LauraG

This analogy does not really work in the given situation. To me, at least, a more adequate analogy would be something falling on person A's foot, but person A thinks person B stepped on it, so person A snaps at them. Person B says it wasn't them in reaction to being snapped at in an annoyed tone, and person A says "how dare you ignore my pain, you could have just apologized" Which like, maybe it'd be nice for them to acknowledge that person B is hurt (apologizing still seems like a bit much), but given the fact that person A started out by snapping at person B, and when there's a history of person A repeatedly stepping on person B's toes and saying "what? it wasn't me" and then running away when told "yes, it was you," then it makes sense that person B might react a bit harshly in this circumstance. Honestly I don't think this analogy is perfect either, but hey... stepping on someone's foot has more fault involved than having something you said misinterpreted by someone else. That's a no-fault situation, and expecting one person to accept fault is a bit ridiculous. I think this would lend some clarity to the original sentence. I don't think it's immediately obvious that it's an example, though once I realized that's what it was it made sense that way.

To play devil's satan*, first you don't need platonic attraction to have friends. Second, It would makes total sense to me to say "more than friends" when you mean "the relationship I have with them is based on romantic attraction in addition to the platonic one" (not all romantic relationship are like that). But most people would understand it as "this relationship counts more in the absolute relationship hierarchy because ... amatonormativity !", and that doesn't make any iherent sense, regardless of your orientation. And third, serendipity and the gray area of the aro spectrum make that some aplatonics having a romantic orientation are already inside the aro community and the civil war has not happened yet. * satan = prosecutor 1) Did I say that you need platonic attraction to have friends somewhere? If what I said sounded like that, it's not how I intended it. 2) That also makes sense to me. It also would make even more sense if they felt romantic attraction without feeling any platonic attraction. I meant inherent sense to them personally, with how they personally structure relationships. Why do we, as aros, see that statement as automatically being about relationship hierarchies in general as opposed to how things personally feel? I don't know that that's necessarily how all alloromantic folks see that statement. (Honestly, I don't think they think about it, for the most part.) 3) I know, lol, I'm one of them, and this whole hypothetical example was based on my own personal experience (which is why I said it's easy to argue against lol). I experience exactly one kind of strong emotional feeling towards others, which I feel quite rarely, and it beats me whether that's a romantic or platonic feeling. Honestly I personally kind of like "more than friends" as a neutral way of describing this feeling without specifically labeling it platonic or romantic, but... that would not play over well with other aros, and I know that. Also... "the civil war has not happened yet"... I beg to differ haha. I think @Coyote literally has a post titled "The Gray Wars".

You're really not listening to my problem here are you? I've said multiple times your example came across as 'this is the only kind of aplatonic' (aka erasing other kinds). I know it probably wasn't meant that way, but that's how it sounded. At this point I think I'm also going to take a step back from this conversation, because I honestly can't explain myself any differently then I have, and I don't think I can state things any clearer, so if you're not getting my point by now, I doubt I can change that. This feels like @Coyote is talking about how ix meant the original statement, which was supposed to be an example of one person, which wouldn't be erasure. But you're still upset about how you originally interpreted it, which was not how it was intended? Am I reading this situation correctly? I think you're not getting each others' points because you're not talking about the same thing. To go back to Coy's original question: I interpreted "[that use/definition]" to mean the personal definition, now that we've cleared up that Coy did not intend it to be a broad, overarching definition, but rather as an example. So essentially how I read this question was "Are you saying that a personal definition of 'I don't love my friends' affects others who identify as aplatonic in a negative way?" Which I don't think is what you're saying, @VoidArcana, if I'm interpreting you right. I'm not sure what you're looking for from Coy before we can move on from the misunderstood meaning of Coy's statement back to the intended meaning of the statement. Are you looking for Coy to apologize because others misunderstood what ix was trying to say? Or, did you miss when Coy said that that's not how ix meant the original statement? Are you looking for Coy to edit the original statement to be more clear? I'm confused. I feel like "If I misunderstand something you say, and I'm offended by what I thought you said, then even after we've established that you didn't actually mean that, you absolutely must apologize or we cannot continue the conversation" is a bit of a harsh sentiment, so I'm sure that's not what you're going for here?

