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bananaslug

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Posts posted by bananaslug

  1. Yep this is a thing! Personally I find that wearing bulky sweaters (when it's not to hot to do so) really helps when it comes to dealing with unwanted family hugs and such, but if you're in a position to safely set that boundary then that's probably better. 

    If you're looking for more threads on this topic I would actually check out AVEN sense touch aversion tends to be more widely discussed in the ace community 

     

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  2. When I was in middle school I made a "rule" for myself that I wouldn't go out with anyone until I was 15. All of my friends knew this.

    One day one of my guy friends asked me to go to a school dance with him "as a friend" and I said yes. Then, about a day before the dance, I was informed by another friend that he was telling people we were dating so I stood him up and never apologized (he never apologized to me either). Not exactly an awkward way to reject someone, but it certainly wasn't kind, and to this day I think I could have handled it better.

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  3. ACEapp is *technically* an aro inclusive app, and it does let you filter for people who just want to make friends, but in my experience it is still pretty ace centric, and unless you live in a big city it really doesn't have enough users to be helpful. 

  4. I... don't get what the problem is? Most queer flags include more specific identity groups in this same way. The trans flag has a stripe for nonbinary people even though enbys have their own flag. The ace flag has a stripe for acespec people even though most aspec identities have their own flag. And similarly, the aro flag has a stripe for arospec folks.

     

    We design flags that way so that they're more inclusive. Some arospecs prefer to simply identify as aro because more people know that term. Some people are questioning and don't know where they fall on the aro spectrum. Some people know they're somewhere on the aro spectrum but don't like using really specific labels. If we exclude arospec folks from the term "aromantic" and any flag associated with that term then we end up excluding all of the people above from having a community. So to answer your question, that's why there's no "aro specific" flag. That kind of thing would lead to gatekeeping and exclusion and nobody wants that.

     

    Aromantic is an identity but it's also an umbrella term for everyone on the aro spectrum. That's been true for as long as I've been part of the aro community, and I hope it continues to be true for a long time. If that confuses some people then so be it, but I think what's most important is that we make sure all of our community members feel included.

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  5. I think it really depends on the person. For me, emotional vulnerability is mostly about expressing feelings even when I'm anxious about other people's response to them. Some people might only be willing to do that with a romantic partner, but other people might do it with friends, family, counselors, etc. So I think whether or not emotional vulnerability is romantic is really dependent on the context and the person.

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  6. I have a lot of trouble with this too. I usually just say "I don't get crushes" or "I'm not really into romance". The second answer gets tricky though cus a lot of allo folks interpret that as not liking big romantic actions as apposed to not liking romance generally.

     

    I've also tried saying "I don't really date" but a lot of straight allo women in praticular interpret that more as me just being tired of dating men which like... idk there's a lot of assumptions to unpack there

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  7. Yes this is deffinatly a thing! I once had a guy in my physics class ask me out, and when I said no he proceeded to buy me a big box of chocolates instead of taking a hint. When I started avoiding him after that he had one of his friends confront me about why I wouldn't go out with him. Thankfully the quarter ended after that and I didn't have to see him anymore but he was persistent enough I'm sure it would have continued otherwise.

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  8. 5 hours ago, Coyote said:

    Going back to the original post, what about the hypothetical person that Siggy described in the first place, who encounters a technically-fitting word in the form of cupiosexual and goes to look up related resources or communities, and can't find a thing? What about the disappointment and pain of isolation that they feel? Why is their experience not worth being taken into account?

     

    What about the real, not hypothetical, experiences that I myself and others have had, finding something on a list that looks promising and then not being able to track down zilch in the way of further writing and personal narratives, let alone an active community? Why is that need, that way of approaching identity, not being taken into account? Why does the ache of that experience count for nothing?

     

    My dude, saying that terms and such should be preserved for "easier-to-please people" as you put it, is not even a little bit equivalent to saying that other experiences don’t matter, don’t put words in my mouth. I said pretty explicitly that I believe we can re-think these lists so that they give people more information and context. These vocabulary lists don’t necessarily have to be lacking in context or links to other resources.

