LauraG

3 hours ago, VoidArcana said:

If you step on my foot, are you going to apologise for stepping on my foot, or are you going to argue that you didn't mean to step on my foot so obviously my foot shouldn't be hurt?

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.

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

adding "for instance" in front of the example given for instance

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.

1 hour ago, John Rando said:

4 hours ago, LauraG said:

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.

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".

54 minutes ago, VoidArcana said:

7 hours ago, Coyote said:

 

Hold on, it's "erasure" to talk about one person?

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:

On 6/9/2020 at 10:18 AM, Coyote said:

I don't.... sssssee if you answered the question there, so I'll break it into two questions: 1) Are you (still) saying that [that use/definition] affects people who identify as aplatonic (ostensibly, negatively)? 2) And if so, how so?

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.

45 minutes ago, VoidArcana said:

I read Magni's response not as an attempt to throw people like myself under the bus, but a request to consider aplatonic people who either don't use or don't fit the given definition. 

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.)

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

3 hours ago, VoidArcana said:

I'm just wondering why people are so focused on defending what Coyote said

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.

12 minutes ago, Coyote said:

You implied you would like me to think more carefully about this, and so I'd like you to point me toward which conclusions you hope will come of it: How does that definition ["I don't love my friends"] affect people who identify as aplatonic?

@VoidArcana I'm curious what your answer is to this question before I respond to the content of your response.

On 6/5/2020 at 10:27 PM, Magni said:

On 6/5/2020 at 1:12 PM, Coyote said:

That's the question though, would an alloromantic allosexual have any reason to want to identify with the ace & aro umbrellas like that? I mean, if someone's like "I don't love my friends," I don't see what that necessarily has to do with me. I'm not preemptively ruling it out, just asking what the rationale is supposed to be.

@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.

22 hours ago, Magni said:

Exclusionists would say stuff like "oh a cis heteroromantic heterosexual person who doesn't have friends can just say they're aplatonic and pretend to be lgbt" and just generally ridicule it as a term a lot.  Do you understand how what you said comes across similarly to that?

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.

22 hours ago, sennkestra said:

With regards to exclusionists though, I just want to gently push back on "exclusionists will make fun of us" alone as a reason to avoid certain phrasing - because I do know people who would describe themselves as not feeling "love" for their friends in very similar terms, and I don't want to throw them under the bus just to avoid stupid exclusionist opinions by saying "we're not like those weirdos". (ace and aro communities already have problems with silencing straight-identified aces and aros and basically throwing them under the bus to more easily win flame war arguments, instead of pursuing more nuanced takes  - I don't want to see that happen to other groups)

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!

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

So do I restrict myself to paraphrasing of other's words w/o citations, asking people to just take my word for it, or do I include links to what exactly the contemporary issue looks like?

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

If I didn't link to examples, I would have to just very closely describe what people are saying and say, basically, trust me, this is really a thing that people are saying.

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.

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

To explain how people have used the "asexual privilege" concept, I plan to link to some posts from 2011 that show people saying the things they said.

• This is so people can understand exactly what I'm using as a reference point and how these conversations unfolded in the past.
• It's also so people can confirm for themselves that I'm not misreporting/misinterpreting things.
• Afaik most of the people involved on the anti-ace side of that debate either aren't around anymore or aren't active under the same accounts.

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.

1 hour ago, Korbin said:

But on the topic of tag policing... Can we please cut it out with the narrative that people asking for tags to be kept on topic is 'policing' in the same way that telling someone they aren't x is policing?

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?

2 hours ago, Korbin said:

There would be no problem if most people didn't equate aromanticism to asexuality. But I can confirm that anyone I've ever met and came out to had assumed I was ace- and or asserted I was ace after I corrected them.

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.

2 hours ago, Korbin said:

Tag policing isn't about trying to put down aroaces for feeling a connection with their asexuality but pointing out that something is perpetuating a common myth. This is not a case where we're trying to antagonize aces at all. 

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?

2 hours ago, Korbin said:

What I'm getting at is that this is making it difficult for aros to try making aro specific spaces for the aros that do see a distinction.

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?

