#support and validation posts

I just want to let you know that I’ve been struggling with family issues, to the point where I had to have my psychologist come around today.

I haven’t been okay for many days and I’m still not okay. Today I learnt that the reason Mum doesn’t say anything positive to me about my writing is because she thinks it’s “too gay” and my psychologist phrased this judgement as a good thing I should take on board as important feedback--that, for my own benefit, I should consider being a lot less queer in what I write.

It will be better for my financial benefit, because we live in a world that often doesn’t financially reward queer indie creators.

For my emotional benefit, though? For my sense of worth as a person? How do I find any sense that I deserve to exist as the person I am if I’m editing myself out of my own work? How do I find the courage to have pride in my identities? How do I exist as a real person if I cannot be real in my own creativity?

It’s so hard for LGBTQIA+ people to find pride in who we are. I grew up in a house where my lesbian cousin was The Person We Didn’t Talk About to my Dutch Catholic grandparents. My grandparents died not knowing who I really am because I am something we didn’t speak aloud to them. Those are scars I still carry, this sense that I should not be bold and proud and defiant about who I am, and both the message and the damage it causes all the years after isn’t something the world likes to acknowledge. As aro-specs, in a world where we’re not even seen to exist and our existence is contentious even within spaces that should be safe (like parts of LGBTQIA+ Tumblr) we’re not free from this, even before we consider what amatonormativity says, more directly, about people who live and feel the way we do.

Before now, I’d been feeling positive about being really fucking aro in my writing. I’d been enjoying this process of expressing experiences that I’ve never seen in fiction. Of making myself a little more real, each story at a time, in a world where my existence feels intangible, impossible or undesirable. Of validating my feelings, of doing the radical thing of treating myself as the person I am as though I deserve to be a hero in a story about my identities and experiences, using my words and identity terms.

Privileged people have the privilege of not making their works appear centred on being cis or heterosexual or alloromantically-heteroromantic--in the sense that while their works always centre on these things, that centering isn’t treated as anything but normal. It’s just as obnoxious (depending on how much you like identity centred in a work); the difference is only one of true acceptance. Writing a story about a cishet couple is “normal”; writing a story with a non-binary aromantic character who uses aromantic terminology is “too queer”.

Today, I am being asked to be less of myself in my creativity by two people who think they are being accepting of me in saying this.

Please, please--support your aro-spec creators. Please let them know that they’re loved and appreciated. Please let them know that they’re needed. Please let them know that we’re grateful for the steps they take in making worlds that depict us--both as we are now and as we wish to be in the future. Please let them know that we are grateful for their courage in creating works that depict us even when the world is telling them that they’re only valuable, artistically and financially, when they limit or diminish their aromanticism and/or their queerness. Please let us make sure, as a community, that we can stand together, strong and proud, against an onslaught of messages that demand their erasure and silencing.

Please support your aro-spec creators so they can stand firm in the face of what I heard today and continue to write (or tell or draw or sing or however it is that one creates) the stories we need.

Anon, I want to say that I am so sorry you’re having to deal with the twin difficulty of lack of understanding of aro-spec identities and fluid identities, because I rather suspect that some people are causing you unnecessary doubt and confusion. And I very much hope that being in love is a wonderful, positive, amazing experience for you: I’ll metaphorically cross my fingers (because chronic hand/finger pain) that all goes well!

How you choose to comprehend and label is up to you. I think it’s worth keeping in mind that when a demiromantic falls in romantic love, that experience of romantic love does not by definition make them stop being demiromantic. Being in a romantic relationship, even if they’re in that relationship for the rest of their life, does not by definition make them stop being demiromantic. It may change how they relate to the aromantic community, yes; they may not have the same needs as they did before. But it does not change, unless they themselves feel it to be so for whatever personal reason, the truth of their demiromantic label. The same, surely, applies here?

In this light, it might be worth considering what you need over what you feel. If you consider alloromantic and/or romantic attraction as one of the aspects of your being aroflux, anon (as I have been recently taught) and you still feel connection to and need for the label and/or the community that goes with it, then by all means, keep it. It’s up to you and what you need, and nobody else gets to tell you that you’re not aromantic enough.

(Side note: by “alloromantic” in the rest of this ask, I mean someone who hasn’t felt themselves to be on the aromantic spectrum, not anyone who experiences romantic attraction. It’s why I often use “alloromantic attraction” or “alloromantic romantic attraction”, to distinguish that from the romantic attraction of some aro-spec folks. There may be some work to be done here on language: I do wonder if the romantic attraction felt by an aro-spec should be labelled the same way as the romantic attraction felt by an alloromantic. I can see reasons for using the same labelling, but I also feel wary about conflating them when they aren’t always treated the same way by amatonormativity. Either way, this is a complex issue in want of community consideration!)

