Coyote

13 hours ago, raavenb2619 said:

Not really. It might have been titled something like "the case against arospec" and went through three or four reasons why arospec was a bad term. I think it made reference to ace community politics, probably talking about how people used various terms like "ace", "asexual", "acespec", maybe "ace umbrella", and noticed that since something about policing language or making graysexuals and other """non-gold star asexuals""" feel unwelcome or second class had happened, it was likely to happen in the aro community and that using arospec would facilitate that bad thing.

hmm.... I can't remember writing anything like that myself. The closest thing I can think of is Oriented Gray, which was mostly about the term "oriented," not "arospec," although point two there does include some discussion of spectrum terms. There's also this short tumblr post that's somewhat related (summary: there's no need to say "acespec" when "ace" means the same thing), although it sounds like you were definitely thinking of something else.

13 hours ago, raavenb2619 said:

I know that there was a push a few years ago to move from "Aromantic Awareness Week" to "Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week", does anyone have information on why that happened?

...Not really. From collecting some info recently, I know that it was proposed sometime in 2014 on Tumblr (original post now deleted), but if there was a switch that happened, I'm not sure when it was. 

13 hours ago, raavenb2619 said:

Maybe there's a comparison to be made with why (AFAIK) the ace community hasn't done the same?

It... kind of has. The ace counterpart used to be called Asexual Awareness Week, but the old site now redirects to Ace Week.

7 hours ago, raavenb2619 said:

@Coyote, do you know what I'm talking about? I think it was a Tumblr user, and I think you linked to them either in the body of one of your Wordpress articles, or in the comments.

I'm not sure I know exactly what interaction you mean, sorry. Can you remember anything else?

Anyway, for what it's worth, here's how I use the term "aro": 

23 hours ago, Whistle said:

Anyways, I'm interested in hearing about experiences of folks who are gray aro, or oriented aros

I put together some links on this here:

https://theacetheist.wordpress.com/2019/08/06/tiny-linkspam-on-tri-label-aro-aces/

On 9/1/2019 at 11:25 AM, DeltaV said:

I simply don’t think that Putin has the well-being of his citizens in mind,

You think?

On 9/3/2019 at 12:38 PM, Cake-Loving Dragon said:

It's just more common for aros (and aces, for sexual harassment).

Is it? I don't think there's necessarily been any particular data collected to measure that. Anyway, I think this might be a case similar to what Redbeard was saying the other month about romantic orientation & discrimination law, about how emphasizing a romantic/sexual split could actually have negative consequences -- currently, if someone were being harassed in this way, the avenue already available to them would be to call it sexual harassment.

On 9/4/2019 at 10:27 AM, nonmerci said:

Personally, I would describe it as "not looking for a special one to one link",

So "nonpartnering"? Or nonamorous?

On 9/4/2019 at 10:27 AM, nonmerci said:

And about it not being near of the cultural weight of sex and romance... isn't it true for platonic attraction too?

Correct.

On 9/4/2019 at 10:27 AM, nonmerci said:

Though you don't deny that aplatonism could belong here?

What do you mean? I neither deny nor agree with it. I'm skeptical and unsure.

On 9/2/2019 at 3:43 AM, Star Lion said:

I’m aro, just not a gold star aro.

"Gold star" anything is an illegitimate concept anyway.

On 9/2/2019 at 3:43 AM, Star Lion said:

So you’re trying to say that mental disabilities are a social construct

It's disappointing, I know, when you're hoping to make a point by drawing a comparison to what you think is a shared point of reference, only to find out that the person you're talking to doesn't agree with you on that either. If you really want to have a discussion about this, we can do that, you're welcome to it, but preferably not here on this thread, because I really would like to discuss the actual topic here.

On 9/2/2019 at 3:43 AM, Star Lion said:

Why do I need to know the history of the spectrum idea and what is the history?

