It is so gosh darn difficult to find other ace and aro people irl. We’re a small community that mostly connects through the internet because we are a small percentage of the population and not that many people know about us yet. So, most of the support we get irl is from gay, bi/pan, and trans people. Not other ace and aro people.

I have two irl asexual friends now, but for the first six years I was out as ace I had none. Maybe an online person here or there, but no physical presence. Nobody to eat lunch with or vent to or hug when things got bad. Instead, the support I got was from my gay and bi friends. They supported me, and I supported them in return. The very first person I ever came out as asexual to was a gay guy I was friends with at the time.

He was there for me and I was there for him in return. He was relieved to find out I was ace actually, because that made me another queer person he could talk to. And soon after I connected with several bi and pan people at my high school. We were able to stand up for each other, get things done, relate to each other.

Including ace and aro people in the queer community means giving ace and aro people a support system. A safe space. An opportunity to relate and be related to. To love and be loved. To protect and be protected. When you’re already included by default it’s easy to sit in your leather wing backed chair in your ivory tower and say “Well these people should just form their own community.” but in reality that just doesn’t work.

Ace and aro people will always have their own community, yes. But also lesbians will have their own community. Trans people will have their own community. Gay men will have their own community, bi people, pan people, non binary people, the list goes on. But all the people in those communities can form one super group that relates, that supports each other. That unites under the umbrella of “not totally cis and hetero at the same time”.

It’s a support system that ace and aro people desperately need. We have bad and good experiences because of our orientation, many of which other queer people can relate to. We see the rest of the community and go “Same hat!!!” and feel a little less alone. And yeah. That includes heteroromantic aces and heterosexual aros. They need that support too, because believe it or not, heteronormative society isn’t kind to them either. They understand a lot more than you think. They’re not trying to join because it’s trendy. They get that same hat feeling just like you and I.

- Don’t complain/shame people for public displays of affection. Doing so is sheer homophobia, no matter what. I don’t care if you say “all pda grosses me out” - if you don’t like it, don’t go to Pride. Plain and simple. Gay people have been fighting to be able to even HOLD HANDS in public, for cryin’ out loud.

- Don’t sexualize gay people either. Saying “yeah I’m fine with pda but I just don’t want people humping in public!!!” Is JUST as bad as saying the above. NOBODY is being overly sexual in public, and even if they are, that’s a personal issue, not an issue with Pride as a whole.

- Straight trans/nonbinary people exist, and they belong at Pride. If you’re going to complain about cishets, SAY CISHETS. Straight trans/nonbinary people are our friends, and we need to welcome them with open arms.

- Bi people who are in a relationship with someone of the opposite gender are STILL BI. They belong at Pride too. If you say otherwise, you’re being biphobic, and you really need to rethink your priorities.

Even on some aro-spec community blogs I see definitions of the “can encompass sexual attraction but it’s mostly about platonic/sensual/alterous attraction” sort–something that nominally includes us but still pushes off us to the side as unusual or exceptional. I know the aro-spec community has talked about this many a time, and QPRs come from aro-ace specific conversations that didn’t exclude sex and sexual attraction, but … but when we’re constantly fighting to insist this term actually includes us, does it truly include us?

If we’re treated as unusual or exceptional, the term doesn’t fully include or centre on us as a norm. It’s rather how I feel in general a-spec spaces, where I know that the assumption is that we’re ace-spec. I’m tired of being unusual in my own house–where I belong in name and less in practice.

I’m getting so frustrated with it that I’m on the verge of throwing my hands up in the air and screaming well, we’ll make our own fucking word, then!

Allo-aros do not have, historically, a major role in the creation of a-spec community language, up to and including the term now used to identify our own community–allosexual. (But at least we’ve been able to take that word and begin to make it our own; our right to it isn’t erased the same way.) Can QPR as a concept, not made by us, have true affinity with allo-aros, non-asexual aro-specs and aro-spec ace-specs who centre their sexual attraction experiences or have sex/sexual relationships that aren’t romantic? Would it be easier for us to make a new term for our relationships that doesn’t require constant activism to acknowledge our experiences?

The problem, of course, is that QPRs are such a central concept for relationships in the aro-spec community that I don’t want to close us out of them just because I’m so tired of being pushed to the sides. That could be really dangerous, and I’m anxious about giving folks reason to shove allo-aros out of a term that has in many ways come to epitomise aro-spec relationships. If we’re aro-spec, and we are, that gets to be our word too, right?

I’m not saying that making a new word is the right way to go; I’m genuinely not sure that it is. I’m just saying that my frustration at the relationships I have had, want to have, write about and may/will have in the future not unquestionably belonging to this term results in a feeling that maybe I should give up, let the aces keep it and make something new that is less tethered to asexual culture, both in its creation and its resulting adoption.

(This is a vent post on my part, not a call to action. I’ve no idea what to do, just that it looks to me like a case of “fight” or “leave”, and I can see advantages and problems in both. Of course, I wouldn’t be looking at it this way if it weren’t for the erasure, would I? If my right to this term were accepted as an equally centred shape of its many potential expressions, if I were regarded as an equal inheritor to a-spec and aro-spec language as any other a-spec and aro-spec, this wouldn’t even be a conversation.)