Neon

I bought one at pride, but can't display it.

Exactly. I phrased it poorly, but this is what I meant. I, for example, am not grayromantic. I'm not represented by that section. But I'm not about to lop off the gray stripe, just because I personally don't identify with it.

Just as there are aro people to whom sexuality is completely different than romantic orientation, there are those of us for whom it's entangled. My asexuality has a lot to do with my aromanticism. The stripe being there to represent some aros doesn't mean it's there to represent every aro. By including it, the flag represents the experiences of every aro, both those who feel their sexuality is related and those who do not.

I'm not going to "give" you a label. That's a personal journey. However, I'd recommend skimming this: https://www.aromanticism.org/en/identity-terms I wouldn't obsess to much over the perfect label. I tried to do that and ended up confusing myself and getting really frustrated. So I "gave up" and just called myself arospec. When I finally started calling myself aromantic (with the meaning of no romantic attraction rather than the spectrum meaning btw), it came about naturally, and I didn't realized I had started doing that until a bit after. I'd recommend that instead of agonizing over finding the exact right label(s) for however long.

In my opinion, it's better to stay in the closet. Coming out in your situation doesn't seem safe to me. Even if your parents would never hurt you, the invalidation combined with whatever else on a potential daily basis would likely do extreme harm to your mental health.

Around 3rd grade. But I don't think any were serious until 7th.

At night, I do my best to come off more as a guy for safety reasons. But other than that, I don’t think so.

Depends on the day (ie did I see more people talk about sex or romance, and thus how did I feel more alienated?). But normally romantic.

In real life I've only seen the scale used three ways: misogynistically (gross), jokingly (still weird), or to body shame someone (also gross). As far as I know it originated as being misogynistic.

I've seen it time and again how when discussing asexuality in a vacuum, alloromantic asexual people feel the constant need to clarify that they are not aromantic and still feel romantic love. And while I don't think that's inherently bad, it often comes across more as separating aroaces than it does ensuring that asexuality and aromanticism aren't conflated. I've felt at times that the alloace community doesn't really regard aroaces as a part of it. The phrase "ace people still feel (romantic) love" and variations of it is treated by the alloace community as the most important thing to know about asexuality, and a given for all ace people. Which implies that aroaces aren't really a part of ace spaces. That we are less important, or even a threat to the "real" aces. And while the aroallo community also emphasizes that they are not asexual, the rhetoric is totally different. It focuses more on how aroallo people aren't talked about enough, and how not all aros are ace. Aroace's existence isn't treated as inconvenient or ignored like we often are in ace spaces. And I also want to recognize this isn't just an aroace thing. Aroallos and non-sam aros are also harmed by a lot of those implications. At this point though, I have to wonder if it's just me reading into things that aren't there. I've never really put words to these ideas before, and I haven't seen others do so either. So I'd really, really appreciate other people's thoughts on this.

I think you are more thinking of amatonormativity. Alloromanticism is just being alloro, whereas amatonormantivity is the assumption that everyone wants and is looking for a relationship, and the subsequent societal effects. Some resulting issues from that I can think of are: Pressure to be in a relationship causing people to not leave toxic situations. People being seen/seeing themselves as less than for not wanting a relationship. Exploiting the idea of love to gaslight and manipulate people. Exclusion, bigotry, etc. towards arospec people. Attempts to deem who is “worthy” of love (and then all kinds of bigotry from that). The list goes on, as you said. As for specific statistics and facts, I would look into why people stay in unhealthy relationships and scholarly writings on amatonormativity. Final advice, don’t sugarcoat anything. Allos can get very defensive when their mindsets about love are challenged, so it’s best to be blunt from the get-go.

My friend refused to leave a toxic relationship because then she wouldn't be dating anyone, and she thought that was worse. (They did break up eventually)

I'm back with a shorter name. Hi, I'm Neon. I was here quite a few months ago as Neon Green Packing Peanut, I stopped being super active around the time I decided to just not bother with AVEN anymore (I found it rather toxic to arospec people outside of aro-specific threads. Also all the big accounts were alloallo people talking about being late bloomers). I didn't mean to stop checking here, it just kind of happened. But yeah, I'm back, with a better feel for aromanticism, and my own identity. I realized that being aro and being ace are tied together for me, but are also separate experiences. A bit paradoxical, but that's just how it goes. I also found I feel a lot more connected to being aro than ace, because it affects my life more. I decided to not label platonic, aesthetic, or similar attraction, because it just wasn't working for me. I've recently gotten really into Steven Universe and Our Flag Means Death. I don't really know what else to put here, but I'm open to questions, comments, etc.. Hi again I guess.

