reblogging into the void

Don’t do it!

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And yes, aspec people can be aphobic. Sometimes it’s internalized, sometimes it’s towards another part of the spectrum you don’t relate to, but aphobia is still bad! And exclusionism towards acespec/arospec/aplspec/afamspec/etc identities that still experience some attraction or are willing to or enjoy related activities is aphobia!

Don’t be an aphobe!

🖤🩶🤍💜

💚🤍🩶🖤

🧡💛🤍🩵💙

💜💙💚💛 (does the yellow heart or white heart look better for apl?)

Like

Asexual Zhongli, headcannon that just…makes sense to me for some reason?

Romance favorable Aroace Albedo, like I can totally imagine him getting in a relationship and studying how he feels, how his partner feels, how others feel, etc, etc.

Aroallo Chiori? Anyone?

Demi-romantic asexual llluga. In a qpr with Flins. I said what I had to say.

Romance indefferent Aroace Noëlle, who doesn’t really care about romance anyway and always says she’s ‘’focused on her work’’

IF YOU ARE ALO AND THINK YOUUUU CAN DISS THEM HERE, GO AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ok. so fellow aroace people, I mean this with all the kindness and love in my heart.... some of us are insufferable.

Its a minority, but DAMN IS IT LOUD.

the world cannot and should not bend to your prefrences and repulsion. a media isnt bad because it has sex or romance, and more importantly, you are not entitled to FREE FANWORKS THAT VALIDATE YOUR HEADCANON. END OF STORY.

I see this happening rn with the PHM fandom because of a common crosship with the film Iron lung.

Do I like aroace grace? YES! I LOVE THAT! I feel incredibly seen by PHM!

are the big mean alosexual opressing me because they are a majority group and therefore there are more of them to make alosexual headcanons and art? NO!!!!!

we are not being opressed by fanart, this isnt aroace erasur because ryland grace is not canonically aroace! I think theres a lot of merit to this head canon! but ryland grace does not have a canon sexuality. you can be sad there isnt more of it, but the solution for that is to MAKE IT!!! MAKE THE ART!!!!! MAKE THE FIC!!!!! OR COMMISSION IT!!!! OR GO TO ARTISTS WHO TAKE REQUESTS!!!! fanartists and fanfic authors do not OWE ANYTHING TO YOU! unless you PAY THEM!!!!

now, if someone goes on an aroace fanwork of phm and comments something like "lol bloody mary rulez lmao" then sure, thats fucking annoying. but guess what??? you are doing the SAME THING!!!!!

and dont even get me started on those of you who act like every piece of sexual media is satan-

"Theyre shoving it down our throats!!!!" guys. guys. guys thats conservative talking points. what are we doing.

*remembers Toph Beifong from Avatar the last airbender exists*

Now hold on a fucking second.

She wears green, she has two daughters in legend of korra with no known fathers (she canonically fucks), she isn't really seen that much with a potential romantic love interest (at least to my memory). Yes she did seem to have a crush on Sokka at one point but that might've also just been a demiro situation or confusing other attraction types and feelings for romantic ones (+ they travelled together for months to save the world and fought a lot of battles together, it would be weirder if they didn't form a bond of any kind already by that time)...

And she invented metalbending!

That last one doesn't have shit to do with being aromantic, but it is still an awesome bonus to have.

+ If she had the words I totally could imagine her just going "yeah, I'm aroallo, idc, just deal with it."

Have you been in a scenario where somebody calls you inhuman for not experiencing some type of attraction or another? Well you’ve been a victim of not just aphobia but the “No True Scotsman Fallacy” the No True Scotsman Fallacy is an informal logical fallacy that, to quote Wikipedia is a fallacy “in which one modifies a prior claim in response to a counterexample by asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition.” Let’s use a hopefully hyperbolized example

Bob: everybody wants sex.

Owen: I’m asexual and I don’t really want sex.

Bob: every real person wants sex.

In this example, Owen has committed the No True Scotsman Fallacy by saying that Bob’s Asexuality makes him somehow not a real person. This form of fallacy can even come up in aspec spaces. Another example.

Ace: every aroace can form a queerplatonic bond.

Gary: I’m aqueerplatonic.

Ace: every real aroace can form a queerplatonic bond.

In this example, Ace excluded Gary from being a “real aroace” by arbitrarily saying that “real” aroaces can form queerplatonic bonds

To avoid using this fallacy in future interactions with aspec people, whether you are aspec or not, remember this, no form of attraction is universal or necessary for a fulfilling life. Some people are happy to spend their time completely alone.

Someone who is aromantic will focus on the attraction. Crushes, the romantic feelings themselves, etc.

Someone who is alloromantic will focus on the actions they take after feeling them. Dating, kissing, holding hands, etc.

BUT. Friendly reminder that. Aro people can have romance and ace people can have sex. It’s not okay when someone who is not aro or ace says these things, but if an aro and/or ace person says they want romance or sex THEY ARE STILL ARO AND/OR ACE. I have been told way too many times that I’m not really aroace spec bc I have a boyfriend. That isn’t true.

basically, yeah it’s absolutely wrong to say those things if you don’t experience it (and sometimes even if you do) BUT. People also say the exact opposite of this argument to tell aro or ace people they are not actually what they say they are.