2 hours ago, Korbin said:

Further edit: the person I vaguely mention isn't even at fault in any way. No one really is

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

1 hour ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Nah you're good, don't worry!

1 hour ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

And instead of attempting to resolve the situation by speaking to them directly, you took their words out of context and used them on a different platform as an example of People In The Aro Community Doing Bad Things™ without even notifying them that you were doing so,

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.)

17 minutes ago, Guest Sennkestra said:

Changing subjects a bit, but on thing I'd like to see more of in these conversations is differentiating between different common types of ace antagonism in aro spaces:

 

1. Internal community antagonism, often (but not only) of [aro] allosexual folks perpetuating antagonistic assumptions about [aro] asexual folks in situations where everyone involved is still some kind of aro and in explicitly aro-focused settings.

 

2. Antagonism by aro folks against the asexuality community or concepts (both aro and non-aro aces) more generally, particularly in mixed ace and aro spaces or public spaces more generally.

 

3. External antagonism specifically against aces who are not aromantic, or antagonism against non-aro people more generally which overlaps with ace-antagonism, homophobia, and other biases  - this in particular is something asexual aromantic folks are often just as guilty of - we don't get a pass just for being ace!.

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.

1 hour ago, bydontost said:

2 hours ago, Coyote said:

"allaros [are] literally the most poorly treated aspecs"

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?)

21 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Well, yeah. But not everyone is constantly looking to do Activism™ every time they talk about their identities. Definitely if someone is setting out to say something with the intention of getting people to listen and think, then yes, it's probably in their best interests to not simply scream about things, but sometimes people just... Are venting, on their own blogs? Allo aros are allowed to be angry. We don't have to "get things done" every time we speak. Again, we do need to be really, really careful that our anger does not dip into outright acephobia- But so long as it doesn't cross that line, there's no real reason we shouldn't be able to just talk about our emotions sometimes.

Being polite while explaining is good, definitely! But when not explaining, the language allo aros use to make personal posts on our own blogs- Again, so long as that language is not straight up acephobic rhetoric- Is our business, imo. 

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.

Since a lot of your examples are simply people talking about it, I'd like to offer some specific examples.

Probably the most egregious example I've seen so far is this bulleted list of criticisms of the word queeragamic. (Which to be clear, I don't like the word and think there are valid criticisms/concerns/worries to have about it, just, not the main point the person is making below.)

Quote

I’ll go through some of the highlights from the discord server where we’ve been having a long discussion about this.

• Needlessly gives other people private information about your sex life
• Implies that qprs are inherently sexual
• The coiner has classified criticism from alloaros as “hate” instead of valid critisism
• Qprs don’t have to be sexual in nature to begin with
• Needlessly telling people it’s not sexual enforces the exclusionist rhetoric that aces overshare about their sex lives
• Coiner also said something along the lines of being tired of having to explicitly state that their qpr isn’t sexual. Which like. You definitely don’t have to do.
• Especially to people who didn’t ask.
• How weird would it be to introduce a romantic partner to someone and then say “we don’t have sex” like………
• QPRS ARENT INHERENTLY SEXUAL ANYWAY AND COINER KNOWS THIS
• Theyve acknowledged that qprs can be sexual, not that they are inherently, and still decided that they need to go out of their way to say their own isn’t. It rubs me as purity culture as hell
• Again they refuse to listen to any alloaro that are trying to explain the problem, specifying that they’re not gonna answer any more asks from “aros who are angry about queeragamic”, do I have to tell you why specifically calling out aros to ignore is bad

It’s not the fact that they decided to use another label thats alloarophobic. It’s literally everything else about it. Everything about it screams “person who doesn’t wanna be associated with alloaros even in an abstract way”.

The similarities between the sentiment being expressed here and anti-ace rhetoric that identifying as ace means you're "oversharing about your sex life" make me highly uncomfortable. Especially considering this was based on a conversation on a discord server that has over 100 people on it and apparently no one pointed out that this isn't okay? However, as an ace person bringing that up, my concerns get dismissed as an ace person who's ignoring allo aro's complaints, and I don't really know how to address this issue without that being the perception?

