Coyote

So how would you break down 'allosexual aro' and 'ace aro' into categories or criteria? This seems overly reliant on the idea that all aros are either aro allo or aro ace. Some aros aren't. Anyway, can we just put together a list of some aromantic media in the first place before figuring out how to numerically rank it?

Enzi just said why they feel weird about using the term demiromantic. ...I mean, to be clear, I'm all for using whatever labels work for you, whether that means using something in spite of other people using it slightly differently (as will always be the case) or not using something that "should" fit, because it would feel weird. More importantly, I don't think anyone can really tell anybody else what they are. That's something that everyone has to figure out on their own. I agree, it's both a pro and a con, at the same time. And I can understand that making it a little daunting. To me it's also important to remember that figuring out what particular label to use doesn't even need to be important. The bigger questions are -- What communities do you want to be a part of? To what extent, and what ways? And what is this self-knowledge helping you to do -- or how to conduct your relationships in life? But in any case, personally the best way for me to figure out labels has always been to read a bunch of writing by different people about their experiences and what they use those labels to mean, so here's a blogpost by a greyromantic about greyromanticism, as a starting point.

If I may hazard a guess... I figure they mean "official" colloquially, in the sense of "credible, serious, and polished-looking, with an air of authority."

I'm happy to hear this. It makes sense to me, even though it's arguable. Although I'm not interested in pushing for them to go one way or the other on how to handle this (and am just sharing some thoughts here), the way I see it is like this: if they were to do a lot of disclaimers and personalization of the site, framing everything in terms of "this is just our own way of seeing it, from the POV of the team here," then there wouldn't be a lot to differentiate it from a lot of existing aro blogs and glossaries that are already out there. It'd just be basically the same thing, except with a different domain. My understanding of the goal here is to create something that looks more "official," and -- for better or for worse -- to a lot of anglophones, more "official" presentation is more impersonal, absolute, unified presentation. You could argue that that association/perception is bad, of course, but I can understand not wanting to fight two battles at once, if that makes sense.

Hello Tost. Thank you. My question pertains to something that's already been said about the team's plans: What I understand this to mean is that the team is intending to not invite any outside beta readers/not release any part of the web copy before publishing the site. Why?

It sounds like we are still not on the same page, because I disagree with some of what you've said here -- or rather, I just have a different understanding of how to parse it all. On the one hand, I think it's fine and would make sense for the team to include something on the site about how the team came about -- some kind of "origin story," so to speak, on the website, whose idea it was, and how the other people were picked, plus a note that these people were not voted into the position or whatever. That would be fine. It's not something I'm pushing for, but it'd be fine. On the other hand, I would draw a distinction between them doing that and them saying "we are not representatives" or "this website is not representing the aromantic community." Because it is. And I'm not even saying that's a bad thing! I'm just saying, "representing others," necessarily, is something that this initiative entails, by definition. I cannot stress enough that representing others is not (itself) something that I object to. I just don't know why you're talking like that can be avoided in a project like this. It's actually little different than, say, the grad representative from my department, who represents the graduate students at faculty meetings -- by showing up to those meetings and acting as a liaison between us and them. In that role, they are representing others. Representing others is not a bad thing to be avoided. It's the point of the whole website. So it's because they are aiming to represent others in this particular way that I have questions I think it's not unreasonable to want answers to. At the moment I have one question in particular that I think is pretty good & that I would appreciate some support in getting the team to answer.

I think they're all intertwined forces -- sometimes identifiable separably, but often running as a pack and reinforcing each other. Heteronormativity and amatonormativity do tend to go hand-in-hand (Luvtheheaven discusses an example of that in a recent post). And another reason to make the connection to heteronormativity, tbh, is that this is something you'll see tackled in academic queer theory sometimes, although not always by the name of amatonormativity as such. I wouldn't know who to cite off the top of my head but they definitely make the case that the "respectability" of marriage is inflected with a heteronormative ideal -- and paint trying to incorporate LGBTQ people into that mold as assimilationist. huh. Interesting. Thanks for collecting those pdf pages. Is there a main source page where you found them?

Baby Outlaw -- Elle King: Well I ain't nobody's baby Baby, I'm an outlaw

Of course we're not. The (self-)chosen aro representatives in this situation are the people who have decided that they're going to represent the aromantic spectrum, i.e. create the outward-facing advocacy website for it. I'm actually pretty confused how you've interpreted my post/why this comment is directed at me, because if you have a problem with people selecting themselves as aro representatives (a problem which I don't exactly share), then I'm not the one you should be looking at. Or, on the flipside, if you're perfectly okay with anyone self-nominating to be aro representatives, then I don't know why you've phrased your remarks like this. Or were you just highlighting that "we" are not members of that group, unlike the team here? Those are some possibilities there off the top of my head, but I admit I'm at a loss for what you're specifically trying to get across to me, other than the nebulous sense that I said something you think I shouldn't have. I do tend to have a problem where I'm bad at grasping what other people are saying. Would you be interested in elaborating?