Maybe it wouldn't make any difference, but you seem to be treating the attraction-basis-for-orientation model as some inherent natural truth as opposed to kind of a consequence of mere happenstance. In actuality, there's no particular hard "proof" supporting it besides just the fact that a lot of people either use it or talk about it at this point, but it wasn't always that way. There are two main things that I think are relevant here. Well, three, really. The first is that I'm understanding the history of the aromantic spectrum as basically drawing directly on the asexual spectrum, given the parallel terminology (correct me if I'm wrong here, folks). The asexual spectrum is a concept expressed by the AVEN triangle (with its white-to-black gradient), which was itself based on the Storms' model. In direct reference to the triangle, the term gray-a was first proposed in 2006. You'll notice that it isn't explicitly defined in terms of frequency of attraction -- it's introduced as a name for the "fuzziness" around the asexual part of the AVEN logo. And thirdly, "asexuality" itself, the basis of comparison for gray-asexuality, wasn't (and isn't) always defined on the basis of attraction, either. While it's certainly fine to use it for that, there's always been people using it to mean more than one sort of thing, from the beginning and throughout the community's history. Why approach it like this one model is more "right" than any other, when the reason it even gained this level of prominence at all is an artifact of older infighting + bureaucratic inertia?

On 9/2/2019 at 4:35 AM, nonmerci said:

But this is just my opinion, I just started looking this label to see if it can fit me si I don't know a lot yet, maybe you know more and can explain why you think it doesn't fit in an a-spectrum?

I'm not saying for sure it wouldn't, I just don't see why it would. The term has only been around since 2015, I basically never see it defined in a way that's not amatonormative, and there's nowhere near the widescale cultural weight around it compared to sex and romance, because it's way too niche for that. So what does that leave?

On 9/2/2019 at 4:35 AM, nonmerci said:

And I won't define atheism like this neither. It is some kind of belief too, in science and evidences.

Not necessarily.

2 hours ago, DogObsessedLianne said:

A-spec when speaking generally can actually be inclusive of anyone who touches on the A be it romantically or sexually.

So romantically or sexually, specifically? And not including other "a-" stuff?

I guess it figures that I'd start a thread on one topic and it'd get completely derailed by another...

On 8/31/2019 at 9:24 AM, nonmerci said:

I also see the term analterous, which has the a- prefixe. And I think it shares things in common with aromanticism and asexuality, like being define by an absence.

It may be defined by an absence, but I think the relationship between aromanticism & asexuality is more than just being defined by an absence, or else we might as well end up reasoning that atheism is a part of this a-spectrum notion, too. Are there other connections there besides the absence prefix?

On 8/31/2019 at 9:42 AM, Star Lion said:

That’s like me saying “nothing makes you mentally disabled except identifying as it.”

Bud if you think that identifying as disabled isn't something with ambivalent edge cases and that disability itself hasn't already been studied and scrutinized by scholars and activists alike as a social construct, I have some bad news for you.

On 8/31/2019 at 9:42 AM, Star Lion said:

There’s a truth to all these things

Is there?

5 hours ago, Star Lion said:

My belief is that this makes you more aro than greyro. Greyromantics experience romantic attraction and you don’t.

Knock it off with the identity policing, dude. You went and made claims about the rainbow flag without knowing the history of it -- do you know the history of the aromantic spectrum concept either?

29 minutes ago, raavenb2619 said:

I’d recommend you try listening to grayromantics when they talk about their experiences instead of talking over them. 

Star Lion's grayro himself, so I don't expect he'll take this advice seriously, but ftr, identity policing is still identity policing regardless of whether you yourself identify with the term in question.

1 hour ago, Star Lion said:

I did that to be specific because everyone is calling themselves gay these days and it’s like they’re having gay men be the representation of the entire queer community. Even their flag is being used to represent everyone.

..."their" flag? What flag? You mean the rainbow flag? The rainbow flag designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978 that represents the entire LGBT community? Is that the flag you're calling just for gay men?

1 hour ago, Star Lion said:

Monoromantic isn’t a spectrum because if you like more than one gender romantically at all, that would make you biromantic.

That's an excessively binary outlook. Nothing "makes" you bi besides identifying as bi, and there's nothing wrong with discounting exceptions or expressing priorities by identifying as something else.