Also as perhaps a point of clarification, I don't think @Coyote, by asking why aplatonic should be included in aspec, means to imply that there isn't a reason why aplatonic could be grouped with ace and aro, but rather that aplatonic should only be included in that grouping if it makes sense and there's a reason for it, so Coy is asking about what that reason is in a legitimate sense. Coy you can correct me if I'm wrong here. For example, ace and aro inclusion in the broader queer and LGBTQ+ community makes sense because that's already a broad coalition of groups that defy cishetero norms. Ace and aro folks already defy those norms as well, and it makes sense for our communities to support other LGBTQ+ communities and vice versa. We're stronger together and all that. To play devil's advocate (and I legitimately mean that - I think you could probably argue against this pretty easily), an alloromantic aplatonic person might love their romantic partners, but not love their friends (note: this is a specific example, not a broad generalization). For them, the idea of being "more than friends" might make some inherent sense to them, and so they're not exactly defying amatonormativity there. In fact, they may actively be confused by aro frustrations with things like that phrase, because they can't relate, and aros might be frustrated with them because they feel like they're upholding a system they find harmful. In this case, it might not make sense to group these two groups together.

Re-reading Magni's response, I personally don't see how how this connects with what ze was saying, since ze said multiple times that what upset zem was more than just the definition. However, if the complaint was just that the definition used was not broad enough, that's fair. I'm a strong supporter of broad, inclusive definitions. -- For the record, I'm also coming to this conversation as someone who ostensibly could identify as aplatonic. I personally don't find the label itself useful, as I don't distinguish between romantic/platonic feelings and I find my aromantic/grayromantic label to cover those experiences personally.... But still given that, no one in this conversation identifies with the set of identities I was referring to in my original comment: allosexual, alloromantic, and aplatonic. I was trying to ensure that we weren't automatically labeling those (currently hypothetical) folks as bad or harmful to aros in some way, because that just reinforces the whole idea that being aplatonic (or more specifically in this context - not loving your friends) is bad in general, and if those folks are more than hypothetical, it's not a good look to say the least. (I'm also not trying to imply that Magni was necessarily saying that - I tried to ask to clarify but ze doesn't want to respond, it looks like.)

I really don't know why Laura and Sennkestra are doing that either. I'll let them speak for themselves, of course. Mostly I just feel like people so often choose to interpret the things you say with the worst possible interpretation (for @VoidArcana's reference, since you mentioned being new here, this has a broader context than just this thread). Assuming positive intent of others is a value of mine, and as a result this pattern frustrates me. @VoidArcana I'm curious what your answer is to this question before I respond to the content of your response.

@CoyoteI don't like how you seem to be equating aplatonic with, like, just some allo person going "I don't love my friends"? It reminds me of exclusionist rhetoric and the ways people have ridiculed the term aplatonic. (idk how to word this better rn but can try to elaborate later if needed) @Magni Is there something wrong with the idea of an allo person identifying as aplatonic because they don't love their friends? I don't see how there's anything wrong with what @Coyote said unless you're assuming that there's something wrong with saying "I don't love my friends," or assuming that Coy thinks there is something wrong with saying "I don't love my friends." I can see how maybe you might have interpreted "I don't see what that necessarily has to do with me" as being flippant about aplatonic as an identity, but I'm fairly certain that's not how Coy meant it - I think you're misinterpreting the tone (which again, is understandable). But in the future it might be better to assume positive intent, and ask for clarification on the tone before jumping to conclusions. Again, I don't see how what Coy said could possibly come across similarly to that unless you're agreeing with exclusionists that it's bad/harmful for allo folks to identify as aplatonic? I think you're falling into the trap of thinking something's harmful because it gives a bigot an "excuse" to harm people, rather than challenging the whole notion of that quality being a valid reason to harm people in the first place. Ah Sennkestra already said what I was trying to say above in a much more easily understandable way.

Suggestion for the future: please include "neither yes nor no" as an option on future surveys whenever there's a yes/no/unsure question (for me personally, this was an issue on the "is your partnership romantic" question, but I'm sure it will be a thing for others on other questions) In general, the survey questions are difficult to answer as someone who doesn't find "romance" to be a personally useful category, but also I recognize it's really hard to write questions that accommodate that. Edit: just realized there's an option to add feedback at the end of the survey - whoops! Anyway, congrats about getting this out! It's exciting!

