techno

i'm nearing the end of my college career now, and as i'm trying to figure out what comes next, this is the problem i am facing. i have great friends here, but because we'll likely go our separate ways some day, i can't help but dwell on the fact that every phase of life is fleeting.

the first step is deciding what you want from the rest of your life. the second step is figuring out how to achieve it. i don't even have the first one figured out yet.

@Coyote I'd never heard of that concept before, but from a cursory glance, it would seem so!

2 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

+1 but also: can you elaborate?

Yeah sure! It's about separating love from humanity, or love from goodness or kindness. We're all likely familiar with the prevalent idea that love is what makes us human, but what I see talked about less is the idea that being capable of love is the same as being a good person. You can love someone and still hurt them; you can treat someone with kindness even if you don't like them at all. We can't choose whether we feel love or not, no matter whether that love is romantic or platonic or something else or what-have-you. But we can choose to be kind and to do what's right. Moses Sumney talks about this as well.

The kinds of love you feel or do not feel and in what quantities don't determine your value as a human being. Love, to me, is an arbitrary concept. And we don't solve amatonormativity by shifting the focus merely onto a different type of love; we don't do right by each other by simply repackaging the same rhetoric used to alienate us ("Love is what makes us human!") in a different wrapping. A narrative in which any form of love is pure or universal or a sign of being a good person will always be one in which one of us is left behind.

Returning to the initial question of what we can do besides wordsmith, I think the push to constantly create new terminology is both a result of a rapidly expanding community and a desire to somehow wordsmith our way through intracommunity differences. I guess you could call it growing pains? What happens, at least in community spaces that I've been involved in, seems to be that people begin to take notice of some sort of difference or disparity in aro experiences and narratives, and try to create the language to concisely name and talk about that disparity (for example, as others have mentioned in this thread, aromantics who don't want a qpr or similar relationship feeling alienated by those who do). I don't see the problem with this, on a surface level; if people want specific terminology to talk about their experiences, then more power to them. I personally do consider myself nonamorous, in the "not wanting a qpr or similar relationship" sense. The issue comes when we try to make the terminology we have exhaustive, intensely specific, applicable to all and not up for interpretation. And that's never going to be possible.

For me, the seemingly never-ending onslaught of new terminology, while it can often be used to point out the diversity of aro experiences or to shed light on unequal representation within the community, does very little to actually solve whatever problem it's meant to address. People can use whatever labels for themselves that they feel comfortable with, and I'm never going to take that away from them; however, we need to address the root causes of problems rather than simply create terminology to attempt to patch them up. The focus should be on creating spaces where all arospecs feel welcome to talk about our experiences without having to box ourselves into a corner--that's what we can do besides wordsmith.

As for how we do that? I don't know, and I don't think anyone does, or else we would have done it already. But for starters, casting all other terminology aside, what are the main goals of aro activism? When you strip back all of the word salad, what's left? Heteronormative/amatonormative society largely doesn't understand or accept us, regardless of any distinctions we choose to make between one another. In my opinion, a core tenet of aro activism should be dismantling the idea that love, in any form, is normative or necessary in order to be a valid human being capable of good and worthy of respect.

Apologies for the yelling towards the beginning and stuff, there's only live recordings of this right now, but I love this song with all my heart.

@mythlady Ah, I know what it is! I was answering someone else who asked if there was a word for the opposite of shipping, but I guess I didn't tag them! My bad, thanks for the explanation anyway!

For me it's kind of hard to explain. I've thought about my gender a lot from time to time, especially in connection with my orientation. I see myself as a girl, other people see me as a girl, and while I'm cool with whatever pronouns, she/her is what I'm used to and what I prefer. But while I suppose I identify as female, and I do feel connected to womanhood and femaleness in many aspects, in other ways I don't identify that strongly with womanhood. Part of that comes from my orientation and not feeling as connected to my gender, I guess, because of it.

As for physical presentation, I mostly present myself anywhere from androgynous to the androgynous side of feminine, if that makes sense, but if I had my way I'd present a bit more androgynous all the time. Most of that is personal comfort/style preference/just the way I like to look and what I think flatters my body type (hyper-feminine clothing typically doesn't). As for other forms of expression, it gets a little complicated and a lot more subconscious and I've been thinking through it a lot. I don't associate the way I think, feel, or behave with my gender, and it bothers me when people tie my personality or mannerisms to my femaleness (especially because that's usually sexist). But I often catch myself behaving slightly differently around people depending on their gender and the way I want them to think of me. I especially notice this when I'm hanging around guys. I think this comes from my orientation rather than my gender, because guys are much more likely to perceive me as a potential romantic interest or a threat to their existing relationships, and I want to avoid that, even if that means playing into the idea of being "not like other girls," as problematic as that line of thinking can be.

Mostly, my identity and expression of gender are tied to my orientation and the way I want others to perceive me in all aspects, not just in my gender. I want people to see me as a girl, but I want that to not matter. I am a girl, but I don't want me being a girl to come with additional baggage that I have to keep working to cast overboard the more I get to know someone.

I suddenly got a bunch of really kind messages sent to my aro blog one after the other! Made my day. 

...I've made a mistake and forgotten two very obvious and crucial examples of aro songs.

this song

and Moses Sumney's album CALLED AROMANTICISM

idk how i forgot either of those. shame on me really

NoTP?

As a bitter aro and a complete music nerd, I have a running list...

