Coyote

26 minutes ago, bydontost said:

This person says that they hate aces (that literally means they're acephobic), but not to call them acephobic.

And they've been largely getting away with it, from what I can tell.

This would be one thing if they were just some weird anomalous fringe element, but they do seem to be getting listened to, and their posts merely strike me as the most blunt and obvious expression of a framework that other aros have been operating on more implicitly.

30 minutes ago, bydontost said:

and imo doesn't imply that other a-specs have it good or are to blame for this.

It sets up a linear hierarchy, doesn't it? "Bottom" can only exist in relation to something else positioned higher.

15 minutes ago, Korbin said:

Please someone stop me I am spiralling out of control.

Standard-bearer. Sidekick. Confidant. Associate. Accomplice.

1 hour ago, LauraG said:

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,

Asexual privilege?

2 minutes ago, bydontost said:

including things that imply aces are privileged

Asexual privilege. Got it.

Okay, here's some examples of what I've seen on that front:

• "Aces hold power over aros!"
• "allo aros are kind of at the bottom of the barrel in the aspec community"
• "allaros [are] literally the most poorly treated aspecs"

***

3 minutes ago, bydontost said:

i think not generalizing could help, when we're talking about a problem?? instead of talking about aces doing this and that, we could say that a certain thing happened

Further thoughts on that point.

2 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

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?

Further thoughts on that point as well.

29 minutes ago, Lokiana said:

Even then, people were being cooperative and still having a discussion throughout the thread...maybe not everyone was arriving at the same conclusion and maybe not everyone had the same opinion, but people were listening, is the overall impression I get. 

*squints* ......I wish I could understand how you're coming to these conclusions. If I turned to one of my friends, linked to this thread, and said, "So as you can see, people listened and were cooperative," they'd think I was being sarcastic.

31 minutes ago, Lokiana said:

(Also, regarding your question: aro tumblr is a mess nowadays. It's developed into multiple factions and groups as far as I can tell, the hivemind thing is only slightly a joke, and there's a lot of conflict. Because aros can't agree on anything and especially not now.)

I don't think that's an aro-specific thing. Or rather -- I get what you're saying in calling aro tumblr a mess, and I'd agree with that assessment -- as in, it's messier than just a baseline "people don't always agree with each other" -- but I'd attribute that (in part) to some additional contributing factors involved.

But in any case: okay, then what are the factions?

9 hours ago, Korbin said:

Would it be corny to call my 'qpp' my partner in crime?

Yes, but don't let that dissuade you.

2 hours ago, bydontost said:

It's a food for thought, and I think that what we have now is an acephobia problem

I'm glad you said it so that I don't have to.

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.

1 hour ago, Lokiana said:

Lack of accessibility, in my opinion, but also intercommunity cooperation.

Wh.... Okay, I take it I didn't word my question clearly enough, because it sounds like we're not on the same page about what I was trying to ask there. Understandable, since the word "here" is pretty ambiguous and wasn't really emphasized. I will try again.

Referring specifically to this Arocalypse thread, I've gotten the impression that (up to that point) the answer to "Are you ready to listen?" has been mostly/disproportionately a "No." If you have a different overall assessment of this thread, or if your impression of it is mostly "Yes," then -- in this thread -- what am I overlooking?

38 minutes ago, bydontost said:

That was a rather large introduction, but: aros who act acephobic. They're there and we need to address this problem.

Interesting choice of topic.

Since you raised it, I'd like to bring in this question I asked in February:

https://theacetheist.wordpress.com/2020/02/23/what-would-anti-ace-problem-aro-community/

3 hours ago, Lokiana said:

6 hours ago, Coyote said:

Quote

Some of us are ready to listen.

 

Are you?

 

And over the past four pages or so, the impression I've gotten here mostly is "No."

 

I think saying no one is ready to have that conversation might be an unfair representation.

What I said was "ready to listen," not "ready to have that conversation," but this is certainly one of those areas where I would be glad to learn that my previous impression was wrong.

