El011

there is no "norm" by which every single person or even most people experience romantic attraction.

The first time I had a crush, I had no idea wtf was going on and it took me about a year to recognize it.

imo it's not good to shut down literally any questioning of anything someone aro or ace does or says as "aphobic" or "exclusionist." People pointing out that we're not perfect and infallible are not oppressive to us, and if we act like they are we just come across as kinda cultlike tbh. shutting out outsiders and painting them as hostile, yk? now, as a questioning arospec who does feel romantic attraction, i think whoever said this definitely has a point. there's no solid boundary for who is or is not arospec, and therefore someone could feel romantic attraction exactly like i do but choose not to identify as aro. and if we say otherwise, we're invalidating them, which is against the rules of this site.

The split attraction model is a very new concept and before it existed bisexuality meant attraction to all genders. It doesn't have to be sexual, you can be a bi (romantic) ace and still identify as bisexual. You can also be gray-ace and bisexual. In the terms I've seen most commonly on this site, I'm gray-biromantic bisexual but I'm also not the biggest fan of the split attraction model so I don't use that label. So even if I were 100% asexual and sex repulsed, I would still be bisexual because I could be romantically attracted to any gender on the rare occasions when I do feel romantic attraction. But if I were fully aromantic on top of that, I wouldn't be bi.

I've heard that if a male octopus tries to mate with a hungry female octopus when she's not in the mood, she'll strangle him, take his corpse to her den, and eat it, and that's the level of bad bitch I aspire to. Plus I think people assume sea animals are unintelligent or unevolved, just like they assume about "promiscuous" women, but cephalopods are actually really smart. So I vote the octopus or maybe cephalopods in general as a mascot for woman aligned aros and maybe also woman aligned aces.

Yeah...I'm just not going to deal with that mess of an essay above me but if anyone else wants to take a stab at it that's cool.

Not a movie but I just remembered this Christian romance novel that everyone here would absolutely hate. It's called Kiss An Angel or something and it's just full of offensive stereotypes about how it's a woman's job to be a free therapist for toxic men, how romance will cure any kind of trauma even if you've literally never had any proper treatment, and how you need to be fixed if you don't like romance because that only ever means you're broken somehow. As a greyro, an abuse survivor, a social worker, and a feminist, this book makes me want to go find the author and yell at her Gordon Ramsey style until she realizes how fucked up and terrible her writing is. The main characters are named Daisy and Alex and they've been pushed into a marriage arranged by Daisy's dad Max. Daisy agreed to it because Max promised to pay off her debts, and Alex agreed because he feels like he owes Max a favor. Daisy is very sweet and intelligent and seems like a generally nice enough person. She's very tenderhearted and flighty and apparently made some incredibly bad decisions like becoming a shopaholic as a coping mechanism after her mom died and racked up enough debt that she's at risk of going to prison, so now she has to marry Alex and live with him at the traveling circus where he works. Now Alex is never actually called aro but he is basically every stereotype of an aro cishet man. Promiscuous, callous, coldhearted, cynical, uncaring, terrible communication skills. He was abused as a kid and is convinced he can never feel love for anything or anyone because of that, but he begins to love and respect Daisy as a friend and improve as a person, plus the two of them have some fantastic sex which is fun to read. Then they find out she's pregnant because Daisy's stepmother sabotaged her birth control and it turns out that both of them are descended from prominent families with ties to the Russian monarchy. Max tells Alex and Daisy he arranged the marriage because he's an emotionally abusive misogynist obsessed with Russian history and expects his daughter to be an incubator just so he can have a kid descended from both bloodlines. Because of Alex's past he's convinced he's going to be a terrible dad and tells Daisy to get an abortion, which is totally an asshole move (she's pro-life, which would be fine because it's her body her choice, but the whole abortion dilemma is framed like abortion is the worst thing anyone could ever possibly do and is obviously meant to guilt trip the reader into also being pro-life) and she runs away in response. Then he has a huge guilt trip and realizes that Daisy totally cured him with her magical Christian vagina and now he's in love with her, so he goes off to find her and bring her home and they all live happily and romantically ever after.

It would also be denying the person's alignment with womanhood to call yourself bi just based on that, esp if the nb person is transfeminine. It's not inherently invalidating a person's nonbinary gender to be gay or straight while still being attracted to them.

It depends on what it is I'm doing that is abnormal and whether it's objectively inappropriate for the current environment I'm in.

If you're not full aromantic asexual, what's your usual preference when it comes to people you think are sexually or romantically (for greyros or non-aro allies) attractive? I haven't been romantically attracted to enough people to form a consistent pattern of what i think is romantically attractive yet but commonalities among past romantic crushes are: good sense of humor kind, patient, and compassionate book smart compatible values and morals to mine good with kids and animals (i don't actually want kids, i just think it's sweet when other people are good with them) My type sexually is: men with buff (not like, hulked out but def with muscle definition), tattooed arms and long hair. bonus points if they're wearing long sleeved button down shirts with the sleeves rolled up. petite, curvy women with thick, curly or wavy brown hair androgynous and gender nonconforming people esp long haired, buff, masculine women I'm also generally turned off by people who have a lot of facial hair, a little bit like maybe stubble is fine but if there's a lot of facial hair esp if it's not EXTREMELY well groomed, it's just a complete turn off. So what about everyone else? What kind of people are you normally attracted to?