One person recently called this out (which... not a huge fan of their approach, but agree with the point), and the op just dismissed them, then doubled down on the point by making this post.

And another angle that people were taking with the queeragamic criticisms, which you can see a little bit of at the end of the above post, is that by being uncomfortable with others assuming that you're having sex, the coiner is somehow sex-shaming allosexual aros? Which again, to me just sounds like typical anti-ace rhetoric that says identifying as asexual is sexualizing everyone else (an argument usually made in the context of minors):

Quote

Yeah okay keep your “””pure””” term for the Valid Aros who don’t have these dirty, impure sexual relationships you hate so much.

I’m gonna be over here knowing that aroaces aren’t the Superior Aro who’s inherently better than aroallos or whatever the fuck 

note: this isnt me hating aroaces in general, this is about a qpr blog i used to like deciding that aroallos are ruining the term qpr by having sexual elements in their qprs, and decided to make a “new term” thats basically just a qpr except you cant use it if your relationship is sexual. which is completely unecessary because qprs have ALWAYS included only the elements the participants want and is a highly versatile and fluid term thats personal to a relationship.

but i guess us filthy, depraved aroallos need a term we’re explicitly excluded from so that we don’t ruin the precious image of our community or whatever.

i am so fucking tired.

Like, the coiner of the word did coin it in reaction to realizing that there are plenty of people who use qpr to describe relationships that are also sexual, but I think they were just wrong for assuming that it wasn't sexual before? (Though, because the etymology of the word is weird, it's an understandable mistake.)

Idk it's a really common experience for aces to be uncomfortable with others seeing them in a sexual way. Whether that's being hit on by others, having others assume they're having sex, realizing others are seeing their body in a sexualized way -- this is a really common ace experience, and it's totally separate from sex-shaming others. Being personally uncomfortable with others assuming you're sexual is very different from shaming others for being sexual, and confusing those two is a common anti-ace sentiment.

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

What are we using as criteria, though? Asking because I want to know what other evidence would be relevant to bring in. I've got some links stored, but I want to make sure I'm not wasting anyone's time with anything not salient enough.

The criteria I used for the above was whether or not the statement was something I've heard non-aro/non-ace people say before and considered it to be anti-ace sentiment at the time, excluding generalized statements of frustration that don't deal directly in issues (e.g. "I'm tired of aces" or something like that, which would be very different coming from a non-aro/non-ace person vs. an aro person who had been hurt by aces.)

On 1/6/2020 at 3:48 PM, Coyote said:

you mentioned an infographic project too, right?

Yeah, it's just about done now, should be going up within the next few days. My goal was to just get something that would be a good primer on queerplatonic to compete with the bad one in the tags. I'm thinking the audience for that one is people who don't know what queerplatonic means at all - where I don't think who coined it is necessary.

I was more thinking that this would help with combating a slightly different but related misconception - that (allo)aces use queerplatonic to refer to non-sexual romantic relationships (aka "aces stealing aro terms"). I have not personally seen any evidence that suggests that's a widespread problem, and that original infographic is the one post I've seen that actually does that. It's just one post, but it also has nearly 9k notes, which is a problem, and probably the root of that misconception. This was my way of trying to combat that problem at it's source.

On 1/6/2020 at 4:49 PM, bydontost said:

i decided to put it there, bc it's sth that aros don't know about and often think aros coined it, this is the reason for this whole thread. the goal is to put accurate info out there in a form that people like, read and reblog (if we're talking about tumblr)

That's probably a good idea. I think that's aiming a bit more for an aro audience or at least a more informed audience, as opposed to a general audience like the previous infographic. Perhaps a second infographic aimed more at an aro audience that's about the history of the word queerplatonic would work better for that. I'd mentioned a while back that I might try to make a summary of Coy's history of queerplatonic post that's more digestible - this might be a substitute for that.