It's hard to say how recent exactly, but something like that, yes. While mothers/fathers/children relationships may have existed since the origin of sexual dimorphism, the idea of taking that as the "basic unit of society" (or even calling that "the nuclear family") isn't universal across time and space. I was hoping to put together something of a more specific timeline on that, but that's going to have to wait, because it turns out that the literature on this subject is a lot more varied and complicated than I thought. Should have figured though. Anyway, this is something important to me to talk about because while criticizing amatonormativity is one thing (and it is a good thing to criticize), recognizing a connection between that and the nuclear family, and criticizing that norm as well, opens up a lot of potential for alliance with lots of other movements. Those sources, they come from feminism, sociology, geography, critical race theory, queer theory, postcolonial and indigenous studies... There's a lot of connections waiting to be made there. I mean, I dunno about y'all, but I find all that potential exciting.

It's alright. A decent conversation starter, I think. Gotta say, though, when I saw the title ("Why Are Romantic Relationships Privileged Above Others?") I assumed -- incorrectly -- that that question was going to be answered. And the article doesn't really do that, more just argues that the question is worth asking. This is a good point. DePaulo is... downplaying the societal place of familial relationships, here, in a way that needs to be a little more hedged, I would say. There are certainly cultures that prioritize family as much as if not more than romance. And while she does qualify "in the U.S.," that still includes a big mix of people. It's my understanding that, for instance, the place of "family" is generally different in upper/middle-class White culture vs. Latinx culture. Plus, yeah, contrasting them gets in the way of recognizing how they're intertwined. Romantic relationships are expected to be how more families(/children/blood relatives) get made. That's why I'm inclined to think that a serious approach to answering this question ("Why Are Romantic Relationships Privileged Above Others?") would have to start digging into critiques of not just marriage but also the nuclear family. I've put together a few sources on that topic here, for anyone interested.

Quite so. Look at most of this thread already -- the few people who pipe up with something other than why they shouldn't have used paypal are getting a lot of "don't worry about it" and "no, we refuse to do that." If that's what others are getting, what hope do I have of hearing anything different? It makes me wonder what they actually had in mind when they said they were interested in "feedback."

I want to say just one thing about these responses. I've been... thinking carefully about how to word this, since although I have my own set of concerns about this project and how it's currently proceeding, I don't really expect you to care to hear it. And so I'm trying to nix any commentary that I don't think has a chance of being listened to. But while you might not care about my trust or what I have to say as an individual, you should care about winning the trust of the community. That absolutely deserves to be step one for embarking on a project that very directly entails becoming representatives of the community. I don't think "we're not asking you to trust us" is a response that makes sense here. You should be asking for and trying to earn trust. You should be doing that. You're setting out to do something very important in a way that may have far-reaching consequences -- and people deserve to know that a task like that is going to be handled appropriately. Saying "we're not asking you to trust us, just asking you to suspend your distrust" doesn't even make sense at the sentence level, and it especially doesn't make sense in context. Asking for people to "suspend their distrust" is a request for trust. That's already happening, right there. And it's happening more generally, too. You are asking everyone to not worry, to "please don't assume we will misrepresent you," to "support" the project, to just wait and see. That's asking for trust. And with some people, @Mark and others included, that trust hasn't been earned yet. @running.tally indicated that the team isn't sure how to handle that issue. Like I said, I'm not expecting any of you to be interested in my advice, but surely there must be somebody you can ask.

Hadn't heard of them, but e.e @ them using the lipstick flag. I've been trying to think of more specific links and people I could point you to for this... There are a couple of people I know, like Rowan and Sciatrix, who may well be pretty close to what you're talking about, but I can't think of specific blogposts of theirs atm that would be useful here. In addition to the Aceadmiral links, though, you might be interested in some of the stuff that Laura's written on being a homoplatonic aro ace, and potentially also some of what Elizabeth @Prismatangle (a grayro ace) has written on being "bi, not otherwise specified." Actually come to think of it, on that topic there's also Vesper's video on being a bi-but-not-biromantic ace, too. You know... It occurs to me the dilemma you're facing kind of reminds me of the qualms I've had around butch identity -- I've mentioned on my Pillowfort blog before how I feel weird about using the term because I'm sure some people would view me as not "qualified" to touch it, even as indirectly as calling myself "butch-aligned." I still haven't completely resolved that for myself, but for me, here are what I consider to be some key questions on that front: Do I get something out of being recognized as "having something in common" with that group? And how much does/would it bother me to be "mistaken" for sharing traits I don't share, via that association? What are the risks and rewards of highlighting that relationship, for either of us? I gotta head to bed soon but some of the arguments you might face seem pretty predictable from a ways off, so if you want we could also talk through what I think some decent counterarguments would be.

