Coyote

How come?

Cool beans. I hope so! We do already have the "I can't be cissexist/transphobic, I'm gay" type of line, which is a problem, and the problem doesn't contradict the fact that heteronormativity and cissexism are related. Granted, presenting amatonormaticity as only a subcategory of heteronormativity would be an oversimplification, yes. Adjust as you see fit. I think starting out by pointing out where they overlap is an important starting point, that's all. The precise approach to take will depend on the specifics of your audience, naturally. Since you mentioned it, though -- it might be useful, in one way or another, to bring up the critiques of marriage coming "from inside the house," so to speak. The contemporary aromantic community isn't the first to criticize marriage. Elizabeth Brake isn't either. There's precedent for those critiques specifically originating among gay people themselves, ex. this 1980s essay "Since when is marriage the path to liberation?" Given that history, before anyone starts talking about aromanticism per se, it might be worth finding out if a given LGBT addressee is already aware of those critiques, how sympathetic they are to those ideas, etc. And even if a given activist supports/supported the expansion of marriage in the States or anywhere else, that doesn't necessarily mean they won't think the critiques have a good point. There are more ambivalent people, too, who seem to have viewed it as an in-the-mean-time lesser-of-two-evils kind of option for helping to address healthcare and immigration. Doesn't necessarily mean they're necessarily gonna be gung-ho about wedding bells and singlism. I mean, I guess we could keep exploring hypotheticals, but also maybe @running.tally can tell us more about the kind of people ey's had experience with?

New month, same stuff. "the fact that this word has two definitions - no platonic attraction vs. no queerplatonic attraction - makes any discussion very confusing." Does it? Does it really?

It’s hard to say considering that labels are complicated as we have all different confusing circumstances such as people only attracted to cars, people only attracted to androgyny, etc. What I will say though, is that some people identify in ways that really don’t match what their actual experiences are and there might be a better (non-micro) label that would work better than what they’re using. Whether this is out of ignorance, a different perspective, or an attention seeking mindset I used to think more like you. In 2013, I wrote a whole multiparagraph blogpost on why I thought attraction-based orientation definitions were the best definitions. In retrospect, though, I made a bunch of logic errors, like arguing "We can't define X as Y, because some Xes are not Y, so therefore X is not Y," where it was plain that I was already assuming a given population that "counted" (or not) instead of arguing for why they should be counted that way. It's been a long convoluted path away from that prescriptive way of thinking, for me. Some of it had to do with, for instance, learning about the less-than-straightforward histories of different terms and witnessing some of the conflicts within the community over tensions between different narratives, as well as reading the blogs of people like Hezekiah, who in 2015 put together a linkspam on asexual prescriptivism. When you say "some people identify in ways that don't match what their actual experiences are," the extent to which I agree is that there are plenty of cases of people looking back and realizing they were identifying as something that actually wasn't the best fit for them. That's their own call to make. It's nobody else's place to make it for them. Telling someone that they're not really aromantic, or not really greyromantic, or anything else in the same vein, is identity policing. (And that's bad.) Presumably, you can see on my posts here that I've set my "Romanticism" as Quoiro. By some people's standards, this is a "microlabel." Are you going to tell me that there's another label that would "work better"? From my POV, some conflict is inevitable. It's just a matter of figuring out which enemies you'd rather have. I see. I did wonder if that might be the case. Sorry you had to deal with that. I see. This is helpful, actually. Well, helpful in the sense of helpful to know what's being said, for the purpose of strategizing what to say back. You know what I mean. If I may ask -- or if you remember -- can you recount what foot you started off on, in those exchanges? Was it something like "Can we extend this program to aromantics?" [starting with organization -> group] or "I'd like to distribute some brochures here on aromanticism, which is..." [starting with group term -> definition] or "Some other aros and I would like to host an event here at the resource center" [starting with group -> organization]...? Do you recall any of the leadup? I ask because I wonder what would happen if, for instance, you started off with something more [social context -> group], like "Because of amatonormativity, which is the romantic part of heteronormativity, a lot of people grow up with the expectation that they're supposed to fall in love and get married. We grow up hearing about weddings and romantic love and soulmates and love stories, hearing about crushes in middle school and high school, seeing advertising for online dating sites, watching movies and reading books with romantic subplots no matter how forced they are -- it's enough to really compound the stress for queer people who have very slim chances of finding a romantic partner. It's also especially bad for people who don't like romance or feel romantic feelings at all, who are sometimes even told that they're heartless monsters. And the way that our society expects marriage, including with tax benefits and everything, means it can be especially hard for people who can't authentically live that way. That's a part of why we're working to build an aromantic movement that fights amatonormativity and promotes acceptance. Since the 2000s some people have started identifying on the aromantic spectrum because [etc. etc.]" ...the idea being, you might be able to reel people in if you start off with what's more familiar to them. Does that make sense? I think the things I've been suggesting so far have been pretty coherent. Hopefully you can let me know if not. I'll ask a question though: Do you think the people you're thinking of can be successfully shut up with a single-instance response? ...where "single-instance" here means "saying one thing," as opposed to dialogue and back-and-forth requiring multiple responses and responses-to-responses over time. By the way -- will the What's Going On posts have an RSS feed? Siggy would like to know.