• "Love Love Love" by Of Monsters and Men (the title would lead you to believe this is not an aro jam but if you look at the lyrics, you'll think otherwise)
• "Alone and Sublime" by Mother Mother (mainly about wondering whether it's somehow wrong to be alone)
• "No One to Nothing" by Mother Mother (idk this one just gives me an aro vibe)
• "Heart Heavy" by Mother Mother (i think it's safe to say Mother Mother has a decent amount of aro songs)
• "Another Night on Mars" by The Maine (a song about friends, really)
• "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem (another song about friends. also an existential crisis jam, tbh)
• "Something In Me Was Dying" by Keane (about meeting someone who sticks with you. i always thought of it as a song about friendship although it was probably meant to be romantic)
• "Are You Satisfied?" by Marina and the Diamonds (about making your life what you want it to be even if other people say it's wrong, at least how i interpret it)
• "I Am Not a Robot" by Marina and the Diamonds (a classic aro anthem)
• "Oh No!" by Marina and the Diamonds (another aro anthem tbh. also how i react when someone flirts with me)
• "You're My Best Friend" by Queen (an obvious choice)

I'm sure there's more I'm not thinking of, but here's a bunch I dug through my archives to find  took me a surprisingly long time.

7 hours ago, ApeironStella said:

HOW COULD I FORGET HARUHI. She is so aroace, yes! She was only shoujo reverse harem protag I could relate to. Ouran is like... one of the really few somewhat romance-focused shoujo series I could bear to watch and it was all due to her aroness and being the Sane One to Host Club Hijinks. Kyoya is really likely too, I have a fondness for him but not to "I feel you" level it is with Haruhi.

Same! Haruhi has been one of the very few characters in any media that I have related to so strongly, up until the point where they threw all that potential away. Maybe that's why I always kinda felt empty at the end of the show?

Reading people's annotations of Sumney's lyrics on Genius is so frustrating... So many allos missing the point. 

Oh well, at least we'll always know the truth.

On 12/3/2017 at 4:32 AM, ladyasym said:

Haruhi Fujioka (though apparently in the manga she eventually ends up with one of the main characters but I like to think that it's a QPP based primarily on friendship), because she is just genuinely not romantic, and really into the friendships she has with the other characters. Maybe she's even Aro-ace? 

Kyoya Otori - extremely practical, calculating, not romantic (or even romantically inclined, outside of a very technical way), and very possibly Aro-ace. Devoted to friends yet very self-serving, idk - I think he's the coolest, lol. 

YES. Everything about this. Haruhi could have been such good aro or aro-ace rep if they'd just ran with that instead of screwing it up at the end! Ugh!

I'd never thought about Kyoya before though!

On 12/3/2017 at 4:32 AM, ladyasym said:

Jughead Jones - from the original comics (don't even get me started on how they desecrated his character on Riverdale...) Aro-ace for sure. 

Oh boy... Don't even get me started on the disgrace that is Shitterdale. Anyone who's been around in the Discord chat for a while can probably tell you I have a lot of opinions about what the CW has done to aro-ace rep...

@Apathetic Echidna I LOVED Erased! It had its flaws for sure, but something about the aesthetic of it and just the concept was really engaging to me.

I just finished Wandering Son, which is basically about trans kids dealing with middle school and puberty and it is so good and wholesome. I highly recommend it.

On 7/20/2017 at 8:07 AM, Momo said:

YES! I was so upset at Haruhi at the end of this show.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

I wanted her to stay single forever. I actually stopped watching when my room mate spoiled this plot point and when I could see things starting to head that direction.

 

Oh my gosh, same! I first watched the show maybe a year before realizing I was aroace and I just remember being really... disappointed? Like the ending bothered me and I couldn't put a finger on why for the longest time but my friends who watched it with me could not understand why I wasn't thrilled by the ending. It just felt like it came out of nowhere. I related to Haruhi so much and that was one of the reasons I loved the show, and suddenly I couldn't relate to her anymore.

On 6/27/2017 at 5:46 PM, Kickaxe said:

Digging this one up again because I just rewatched Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood. Talk about a show that knows how to do friendship. Ed and Winry end up together but that's expected from the start. But at the end, when Roy and Riza DIDN'T end up in a romantic relationship? I was just so damn surprised and excited. It's not often my favorite friendships get to STAY my favorite friendships.

That show is a BLESSING. I agree with you 100%.

Every time I see one of those "letter to my younger self" things it's always the same cliche "don't worry about that relationship, you'll find the one some day, you have time, you can get over having your heart broken, blah blah blah." Insert allo nonsense here.

So now I'm wondering: what would you say to your younger self?

16 hours ago, Lie-RennyValkyrie_ said:

I'm 14 but my parents seem convinced that it's normal for people to not have crushes until around this age or older. I know some alloromntic people that haven't had real crushes but they have at least had crushes on fiction characters or celebs. I haven't even had that.

I was 14/15 when I realized I was aroace, but looking back the signs were there before then. It's been a few years and nothing has changed. I would say if you feel like you're aro, then you are. It's kind of like a hunch. There's a good chance it won't change, and if it does, then so what? If you feel the label aro fits you now, then you're aro. If you're old enough to recognize that you might be aro, you're old enough to be aro.

18 hours ago, DannyFenton123 said:

Gremlins. Those things still creep me out today.

As soon as I saw this topic thread, I IMMEDIATELY thought of Gremlins. I cried the first time my parents had me watch it!

Jonah (youngblossom) is aromantic and asexual.

@Isaac Thank you for the correction!

I mentioned that I never planned on getting married and my dad responded with disbelief, implying that I was being ridiculous.

So yeah, no, I'm never telling my family.

"You should try liking someone. Maybe that'd make you happy."