First off. A lot of people treat romance-favorable arospecs and sex-favorable acespecs as some edge case or exception within the community, but that's not really the case. I ran a poll (see the ace poll here and the aro poll here) that demonstrated, even if you discount indifferent and ambivalent folks who might have no feelings, mixed feelings, or fluctuating feelings on the subject that could include some level of favorability or wanting to participate depending on the person, sex-favorable acespecs were 16.9% of respondents and romance-favorable arospecs were 25.5% of respondents. Those aren't insignificant portions of the community? They're not edge cases, exceptions, or just representing "some select members" of the community. They are a significant portion of the community.

You may also note, I was reading everyone's tags and thoughts on the polls as they were sharing, and many chose to share their feelings in the tags. Many didn't. Most of the people being more vocal about their experiences were on the averse/repulsed end of the spectrum. That's not a bad thing! I love hearing from them, and their voices deserve to be heard just like any other ace/aro person's. But I also want to just add a gentle reminder that the loudest voice and the bloggers with the biggest platforms aren't always right. If you think a big blogger is being exclusionary in the types of posts they boost or the arguments they make, then I'd encourage you to seek out other sources of information on the community. No single voice is ever going to be the most authoritative voice on an entire community, especially not one as diverse and covering such a broad width of experiences as the ace/aro communities.

Now, uh. Ace/aro shipping, the big hot topic issue. In my opinion, shipping and fictional characters are never going to be more important than real life living ace/aro folks, so I would just keep this in mind.

Do you think ace/aro shipping is okay? Yes, actually, I do. For one thing, alloaces still feel romantic attraction and can have alloromantic ships, while aroallos still feel sexual attraction and can have allosexual ships. This combining of them and saying "no shipping ever!" is conflating the two types of attraction, not to mention it often ignores queerplatonic shipping entirely, too.

There are also gray, demi, and other aspec characters that still feel attraction on a limited or circumstantial basis. Those readings of characters are valid. There's also identities like cupio where people still actively seek out relationships despite not feeling attraction, or oriented aroaces who might feel an attraction that isn't romantic or sexual.

But! Isn't shipping an ace/aro character like shipping a lesbian with a man? No, it really isn't ^^" I find this to be a pretty allo-lensed argument, actually. Allo people generally view it as the end of the world to be with someone they aren't attracted to, speaking broadly, but that isn't really how many ace/aro folks operate. (Many do though, and that's okay too.) Many ace/aro folks still have a libido or a desire for romantic intimacy. When an allo person wants to be with someone to work out that libido or desire for intimacy, they're almost always going to choose someone they're attracted to, because their feelings have a target. Now, when an ace/aro person has a libido or desire for romance? There's no target, or it might be limited/circumstantial. If the desire is still there, they may chose to ignore it, to take care of it by themself, or to seek out a partner for those urges they care for on a level that may not be sexual/romantic. All of these reactions are valid and should be respected, because it's an individual choice/preference.

But isn't shipping an aro/ace character erasure? I'd only consider it erasure if a) it's 100% canon, and b) you're doing completely allo shipping that doesn't incorporate any actual ace/aro headcanons whatsoever. A woman who avoids marriage to a man in a period book could be aroace, or she could be a lesbian, or she could just be avoiding ceding her bodily autonomy and freedom to a man via marriage. All of these readings could arguably be correct, and it's okay and not erasure for them all to exist at once or for people to have different takes. Same goes for a character who is ambiguously ace/aro in canon but we aren't given the specifics; people can read them as demisexual, aroflux, a sex-repulsed ace, a romance-favorable aro, among many other examples--as a community, we get so little rep, so while I understand getting defensive over your reading, ace/aro folks are going to want to explore the broad experiences under the umbrella that may differ from your particular reading and that's okay. There doesn't need to be one definitive "correct" reading on the character in fanon.

But a sexual asexual person or a romantic aromantic person doesn't make sense to me! Well, why do you have to understand it to respect it? Every queer identity goes through this process of people not understanding it at first, but that doesn't make those identities invalid. Telling an asexual person they have to be non-sexual and/or sex-averse/repulsed, or telling an aromantic person they have to be non-romantic and/or romance-averse/repulsed, is like telling a non-binary person that they have to be androgynous. That might make the most sense to you, and there might be many non-binary people who fit into that box, but it's a much broader spectrum of identity and expression, as well.

So should I tell every ace/aro person they can still do romance/sex? NO. Don't do this. If someone says they don't want sex or romance, that's the end of the conversation. Believe them, respect them, and move on. If someone doesn't want to engage with romance/sex, respect their wishes and move on. I'd encourage people to make fandom more welcoming for our repulsed/averse ace/aro siblings by doing things like tagging your ship content with romance warnings if it's romantic, marking and warning for sexual content as is already standard fandom etiquette, engaging more with platonic and/or queerplatonic art, and engaging with repulsed/averse readings of the characters alongside any engagement with favorable readings. Not everything is about romance and sex, and those ace/aro folks who don't want to participate in it need to be validated as much as those who want to participate.

But allo people are doing ace/aro shipping wrong! Can't we just take it away forever? Unfortunately, no. ^^" An anti-censorship stance means accepting that people will make things you don't like. There will always be allos who don't take a character's ace/aroness into account and refuse to engage with averse/repulsed-focused headcanons, but I'd say that catching sex-favorable aces and romance-favorable aros in the crossfire as you try to go at these people isn't the solution. There also might be questioning folks who are new to ace/aro things who initially get things wrong, but they should still be given room to explore that they might be ace/aro via fiction. Just block anyone who makes the art you don't like and move on, and promote and celebrate the people who are making the things you want to see more of. And please, for the love of everything that is good, stop tagging your hate for shipping and favorable folks with the favorable tags. It's not fun to go into the favorable ace/aro tumblr tags and get flooded with hate for your identity.