That sounds about like what I was thinking, as well. So... not to be a broken record here, but I think addressing this problem of a neolabels-over-discussion cycle would have to mean... moving more aro community engagement away from platforms that tend more in that direction, i.e. Tumblr. Btw, you mentioned Discord as well, but I mainly use Discord just for IMing people I already know and haven't explored many group servers -- can you say more about what the state of aro discord looks like?

"I read somewhere that the word 'smash' was used to describe an overwhelming feeling of lust for another person" "Does anyone find it odd that we use the words 'crush' and 'smash' to describe having a romantic/sexual attraction toward someone?" Squish was first proposed in 2007 as Raisin's word for when "There was just something about them that I liked. I wanted to get to know them better. I wanted to talk to them, just be around them. [...] I just have a desire to talk to the person and be friends with them." It does not look like "intense" is a requirement here. In fact, they even wrote that these feelings "aren't as intense as 'crushes.'"

Yes, speaking of people such as yourself, I notice you responded to the part of my post that was directed at Neir but not the part of my post that was directed at you. In light of that, I will ask you a question. Do you believe that everyone has a "true" romantic orientation, which is separable from how they do or don't identify? Presumably this is something that AUREA is meant to help with, no? I notice you're using quotation marks here. I'm familiar with the kind of accusations you're describing, but I don't have any links on hand at the moment. Do you have direct experiences with or links to public exchanges where you or others have gotten called those things -- specifically because of an inadequately "simple" definition? To clarify, I don't doubt that it happens -- or, well, I don't doubt that that's something people claim is the reason for slinging mud -- but like I said, I'm not currently convinced that's a completely accurate description of the situation as it usually happens. Or in other words: I suspect that some of the people you're thinking of might be engaging with you (general you) in bad faith -- and trying to get you to blame yourself for it. There are ways to deal with people engaging in bad faith, certainly, but I don't think "taking what they say at face value" is one of them. That's why I keep asking for links. It's hard for me to say for sure what's going on without looking at a specific example. In any case, I'm not sure whittling down a "simple" short definition is a guarantee towards getting taken seriously in the way that you hope for. ....Tangentially related: It occurs to me to ask, do you have any plans to include a section of essays or articles by/about folks on the aromantic spectrum, like an Aro version of the AVEN Asexual Perspectives page? I remember when I first started my questioning phase, I read through all the definitions in glossaries and wikis, but that didn't help much. Simple, raw, short-form definitions left me completely lost. I also made a lot of bad kneejerk assumptions in reaction to the unfamiliarity (up to and including stuff like "some of this just seems like splitting hairs and trying too hard," "probably only the real asexuals are the aromantic asexual nonlibidoists," etc.). Being faced with materials that straight up said "no, those assumptions are wrong" didn't totally convince me. There was something missing, and I was aware that I didn't understand. But you know what did help me come around? The more extended writing. Commentary and personal narratives and critiques of social norms and discussion and... stories. Stories, not definitions. It's how it's worked for me, and it's how I'm sure it's also worked for other people. I still think back sometimes about that ace panel that I once participated in with Sciatrix, and some of the comments she made after the fact. She's had a lot more experience doing ace advocacy panels before -- and her perspective, from what I remember of what she said, is that people respond to those kinds of "informational"/"educational" efforts differently when you're talking about technical definitions vs. about experiences. She also mentioned later how, during the panel, one couple in the room reacted with visible surprise when she mentioned how it's often easier for her to just present herself as a lesbian, rather than to get into the complicated specifics of being a partnered ace. And how, once we got off dry 101 and instead started getting into the things we'd lived through and the things that made or identities salient... it was like there was a whole shift in the energy in the room. Because what we were talking about at that point went from a weird foreign complicated niche technical concept to something that actually, meaningfully affects people's lives. And things like that, that shift toward context and stories, has ever since been cemented in my mind as a necessary part of getting these identities "taken seriously" on a broader scale.

