El011

I just feel no need to tell most people. Why is it their business if I don't have romantic feelings for someone I'm having sex with? And when does that naturally come up in conversation anyway?

by that logic do gay, lesbian, or straight people even exist? I mean, it's impossible for ANYONE to know that they're not attracted to nonbinary people unless they're just straight up not attracted to anyone because you can't tell someone's gender just by looking, and there are plenty of nonbinary people who lean more toward one side of the binary. Nonbinary people - depending on the individual, of course - can be included in any sexuality, and saying or implying that being attracted to us is inherently a bi thing even for people who aren't attracted to both men and women is super invalidating and transphobic. There are plenty of nonbinary people who are dating gay or straight people. Also, there are nonbinary trans women or transfeminine people, and nonbinary men or transmasculine people. It's incredibly harmful to say that a lesbian or straight man would actually be bi if they were attracted to a nb transfem or a gay man or straight woman would actually be bi if they were attracted to a nb transmasc, because saying that implies that transfems are inherently not women and transmascs are inherently not men. what you're saying is very harmful to nonbinary people and invalidates and judges my identity and my experiences as a nonbinary person who has had both lesbian and straight male partners. Also, are you cis? If so, you shouldn't be speaking over a nonbinary bi person on this at all. And if not, your opinion doesn't cancel out mine.

if you still need help, I'm bisexual and nonbinary, I have a gay great-uncle, lesbian distant cousin, nonbinary distant cousin, and gay first cousin.

how would that work, though? nonbinary means a thousand different things to a thousand different people and we all look and present differently. like three other people might use the same pronouns and dress the same way as me, and one might identify as a gender nonconforming woman, one might identify as a gender nonconforming man, and one might identify as a different kind of nonbinary than I do. also, another nonbinary person might identify exactly like I do, but look completely different, present completely differently, have different goals for their transition, use different pronouns. i feel like saying you're attracted to nonbinary people the same way you're attracted to women or men doesn't really work, partially because it implies we're a single specific gender with shared experiences and ways of signaling our identities, which is untrue and invalidating and partially because anyone who feels attraction can be attracted to nonbinary people. there are nonbinary people dating lesbians or gay men or straight people, or who identify as lesbian or gay or straight themselves.

I feel like this could end up being biphobic and transphobic really quickly and this thread just feels really invalidating and judgmental of other people's experiences. Like, I'm not gay/trans lite or closer to cis/straight because I align partially with my assigned sex and am attracted to people who are the perceived opposite gender of that. I'm all bi and all nonbinary, where I fall on those "scales" is my business unless I want to share with someone. Can we just agree that you can identify as and reclaim queer if you're either non-cis or attracted to your same gender, or obviously both? As aces and aros, we should have a separate term, listen to marginalized people, and acknowledge the prejudice and stigma we face without denying that some of us are still more privileged. I've seen A+ and acomm proposed as community terms for us.

that actually just sounds...like pretty typical sexual attraction? most people aren't going to be seriously interested in someone sexually if their only redeeming trait is that they're hot.

this is late but I think you should break up with her. You're obviously not enjoying this relationship and you should find someone who can feel the same way about you as you do about her.

non-aros: what does kissing feel like when you have romantic feelings for the other person?

straight people in general have absolutely no idea wtf they're doing, so that could be why you're especially annoyed by het stories, and for that reason i prefer gay love stories and find them cute but i very rarely get those kinds of feelings for myself

companionate is a good term for this! Companionate love, what we would call quasiplatonic love, is basically liking someone a lot as a person and wanting a close bond with them, but not without the limerence and infatuation of romance. romantic love on the other hand is infatuation/limerence plus liking someone a lot.

