Coyote

Well, color me confused then. I wouldn't have expected that. When someone talks about "defining aromantic," I'd always assume that they mean defining aromantic itself, as in for people whose primary identity label is "aromantic" point blank. If what they mean is the aromantic umbrella/spectrum, then I expect them to say "aromantic umbrella" or "aromantic spectrum" (or "arospec," if they're from Tumblr and/or on a mobile device). I also know that I'm not the only one who finds using "aromantic" and "arospec" interchangeably to be confusing. I also suspect that using specific terms as umbrella terms may be a part of the reason for the rise of the (icky) term "endcase aros," which is... unfortunately linear in its implications. Especially given that I've only ever seen it defined purely in terms of the zero attraction thing. This would be a type of that "pushing into grayness" issue that James mentioned. And jury's out on my relationship to the aro umbrella, but if somebody were to refer to me personally as "aromantic," I would be annoyed. (But anyway: thank you for clarifying.) If the task is for defining the whole aromantic umbrella as a concept, not aromantic-just-aromantic, then I would not have suggested quite the same wording. For that, I think it would make sense to take a page from the Carnival of Aros FAQ written by @sennkestra -- wording like a) "anyone who personally relates to some aspect of aromanticism," or b) aromantics + "those who may identify with identities sometimes considered 'adjacent' to aromanticism." Either of those seems like a decent starting point to me, if only just because of their breadth/comprehensiveness while also sticking to the specific topic of aromanticism.

Hi Bri. Looks like this is your first post here? Welcome to the forum. My tip is this: Remember that only you can really determine what it feels right to call yourself. It's no one else's place to tell you what you are or aren't. With that said, if you're looking for people with experiences and outlooks similar to yours -- not seeing what all the fuss is about, not experiencing much in the way of romantic feelings, not seeking out romantic relationships -- then these are certainly things that you will find among many members of the aro community. There's no one single way to be under the aromantic umbrella, of course, so not every aro will look just like you. That's just to say, if you're looking for that resonance, then I think you've come to the right place. Any of those reasons you named are plenty normal reasons that some people have for identifying with the aromantic spectrum.

hm. "Disconnected from normative societal expectations" is something that strikes me as maybe overbroad, since arguably that could apply to people who are gay/bi/pan in a romantic way, but I think it's a good start. If it were me, I might put that one up front and then add some subordinate clauses with examples, ex. -- Aromantic: a person whose experience of romance is disconnected from normative societal expectations, for example due to experiencing little to no romantic attraction, feeling repulsed by romance, or being uninterested in romantic relationships. Presumably @running.tally is also interested in non-surface conversations. Part of why this is an issue is because of identity policing, questioning people, and folks who don't exactly fit this one singular narrative -- as James argues, asserting that someone can’t be aromantic (and instead has to identify as something else) because they “experience” any amount/type/frequency of “romantic attraction”... is identity policing. And, granted, no definition can prevent that. But certainly a very narrow and precise definition lends itself to that easier. And... unfortunately, getting hung up on levels of attraction does seem like something that's been going around, if I'm not mistaken. These questions matter for discussions and relationships within any given community, not for just the cursory introduction. Although even the cursory introduction can also shape whether or not someone feels emboldened enough to look further. Anyway, I'm a bit unclear on something else here-- Are y'all talking about the word "aromantic," or are y'all talking about the concept of "the aromantic umbrella"?

I'd never heard of that before either and I can't say I'd go for that either. This is the only overreaction I see in this thread. You really gonna accuse "everyone" of "oversensitivity"? Even Neir/running.tally, who posted solely to call the idea cute and fun? Take it easy.