1 hour ago, Star Lion said:

Aromantic isn’t a spectrum because if you like any gender romantically at all, that would make you non-aromantic or “alloromamtic”

....

So am I the only one seeing this? Is anyone else seeing this?

On 8/29/2019 at 4:40 PM, nonmerci said:

aro, ace, aplatonic, non-alterous...

Non-alterous? o.o

On 8/29/2019 at 4:40 PM, nonmerci said:

I don't know if an allo ro and allosexual person would see it (or as a child maybe, when people encourage you to have friends and all). But inside the aro community maybe? As we say about squishes, it seems that sometimes aro are expecting to have squishes. Plus if the term emerged  (contrary to terms as asensual for instance, that I never saw), it must be because people feel this platonic pressure, I suppose.

The person who use to run Aplatonic Agenda was an alloromantic allosexual, and the person who first proposed "aplatonic" wasn't aro either, so I'm not talking about just within the aro community.

Part of the reason why I ask is because I see people, for instance, correcting people on the "proper" meaning of "aspec" (ex. here in this post, the contribution from @techno-trashcan) to say it means "ace and/or aro" -- but I can't recall seeing anyone try to "correct" people that the a-spectrum should also mean "aplatonics," so is that something that needs to start happening too, or no? 

23 hours ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Think of it like the LGBTQ+ community.

huh. That's an example I do think of as a partnership or coalition, like how you described what "Aces and Aros" implies. The difference is that there are several organizations, resource centers, events, etc. that bill themselves as "LGBTQ+," whereas for general joint/overarching "aspec" community spaces/efforts, I'm not sure I'd be able to name any, besides.... TAAAP, for one, and the recent NYC Aces and Aros Conference. Both of which do the "Aces and Aros" wording. But anyway. Are these the examples you mean by general unified community, or... does "community" here refer to "the general demographic/population/group of people this could describe, regardless of interaction or coordination with each other"?

On 8/27/2019 at 10:05 PM, Apathetic Echidna said:

I think it covers any of the a- prefixes, aromantic/asexual/agender being the most common [...]

 

As long as it is clear whether someone is talking about their orientation (individual level) or the community (population level)

...Orientation or gender, you mean? Or is the "agender" there more... conditional?

19 hours ago, Star Lion said:

Still wish we didn’t call this a “spectrum.” Homo oriented people don’t call themselves a spectrum and neither do straight people so it makes sense for us to follow the same trend

I have never in my life encountered anyone referring to themselves as a "homo oriented person." But regardless: why would it necessarily make sense for us to talk like straight people?

19 hours ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

I don't think it would be fair to turn them away.

Sure, I guess. It would be interesting to see what that personal narrative would look like. Since I don't see that currently happening at the moment, though, I don't see a need to address that hypothetical scenario. My intent was more to ask about the concept as a model, implying some kind of inherent commonality across the board. I think you could make some kind of case, for instance, for the intertwined nature of amatonormativity & sexnormativity (even if theoretically separable and sometimes appearing in isolated forms) -- which would have implications for grouping aromanticism & asexuality together, conditionally, under some circumstances. But as for some kind comparable of... platono... normativity? I dunno about that. I haven't seen anyone really explain a case for that yet.

19 hours ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

I think it's important to acknowledge that overlap, and to be allies to each other, so the aspec community is the union of both the ace and aro communities as one large, diverse whole. "Ace and aro" more implies a partnership than a single unified community, imo.

Can you elaborate?

I ask because I've seen some aros (ex. here & Crou in the post above) talk about membership only in aro-specific communities and/or communicate a preference for modeling ace & aro communities as two separate things. Is there a way to make the premise of an overarching a-community compatible with that?

30 minutes ago, running.tally said:

Coyote, you've beat me to it! I was just about to make this forum topic.

30 minutes ago, running.tally said:

I personally like "a-spec" as a term I can use for my aro and ace-ness simultaneously.