Yeah, I kind of hate when people paraphrase? Because then it's hard to know yourself whether they're misinterpreting people or whether they have a point. For example, I know @Jot-Aro Kujo has gotten upset about how people bring up shared ace & aro history before, and my first instinct was that those complaints were talking about people making corrections when others make inaccurate claims about the history of certain terms (*cough* queerplatonic), until I encountered someone who just brought up that allo aros wouldn't have the words to talk about themselves without aces just at the mere mention of an allo aro person, and I was like "wait, wtf this happens this way? that's messed up" and realized that my interpretations of Alex's paraphrasing were probably inaccurate. So I've tried to give examples when I talk about things now, because I realize people's interpretations of paraphrasing is subject to both my interpretation as the writer and then the reader's imagination of what I must be talking about, both of which might be inaccurate. I also wonder how people from older conflicts would feel about things being brought up after a long time. Like, people might not want to get back into certain drama if you message them after a while has passed, and might get upset at you bringing it up if you were to try to approach them.

So I've seen something new that I'd like to share on this thread, however, I've not contacted the two people involved in the conversation as per the discussion @Jot-Aro Kujo and I had earlier in this thread. The thing is, I'm 5,000% positive that me, as an individual, saying something would go over extremely poorly. Would Alex, or someone else (preferably an allo aro someone else) be willing to reach out to those people if I shared the post privately? Pending, of course, taking a look at the post in question. I'd understand if you didn't want to touch it. Mostly, I'm just concerned that these people will be considered right by a large portion of the community if there aren't people opposing those ideas, particularly other allo aros opposing those ideas, because aces just get dismissed.

What would you prefer we call it? Harassment? Vigilante modding an unmoderated space? Somehow I doubt those two come across any better... (this is mostly a joke) I say this because I have received a slew of nasty messages of this variety for a post that was so relevant to aromanticism that in the notes there were people asking me what it had to do with asexuality (it was an ace week post, so it mentioned aces for that reason, people got confused about this once it was no longer ace week). It was a post inspired by my aro experiences, so I tagged it as aro for that reason, but also because I wanted to be able to find it again when I wanted to reblog my aro-related posts at times like ASAW! Tags have multiple functions beyond doing a sitewide search of the entirety of tumblr. Having a bunch of people come and tell me that my post, which was inspired by my aro experiences, wasn't aro, did feel like they were policing my identity. (And I got another person literally call me alloace over that same post for using the word queerplatonic and ace in the same sentence, so I was maybe also primed to interpret it that way, but it still felt really awful.) My point is that if you misinterpret the other person's post, and you tell someone that their post isn't aro, you run the risk of saying things that do sound like identity policing. I once saw a blog accidentally tag a post that said something like "it's okay to want romance without sex" as aromantic. Now, I'd agree that's inappropriately tagged. But how did someone correct that? By saying "this isn't aro"! Cupioromantic aros and aros who otherwise "want romance" exist, and when you say "this isn't aro" on a post like that, you're essentially calling everyone in that category "not aro." Which is identity policing, even if accidental (which I think it probably was in that case - it just felt icky to read). Do you have any suggestions for how people could continue to address mistagged posts in a way that won't put others through that awful experience I had? What's the connection here? How do mistagged tumblr posts, specifically, contribute to this misconception? This feels like a correlation not causation kind of thing. Maybe this is the source of disagreement here? I don't think that the misconceptions are caused by the mistagging, but rather vice versa - misconceptions cause the instances of real mistagging, which are usually done by baby aces or people who are not themselves ace or aro. I honestly do not believe that tumblr tags are enough of a community face to really contribute to this misconception, and we're better served addressing that misconception in other ways that would be more effective than messaging each individual who doesn't understand the difference between asexuality and aromanticism. I believe that! I believe that it's not intentional - I think it comes more from not understanding how certain posts are relevant to aromanticism, or just how people go about making the correction. Personally, I believe the risk of causing harm to another aro is not worth it, but if you have suggestions for ways to mitigate that potential harm instead, I'm all ears. On this note - I believe posts that are about being aroace, where the "aro" part of that is a significant aspect of the post, but are also limited to aces in some way, would not be inappropriately tagged with "aromantic" - because even if they're about asexual aromanticism, they're still about aromanticism. I've seen some people tag police because a post was limited to aces, but still about aromanticism, which I don't think is okay, would you agree with that? Those spaces are important! But honestly? Tumblr tags are a terrible place to try to create any kind of community space. Why is everyone so focused on trying to turn them into a that? It's literally just a sitewide search of Tumblr! No different from a google search, except that it is limited to tumblr! It feels as ridiculous to me as writing letters of complaint to the essential oil company Aromantic telling them they are invading the community space that is my Google Alert emails. Additionally, tumblr tags are, by nature, unmoderated - and moderation done by people who are not designated mods does not lend itself to a positive community space. You want a place where you can create community guidelines, and have designated mods who reach out to people who don't follow the guidelines, and who can straight up delete irrelevant posts if needed. Why not put energy there as opposed to tumblr tags, which is like, the least productive community space you could possibly put effort into? I appreciate this, considering I'm 95% sure that that's me? Even if I'm not completely sure what you mean by this. But thanks

