Our attitudes to AVEN

[techno]

Both aromanticism and asexuality are REALLY far-reaching and encompass a lot of different people in a lot of different situations, and I think as both communities have grown, AVEN has failed to account for that diversity. It often fails to consider the unique experiences of being aro ace as opposed to allo ace, and has failed to provide any sufficient sort of support for aro allos, for whom the aromantic subthread of AVEN was or seems to have been the only source of visibility for a long time.

 

In other words, AVEN has, in my opinion, failed at its job.

[TheAP]

This thread makes me sad. I love AVEN. Sure, there's a lot of drama, but the people are so friendly.

[Arocalypse]

22 minutes ago, TheAP said:

This thread makes me sad. I love AVEN. Sure, there's a lot of drama, but the people are so friendly.

my solution was to get the friendly people on skype, aroca and tumblr coughyoucough

and now i have the awesome people without the drama

[Ace of Amethysts]

17 hours ago, TheAP said:

This thread makes me sad. I love AVEN. Sure, there's a lot of drama, but the people are so friendly.

I wish I was still there. I really do.

[Tal Shi'ar]

On 25/01/2017 at 11:25 AM, Ace of Amethysts said:

@Dodgypotato There`s this one lesbian user who literally got me kicked from the site.

 

Could we please avoid starting rumours, yeah?

[Adrienne]

On 1/26/2017 at 9:33 PM, Ace of Amethysts said:

I wish I was still there. I really do.

If your ban wasn't the result of you breaking the TOS, maybe you could ask the admins for permission to create another account. We'd love to have you back

[Ace of Amethysts]

I`m sorry for this, guys. I`ve just been struggling with anxiety.

[Arocalypse]

People saying aven was toxic:
2015 me: What are you talki-

2016-early17: wait wait i see it now

 

It's really sad how it's fallen so far. Even though I'm not aromantic, I'm glad arocalypse exists, since asexuality is still discussed here but without all the bad parts

[Ace of Amethysts]

I'm sad now.

[Arocalypse]

1 hour ago, Ace of Amethysts said:

I'm sad now.

[Ace of Amethysts]

@Arocalypse Are you a cat or a website?

[Confidential_Con]

[Arocalypse]

15 hours ago, Ace of Amethysts said:

@Arocalypse Are you a cat or a website?

Unfortunately, there are no gifs of website hugs.

[Ace of Amethysts]

That's really unfortunate.

[Mark]

On 26/01/2017 at 8:25 PM, techno-trashcan said:

Both aromanticism and asexuality are REALLY far-reaching and encompass a lot of different people in a lot of different situations, and I think as both communities have grown, AVEN has failed to account for that diversity. It often fails to consider the unique experiences of being aro ace as opposed to allo ace, and has failed to provide any sufficient sort of support for aro allos, for whom the aromantic subthread of AVEN was or seems to have been the only source of visibility for a long time.

IMHO AVEN was only really intended to serve the interests of allo ace people. Rather than being purely about asexuality...

[Ace of Amethysts]

@Mark How so? Just curious, is all.

[Momo]

On 2017-1-27 at 7:25 AM, techno-trashcan said:

Both aromanticism and asexuality are REALLY far-reaching and encompass a lot of different people in a lot of different situations, and I think as both communities have grown, AVEN has failed to account for that diversity. It often fails to consider the unique experiences of being aro ace as opposed to allo ace, and has failed to provide any sufficient sort of support for aro allos, for whom the aromantic subthread of AVEN was or seems to have been the only source of visibility for a long time.

 

I've not been a part of AVEN before, but I've definitely seen other ace forums that have perpetuated the same error - going so far as to say things (about aro, or aro subforums) like "I don't see why we need that here." or "I don't know what they'd talk about." 

[Mark]

6 hours ago, Ace of Amethysts said:

@Mark How so? Just curious, is all.

Even though AVEN has done quite a bit to popularise the split attraction model. This appears to be more by accident than intent...
Their primary interest appears to demonstrating that alloromantic asexuals are "just like you" to alloromamntic allosexuals.

Whilst AVEN shows up frequently when looking for "aromantic" they don't appear to do much to challenge myths like all aros being asexual or that aros can't be interested in romantic coded activities.

[Ace of Amethysts]

@Mark That sounds like a lot of mainstream ace exposure to me.