Yeah, that's something I thought about including in the main post, too -- I can see it having that utility for people wanting to express a "both at once, undistingushed"-ness for a convergent identity. Evidently, though, that's not the only way it gets used. So I'm thinking -- does it have utility outside of that? If so, in what way? If not, is it the best tool for the job?

29 minutes ago, running.tally said:

when I think of a-spec, I think of any identity - an orientation - that can have an "a" prefix. Asexual, aromantic, aplatonic, asensual, etc.

So "orientations," specifically?

Wait -- "asensual"? Are people using that?

Coming off of Laura's post and Neir's survey, I've been thinking again about this terminology and the model of identity it implies. "A-spectrum" is a term originating on Tumblr in 2015, as an attempt to refer to the aro and ace spectrums simultaneously. You might have seen it around.

There are an assortment of different issues to consider here. For example, as @LauraG pointed out, the distinction between "a-spectrum" and "ace spectrum" is not easily pronounced in real life in spoken English, and in my accent, they sound exactly the same. However, I'm making this thread because there are a couple of more theoretical questions I want to explore. Namely:

• What is the "a-spectrum"? And should it be broader or narrower than that?

The term was originally created to refer to the ace & aro spectrums. However, that's not how everyone uses it. For example, I recently asked Neir @running.tally if their use of "a-spec" (for eir & Magni's survey) was also supposed to encompass aplatonism (in addition to the ace & aro spectrums), since that's another identity with an "a" prefix. They answered yes. I've also seen "a-spec" used to mean "aros, aces, and agender people." So it seems that not everyone is on the same page about what the term "a-spectrum" is supposed to mean. In that light, I guess my question is less about what "does" it mean and more about what should it mean. When people talk about a general "a-spectrum," do you think alloromantic allosexuals who identify as "agender" or "aplatonic" should be a part of that? And as aros and/or aces, do you feel that it makes sense to model those experiences on the same general spectrum as yours?

Personally, I don't identify on a general "a-spectrum." I identify as an ace, on the asexual spectrum. I haven't really been convinced that it makes sense to model my experiences & an allosexual aromantic's experiences on the same general unspecified spectrum, solely on account of the letter "a." But that's neither here nor there. Part of why I'm thinking about this is also -- is that what the aro community wants? An all-encompassing "a" umbrella, other than the phrase "aces and aros"? What are the pros and cons of that approach? I'm not sure that I've actually seen that thoroughly discussed before.

And back to the above, again: what are y'all's thoughts on the "a-spectrum" being broader (or not) than "aces and aros"? How far exactly does that stretch? And wherever it stops -- why there?

2 hours ago, running.tally said:

Though, full disclosure, I hadn't thought about the possibility of someone being a-spec and not aro or ace (e.g., aplatonic but not aro or ace).

Yeah, see, I wouldn't have thought so either, but then I had a conversation with someone who used to run an aplatonic twitter account -- who told me that they didn't ID as aro or ace at the time. Just aplatonic. So while I imagine that's a fairly small population, I can't say it's never happened. And I imagine some of those folks, if they encounter this survey, would be dissuaded from taking it by the presentation that frames it as solely for aros and aces. So... worth being aware of that difference between your intentions and the respondents you're probably getting, I figure.

Anyway. In between now and my last post, I got to talking with a few more people about the survey, and they told me they had some more issues with trying to take it, due to the way the questions were constructed. Should I PM you about that or explain here?

2 minutes ago, Mark said:

I wonder if there is a way to "beta test" surveys.

There is. That's what I did with Siggy last month before I released the Romantic Ambivalence Survey.

On 8/20/2019 at 3:19 PM, running.tally said:

This is a broad a-spec survey, so it’s not just for aros - it’s for aros, aces, a-specs, and all grey or questioning folks on any of those spectra. If you are aro only, ace only, or a-spec only, you are just as welcome to participate as aroaces - there will be questions about your other identities as well. 

I was talking to a friend of mine who took this and after I mentioned why I wasn't, I realized I had a question about your target population here. You refer to them in this post and in the Tumblr post as "a-spec" people, but your elaboration only mentions aros and aces. Are you intending the concept of the "a-spectrum" to include aplatonic people, as well?