It depends. I don't think it's constructive to be like "what the fuck is wrong with you, you knew i was aro" when someone starts to feel romantically for you and expresses that, like i've been on the other end of that as a greyro and i know how much it hurts to have unreciprocated romantic feelings for someone. and like, you're not responsible for their feelings but as a fellow human being you do have a duty to be kind. you don't have to roll over and be their lapdog when they disrespect your boundaries e.g. trying to kiss you when they know you're not interested, but instead just gently be like "hey, i know it must hurt to have these feelings growing for someone who can't really return them and i'll try to be there for you as a friend if you need that or give you space if you need that, but nothing romantic is going to happen between us." kind, but firm. however, if someone does know i'm arospec and respects that i'm probably not going to be interested, then i'm okay cuddling and hugging when they're romantically interested in me as long as they don't try to push it.

I don't think romance is more or less true than nonromantic love but the feeling of social isolation as an aro is such a mood.

being attracted to feminine aligned nonbinary people - and feminine aligned isn't a great term btw, it's used to erase and invalidate nonbinary woman aligned people who are masc and nonbinary man aligned people who are fem - when you're a woman is still similar gender attraction because they're the same binary alignment as you. Even though it's similar and not same, for the purposes of defining bisexuality and talking about privilege i and many other nonbinary people would put that into the same category as same gender attraction, as long as you're not doing anything creepy and objectifying like only being attracted to amab transfem people because they remind you of men. Being nonbinary doesn't erase the womanhood a woman-aligned nonbinary person still experiences and implying it does, which you very much are, is used to bar woman aligned and dual aligned nonbinary people from women's spaces that we literally depend on. also, how would you even know that someone you're sexually attracted to is woman aligned nonbinary unless they told you? There are women aligned nonbinary people who look like anything, use any pronouns, have any kind of name or transition goals or body or gender expression. given that you apparently don't id as ace, how do you know that someone you happen to be attracted to that you just pass on the street or whatever is woman aligned nonbinary and not a binary woman? like what would you do if, hypothetically, you were attracted to someone that you had wrongly assumed was nonbinary because they, idk, used both he/him and she/her pronouns, had gotten a double mastectomy, and dressed androgynously but then you found out that this person actually identified as a binary woman, or maybe they just don't feel comfortable with gender labels? Would your attraction to this person just shrivel up and die? It's not like anything's changed about him, and she was still woman aligned in your mind before, right? so what is it about nonbinary people that is so appealing and attractive that you can literally only find in us? if it's literally only nonbinary identity, isn't that fetishization? being attracted to a trans person just because they're trans is being a chaser, which is fetishization. or what if you met someone who used she/her pronouns exclusively and dressed feminine? would you assume this person is a binary woman? what if you found out this person is woman aligned neutrois? even though nothing's changed about her would just being nonbinary by itself make her a viable partner to you? Nonbinary isn't a coherent category of people with shared experiences like man or woman, it's a broad, diverse category with thousands of genders and gender expressions and you can't tell anything just by looking at someone - and having had certain sexual or romantic experiences with individual nonbinary people in the past doesn't indicate anything about who you might meet in the future who could express their gender completely differently than the ones you dated. That's why so many nonbinary people take issue with cis people saying they're "bi because I'm attracted to nonbinary people and men/nonbinary people and women." That's why so many of us are wary of cis people who say that and why so many of us feel they're fetishistic. and before you accuse me of "invalidating" you or your partners/exes, i'm asking this as a dual-aligned nonbinary person who leans toward female and is read as a woman. There are plenty of people who present and live exactly like me but don't id as nonbinary. this is an issue that affects me far more than you.

Oh, I have a long list. Off the top of my head, Twilight and Call Me By Your Name for glorifying pedophilia, though.

Stress can impact romantic attraction and, well, this year has been stressful for everyone. So between that and the physical isolation, I honestly think your romantic attraction just vanished because you feel stressed and isolated. Maybe wait awhile until after you're out of this situation.

I know gray-a is mostly used for gray-aces, but what about gray-aros who aren't gray-ace (ie who are fully asexual or who are non-ace)? Do you use the term for yourself, if you're a gray-aro who isn't gray-ace? Why or why not? Edit: I'm using gray-aro and gray-ace to mean any arospec or acespec identity that isn't full aromantic or full asexual. So, demisexual or quoiromantic for example.

I feel like if I were best friends with someone who was romantically attracted to me and knew I was aro and was genuinely okay with that, and we were sexually attracted to each other, I would date them if I'd known them for about three months at least. I also have been looking on Tinder and OKCupid for sexual partners that I can be friends with and who are going to be okay with me being aro. I don't think it's the idea of a relationship I'm repulsed by, it's the expectation to be romantic and expend significant energy on romantic stuff while in one. I've also had crushes before, being grayro, and would have dated either of them.

I like weddings and I'm not cynical about romance at all, but for myself I would mostly just want it to be a commitment ceremony with a big party and lots of food and dancing and nice clothes. I don't care if it's romantic. And I wouldn't spend more than $6000. Why spend like $50,000 on one day when I could save about $15k and have a fun, but not overly complex, formal party with our favorite people and go on a two-week luxury vacation at a fancy hotel in a foreign country with my best friend?