I always appreciate links. Hard agree. I haven't adopted the labels I have just from staring at the definitions alone. I even wrote a post about that in 2015, although it could really stand to be updated... There's things I'd say differently now. I think that's a bad outlook to have -- where "bad" here means "detrimental to having a community." I've mentioned this elsewhere before, but communities will always, always have people who are different from each other... because people are different from each other, period. I... hate this, to be honest. Whipping up an endless conveyor belt of neologisms to send them off like paper boats on the off chance that someone out there might appreciate it is like spending your days adding tape to paper towels because somebody might want a bandaid. That's not how you make sure this stuff is useful. And that frustrates me, because it means people are pouring energy into things other than (and basically at the expense of) community building. This isn't just some generic commentary about there being "too many" or the terms not being "respectable" enough, to be clear. After all, I'm someone who identifies with a concept that's pretty undignified & that was first named on a whim (wtfromantic). And there have also been... an endless array of gender terms that I've looked at and been like... maybe? Maybe this could work, I guess, but let's see how it's used first/what the community looks like, in order for me to tell if this is an identity that works for me, and then [insert surprised gru meme] there is no community. There's no one posting about what it means to them or hardly using it at all. So it's practically useless to me. What am I supposed to do, start an entire community myself? Around a term somebody else created? Why's there a term at all if you can't find out anything about it besides the name? It feels like a bait & switch and I feel cheated. I don't necessarily want to make things "tidier." I just want to see some actual follow-through. But there won't be, because aro, ace, & nb online communities (as far as I can tell) are majorly based on Tumblr, and Tumblr overall prioritizes images, not text. Consequently: endless autocratic flag generation & moodboards, far surpassing any actual in-depth discussion. There are some terms I can find more flag/moodboard posts about than people identifying with them, let alone talking about it. You want to stem the flow of neolabels generally, you're going to have to form a bigger aro community off Tumblr.

Right, not trying to rush you. Just thought I'd ask where to set my expectations.

Depending on how familiar they are with the term polyamorous, I would think. The term was derived as a spinoff of that one. huh? Nonamory was suggested by anagnori, who is aromantic.

Approximately what should we be expecting in the way of turn-around time for emails?

Uh. I'm seeing some reason for hesitation here. Some of these, I just don't see the need for (we already have words like "alloromantic," "dominant," and "submissive" -- what are these alternatives adding?) but others... "strong aro"? "soft aro"? That sounds kind of value-laden and, more definitely, makes it sound like you're framing romance-repulsed aros as "more" aromantic than other aros. Please don't repeat the ace community's mistakes. There's no need to frame some aros as "softer" or weaker than others -- or "less likely to destroy cupid's spells" than others. This feels like it's setting up a hierarchical scale of aromanticism.

Old enough to talk. Getting told "you're too young to know that" is a common experience to all sorts of people who aren't straight (or cisgender, for that matter). It's a double standard, because those same people probably wouldn't have told you "you're too young to know that, maybe it'll change" if what you had said was "I'm straight." They're just generalizing based off of what's more familiar to them. It's a type of reaction to expect from people -- but not something to take to heart. It's okay to identify as aromantic if that's the term that feels right to you. No matter how old or young you are. I promise.

Is it? That hardly aligns with what I've seen, but alright. I'm plenty familiar with it being explained to me second-hand, actually. The more people talk to me about it, the more I become convinced that referring to the group you're speaking of as "antis" is a strategically unsound choice. "Anti-shippers" is also silly, but that's for the separate reason that, according to one harassment account I've been directed to on this topic, some of these people are shippers themselves -- basically participating in a ship war. I see. In that case -- I don't know of much, but I recently started another PF discussion on this topic ("How does your aro spectrum identity, romance aversion, or romantic ambivalence impact how you engage with fandom?") that's gotten over a dozen comments now. You might also be interested in tumblr user beranyth's old posts on Growing Up Aromantic: The Half-Read Book and also this reblog-chain on dehumanization.

The see-saw cycle.

Well then using "aces" to mean that one segment of them, specifically, is certainly at least a little disrespectful to the ones who aren't.

Much more direct title. Thank you. Aha. I see. I was going to say, if the objective is "aro blogs that don't specifically support [folks who are pro-... harassment? you call them 'antis' here but don't say anti-what and seem to define them more in terms of what they're in support of]" -- then that could mean both "aro blogs that explicitly take your side on the matter" and "aro blogs that don't address it," but "blogs that talk about aromanticism in fandom" is already much, much narrower than that, without even getting into any other ideological stances. Granted, I'm not well-versed in aro blogs, but I don't know that I could think of an aro-specific blog that posts much about fandom (at the meta level) to begin with. hmm. Is it a requirement for the blog in question to have RSS? I ask because Pillowfort doesn't have RSS at the moment, and I know that's a problem to some people. Granted, of the aro bloggers and communities there, I don't know of one that's got much on fandom & aromanticism as a combination specifically, but, if you're looking for stuff to read, you might possibly be interested in this discussion of unshipping. This could also potentially make for a good prompt for a Carnival of Aros, by the way, if you're interested in spurring more discussion on the topic. A step down from that, in the mean time, I'd also be happy to try and get some more people blogging about it, if you could help me with some prompt ideas. Some possible angles -- let me know how much these do or don't match up do what you had in mind: How does your aro spectrum identity impact how you engage with fandom? Are there any fictional characters that you interpret as aro? Have you read/watched anything with a canon aro character? Where/how have you observed amatonormativity in fandom? Do some fandoms feel more aro-friendly than others?