Update: The results have been posted here on Pillowfort.

@Holmbo, can you make sure the redditors see? One of them left a comment at the end of the survey asking that the link be shared there.

Bumping this thread because I still don't know of anywhere anybody's put together anything like this.

@sennkestra In the mean time, here are the things I know so far:

• 200[?] -- the word "aromantic" used on Haven for the Human Amoeba
• 2006 -- the word "aromantic" used on the AVEN forums
• 2011? -- National Coalition for Aromantic Visibility founded, now defunct
  • First flag proposal (green/yellow/orange/black )
• 2012 -- "amatonormativity" coined by professor Elizabeth Brake
• 2014 -- Aromantic Awareness Week suggested on Tumblr (since renamed Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week)
• 2014 -- Second flag proposal (green/green/yellow/gray/black) and Third flag proposal (green/green/white/gray/black)
• 2016-ish? -- Arocalypse created (@Blue Phoenix Ace can you confirm?)
• 2017 -- Aromantics Wiki was created
• 2018 -- aromantic and other romantic orientations added to the Oxford English Dictionary
• 2019 -- Aromantic-Spectrum Union for Recognition, Education, and Advocacy was created

See also my timelines on QPR & related concepts (like "squish") and wtf/quoiromanticism. I get the sense that there would also be an interest in this over on aro tumblr.

Anyway, somebody else take over for me here.

7 hours ago, Irifluo said:

There are relatively few words describing multivariate relationship: cooperation, group, polyamory, etc.

Also "squad" and "community."

7 hours ago, Irifluo said:

When I was a child, I often lived in groups (or groups on the Internet, similar to the community, and many members were active). My childhood was living in such an atmosphere: Play Together.
We attach more importance to the multivariate relationship of the group than we do to the relationship between the two.
We value group relationships very much, so we often play together (not every time every member participates), so we WON'T BE ALONE.

 

In the later years, the small group ended. The end of the small group has its own factors. But the most important factor is: As members grow up, they begin to pursue binary relationsship (especially monogamy Relationship Escalator). This tendency to pay too much attention to (and even to compete with) the binary relationship has greatly weakened the multivariate relationship. This tendency, in fact, can be said that Amatonormativity, is what I do not like.

Sympathies. And yeah, I think this is an important part of understanding what "amatonormativity" is -- not just the romantic/nonromantic distinction, but also thinking about individual relationships to the exclusion of group relationships. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

On 8/7/2019 at 12:39 PM, Cristal Gris said:

I just saw someone say " soulmates can be platonic ! don't exclude us ! " and like.. please no...

+1 to the anti-soulmates resistance. The idea of "soulmates" at this point is basically inextricable from the idea of predestined relationships, which... is just a bad outlook to have on relationships all around, no matter what kind.

On 8/7/2019 at 12:39 PM, Cristal Gris said:

a lot of aros are firm on saying that QPR are not friends , like, never ever.

I'd really like to know how these people define "friendship."

10 hours ago, aspecofstardust said:

My issue with thinking about qprs right now is that I have such a hard time distinguishing for myself what the difference is between a qpr and a very close friendship.

There isn't necessarily any difference -- they can be the same. "QPR" is just... more specific, or I guess, a more specific way of indicating how you think about the relationship/how it doesn't fit within societal norms. Different people live in different cultural contexts, so there can't be any hard and fast rules for what exactly that will entail.

8 hours ago, raavenb2619 said:

Yeah, Googling “queerplatonic relationship” gives me mostly articles like “X signs you’re in a queerplatonic relationship without even knowing”, which feels icky

Oh geez, what?

1 hour ago, Mark said:

I think "called into question" is far too mild a way to put it

1 hour ago, Mark said:

There's also the anachronistic language. Since.there's no possible way that Ulrichs could use the term "heterosexual" in 1879.

Admittedly the other reason he wouldn't have said "heterosexual" per se was because he was a German and writing in German. I'm not sure what the exact German words he used were, besides "Uranodioning" etc., which has been translated as "bisexual." 