[Mark]

4 hours ago, Ace of Amethysts said:

@Mark That sounds like a lot of mainstream ace exposure to me.

Such exposure would could only come from AVEN, directly or indirectly, in practice

[techno]

@Mark I totally agree. One of the asexual community's biggest problems is that its only source of exposure, information, and education has been AVEN for a long time. AVEN has been an invaluable resource, sure, because without it there would be way less information out there than there is now, but when people outside of ace circles see the toxic environment and the biases and all of the issues that AVEN has, they associate asexuality and AVEN to the point of treating all asexuals like a hivemind.

 

And since AVEN played such a pivotal role in popularizing the split-attraction model, the aromantic community has become inextricably tied to the asexual community for no good reason. As an aroace person I of course have had times where this connection comes in handy (to be fair, I wouldn't have known about aromanticism if it wasn't mentioned so constantly in ace circles), but that isn't the case for allo aros. And because so much of the mainstream ace rhetoric is based in the fact that aces "can still love and are still ~~normal~~ just like everyone else," aros get thrown under the bus, asexual or not. They always stress how "asexuality and aromanticism are not the same thing," which is true, but it's like they're saying "asexuality is different from aromanticism, we're not like them, we're normal like everyone else, we don't touch that." No one ever goes on to further explain this or to provide ANY resources to learn more about aromanticism. Aros are like an afterthought. And that's why I joined Arocalypse, because it's really the only accessible community out there, and I've felt a stronger personal connection to the aromantic community than the asexual one. Even as an aro ace person, the asexual community has thrown me under the bus for not fitting their standard narrative. AVEN specifically has dedicated so much to advocating for their own humanity that they have forgotten that we are human too.

[Mark]

10 hours ago, techno-trashcan said:

And since AVEN played such a pivotal role in popularizing the split-attraction model, the aromantic community has become inextricably tied to the asexual community for no good reason.

As an aromantic person who isn't asexual this is a problem. In some cases a very big problem.

 

10 hours ago, techno-trashcan said:

They always stress how "asexuality and aromanticism are not the same thing," which is true, but it's like they're saying "asexuality is different from aromanticism, we're not like them, we're normal like everyone else, we don't touch that." No one ever goes on to further explain this or to provide ANY resources to learn more about aromanticism. Aros are like an afterthought.

IME most resources on aromanticism tend to come across as either an add on to asexuality or from a very aro ace POV. (Typically with haphephobia and philemaphobia in the mix too.)
 

When someone searches for "aromantic" pages like this (on the AVEN wiki) are likely to be near the top.
There's "... aromantics are often satisfied with friendships ..." somewhat implying that friendships are less than romantic relationships. Whereas to non romantically repulsed aro friendships can be more than romance Nor do I especially like the friends -> QPR -> romantic relationship hierarchy mentioned further on.
The article goes on to confuse romantic coded behaviours and activities with romance.
(That aros might have a different definition of "friend" from allos or desire the ability to do romantic coded things with friends goes unmentioned here.)

There no mention at all things like identifying as a couple, spending lots of time together, doing things (not always romantic coded things) together as a couple, etc Which are, IMHO, the kind of things fairly unique to romantic relationships.

There's also an Aromantic FAQ linked from here. Which I think is a little better, but still problematic in many ways. My impression is that it was written by an alloromantic.

Even other websites such as Aromantics Wiki appear to be taking a lot of their information from AVEN.

[Momo]

7 minutes ago, Mark said:

There's also an Aromantic FAQ linked from here. Which I think is a little better, but still problematic in many ways. My impression is that it was written by an alloromantic.

Even other websites such as Aromantics Wiki appear to be taking a lot of their information from AVEN.

 

Interesting thought: I found Arocalypse.com via Google while looking for an aromantic forum. Seems we have some amount of juice in this space. Would it be worthwhile trying to put together our own FAQ / wiki? 

[Mark]

4 hours ago, Momo said:

Would it be worthwhile trying to put together our own FAQ / wiki? 

I think it would be very important for this to cover romantic coding, amantonormativity and the history of romance (including how recent the latter two actually are).

[techno]

And people wonder why the aromantic community has often been pushing so hard to separate itself as much as possible from the asexual community... all they have to do is look at this thread.