     

    5 hours ago, Coyote said:

    What about the reinvention treadmill & how many terms are cousins to others but are never being indicated as such in a way that would help bridge those paths, for those seeking them? Why isn't it worthwhile, for instance, to include a note about cupiosexual also being similar to sex-favorable asexuality, for which there is far more in the way of use and application? Why aren't people bothering to help each other in a way that's as simple as inserting a few lines of text and a hyperlink or two? Why are the people who want that, the people who need that, not worth prioritizing?

     

    So uh...most aspec terminology lists do mention if there are other terms with the same meaning (including most of the ones in siggy's footnotes). For a common example, most of theses lists include both Lith and Akoi and make a point of stating that they’re two different words for the same thing. Like yeah, probably not all of these lists are so helpful, but in my experience the vast majority of them are. Most of the people who have been in the community long enough to collect a glossary are pretty aware of the "reinvention treadmill".  

  9. 1 hour ago, Coyote said:

    But even if you're very interested in, say, thymromantic being documented and preserved -- a glossary is not at all a good way to accomplish that. A good historian wants dates, authors, metatextual details, context, comparability to other sources -- there should be a way to trace back where a term actually came from, what other authors it was used by

     

    I think you may be looking at history as purly accademic and research based, and while that is one way to look at history, there's another away of looking at history, which is offten more common in queer communites, and that's as a way of telling stories about ourselves and who we are. 

     

    A great example of this with vocabulary is the term Bambi-sexual. This was a, not super common term, that happened to be included in a few diffrent queer and gay glossaries back in the 80’s.

     

    Now would those sources be especially helpful to academic historians trying to find the origin and different uses of the term? Probably not. But when dug up and remembered by community members outside of that field it help inform an understanding and narrative of what the gay and lesbian communities were like in the late 80’s. It show us a way in which this community has changed over time, it gives us some idea of the diversity of experiences within that community and it helps us understand what some social and cultural norms may have been in that time and place (in this case Los Angeles).

     

    And with Bambi-sexual in particular, a lot of alloace’s saw the term and said, “Hey, that sounds a lot like me, isn’t it cool that people like me existed in the past even if we use different terms now!” and that’s important too because it gives us not just a sense of what was happening then, but a sense of where a certain group was in history.

     

    And yeah, it maybe doesn’t give all the information that an academic historian or linguist would want, but it still informs us. Language builds and reflects culture and preserving language in one form or another, can in many ways help preserve an understanding of that culture and who we are as a group.  

     

    Now I am certainly willing to have a conversation about how we make these lists and glossaries, and what context should be included with them. For instance the AUREA glossary includes sources to the coining of each word when possible and maybe we should make that more of a norm, but I don’t think having less documentations of terms is super helpful. It is always good to have as much information as possible, and while this is just a personal preference, I would prefer do have half a dozen uncontextualized glossaries than lose all that language completely. Even language without coinage and multiple context can be useful, or at the very least interesting.

     

     

    1 hour ago, Coyote said:

    By only labeling it a "glossary" if it's actually meant as a glossary.'

     

    Well it's worth noting then that a lot of the "glossaries" in those foot notes were not actualy labeled or intended as glossaries. Most of them are tittled "list of aro-spec identies" or something like that. If a glossary is only a glossary when labled as such then we're not actually having a discusion about the right topic. 

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  10. I think this kind of relates to a conversation that happened a few years back (which seems to have been eaten by time but I will keep looking) about how we preserve aspec terms for historical purposes. The question being, sense some terms will inevitably die off on their own, how do we catalogue our terminology for historical reference. 

     

    As someone who actually made one of the glossaries listed in the footnotes on that post I will say personally that I find the purpose of stagnant aspec glossaries to be more as a historical paper trail than anything else. Have I actually met anyone who identifies as Thymromantic in the last 3 years? No. But someone, at some point, did find that to be a useful enough concept that they coined a term for it, so I feel that word is worth preserving, at the very least so that some day in the future aspec historians will have a better idea about how we talked and thought about attraction. Same with other dead or uncommon labels, whether we use them or not, if we want to keep a historical record we still need to have them documented somewhere public.