On that note -- have you considered linking to one of those posts and/or a compilation of links in your sidebar? That's one of the places I checked first, actually. I know there's links within your About, but I mean as its own link/page right there among that and the Ask link. Relatedly, Tumblr is also known to have terrible SEO/doesn't come up with relevant posts easily for people googling things, so if you were to put up some info on voidpunk on a more SEO-friendly site, it might be easier for people to find the right information via search engines.

So you're looking on Tumblr. Is this an absolute requirement for you? Are you looking for resources, or are you just looking for blogs? "Blogs" is a lot bigger/more numerous category than "resources," to me. "Blogs" is also a bigger category than "blogs on the Tumblr platform, specifically." At the moment it's not completely clear to me what you want. You could have a discussion, here, on Arocalypse, about aros in fandom & what you want the aro community to look like, and that would be a different kind of thread from a request for blogging recommendations, but for blog recs I would need more details about what specifically you're looking for -- and atm I'm actually not sure which one you're actually angling for between those two possible paths. Speaking of warnings, given that this is a fraught/sensitive subject for a lot of people, it would be polite to give this thread a more indicative title.

It's my understanding that voidpunk as you know it was initially created by Alex @Jot-Aro Kujo on Tumblr in February 2018, starting with this post, although the name itself was proposed here by Tumblr user milkchocolateowl. Alex elaborates on the purpose of the concept in this post: ...and this post: ...and this post: ...and see also A Note on Voidpunk and the Aro Community: ...and this post:

Fun fact, while I don't know if anyone still uses this, the original squish thread made reference to calling this a "smash."

It sounds like you may have made that ruling preemptively. "Every relationship is romantic in some way"? That's far from true. I understand that you may be fearing some friction in looking for what you want, and that apprehension may be warranted -- but relationships are whatever you make them to be. what? Only a problem if you feel it's a problem. I think you'd be surprised. I don't mean to downplay your personal struggles, but this all sounds fairly within reach so far -- as much as sexual partnerships can be described as such. It is fairly standard for some people to take a long time (i.e. years) to find a partner they're compatible with, after all. But this really doesn't sound as niche or outlandish as you're making it out to be. Just focus on the parts that you *are* looking for, while also making sure to communicate your specific personal boundaries, like hand holding, whatever other things feel too romantic for your tastes, etc.

I associate that word with art galleries and also, more generally, gratitude/thankfulness, which makes it kind of weird for me to swap out in some cases, but I also can see it working fine in others.

I can see what you're saying, yeah. hm. I'll give it another shot.

Thank you. Ostensibly. And yet it's far from impossible to find amatonormativity messages and harmful wording about aromanticism even within the aro community. Even with good intentions, I can't trust that having-the-right-identity will equal perfect execution.

You know, I had figured that changing the thread title to something more provocative might help it get responses, but it seems I failed to apply that same effort toward making sure people read through the entire first post. It's a string of thoughts that I find hard to condense down into something simpler, I'm afraid.

Oh hey, a fellow 'yote! Hi, welcome to Arocalypse. Have some ice cream.

huh. Personally, I like to make a big distinction between attraction and desire. So much so that it's more than a little confusing when a definition of attraction has the word "desire" in it. But that could be because I reserve "desire" for things you have the actual will to act on, whereas it's possible to feel attraction without feeling like acting on it. It also appears to be somewhat important to the squish and QPR concepts. Somewhat. Queerplatonic is also a relationship term, and I think of it primarily as referring to that, although it was also discussed as a parallel type of attraction by Meloukhia from the beginning. I think it's plenty common to discuss it mainly as a relationship descriptor though. When I was looking up the origin of squish, on the other hand, I was surprised to find that it was... older? apparently? than anything I could find on "platonic attraction." Rasin's post doesn't even present it as a type of attraction -- just "a desire to talk to the person and be friends with them" (and which is, weirdly enough, explicitly defined as being less intense than a crush -- I wonder if the people who use "squish" these days still think of it that way). It's been defined a few different ways, yeah. Not always good ways. I know someone who's planning to write a more in-depth post about what it means to her, but for the time being that's still forthcoming. hmm. Are you using "unconscious" to mean "without being aware of it," or... something more like un-willed?