I think a fair rule is that the only time we discard our labels is when they ring false with us, and other people don’t get to determine that. If you feel it describes your truth, it’s yours.

Anyone who comes up to me and says an aromantic and/or aromantic-spectrum person who currently, previously or will experience romantic attraction isn’t welcome in the aro-spec community will have to fight me. Yes, your experiences won’t be like mine, and we will both have issues where we should take a back-seat to let the other talk, but that doesn’t mean you don’t belong here. You do. Anon, if you have other aros telling you that you don’t belong, they’re the ones that don’t belong. They’re not engaging in the spirit of the community we’re building and they can shut the door on their way out of it. If they’re not aros telling you this, I’d be asking why alloromantic folks think they have any right to declare this to you, because they don’t. Especially if they’re non-fluid orientation alloromantic folks, who’ll have no clue about the intersectionality of the aromantic spectrum and fluid orientations!

(I think aro-spec people who do experience romantic attraction have a lot to say about romance and amatonormativity that everybody should listen to. We know a lot about romance from the alloromantic perspective. We don’t know much of what romance looks like when one isn’t solely, wholly or constantly alloromantic and not centred the same way by amatonormativity–especially with regards the expectation that all people in romantic relationships experience alloromantic attraction. For the sheer point of learning more about romance and amatonormativity, never mind bridging the gap between alloromantic and aromantic experiences, we need aro-specs in the community.)

As someone with a fluid identity myself, I do encourage, as best you can, trying not to worry about whether it will change later or for how long. Honestly, every time I shift in my sexuality I feel this guilt, like I’ve been lying to you all–maybe this time I’ll always be ace, maybe this time I’ll always be pan, maybe I was never ace, maybe I was never pan, maybe I’m always just grey-ace–arugh! Seriously, every single time! But this is symptomatic of living in a world that doesn’t give us space for fluidity, that treats it as imaginary, exaggeration or falsehood. We feel uncertain and unsure because fluidity isn’t prized or celebrated as a legitimate set of experiences; we question because we are not given any sense of security in our fluidity, the ability to trust that changes to how we feel now doesn’t invalidate how we felt then.

(And attempting to talk with authority on issues when I’m not always that orientation? Oh does that ever give me a raging case of self-doubt! I’m constantly feeling like I am not enough of anything, in terms of sexual orientation, to talk about it.)

Worrying about whether or not you’ll change in the future only leads to uncertainty about your past and present experiences. It only unravels us. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t check in with what we’re feeling every so often; I think that’s a healthy thing. I mean that the future, and any future shifts in our orientations and/or gender, are out of our hands, and the only thing we can do is find the words and communities that best suit the whole of what we know ourselves to be at this point in time. The worry is not inherently ours. The worry is not something we deserve. The worry is imposed upon us by a worldview that has no space for us. It’s internalised antagonism gifted by a world that wants people of fluid orientations and/or gender to pick one and stay there.

Anon, you don’t have to pick one. You can take a label that encompasses those changes, stare defiantly at the world and tell them that you don’t have to, or want to, pick one side. You can be desperately in romantic love and still tell the world you’re aroflux and they’re taking that word from you over your dead body.

If you find, over a long period of time, that your feelings and needs better match those of a alloromantic person and stay that way, then perhaps you may consider changing your label. But just being in romantic love, now, is not in itself a condition that denies you the aroflux label. It’s an experience, by and large, that more often necessitates it in light of your other experiences.

I would suggest, anon, that you let this go, as much as you can, for a while. Hang out in the aro-spec community if you want–or don’t if you don’t want. Enjoy being in love as much as you can. Just do your thing, have fun, feel what you feel, and try not to worry about labels for a while. Then, when you’ve had a chance to relax and feel, you might want to come back to questioning, if you really do feel there’s something to question. Now, though, I think you need some space to get away from the fluid antagonism; questioning is I think happening now from fear and uncertainty, not from a curious interest if the word still applies, and that can lead us to making decisions that feel like a solution but abrade at us later. Take a break and come back to it, if questioning is the path you still wish to go down, but now is not the best time for questioning. Just be and enjoy the change. Because that’s something folks don’t talk about, the joy of shifting experiences. Sometimes it’s fun having sexual attraction and sometimes I am so glad I don’t feel it at all on any given day and sometimes it’s wonderful that it’s such a vague feeling, and I get to know all of these. Isn’t that awesome?

(I’ll emphasise that you’re still part of the aro-spec community if and while you question, anon. You’re still entitled to full and complete participation in the aro-spec community.)