     

    I think the issue here is mostly with dates. Most of the glossaries in those footnotes are dated, and you can easily see that they haven't been edited sense 2015 or 2016. In those cases I think it's often up to the reader to think critically about whether or not a glossary is current enough to use. In other cases they're not dated and I really think that's a bigger issue. There's no way to know what's current if there is not date, and especially on social media platforms where things can get picked up and shared how ever many years later, there's not always a good way for creators to come back and say "hey this is actually pretty old and shouldn't be used anymore" when a glossary isn't dated to begin with.

     

    I think there is also a question here of how we use those glossaries. If I intend a glossary as a historical record but other people then use it as a reference then how do we reconcile conflicting uses? 

     

    I don't have great solutions for these things but I think it's worth bringing up and maybe having a conversation about.

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  11. Hmm, so for me personally adoption is a really big thing that I see having political challenges with in the future, and I think what will really allow us to change and work on that problem is coalition building.

     

    You mentioned working with the poly community on marriage, but we should also be working with poly folks on adoption. Monogamy is just as much of a prerequisite for adoption as marriage often is, and that’s another place where these two groups could work together. 

     

    I also think with adoption, at least in the U.S, it would be important to do coalition building with non-christian religious groups. A lot of courts and adoption agencies are unwilling to send children to non-christian households, and that bias affects a lot of people. I know that personally as a children's class director at a Pagan place of worship I’ve had to do a lot of work to make services “acceptable” for pagan foster kids to attend because our cultural norms are so different. We’ve also had a lot of potential foster parents and adopters in our community turned away by agencies because they’re not “promoting christian values within the home”. And that’s just my experience with paganism, I know that a lot of other non-christan faith groups face similar problems when trying to adopt, and I think that given the opportunity, non-christain religious organizations are some really big, already organized, groups that could really help us with political activism around this issue.

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  12. So I work in child care and usually when I talk to kids about aromanticism I don't actually use the label "aromantic" 

     

    Kids have a lot of questions about relationships so usually I instead say things like "I don't get crushes" or "I don't want a boyfriend/girlfriend". The point isn't so much to teach kids the word as it is to open kids up to other ways of thinking about romance, and I think with children's media that would also be the best way to do it.

     

    When I tell kids I don't get crushes they tend to come back with questions a few days later. "Won't you be lonely?" "Who will you live with?" And "can you marry a friend?" Are some of the more common ones. I think there are definitely ways a program like Disney could address these questions through an aro character, especially sense those questions are ones that aros frequently have to grappel with themselves.

     

    But yeah I think Disney has enough personal growth and exploration stories that this wouldn't be to hard to do, but I think having an affective aro character also means addressing the questions kids have about it.

    • Like 5
  13. Hi @Coyote

     

    Our PR Team is getting to all the emails as fast as possible. We are an all volunteer team and we are trying to give equal time to all feedback so unfortunately response time is a little slow, but we have received your email and are working on addressing your feedback.

     

    Thank you for your concern, you should be receiving an email back before the beta period is over.

  14.  @raavenb2619 Tumblr can be a little hectic when it comes to tracking down peoples feedback, so while we aren't putting an open link to the beta on Tumblr quite yet we do have a select group of Tumblr bloggers that we're asking to look over the site while it's still in beta. If you know a few Tumblr users who you think might want to look over the sight you're welcome to share the link with them, but we want to finish the beta period before posting the website link there. Currently, we are looking for aro's of color and aro men in particular who would like to give feedback since those experiences aren't as prevalent within our core team.

     

    Thank you so much for your support and willingness to signal boost, it's greatly appreciated and we definitely encourage it once we're out of beta! We'll make another post when the website goes into Alpha so that it's easy for people to keep track.

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  15. Hi there @Solfege, I’m one of the website building team members! Thank you for your feedback and I hope I can address some of your concerns. 

     

    20 hours ago, Solfege said:

    I think consulting asexualsurvivors.org, both the website design and team members, would be really helpful for everyone working on the arospec website. Or heck, contact the staff/volunteers at AVEN, it can't hurt. Don't tell me "But they're ace, not aro!" They have experience building the sort of website you're aiming for, and could give you a lot of helpful tips about how to do it yourself.