What am I overlooking?

Well, since this thread has built up to a few pages now, and in case there's anyone else who'd rather skip to the end like Spade did, here's a very loose summary of the situation, as it stands.

In the post linked at the beginning, I explained the context of QPR misinfo and then said this:

Quote

Unfortunately, it can’t be all take and no give, because an honest conversation about aro-ace community relations needs to involve some honesty about how the aro community itself has made people feel unwelcome, too. That includes me, but not just me. I just happen to be part of the visible tip of the iceberg, speaking for myself but also relaying what I hear spoken in whispers, private messages, and viewlocked posts.

 

Aros who are gunshy of the ace community, I know you’ve been burned before, so I understand if you don’t believe me when I say this: Some of us are ready to listen.

 

Are you?

And over the past four pages or so, the impression I've gotten here mostly is "No."

4 minutes ago, Momo said:

anything with the word 'personal' in it will take some measure of judgement call on a case by case basis just by virtue of the fact that each person is individual and we can't specify a complete list of all things someone might consider an insult.

Sure. What I'm asking for is some clarification on what criteria the staff, themselves, will use in determining whether something is a personal insult.

17 minutes ago, Momo said:

We have a mind to review them but no immediate plans to change anything in particular right now. If you have questions about them then please ask but I can’t promise an immediate response but they will definitely feed into that review at a minimum for a response later. 

Very well.

One of the things I'd like to request clarification on is Rule 2b, on Personal Insults. Here's what the rule currently says:

Quote

b. Personal insults
Personally insulting other users in any way is unacceptable. This includes, but is not limited to, using a person's race, sex, gender identity or expression, creed, disability, nationality, or sexual orientation as a way to insult any member.

I think this is a fine rule, but I think the wording could be more precise, since as it stands, it could be misleading about how the staff actually intends to interpret and apply it in practice.

For instance: Just looking at the text alone, since it says "includes, but is not limited to," I would have figured that this rule would also apply to statements like "You're irritating to deal with." Now, I could be mistaken here, but if I could read it that way, I figure it's possible that someone else might read it that way, too -- and while it's no skin off my back, I know other people can be more sensitive than I am about that kind of thing. Just saying, I wouldn't want a sensitive newbie joining the forum and thinking they're safe from those kind of comments if the staff aren't actually going to consider it against the rules.

@Momo so the site rules/terms of service aren't substantially changing, correct? In that case, can I request clarification on one of the rules?

5 hours ago, Ace_of_Spades7 said:

So the difference between "romantic" and "aromantic" is being portrayed as dislike of physical contact rather than not experiencing romantic attraction/desire.

Yeah, that's... badly written.

On 3/18/2020 at 10:39 AM, Mark said:

Could it be intended for sex favourable asexuals rather than allosexuals?

Who knows. The person who wrote that's not really around anymore to ask.

5 hours ago, Ace_of_Spades7 said:

"Sex-favorable" just means that they are willing to compromise sex within a relationship if their partner is sexual.

That's not necessarily how they'd all describe it, I don't think. For reference, here's some stuff on sex-favorable aces:

• Reflections on the Use and Boundaries of Sex-Favourable Asexual as a Term
• Living as a Sex-Favourable Asexual
• 20 narratives of aces who like sex

25 minutes ago, nonmerci said:

because I mentioned QPR can be sexual... which is, now I understand, not how it was supposed to be originally.

Point of clarification -- I think the "I Don’t Mean to Baffle You, But I Do" post was more about the author's own relationships, but before that, in 2011, they posted this, which specifically says "a queerplatonic relationship can be sexual." (I don't know why use the term "platonic" in the term then, but that's what they did.) So technically speaking, that's not a recent development.

@pressAtoQUEER

Oh. I'm glad we could parse out what was happening there, then. Thank you.

1 minute ago, bydontost said:

Only the second one. Third is an example of 2nd imo.