Presumably you'd also consider it nit picking to ask what the heck you have against autistic people. If what you mean is "we have no right to judge them" in the same sense that we'd have no right to judge an abuse victim for not leaving their abuser -- which is to say, that they deserve more sympathy than blame, as people who are being taken advantage of -- then I can see what you're saying there. This sounds like you're splitting aromantics in two, between the sexhavers and the nonsexhavers (who "reconcile" themselves to living without sex -- what does that mean?). While I'm interested in pursuing the more general train of thought, why center sex in this? lol I think Oliver's on the money here. Relatedly, here's some writing on the nuclear family that I'll maybe possibly get around to sifting through at some point. If anybody else feels like exploring that body of work... it points to a good foundation, I think, for some intercommunity/inter-movement alliances, like you, @Scoop, and @aro-fae were talking about.

Sure, you can find some lithromantics around here on Arocalypse here who would say so I think. I don't know of much writing that's been done on lithromanticism by itself, but it's generally been referred to as an aro spectrum identity on places like the Aro Wiki and AUREA.

This is the kind of stuff where there might as well be no "true." hmm. You've mentioned "powerful allies" and "big allies" here a couple of times. It might help here to link me an example of what conversations you're thinking about. I have my suspicions about what's going on there, but I don't want to speculate any further in the abstract when I'm not sure yet what you have in mind. A thing to take into account, regardless, is that whatever you put on your "front page" (so to speak) as "the simple definition" is necessarily going to influence how people understand the borders of the concept and could have unanticipated consequences later down the line. I think an instructive basis of comparison here would be the history of debates and fissures over how best to define "asexuality," precisely because it illustrates how this goes down. When David Jay made the website for AVEN (not the first online asexual community, but relevant because that's what AUREA is meant to become comprable to), he threw up a very simple one-narrative definition, and although that definition has been debated and contested ever since (from the very first year of AVEN's existence in 2001), that line on the front page has never ended up getting changed by the people who run the place. Now, more than a decade since then, you've got people so influenced by and accustomed to that front page definition & the exclusive focus on attraction & parsing aromanticism via direct parallel to asexuality that you get folks like Star Lion here, saying formulaic things like "it’s literally one thing which is a person who doesn’t experience romantic attraction. Nothing else is relevant." So with that in mind: Y'all have mentioned that you aim to create the aromantic parallel to AVEN. So anticipate that your website may be subject to the same things that AVEN has been subject to. Imagine that there will be people who only look at that front page definition on AUREA, take it as gospel, and look no further. How hard or how easy do you want it to be for that front page definition to be used in the same way that AVEN's has been? Just something to keep in mind.

With all due respect, what you're talking about here -- saying there's no choice but to oversimplify things in order to appeal to the sensibilities of more powerful people -- sounds like the ethos of respectability politics. Anyway, I think it's a false dilemma. There's always the option of something as tautological as "People are aromantic if they feel like aromantic experiences [of some kind] describe them somehow," with an addition like "absence of romantic attraction, distaste for romance, or disinterest in romantic relationships are some examples of what can be considered aromantic experiences." If that's "too much diversity" from someone's point of view, then the problem is their attitude, not the string of words. Are you really asking? The only definition I've ever seen of cupioromantic (including here and on AUREA) involves wanting a romantic relationship, not just "not being repulsed." Those two things are hardly interchangeable. What the hell? Who are you to tell people what they "really" are? Aromantics call themselves aromantic for more than just one reason, and greyros don't all call themselves greyro just because of romantic attraction. If you look at threads like Why do you identify as gray-romantic?, you'll find a mix of different responses, and there are also greyros who are uncomfortable with being assumed to experience romantic attraction. Attraction isn't the be all end all of everything. Some people aren't even sure when they are or aren't feeling it. Any discussion of greyness needs to account for that. The whole premise is a social construct anyway -- what do you even mean "isn't practical"?

huh? Do you realize what you're saying? Taking an attitude of "just keep it simple" toward this stuff is the exact same attitude you find among people who think the whole concept of "romantic orientation" is too complicated and we should just stick to the system of gay/straight/bi.

"Split attraction model" as a term is a whole other can of worms, and it originated a decade after (not before) the term aromantic. Anyway. Back to the aromantic vs. aromantic spectrum question, for those interested: Siggy recently wrote a post he titled "Aromantic" should not refer to the spectrum.

Looks pretty sincere to me. If you want, I guess we could ask. hmmm. Do you think the answer would be improved if those things were added onto the list?

Hey Janeisy. I'm not sure what kind of advice you're looking for right now, but you might find some similar experiences among lithromantic narratives -- here are just a few links to get you started: Arocalypse thread - Lonely Lithromantic AVEN thread - Lithromantic Definition About the origins of "lithromantic" As for advice, are you able to identify what feels wrong to you about dating? Is it certain forms of touch? Is it certain expectations or behavior? Is it certain ways of addressing or referring to each other? Or is it the whole relationship type altogether? Either way, there's nothing wrong with setting boundaries or deciding that there are some things you just don't want. You don't owe romance or romantic-coded behavior to anyone.