Ophelia from Sweet/Vicious is aromantic or gray-romantic bisexual. She prefers hookups and hanging out with friends over committed relationships, there's a comment in the first episode about her being attracted to all genders, and she just really never shows romantic feelings toward anyone. I do absolutely love Juphelia but that's also not canon and I feel like it kind of says something if Ophelia has only just started to fall in love once in 21 years after knowing Jules for several months, and seems to have a lot of trouble figuring that out despite already knowing she's bi. Lauren from Faking it is a straight aro and so is Liam. They're fwb. Lauren had been dealing with a lot of insecurities from her ex finding out she was intersex and then she met a hot guy who was really into her and she just ran with it. With Liam, he's always shown more interest in his friendship with Shane and with having sex with girls but has never wanted commitment or felt romance no matter how much he tries. And Karma is gray-romantic/quoiromantic bi. She was so confused over her feelings for both Amy and LIam, and then with that one guy Wade she mostly wanted him for sex. I think it fits really well for her to not really understand what romance is or whether she's feeling it. Also I change my mind about Warrior Nun. Camilla and Lilith are both aro and Mary, Ava, and most of the nuns are bi. Beatrice is canonically a lesbian. Lilith is also asexual. I think a lot of these women just didn't see any way out of marrying and dating men and also felt that they had been called to fight demons because of their lack of interest in dating and marriage. Lilith especially, and I think part of the reason she felt so strongly that she was supposed to be the next in line for the Halo was that she'd never been attracted to anyone and had assumed that meant God was calling her to be the next Warrior Nun because of her supposed "purity"...until she found out asexuality was a thing. Emma and Hook from Once Upon a Time are both arospec bi. Zelena is a straight aro and so is Cora. Hook and Emma had never really wanted commitment or met anyone who understood them and their limits, until each other. Zelena and Cora just always seem to prioritiize other things over romance and seem largely indifferent to it. Jason from The Good Place is a straight aro. He loves Janet and Tahani as friends and sexual partners but has never felt romantic attraction. Tiff from Bonding is a bi aro. Pete just seems like a QPP to me, and she never shows romantic attraction in the show as far as I remember. All the circus characters from The Greatest Showman except for Anne, Barnum, and Carlyle are aromantic and bisexual (Anne, Barnum, and Carlyle are also bi, but not aro). Also, Charity is bi and Barnum is nonbinary. None of the characters are ever attracted to anyone and just want to commit to each other. Also, I love shows and movies that prioritize a close relationship between friends who want to devote their lives to each other. Henry and October from The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod are both aromantic bisexuals. Snow is also bisexual and so is Vlad. Joss is gay. The way Henry has always made it clear to girls that he's not going to do anything romantic with them and is just interested in sex reminds me a lot of aromanticism, and he just seemed really bothered by Melissa's efforts to be romantic and insist on him also being romantic, and it made him act unlike himself and stressed him out and he just didn't really seem to have mental energy for anything else. He seemed happier after he and Melissa broke up, and then I think when he met October he mostly saw her as a friend who he was sexually attracted to and was glad to meet a like-minded person who understood his limits and capabilities and felt the same way, and she felt the same way toward him. Snow and October definitely used to date, and October isn't romance-repulsed but her inability to feel romantic bothered Snow so they broke up. Also, Vlad has absolutely had a crush on Henry at some point but he eventually got over it. As for Joss, he definitely seems to have a crush on Vlad that he won't admit to himself and only thought he was interested in Meredith because he was jealous of her and because she was pretty and popular and she seemed like the kind of girl he should have a crush on.

not invalidating you or anything but i just thought you should know, there are nonbinary trans women who would certainly disagree with that and who would relate more to your experiences than mine even though they're nonbinary and you're not. nonbinary is so varied that i don't think we can really be described as having a single experience of gender.

i mean aro aces aren't really going to date or anything whereas a lot of aros who aren't ace go on dating apps for hookups and have fwb relationships. this is of course assuming that all the aros involved are full aro and not gray but tbh going into the many ways to be gray-aro would just be a headache that I don't feel like dealing with right now. besides, speaking as a gray-aro, it's totally reasonable for someone to experience attraction exactly like I do and not identify as aro. I just do it because I find the identity personally useful when it comes to communicating my needs to a sexual partner and making sure they understand and don't take it personally if I'm not romantic or view them as a friend. As for how it interacts with my bisexuality specifically, I definitely feel less kinship with the rest of the aro community than I would have otherwise because of the homophobia I've experienced within it and because I also just share more common experiences with a bi person who isn't aro than an aro who is straight/het or ace.

what social and legal oppression do we face that is based on being aro and only on being aro, that doesn't also widely affect non aros? and, again, I specifically said multiple times that I was mostly talking about cis people. would you read the post at least before throwing a tantrum? also, you said that sexual orientation is something that doesn't help you understand yourself but also said my experiences with sexuality don't apply to anyone else. why do your experiences apply to other people and mine don't? why do you only use that argument when it suits you? do you actually think that there aren't a shitton of other aro bisexuals who feel more common ground with non-aro bis than with aros who aren't into their same gender? I've literally had multiple aro gay and bi people approach me quietly to thank me for calling out the homophobia from the aro community that we are so frequently screamed at for even daring to acknowledge without a million disclaimers validating people who don't experience the same level of discrimination as we do, and tell me that because the aro community is so homophobic and treats them like deviants and outcasts and they no longer feel safe participating in it. and yet I'm the one hurting our community? why is it that I, a bi trans aro, am expected to "reflect on the hurt" that I'm supposedly dealing to people who are cis and don't experience homophobia, but if anyone ever fucking dares to acknowledge that the aro community is anything less than perfect, they're an arophobic monster? why are gay and bi aros treated like shit so constantly for simply addressing homophobia in a community where we deserve to feel safe? how does ignoring our needs make YOU and everyone else in this thread not an arophobe? If any of the most marginalized aros among us feel unsafe, we're no kind of community, just another tool of oppression, until we fix the issue.