Okay. That... indicates some preexisting concept of... components to orientation besides sexuality per se. If anybody sets out to argue that that idea was never around pre-2000, we do have that ready as a counterpoint.

What it doesn't indicate, to me, is community history, in terms of people actively affiliating with each other on the basis of aro/bi identification. That's sexological history, not bi community history. We don't even know anything about the people who applied those particular models to themselves afaik, or if that was even used by anybody besides theorists and researchers.

Just now, bydontost said:

Okay, sorry, they said they didn't know about such a history for aros and bis, but do know of such a history with aces and bis. I mean... do you gather what I'm trying to say at all?

I can gather what you're saying if you're saying ace history = aro history, and otherwise... I don't gather what you're saying.

1 hour ago, bydontost said:

Yes, that is the community history between bi and aro communities - that I know of, in the sense how anything about this can be known anyway.

Okay. So you're saying that the community history between bi and aro communities is

• The Golden Orchid Society, a collection of organizations in South China that began during the Qing dynasty and existed from approximately 1644 to 1949, which practiced marriage between women (to women) and nonpartering/solo marriage
• The concept of sexological orientation models which include "emotional preferences" and "affectional preference"
• A Tumblr post saying "There was a 2 (or more?) point kinsey-like scale used among me and my queer friends in HS"

?

1 hour ago, bydontost said:

I was just agreeing with @VoidArcana that it seems like a weird reasoning to tie aros and aces, and aces and bis, but then deny the tie between aros and bis.

I figure it's perfectly appropriate to say "I don't know" when one doesn't know, which is the thing that @flergalwit did. If anything, I wish people would take that approach more often.

If we had a case of someone actively denying something/saying something for sure wasn't the case, then on this topic I'd raise an eyebrow at that too, to say the least, but luckily that's not what we're dealing with.

25 minutes ago, bydontost said:

I think it's worth talking about somewhere, but not documenting in this compilation

Okay. That makes sense to me then.

26 minutes ago, bydontost said:

4 hours ago, Coyote said:

Is this... that? Is this the community history between the bi and aro communities?

I mean... I don't see anything wrong with this..??

Is that a yes? I can't tell if you're saying "Yes, that is the community history between the bi and aro communities" or if you're asking "What would be the problem with it if that's what I were saying?" ....And I don't want to respond to one if what you meant was the other.

48 minutes ago, bydontost said:

3 hours ago, Mark said:

It's definitely from an ace perspective. Can't see anything obviously allo aro applicable.

If asexual was a category used in research some years ago, then it can be compared with concepts that also appeared in around that time, but aro is a new concept and doesn't really have a 1:1 translation to a concept that existed.

For reference -- and this is just talking generally about where I'm coming from on this -- here's an example of intersecting-LGBT-and-asexual-history that is arguably not relevant for "aro history" per se (and also more sexological than communal, but anyway): Bell and Weinberg's Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men & Women has some sections on an "asexual" subgroup within their "homosexual" research participants. This "asexual" label is one assigned by the researchers, and their criteria for it are pretty sex-specific, in a way that necessarily would have excluded people with higher/moderate levels of "sexual interest" or sexual activity, who would have been sorted into a different group.

If somebody then extrapolated from there to say that this example demonstrates shared conceptual history for aromanticism & gayness, I'd say that jump wouldn't make sense -- and, if anything, that would be actively doing a disservice to the idea that aromanticism isn't inherently an ace thing.

4 hours ago, bydontost said:

second link (https://atomicbubblegum.tumblr.com/post/113202572465/cease-and-de-cis-so-i-reblog-a-lot-of-things) has this:

Quote

What I am getting at, is that in the models I grew up with, among the queers I grew up around, both aro and ace people could qualify as not just bi, but bisexual. Or any other sexual orientation, really. (...) There was a 2 (or more?) point kinsey-like scale used among me and my queer friends in HS. It had a numerical range which translated to homo->bi->het. There was a 2 (or more?) point kinsey-like scale used among me and my queer friends in HS. It had a numerical range which translated to homo->bi->het.* One scale was sexual, or “Who do you want to sleep with?”. Another other was romantic, or “Who do you want to marry/date?”. (The third, if it existed – and I feel like a third did – might have been aesthetic. Possibly “Who do you think looks hot?”) If you were in the middle for either/any of them, you qualified as bisexual.