On 12/26/2019 at 7:12 AM, bydontost said:

possible intention for posting in the first place: building up aro community with what they thought was aro history

I think that makes a lot of sense. Since I think Coy was asking in order to find a replacement phrase for "aro reparations" in the title, here are a few possibilities for that one:

• Building Aro Community
• Aro Community Building
• Building Aro Community & History (Maybe too long)

Also if this is the ending, I think "proxy" doesn't quite make sense... perhaps a word like "vehicle" would get it across a bit better?

• QPR Misinformation Is Not an Appropriate Vehicle for Aro Community Building

We could also play around with the sentence order a bit, which could shorten it more, and potentially allow for more detail in the part talking about motivations:

• Aro Community Building Deserves Better Than QPR Misinformation
• Building Aro Community & History Deserves Better Than QPR Misinformation

On 12/26/2019 at 7:12 AM, bydontost said:

sidenote: what im interested in is aros and aces to be on equal footing, so framing the relationship as "victim and offender" chafes at me the same way "indebted and benefactor" does ("I think that general aro groups owe a very specific debt to ace organizing and communities that needs to be acknowledged.")

I wholeheartedly agree that I'd like the communities to relate to each other as equals, rather than as either of the two framings you mentioned.

If we're being super careful in this thread about not taking people's words out-of-context by making sure to acknowledge why people say the things that they say, which it seems we are, I do want to add that the person you're quoting there said that statement in response to having her own identity and community membership erased. Whether or not people find that motivations are more important than the impact such statements have will vary I'm sure. I just encourage everyone to consider the motivations for everyone involved, if that is something that's important to you.

I also wonder whether the entire framing of "indebted and benefactor" would even exist if it weren't for misinformation being spread about the origins of the word queerplatonic (or more broadly, attempts to separate aro history from ace history where that would be impossible). One of the benefits of addressing the misinformation in our community is that it would help prevent this kind of framing from happening as a reaction.

Would you consider the phrase "platonic relationship" to be a synonym of "friendship"?

Do you consider all friendships to be platonic relationships?

Do you consider all platonic relationships to be friendships?

(I'm intentionally asking a question I know people are going to have different answers to. I'm curious what everyone's first instinct is!)

3 hours ago, bydontost said:

I was thinking about sth closer to "misinformation on qprs in aro circles hinders conversations about real problems between aro and ace communities" 

That sounds good. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to make this more concise?

Maybe we can take out "in aro circles"? I don't think that alters the meaning too much. Maybe also "real problems between aro and ace communities" can just be "community relations". So "misinformation on qprs hinders conversations about community relations"

Perhaps this might also be a substance over style situation where it's better to have a wordy title that gets across the right impression.

3 hours ago, bydontost said:

I think that then it'd be useful to send it to big aro but also *ace* blogs, bc let's be real they have bigger followings

True. We can definitely make sure that happens too.

One thing that I think is important for us to keep in mind as we discuss intent...

Just because someone does this intentionally doesn't mean they are doing so with bad intent. While we all seem to be in agreement that spreading this misinformation is not a good thing, I think it's important to realize that recognizing that there may be intent behind some instances of this happening doesn't mean that that intent can't be good.

One thing I took away from Coyote's post was the entire idea that the intent behind misinformation on qprs (whether done knowingly or unknowing, and I believe both happen) is positive intent. People feel genuinely hurt by the ace community and worried that they'd lose a word that's important to them if they admit that it was the ace community and not the aro community that created the word. As someone who's been hurt by the misinformation, it was hard to keep this in perspective, but Coy's post helped me do that and I'm grateful.

(And one final note - if assuming positive intent is a value of yours, I encourage you to take a moment now to check in with yourself to make sure you are applying that principle evenly in this thread.)

4 hours ago, Coyote said:

Back on the topic of the original issue:

 

Given that there are many people frustrated with the real crimes of the ace community, and given that people keep talking about a fake crime instead of just focusing on the real crimes (and even citing this fake crime as an intracommunity grievance), what are some potential solutions here?

Hm... I'm not totally sure whether to read this as potential solutions to the "real crimes" or "fake crimes" - I'm thinking maybe you meant both? That's how I'm going to respond to it.