I'm sorry if I did this in this thread at all? I know this is directed at @Coyote but I can't help notice the similarity between that and my own post further up this thread. I didn't reach out to both of the people I quoted up there, mostly because best case scenario I didn't think they'd listen to me... worst case I'd get hate mail... How do you suggest people balance making the effort to reach out to people yourself, when you are fairly certain they won't listen to you (or you've seen them fail to listen to others in the past), versus trying to reach out to others who might have a better chance of getting through to the people making the comments in question or at least try to draw attention to the issue so that others know it's not okay? I certainly prefer friendly one-on-one conversations where you're both trying to understand the other person, but sometimes I doubt that the other person would be willing to engage in that with me. (Edit: I also value giving evidence and examples to back up claims, that way people can know exactly what you're talking about. I've definitely thought people were talking about one thing when they were actually talking about another in the past, so I usually try to give specific examples myself so we're not talking around the issue too much.)

Another type I've seen (that probably overlaps with all three of these?) is downplaying legitimate issues that aces face, or implying that aces, especially allo aces, don't really have it all that bad. I think this often happens simply because the people saying this don't know a lot about issues aces, especially allo aces, face (maybe they're thinking of issues aros face, and thinking that aces/allo aces don't have to deal with those, forgetting that there are additional issues that being ace/allo ace might add into the equation?). But when that's combined with "everything's always about aces all the time so I don't want to hear/learn anything new about aces because I'm tired of it" it doesn't work out so well.

i sign under everything @Jot-Aro Kujo said in this reblog with both hands, that comment about sex-favorable aces was tone deaf. "Yeah, there are sex positive aces, but they’ll never be treated the same way that alloaros are. And like, it all started when allaros started getting mad at the fact that we’re literally the most poorly treated aspecs." on the other hand implies that aces are privileged over alloaros imo. I also agree that that particular commenter was out of line. I do think there are times that sex-favorable aces face similar issues to allo aros (such as finding community space where talking about sex is okay), but that fact should never be used to downplay those issues, it should be used to bolster them. (And also it shouldn't be used as "this is only valid cause it also affects aces" either) I would like to (gently) push back against the bolded sentence up there, though. There is a very long history in the ace community of shitting on sex-favorable aces. Broadly, I think the ace community does a pretty good job of addressing it when it comes up; so much so that I think the ace community as it stands now places too much emphasis on sex-favorable aces. But the reason that happens is because of that long history of people trying to kick sex-favorable aces out of the ace label or community. To take an example from early ace history, there was the Official Asexual Society (source) : I certainly don't want this to devolve into "who has/had it worse" but I just want to point out that it's a little more complicated than you might be thinking. (Alex I also don't mean to be talking about you in the hypothetical; I'm hoping this response doesn't come across that way?)

I definitely agree with all of this. One thing I'd like to mention is that sometimes, especially on Tumblr where everything's out in the open for everyone to see, it can be unclear which the op is trying to do. I don't have the exact link, but once I encountered a post that, based on how it was written, sounded more like an explaining/Doing Activism type post (it was written with the framing as if it were giving advice to non-alloaro folks), but it also had a dni banner that made it very clear that it actually wasn't for that audience? That post made me think a lot about the potential for confusing a vent post for a Doing Activism post, because without the dni banner I definitely would have misinterpreted that.