     

    Yes, we recognize that website design and building experience is a necessary part of this project and while we haven’t been working with AVEN or asexualsurvivors specifically, we have been consulting with community members that have web building experience.  

     

    20 hours ago, Solfege said:

    "AVEN for arospecs" is too big and vague to be a useful goal. You need to start with something smaller and concrete, e.g. "provide an educational resource for people curious about the aro spectrum." And you need to define how you're going to pursue that goal, like "publish essays explaining aromanticism and related concepts." If you don't clearly define your goals and methods, you'll waste time and money on things that don't actually make your website a solid resource.

     

    This is understandable. We listed a broader goal as part of our fundraising, but our more specific goals include:

    • Creating an extensive aromantic glossary with coinage and variation in definition listed  
    • Providing accessible online and printable resources, as well as a listing of in-person aromantic groups
    • Creating an aro community contact point for media outlets and researchers
    • Maintaining a community feed with information on events, surveys, and news articles  
    20 hours ago, Solfege said:

    Instead, why not set up a subdomain at wordpress.com for free, begin publishing content, and migrate to wordpress.org self-hosting once the community has gotten to know to your work? You could even market the earlier site as a "beta version" and use it as a chance to invite feedback from the community and get diverse voices contributing.

     

    Many of our team members already run or mod for aro specific blogs, so our goal with this website was to create something more formal than a subdomain. While we did consider using wordpress self-hosting, we also looked at a number of other hosting platforms and decided that squarespace provided the best website building tools for the lowest cost, so we are using it instead.  As for having a beta version for feedback, we are planning to accept feedback on the website once it’s live.

     

    20 hours ago, Solfege said:

    Another way this project is "big" is that the aromantic spectrum is a huge, complex topic, and you will need to do a ton of research or add guest contributors' content in order to represent it accurately. Preferably both. It's good to have diverse identities represented on your staff, but having an identity doesn't automatically make you informed on its history, issues, intersections with other identities, or the best way to advocate for it. And you need to read actual books and articles, from inside and outside the community, not just blog and forum posts. Otherwise, you're likely to post factual errors or prejudiced content by mistake.

     

    I appreciate your concern on this point. We have been consulting with other community members on various topics and are working hard to make sure we have accurate information on aromantic history and sources for different terms and concepts. We would not be doing this project if we weren’t all willing to put in the work.  

     

    20 hours ago, Solfege said:

    Speaking of which, I agree with Coyote's point about representing aro-spec people of color on your team. I'd also want people with mental disorders, the autism spectrum, and physical disabilities represented, either on the team itself or as major guest contributors. A lot of anti-aro prejudice is related to racism and ableism.

     

    While diversity was considered when picking team members, we were not trying to fill any diversity quotas. As a result, we do have some gaps in experience, but we will make a point of consulting with other community members around topics that require more diverse viewpoints.

     

    As for things like web design, we are designing the website with an eye towards accessibility. I can say that personally as a dyslexic person with a background in graphic design, that’s definitely something at the forefront of my mind when making this website, and I know that my other team members have put a lot of consideration into that as well.

     

    20 hours ago, Solfege said:

    The other big issue is that you may focus on the superficial aspects of building a website, like its appearance, domain name, "aro 101" content, and logos, without paying enough attention to the logistics. Who will maintain and update links? Who will pay the bills? Who writes what content, and who proofreads it? Can team members edit each other's content? Who is in charge of soliciting input from the arospec community? How will you make the website accessible to people who are blind, dyslexic, or have other disabilities? If two team members disagree, how will you resolve it? If a factual error or prejudice sneaks into the website's content, who will fix it, and how? Will you copyright your content, and if so, how will you protect it? How will you protect the website's security, and its users/contributors' privacy?

     

    I agree that logistics are important. Every member in our group has an official assigned role to make sure things get done and we will be posting those roles when the website goes live.

     

    Thank you very much for your feedback. It does give us more things to consider when creating our website and we really appreciate that and will discuss it.

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