Woof. This stuff is kind of a mess. I'm gonna put down some notes about the term "oriented aroace" first and then address some of the specific issues you raise. While on the one hand, people choosing labels for themselves is their own business, I'm not thrilled about "oriented" (specifically) as a distinguishing label because, tbh, it makes it sound like folks don't think of aromantic and asexual as themselves orientations. Maybe that's just quibbling over semantics, I dunno. But I'm also not thrilled about how it's been used and defined, either. I've brought this up already elsewhere, but I'll just say it here too since it's relevant: The term "oriented" aroaces was (apparently?) popularized by an anonymous-aside-from-their-tumblr-url tumblr user, who defines the term like this: ...And there's already problems with that alone, even aside from the confusing talk as if aro aces aren't on the aro & ace spectrums,* because "those who do not know whether they feel such attraction or not" and "grayros/gray-aces" are already overlapping categories. In other words, this definition is crunching the umbrella of grayness. * Seriously folks. What the heck. With that said, I also want to temper this with some acknowledgements. I do think it's fine for people to label identities on an unorthodox axis if they feel like it. That one tumblr user there isn't the one who invented that concept, after all. Aros and aces have been using multiple identity labels since well before that was called being "oriented." And if anything, I would like more attention drawn to unorthodox attraction, axes, & identities in general, because I could benefit from that myself, despite not using orientation language for all my attractions. ...I just don't like "oriented," specifically, in light of all of the above, as a way of doing that. Anyway, more to the point-- This might be something to take up with lesbians & the lesbian community, but I can also understand why you might anticipate hostility there on this particular issue, so that places you in a tricky spot there. You're not alone though. I can think of at least three different bloggers off the top of my head who might relate, but just an example, you might be interested in this post by Aceadmiral about the attendant baggage (note the post introduces it as "homoromantic asexual issues," but it's worth noting that Aceadmiral themselves doesn't have a romantic identity and also wrote this). So I guess what I'm thinking is... There's reason to anticipate some sensitivity there, and some of that reaction may be understandable but also not all of it will be correct. For the time being, for figuring out where and how to locate yourself, the questions that I think may be the most useful are 1) Do you want to be a part of/interact with lesbian communities? If so, how much/in what ways? 2) Do you want to connect with lesbians generally on the basis of lesbian-ness, or just lesbian aro aces? 3) Would seeking out more of the latter's narratives be helpful to you? Are you specifically interested in narratives of lesbian aro aces, or would you expand it to aro aces with unorthodox-axis identities more generally? Or even non-axial ones? No, it isn't. There's nothing romance-supremacist about bonding with people and wanting to form longterm relationships. The only amatonormativite thing about that would be saying that that can only happen through romance -- which you're not saying. If it feels right, then it's right. Any identity can be real if you make it real. What it sounds like you're asking, though, if there are others who do the same and what that looks like.

I don't know much about these people. I and the team wanted people who we knew and trusted It sounds a bit like you two are talking past each other here. Tost and Ramen are saying that the team members trust each other, while Mark is saying that they (Mark) doesn't feel as much of a reason to trust the team. 1) Is that interpretation of what everybody's saying correct? 2) To the team in general: are you interested in soliciting trust or convincing anyone else at Arocalypse that you should be trusted with this (pretty big and serious) task? 3) Mark, what would be some things you would like to see that would help build your trust? I don't think that's just an "if," but more of a "when." Nobody's perfect, right?

For any aros without a sexual orientation reading this -- I think "Something not listed here" could work in the meantime, but also, are there suggestions of what people would like? Maybe an option like "none" or "I don't have a sexual orientation"? Those parallel what I would say for romantic orientation when quoiro isn't given as an option. True that. For anyone else who's thought about it -- I also would recommend contacting the Ace Census team for guidance in getting the ball rolling. As their guide to the data [pdf] indicates, they've had a lot little of hiccups over the years in survey design that I think an aro census team could learn from.

Whoa, what? I'm not so sure about that. I don't have the same impression of there being such a thing as "online queer culture" with specific agreed-upon norms and values across the board. My first impression would be to wonder if people are talking about a more specific online queer subculture (like, say, their personal social network) and generalizing that as something much broader than it is (maybe because they just aren't aware of the counterexamples?), but I don't know. Just something I would be inclined to suspect as a possibility here -- especially with these examples. While it's fine for people to prefer certain online database/record-keeping setups*, and while it's fine for any given community to have a "off-limits topics" list, I don't agree with characterizing those as aspects of "standard online queer culture." *I'd also question the idea that more record-keeping = more safe, but that may be beside the point.