In terms of addressing misconceptions, I wish that there was more of a community-driven effort to not tolerate this kind of thing - much the way there is about not tolerating anti-gray nonsense. Though, I'm thinking this is a situation that requires a bit more delicacy, since, as your blog post points out, there often is a legitimate hurt there that deserves attention and to be addressed. Unlike the anti-gray bigotry which warrants a stronger response.

If you'll excuse the ace community example, I'm thinking much the way the ace community self-polices sex-negativity. In all the ace communities I've been a part of, bad mouthing others' sexual behaviors is unacceptable, but when its corrected it's often from a place of "I get why you feel this way, but saying that still hurts other people. Try framing it this way next time." Something like that.(And there may be some people already doing that, which is awesome!)

To move a bit away from the context of coinage and towards another common greivances relating to qprs - that alloromantic aces use the word to mean non-sexual romantic relationships. Personally, I haven't seen evidence to suggest that this is as pervasive a problem as it is sometimes framed as, but what I have noticed is that the one post I've seen that does this is one of the first results when you search queerplatonic on Tumblr. Which is a problem.

Seeing as the op has not responded to any of the corrections, I was thinking of ways of trying to combat that, and I think the best course of action there is to create a competing post (that's equally pretty, since I think that's a factor in why it spread). It wouldn't take down the other post, but it would hopefully provide enough conflicting information that people stop to think about which is correct. I'd been working on that with a couple other people and it fell through the cracks - I'm thinking it's time to start working on that again.

24 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Far too many times I have seen accusatory statements along the lines of "The aro community is bad because they don't constantly acknowledge that everything they have came from the ace community!!!!", and this feels very similar

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know I've felt skeptical before of posts that sounded similar to things that have hurt me in the past, and it makes sense that you felt that way when you saw this thread.

27 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

because the thread itself initially lacked acknowledgement of why these things are happening

I think this is what I'm confused about? The point of the first post was to share the link to the blog post, of which the whole point was acknowledging why these things are happening. And the paragraph length summary started with: "A common problem in the ace community is that people don't give enough attention to the aro spectrum as an independent entity. In the process of pointing this out..." Which, yes, isn't particularly specific, but it is a summary. Perhaps you misread that sentence? Or is there something else I'm not seeing?

32 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

nor any sort of "Here's what you can do to help"

Yeah, that's true. I can see how not having that might make it feel like the post was existing to point blame rather than fixing the problem.

34 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Furthermore, the mention of specific posts and their number of notes does feel a little unnecessarily bitter- There could be any number of reasons why one post might have more notes than another.

@Coyote can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that was included to point out that the misinformation was spreading faster than the corrections. And that's par the course for Tumblr. In my eyes, that's all the more reason to try to spread the corrections in some other way.

39 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

This, combined with the mentioning of specific Tumblr users and especially their words being taken out of context, makes it feel like a bitter accusation towards members of the Tumblr aro community specifically, without any real attempt to address the context behind their words

Ah, I see. You don't feel like Coy acknowledged the why behind arokaladin's post enough - am I reading that right? Coy mentioned the reason why this was happening in the original post, but didn't mention it again when referencing the other examples of this happening in this thread, until you pointed out that ix may have been mischaracterizing arokaladin's words?

45 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

The thread feels like an inflammatory attempt to shame the community and to call out users from a completely different platform.

Can you elaborate on why it feels like that to you? I'm personally not reading that from Coy's initial post that started the thread. And in the rest of the thread, it seems to me like Coy is responding fairly calmly to some confrontational responses to the original post.

I realize that different people read things differently though, so I want to understand where you're coming from here.

34 minutes ago, nonmerci said:

I mean, I'm glad that I learn the term was created by aces people because learn in new thing is cool, and because I get now it refers to platonism  (I think platonic relationship were supposed to be not sexual?)

Well, QPRs being coined by aces shouldn't be taken to mean that they need to be non-sexual. In one of the early posts introducing the term (dated 2011), s. e. smith says "The key feature is the idea of being deeply connected to someone, without a romantic element (though a queerplatonic relationship can be sexual)."

What the word "platonic" actually means widely varies from person to person in the aro and ace communities, and also outside of them. Not all usages of it are intended to mean "non-sexual." (Which yes, is very confusing.)