I've found that some people just don't think two headcanons can coexist. They take every dissenting opinion as an attack on their own, rather than individuals each having different interpretations. I think it generally happens more with aspec and trans headcanons (and canon characters), simply because we are an easier target at the moment than other parts of the LGBTQ+ community. And then there's the one's who will say anything to justify a character not being aspec. The most common one I see is that being aspec inherently infantilizes characters. And just.....no. If you think that, you're infantilizing aspec people.

I know that it's just a bunch of grown adults trolling, and that makes me angrier. They are hurting us and people in the acespec community because they just can't help themselves from being bigots.

True (its fun) TPBM has a cat

I'm only out to specific people (some friends and my sibling). I plan on coming out to a few more people, but not anyone else for the time being.

At this point, I'm just kind of iffy on my thoughts. As well-intentioned as it was, the video still had some aphobic and ableist statements. And while that's not inherently her fault, part of me feels like she easily could have used a pseudonym and just asked people in the community if she was overlooking important things. Besides, even if it was a genuine mistake and there was no way around it, that statement was still harmful. The fact that it was a mistake wouldn't minimize the harm done. In my mind, it's a bit of a double-edged sword: we have more visibility, but there's also a massive amount of people who will come out of that video with harmful views. I hope she is able to have a conversation with people that she hurt and grow from it.

You can't choose which plant I can travel in and out of books

Add folders to your bookmarks bar, so when you bookmark something, it is easy to find again. That way you can close tabs without losing them as well. If you’re like me, and incapable of keeping things neat around you for more than a few days, have a time every few weeks where you organize it. If you are like me in that you use whatever is nearest to you to take notes, despite having specific places for said notes, make sure you eventually put everything in the same place.

Hi! So romance repulsion is definitely a thing, for aros, and alloromantic people. Personally, I fluctuate between romance (and sex) positive, indifferent, and adverse for other people's relationships. I still am happy for my friends. Sometimes, I even enjoy hearing about their relationships. However, every now and then, I'll be talking about romance and get the urge to just get out of the situation. I don't really get why, it just is how it is. And when romance is turned on me, it's the same. Just one big "NO" and feeling super uncomfortable. As for what's helped me, I would recommend that she set boundaries with her friends. So they know what she is okay with discussing, and what she is not. I did that when I came out to one of my best friends, and so far, our discussions around that matter have been much more comfortable for me. She also has similar reading tastes to me, so can sometimes warn me if a scene will make me uncomfortable. Additionally, I would make sure that she is aware of how her interactions change due to her romance repulsion. It took someone saying (not to my face) that he hated me for me to realize that my "ignoring" boys (so people wouldn't think I had a crush on them) was actually me being incredibly mean to them until they left me alone. I also found this thread, which talks about different ways romance repulsion may occur. I hope any of this helped!

Personally, I think that you should use whatever label feels right to you. If aroflux/greyro/arospec works to describe how you feel, you should use it. No one gets to tell you that your lived experiences aren't valid, as they haven't lived through them. I hope that helps at all. Welcome to Arocalypse!

Ha no. I would never hear the end of it. The trick with my mom is that you can't directly attack her or her reasoning, or she'll just double down on things. I have to ask questions and provide evidence until she contradicts herself. Then she doesn't bring it up anymore (her way of accepting defeat). I just need to subtly pick apart her logic and remember what she conceded so I can remind her.

So I've been kind of poking around the idea of romance in general with my mom (I don't need to with my dad because he'll tell her anything I tell him). And, yeah, no. It did not go well. Basically, I asked her to read this thing about amatonormativity that I wrote for class. I talked about the stereotypes of being single first, and she responded that people without romantic relationships die young. To which I countered that those studies were biased, and I had proof. She said I, and the person with a doctorate (in this area?), were wrong (specifically, "the statistics aren't wrong". Yeah I know. But the correlation drawn isn't true). We argued on that for a least half an hour. Later I brought up aromanticism and some other points, which she ignored. Which is so weird for her. I rarely ask her for help on writing now because there is a 95% chance we will get into a yelling match about word choice. Her not commenting on a point I made is strange, to say the least. And at the end, she suggested that I change my whole argument to a discussion of the etymology of the word(See? Attempted argument over word choice. What'd I say?) and it's accuracy. Specifically, that it was an incorrect, niche concept. So yeah. That was fun. I mean, I may be overblowing it a bit, as she's been frustrating me in other ways recently. But it's still annoying. She's always been so focused on women succeeding on their own, that I assumed it applied to romance as well. I guess not. Or, at least not for me.