 

That's certainly... personal testimonial. Which counts for something, sure. Does this mean that people exclusively sexually interested in one gender could get grouped as bi if that sexual interest didn't extend to wanting to get married? That's what this would imply. Do we have any personal testimonial from those people themselves?

5 hours ago, bydontost said:

Those scales can measure exclusively sexual interest (like Sell Assessment of Sexual Orientation) , or sexual and emotional/affectional interest (like Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, which includes emotional and social preferences or Shivley Scale of Sexual Orientation, which asks about sexual and affectional).

So are we equating "affectional" to "romantic" here?

If.... you think these links should be added to my timeline compilation, I can do that. Is that what you're linking them for?

Asking because I draw a distinction between "history" in general and "community history," and the reason I necro'd this thread in the first place is that Ax responded to "I don't know [anything] about [a long intertwined history between the aro and bi communities]" with "Are you seriously gonna sit there and say 'there is no denying that the history of the two movements (asexuality and aromanticism) is highly interconnected' and then turn around and talk about the connection between the bi and ace communities while claiming you don't know of any such connection between the bi and aro communities? [...] The bi community housed aros when we didnt have a name, just like it did aces."

The idea being, I guess, setting aside the "if something's true of aces then it's true of aros" idea, that there's a particular history there that someone deserves to be scolded for not knowing.

Is this... that? Is this the community history between the bi and aro communities?

2 hours ago, VoidArcana said:

There's plenty of personal first hand accounts talking about it, as referenced by Tost above me. 

Do you have more?

From the thread--

Quote

Several months later she made a comment about how we were "ace-dating" and well I was quite shocked and probably reacted like I didn't want that. We haven't mentioned it again but I would like to but don't know how.

...huh. Well, this is being relayed by someone who didn't like that, so at least there's not total consensus on it.

9 hours ago, Ace_of_Spades7 said:

But lots of debate on "your relationship sounds more QPR than romantic"

o.o?!

People are telling people their relationships aren't romantic enough for them to call them romantic? You mean actively trying to police people out of using that category, too? Good grief.

From the second link--

Quote

When I think of dating, what I really want, what a lot of asexual people want, are queerplatonic friendships and relationships that do not center or rely on sex.

hm. I think the "and" there is ambiguous. If Sherronda Brown had meant that QPR = relationship w/o sex, there wouldn't even need to be the two phrases there, though it's also unclear if this means "[queerplatonic friendships] and [queerplatonic relationships] [which do not center or rely on sex]" or "[queerplatonic friendships] plus [relationships that do not center or rely on sex]" or "[queerplatonic friendships and other relationships] [of the kind that do not center or rely on sex]." 

For the third link--

Oh! haha, um, this-- @Ace_of_Spades7 I'm not sure if you know this, but Meloukhia is the coiner of queerplatonic. Here's the first usage that appears on the internet, in their Dreamwidth comment from 2010.

I mean, that doesn't mean they're totally above criticism in how they write about it, of course, but uh, well, I don't think you can position this as a pollution of the original meaning when the original meaning came from this person themselves.

9 minutes ago, pressAtoQUEER said:

Unfortunately, considering the relatively short amount of time that "aromantic" has existed as its own term and own community, I think that's just a persistent problem across aromantic history.

I don't see that as a problem -- which is something I wrote more about here, in defense of beginnings.

11 minutes ago, pressAtoQUEER said:

I don't have many more specific references I can actually provide off the top of my head.

Well let me know if any others cross your path. What I've already been able to compile on my own is here.

1 hour ago, VoidArcana said:

Not sure I can give you any particular ones off the top of my head.

hm.