@raavenb2619 Link should be this: https://assignedgothatbirth.home.blog/2019/08/02/call-for-submissions-for-august-carnival-of-aros-relationships/

On 8/5/2019 at 12:51 PM, raavenb2619 said:

Speaking of this, is there much consensus on a term to refer to the whole community? I’ve always used “arospec” and “aro spectrum” as a broad term that referred to anyone who fell under the aromantic umbrella (handle aros as well as demiros, greyros, etc). 

Well, I don't know how to provide proof of consensus, but I find the "non-aromantic" use of "aro spectrum" to be new and bewildering, and this is how I use it:

In this post, Siggy (a grayro) refers to the excluding-aromantic use of "arospec" as "nonstandard usage," and I'm inclined to see it the same way. See that post and the comment section for a further discussion of the consequences of shifting the spectrum framework. ...Also, having been watching the responses come in to the Romantic Ambivalence Survey.... well, to be fair, that's not supposed to be a measure of the whole aro community or opinions on the community, but it is getting a lot of aromantic respondents, and so far, I can tell you that definitely the vast majority of respondents who checked off "aromantic" as their identity did answer "Do you identify on the aromantic spectrum?" with "Yes, I do."

@lonelyace Sorry about your thread getting derailed, but here's a linkspam I put together on tri-label aro aces.

Recently encountered a reblog-chain started by @arokaladin that touches on a few different sites of language/expectations shift:

Quote

Like for instance the umbrella term for all identities on the arospec that weren’t aro used to be grey aro, and grey aros and aros together were the arospec, but now I see arospec used to mean greyro which. I can’t really police because I am just aro but I think is taking away a term we needed to refer to the whole community. 

Quote

It’s also definitely part of the reason for the weird attempts to define qprs as capital d Different to friendships rather than just platonic relationships that the people involved wanted to label a certain way. (Normally different in a way that creates a relationship escalator too, making qprs better or more romantic, or as it’s often put ‘more committed’ than friendship.) Which again reinforces a binary that those of us who do want qprs are Different to those of us who don’t. Which corrupts a term that Needed to be based on choice for a lot of people and tells those people they are different to the rest of the community, (and often better) and tells romance repulsed aros who have/ have had/ want to have qprs that they are associated with romance against their will.

Quote

I’ve noticed this too, the change in how qprs are discussed and the loss of certain terminology (or at least the terms being used less) and I’m not sure if it’s for the better in this case. Queerplatonic relationships were, from my understanding, defined entirely by the fact that the people involved 1) had platonic feelings for each other and 2) Agreed to call themselves partners, and that everything else involved could be anything  if it’s what made the people involved happy. Like, I thought the lack of clear parameters was the point, and while I’m not saying queerplatonic attraction is fake (if people say they experience it, I believe them), I don’t like that it is treated as some kid of prerequisite for being in a qpr since it makes it sound like platonic-but-not-exactly style dating instead of the deliberately nebulous construct it is supposed to be?

1 hour ago, Cristal Gris said:

And how do i use them?

I had this problem a while ago too. It turned out they were disabled on my account.

If you go to your own profile page, clicking on "Edit Profile" (right next to where you change the Cover Photo, top right) will bring up a widget of edit options. Under "Basic Info," one of these options is "Enable status updates?" -- with a toggle button right next to it. Does yours show on or off?

15 minutes ago, Cristal Gris said:

I don't know if this is revelant, but there is a big difference between "you are/ are not [x]" and "here is a list of words that may interrest you".

I agree. I think any time these questions come up, we should avoid things like "That makes you X" or "You're probably X." Ideologically, it's important to me that people always affirm identity labeling is always in each person's own hands to decide for themselves, barring other concerns (like if there's a problem with a term itself).

FTR, I was thinking it would be convenient if there were an aro or even just romantic-orientation-questioning-in-general version of Queenie's linkspam for people giving advice, particularly Sci's "Am I asexual?" "Who can say?" and @sennkestra's reblog-thread exchange with a prescriptivist, or even Hezekiah's identity prescriptivism linkspam. But I don't know of any equivalents.