a better term. People will ditch their friends, ditch out on their families, in favor of spending time with their romantic partner. Or even a crush. We all have that one friend who gets into a relationship and all of a sudden forgets anyone else exists, right?

Amatonormativity is the root of that problem, and so many more. People will change their entire personality to fit in a romantic relationship. People will turn their entire lives upside down to make the relationship work, at their own expense.

Under amatonormativity, there is this idea that a romantic relationship can only look like one thing, that there is an ideal way to do things, and to break out of that is one of the worst things a person can do. This is why polyamorous relationships are so villainized, because they threaten that status quo.

If nothing else, I hope everyone who hears this is inspired to dive into their own wants, think about how romance affects your life, what relationships do you really value and want more of? There’s no wrong answer, and if you find out some relationship styles don’t suit you as well as you thought, that’s wonderful! More than anything I urge everyone to have fun with the relationships in their life, do what feels right for you as long as you don’t hurt others, and just have a good time with it, whatever that may look like for you.

“Everyone else and their orientations are able to bond and relate to the love and romance aspects and we’re over here like— We don’t do that.” - Jaiden Animations

Edit– link to vid <3 :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF1DTK4U1AM&t=3s

because sometimes it's said with the implication of "friendship is lesser than romance" which is bad, but sometimes it's said as in "romantic partners are generally also friends. these two people are solely friends, rather than being both friends AND lovers" which is basically fine

it's like the difference between "this ice cream is just vanilla, which is boring compared to flavours like chocolate." and "this ice cream is just vanilla, whereas that neapolitan ice cream is vanilla AND chocolate and strawberry."

i think really, we ought to start saying "just romantic". because some relationships ARE just romantic, rather than being romantic partners AND friends.

(like, the person who thinks vanilla is boring would not say "just chocolate", but the person differentiating from neapolitan would)

"just romantic" can sometimes be a bad thing, or can be something that'll grow into more than solely romantic over time, or can be a perfectly fine relationship of its own accord.

people in a shit marriage who don't like each other but still kiss and stuff? just romantic. two people who met over tinder and just started dating? just romantic. two people who have been flirting and dating for a while but never hang out outside of a romantic context and are perfectly happy with that arrangement? just romantic.

Unicorn March is all about pride for the most forgotten and endangered parts of the community. 

Sometimes, pride means knowing more about the struggles that people like you face. Pride from within, from knowing what you’re surviving. Pride from other community members and outsiders, supporting you and loving you for what you are, not just what you overcome. 

This infographic collects all the current data on ace-spec oppression into one thread. (It exceeds Tumblr’s image limit, so if you’re only seeing the first post, check the notes for the rest.) Feel free to save any of these images to share. Tag @unicorn-march if you can, when you use these in a reply or your own posts; it would be great to see how this info helps people. Image descriptions are in the alt tags. 

Links to all the sources, in the order that they appear: 

UK Government Equalities Office. (2017) National LGBT Survey. Data from more than 108,000 LGBTQIPA+ people across the United Kingdom. You can review the data and crunch your own numbers by clicking “analyse” on their website! They also have a report which presents some of the data, and their commentary.

Cantor, David, et al. (2015) AAU Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct. Data from more than 150,000 college and graduate students across the United States. 

Samuels, Gina E. Miranda, et al. (2019) Voices of Youth Count In-Depth Interviews: Technical Report. This is a 22-county study of 4,139 unhoused youth across the United States. They worked with local agencies, and were careful to include a mix of rural, suburban, and urban areas of varying densities and demographics. This report has a broad overview of their findings and recommendations. 

The in-depth data represented here comes from Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. (2017) Youth Homelessness in San Diego County, California: Findings from the youth count, brief youth survey, and provider survey. Although that’s a San Diego-specific study, Appendix E provides the data from all 22 counties for comparison.  The Williams Institute. (2016) LGB Within the T. This paper crunches the data from the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, which did in-depth interviews of 6,450 trans people of all orientations.  Borgogna, N. C., et al. (2018) Anxiety and Depression Across Gender and Sexual Minorities: Implications for Transgender, Gender Nonconforming, Pansexual, Demisexual, Asexual, Queer, and Questioning Individuals. This paper crunches the data from the ACHA National College Health Assessment, a twice-yearly survey of (at last count) 67,972 students at 98 schools across the United States.  Yulea, Brotto, & Gorzalska. (2011) Mental Health and Interpersonal Functioning in Self-Identified Asexual Men and Women. This is an older study, by comparison, and much smaller, so it’s used very sparingly here. 

Salway et al (2019). A Systematic Review and Meta‑Analysis of Disparities in the Prevalence of Suicide Ideation and Attempts Among Bisexual Populations. An extremely thorough analysis of the data available in 46 studies on LGBT suicidality, the reasons for different findings in different studies, and the most likely actual numbers. 

Bauer et al (2018). The 2016 Asexual Community Survey Summary Report. This is an ongoing annual online survey of major asexual communities; the 2016 survey received a total of 9,869 responses (Ace = 9331 and Non-Ace= 538). As it’s not a peer-reviewed published study, it’s used even more sparingly here; the only data used here from this report is the percentage of cis aces who had considered suicide. 

Grant, Jaime M. et al. 2011. Injustice at every turn: A report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey. Further excellent analysis of the data from those 6,450 trans people.  

I hope this makes many, many people feel validated by the enormous amount of concrete evidence that IN FACT YES, ace-specs ARE:

rejected by our families,

pressured to do conversion therapy,

harassed and assaulted at school and work,

living in poverty,

and at high risk for becoming homeless, and mentally ill, and suicidal,

just like lesbian, gay, bi, pan, and trans people, and NOT cis straight people.