Well, if you find any, let me know. I also keep a list of reference links offsite (based off the bullet points above), and I'd like to know about anything to make it more comprehensive.

51 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

I'll be honest [...] I used the bi community as an example because I myself am bisexual, but it was only an example. I was not talking about a literal history.

I appreciate that. The being honest, I mean.

Take care over there.

44 minutes ago, pressAtoQUEER said:

Okay, so this focuses on the inclusion of asexuality as a part of bisexual history,

Well that seems... questionably applicable, then. I mean, I hear what you're saying there, but just because aromanticism as we know it here traces back to early ace communities doesn't mean that... all ace history is de facto aro history. That seems like just making the same ace-and-aro-inherently-go-together mistake that Alex (Jot-Aro Kujo) was just talking about.

It looks like the only one that talks romance specifically is this part--

Quote

The Golden Orchid association (1644-1949) - a group of women in China that included lesbians, bisexuals, and “women who wanted to avoid both marriage options, and any romantic or sexual partnership” that today we would call asexual or aromantic. 

--which links to a Patreon post, which in turn cites this site (that I can't access because my browser gave me a malicious browsing advisory, not sure what that's about) and this blogpost, which in turn cites.... Passions of the Cut Sleeve: The Male Homosexual Tradition in China by Bret Hinsch? ...Looks like my academic library has a copy of it, but due to circumstances I most likely won't be able to access it until the fall.

Anyway, back to that Patreon post for now:

Quote

The Golden Orchid Society was a collection of organizations in South China that began during the Qing dynasty and existed from approximately 1644 to 1949 when they were banned because they were associated with an attempt to overthrow the Manchu Emperor. Over 300 years, however, they created an order of women who stood in solidarity with other women against heterosexual marriages that were oppressive at best and far too often abusive. While some of the women may have been heterosexual and avoiding marriage for reasons unrelated to their sexuality, it was common for members of the association to be lesbians or bisexual. [...]

 

When women in China were married, they would have their hair combed differently to signal to society, and any men interested in courting them, that they were not available. While the terms we use now for asexual or aromantic did not exist yet, the Golden Orchid Society had a system set up for women who wanted to avoid both marriage options, and any romantic or sexual partnership, by introducing “self-combing women.” These women would comb their hair into a married woman’s style, and often had a ceremony to celebrate such a decision, similar to a marriage ceremony.

I... 'm not convinced it makes sense to describe this as "aromanticism as a part of bisexual community history" per se. Or vice versa. What it does establish is that women who preferred not to marry anyone participated in the same collection of organizations(?) as women who partnered with women, and that's about as far as I can extrapolate from what I have in front of me. Although being nonpartnering may be relevant to aro narratives, and partnering with women may be relevant to bi narratives, this doesn't... I mean it's not like this is a 1990s bisexual org talking about how "bisexual" includes "people who don't experience romantic feelings," or something. There's more levels of extrapolation happening here than I'm comfortable with based on what I have in front of me.

...Well, I asked a question and then before anyone could answer the thread got locked, so--

@VoidArcana @Jot-Aro Kujo Same question:

Quote

9 hours ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Why is no one waxing poetic about, for example, the history between the aro community and the bi community?

 

1 hour ago, VoidArcana said:

The bi community housed aros when we didnt have a name

 

Sidenote, since I'm not familiar with what y'all are talking about, can I get a source where I can read up on this?

9 hours ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Why is no one waxing poetic about, for example, the history between the aro community and the bi community?

59 minutes ago, VoidArcana said:

The bi community housed aros when we didnt have a name

Sidenote, since I'm not familiar with what y'all are talking about, can I get a source where I can read up on this?

7 hours ago, AUREA said:

  @Lokiana and @Magni have offered to be moderators indefinitely

I see.

In that case, since ze's volunteering for the responsibility of moderation, I think now's an especially pressing time for Magni to demonstrate that ze can resolve the conflicts of zer own.