you're talking about aros as if I'm not one. this is what I mean when I say aros who are gay or bisexual are treated as deviants in their own community, while aros who aren't are treated as the default. it's our community too and we're treated like outcasts. and what you're not taking into consideration is that aros who are into our same gender don't generally have the luxury of treating our sexual attraction as irrelevant to our experiences.

or maybe because it doesn't happen? also what oppression are you talking about? is there a widespread social problem of cis aroaces getting fired, kicked out, and forced into conversion therapy for being aroace? are cis hetero aro men being kidnapped and tortured in Chechnya and Saudi Arabia? was there ever a widespread public health crisis disproportionately affecting cis hetero aces while the government laughed because all the people were dying were people they never wanted to survive? also, I know what cis is. i'm nonbinary lmfao. I'm using both here because trans and nonbinary aces and aros are obviously not going to experience the same privilege as our cis counterparts, regardless of who we're attracted to. like, we're still going to be affected by policies that make it illegal to be lgbt. we're still going to experience violence at the same rates as other trans people. and cis aros who are gay or bi are still going to experience homophobia at the same rates as cis gay or bi people who aren't aro. but like, if you're a cis aroace in bumfuck alabama and you tell your homophobic boss that you've never been attracted to anyone of any gender and don't really consider dating a priority, they probably won't care too much in comparison to if you said you were gay. i have literally seen fundamentalist christians be completely chill about cis aro aces when they thought gay, bi, and trans people were sexual predators who deserved to be tortured and were possessed by demons. when i said my experiences as an aro have paled in comparison to my experiences as a bisexual, that wasn't just for funsies.

why is it more their community than mine? what about the homophobia and transphobia I've experienced when they shat on ME? and how am I gatekeeping?

Straight should still work provided it doesn't make you dysphoric. A trans woman who is exclusively attracted to men is still straight even though her experiences are different than a cis woman's after all.

your literal only purpose in this thread seems to be antagonizing me, validating the privileged, and now ignoring that I actually know what I'm talking about. why are you even here? literally why? you're acting like an ignorant child and I would hope someone who claims to be a community activist is better than that.

not a very good one, apparently. As long as we're on the subject, I'm also a community activist - and a member of the national social work honor society, with extensive experience studying psychology and sociology from actual accredited researchers, experts in social science, that mysteriously never talked about the alleged widespread violent oppression against cis aro aces. Wonder why.

Do you have literally any experience with social science besides seeing tumblr blogs that insist you're a mean bully uwu if you don't constantly validate privileged people? because you clearly don't respect yourself enough to not do that. That said, I don't need you to explain """"""queerphobia""" to me because unlike cis people who aren't into their same gender, I actually experience it and it doesn't just end at people being kind of rude on the internet. Go "waste your time and energy" on them.

so you have no actual response. got it.

ok but most bis aren't going to exclusively talk about wanting to be in m/w relationships. because they don't exclusively want m/w relationships. and this affects my community so it is my business. do i get to just say i'm irish and not white, even though I'm literally never going to experience the same oppression as an irish poc and our lived realities are totally different? No. should poc assume i just identify as irish and refrain from pointing out that I'm white and need to take a back seat in discussions of racism, and ignore that my whiteness is already perceived as the default both in and out of the irish diaspora and by not acknowledging my whiteness I'm just perpetuating that and centering my feelings over oppressed people's needs? Again, no. why is aromanticism one of the only identities where you can just decide you're not privileged and it's totally socially acceptable and encouraged even by progressives? why is the aro community one of the only ones where the most privileged members are prioritized by everyone involved, including those who claim to center marginalized people?

I don't assume that. But if they say, for example, they're not attracted to anyone or they talk about dating/having sex as an ace or aro but only in reference to m/w relationships, literally what am I supposed to think? Especially since most bi aros just...say that they're bi aro because they know otherwise they'll be assumed to be straight? It's not even an assumption, it's just a reasonable deduction based on what an individual has said about their life. Also the cop thing is just really not fair or appropriate considering I'm not exactly shooting unarmed aroaces and getting paid leave for it.