Then you're greyromantic. Welcome to the gray club.

hmm. I thought about this again recently while looking at the AUREA website -- the very first section of their FAQ page, the "General Information" section, has 2 questions on queerplatonic relationships (out of 9 in that section total, mostly about aromanticism in general). I don't know about y'all, but I feel like this foregrounds queerplatonic as a very central/general aromantic concept, moreso than other kinds of relationship preferences and types.

How do you figure? If anything, I'd say there's an opposite problem. On the contrary: about how many new flag designs have come out of Arocalypse? Sure, but I don't think "the aro community is mostly digital" is why people are feeling alienated over not wanting partnerships or not having sexual orientations, and while expanding in-person could have benefits, that doesn't really address the specific thing I was asking about. Agreed. ...I think you may have this backwards. Certainly Simon's (ridiculously amatonormative) terminology suggestions (that delineate between more distant friendlike qprs and closer romancelike qprs, wtf) relate back to some real emotional experiences that resonate with people -- otherwise there wouldn't be people thanking him and saying things in the notes like " Aaaa I really like this a lot. ... And this. Actually makes me feel a lot better. Because I felt left out of even the aro community bc I don’t rlly want a QPR at all." My question is: why are people feeling left out in the first place? What's creating this impression of QPRs as some Master Narrative of How To Be Aro? Where is that coming from? Out of all the aromantics in this thread, how many of y'all even have a queerplatonic partner?

Platonic is a hot mess of a word. We've talked about this before, but aside from the fact that I'm annoyed at the word etymologically (I hate Plato), it's also tangled up in the fact that a lot of people don't make a distinction between romance & sexuality, so, consequently, you'll have people using it both to mean nonromantic and/or to mean nonsexual and/or both. *shrug* Yet another reason why I just avoid it. I mean I get why people want a word for this stuff that doesn't have the word "non" in it, and people like a more established word over a neologism, but this is a problem with that word that's never going to go away. Yet another reason why I can't rightly answer the poll the way the answers are given. What does? Anyway, if y'all are interested in origins/uses of aplatonic, platonic attraction, and alterous, there's more links on that here.

Okay, something it sounds like is coming up here, then: Does it make sense to use "aromantic"* as an umbrella term that includes people who do not call themselves specifically "aromantic"? *itself, as contrasted with "aromantic spectrum" or "aromantic umbrella" -- or in other words, to treat "aromantic" and "aromantic umbrella" as synonymous

Well, how I... wish to proceed, I guess, would start off by ruling out either of those options. I don't support a definition of aromanticism that tells some aromantics they're not actually aromantic, and I also don't support an overzealously-extensive definition of aromanticism that tells people they're aromantic even if they don't want to be called that. @sennkestra recently made a related blogpost about "positive" identity policing, telling questioning people what they "actually" are in a way that's clearly well-meaning but still prescriptivist -- you can read the post and the comment section below for how people feel about that. The way around that dilemma, from my POV, involves making a generalization that borders on tautology and then listing some examples of the different reasons that people identify with the label, without implying any one-to-one formula. So uh, this would be an example of saying the thing I just said I think it's detrimental when people say. o.O

It's not. which would be more aro-specific, I guess...(although I'm personally not sure about the term 'QPR' - do these imply an aro-ace only dynamic, or can they be sexual? (the 'P' might suggest not)) Not at all. Queerplatonic as a term was originally intended as something open to anyone. To quote the person who first suggested the word, S.E. Smith: "Anyone, sexual or asexual, romantic or aromantic, straight, gay, queer, bi, lesbian, poly, cis, trans, etc etc can be in a queerplatonic relationship."

No, that doesn't bother me. For all I know, there's a lively and close-knit icecreamgender community out there -- I'm only annoyed when it seems like people are churning out words before/without communities instead of letting that be a co-constituative process. I'd rather this thread not turn into taking shots at unfamiliar terms just because they seem odd conceptually.

Please don't do this. No one experience is the determiner of what someone is -- it's one thing to point out options someone might not have been aware of, but it's another thing to tell somebody what they "seem."

I voted "something else" because my answer would have been "I don't use the word 'squish.'" Nothing against other people talking that way, to be clear. Just saying that for myself, it's... not the way I talk. I don't use platonic orientation labels, either, for that matter. I honestly hope that that never becomes an expected/demanded/subculturally compulsory thing the way romantic orientation has become for aces. My relationship to the concept of "platonic orientation" isn't the same as how I feel about "romantic orientation," though -- it's more just... I don't see why I'd describe any of that stuff using the "orientation" framework, personally. Also I hate the word platonic. Doesn't sound any different at all to me. Here's the original thread where it was suggested, for reference (which isn't to say that other people don't or shouldn't use it differently). Speaking just for myself again: I definitely have known people I've wanted to become friends with, and what I call that is "wanting to become friends." What?