I didn't say anything about Tumblr. And my impression is the same, actually. Don't look to me for advice on how to use that place for discussion, because I don't try. Anyway, nbd, was just a thought. This... makes it sound like you think aces are more untrustworthy, somehow. For frame of reference, I could take what you're saying about aces and make basically the same argument about the treatment of quoiros and grayros by aromantics. I'm not interested in actually making that argument here, to be clear, but I think the same kinds of evidence is there. A lot of it's even recent, too. For instance: There's the recent ace of spades accusations reifying the great divide -- and what that means for people who don't use romantic orientation. There's been multiple recent claims that queerplatonic is "an aro term" exclusively for aros and/or definitively-nonromantic relationships (example, example). This neglects the fact that not everyone involved with the term's earliest history was aromantic or wanted to map their relationships to the romantic/nonromantic binary. There's been the (now pervasive, apparently) reclamation of "split attraction model" for the categorization of people according to whether they "use the SAM" (example, example)... in a way that assumes you can split everybody between divergent rosol identities and convergent non-rosol identities. This has involved more generally treating differentiating-subtypes-of-attraction & identifying-with-multiple-orientations as the same thing -- which is a problem for me, a divergent & non-rosol quoiromantic who does differentiate between subtypes of attraction. There's even been this bizarre trend of splitting "the aromantic spectrum" apart into something that does not include aromanticism (example), isolating the "spectrum" as something that applies to grayros and other not-specifically-aromantic folks -- as if it's important to have some kind of hard line boundary there. The push for this kind of talk and the more general hard-dividing-line approach behind it has negative consequences for grayros. And now we've got this "oriented" vs "angled" kerfuffle, thanks to an aromantic introducing a specific term for non-axial identities & presenting that as something exclusively for core aro aces, unavailable for gray-aces or grayros, in a way that crunches what grayness even is. This is a case of an aromantic talking over gray folks about our own identities (which -- surprise -- can involve haziness and many other factors, not just clearcut "infrequent attraction"). Plus, as you noted, the wrong definition of quoi/wtfromantic is the one that is featured in most glossaries, including, until recently, here. ...and although that's a similar litany of offenses and widespread misunderstandings, I'm not coming to the same conclusion about it. It wouldn't have even occurred to me to ask how many people on the team are quoiro or grayro, let alone ask that the majority be quoiro or grayro. I'm more interested in reviewing what specific work they put out and checking it for fairness. But even if we were going to ask these kinds of questions/express these kinds of evaluations of what identities/what majority would make the best team, I think an even better question would be something like "How many people on the team are people of color," for instance. And even then, I'm not sure about that. I don't want to put anyone in a position of having to play the token aro of color who has to be the poc spokesperson, like Queenie has talked about being asked of her on panels. So like I said, I'm really unsure about and wary of looking at the team composition in this way. It's not totally off-base, I guess, but I don't think any given identity comp is going to please everybody, and what matters most is the results they produce. As far as addressing grievances is concerned, I think even the "best," most ideal team comp would be wise to solicit feedback before going live with anything. That's really the best thing any team could do.

...Dunno to what extent you're interested in suggestions, but if there's a topic that you'd like to see more people talking about and writing on -- which could be a useful step there, towards getting an even broader sense of what could go into a resource or guide -- then that topic could be a good theme choice for a Carnival of Aros. 'Course, there's plenty of room for any newly-launching project to be generative in its own right. Not trying to talk anybody down from that. Just saying, that's an option too. For what it's worth.

Can't be sure, but diametric sounds like it might get mixed up with diamoric.

Cool beans. Is there a reason why it's select-one-only, instead of checkboxes? Hence my concern. =( Which is also why I'm relieved to hear that @running.tally @bydontost and whoever else are soliciting input and dialogue along the way in the formation stages, as opposed to just self-appointing to call all the shots (-- and run the risks that come of trying to speak for an entire community without bothering with so much as a drafting phase).

Cool beans. Since it sounds like some of your pages will involve definitions of terms -- I have a request to make. Will you please, please, please make sure not to define quoiromantic as "can't tell the difference between platonic and romantic feelings"? The linked post has some detailed information on its history and some suggestions for better phrasing. And more generally, I would like it if glossary makers at large would more regularly take umbrella crunching into account.

+1 to "Advocacy" being a good word and umbrella term to cover the rest. If you don't mind me asking -- is this something you've announced already? Do you have specific plans for what your website will do? Like -- is it a place for FAQs and introductory pamphlets, analogous to stuff like this and this, or something else?

I went and put some thoughts together yesterday, but it's probably a bit much for a forum post. Short version: looking back at what's happened to the ace community as it's gotten more visibility should be instructive to the aro community that "more visibility" does not make for a good community goal -- because "visibility" is not the same thing as "acceptance." I think the (in)visibility paradigm is like being prisoners in a shadowy dungeon and deciding, "well, the problem here is that we need to turn on the lights and be seen" instead of "the problem here is that we're behind bars."