cyancat

yeah lmao

i won’t lie it’s one of those things i’m like But Can I for being Aro? because a-romantic people are allowed to be a lot more hidden for the most part. 

but i think for me being lgbt/queer is much more conductive as a descriptor of anything that doesn’t fit within the hétero-cis constructs of society. being queer is not about suffering to suffer - it’s about the ways a cishet world attempts to reject us. be that with violence or by insisting we do not exist.

also i’m ngl i really do not like relationships in general but i’ve found queer relationships more tolerable than straight ones. i don’t know if this is a very common experience, but i think that i find heteronormative relationships very unpleasant, so anecdotal, but i think part of that is why i see aro as more queer than not.

it’s just. not hetero no matter what people will insist.

also like. i’m unequivocally queer. i’m trans for fucks sake. and for me, aro is just as much part of my experience being isolated from the rest of fuck all society as the fact that i’m trans. no, i don’t feel the same fear from thinking about coming out - but i am still terrified of having to go through the utter humiliation of being told i don’t exist, that my purpose is to get married, copulate, produce children, whatever. being aro is very much part of my identity, and it feels a bit too much like rejecting that part of me if i don’t also let it be queer.

added a no pref 

a question for the aroace folk out there: are you more comfortable in asexual (but not strictly aromantic) spaces or aromatic (but not strictly asexual) spaces?

context; i’ve found that because my aroace-ness isn’t equal - as in, one i see the world through over the other, i have a preference of the spaces i’m comfortable in. so even though i’m aroace, i’d rather be in one space than the other.

[cross post on aven too]

i would argue its the same reason when most allos say they're straight or bi, they're talking about both their romantic and sexual attraction. for most people, they experience romantic & sexual attraction so closely that it's hard for them to make a clear divide. therefore, they kind of end up talking about them like they're the same/adjacent to the point of being the same gradient. likewise, i think aesthetic, sensual, etc., attraction might be experienced so closely to sexual and/or romantic attraction that it's just not a thing people naturally bother differentiating. though, i think the point does still stand, especially when talking about the way the assumption is that romantic feelings are better than platonic ones, which has a lot to do with our language having only one word, 'love,' [where the default is more romantic than not] with contextual adjectives not being the same as having different words for things a la greek, eros, agape, storge, philia, etc]. 

YMBAI you identified as bi/panromantic because you’ve figured you like girls and boys equally after a long struggle of deciphering your feelings — as though grasping at barely existent straws.

Bonus points if you specifically chose to identify as pan because the idea of being attracted to someone because of anything to do with them was the weirdest shit ever/you just couldn’t see it happening for you. The all-encompassing, hand-waving, regardless of pan-romanticism [vs omni’s all and bi’s many] happened to be very convenient for your don’t-want-to-think-about-the-specifics-of-your-preferences agenda.

this is 100% a pointed jab at i, me, myself, and myself alone.

On 1/17/2021 at 2:35 PM, Guest ;afsdkoi said:

You're valid BUT remember orientations are fluid and you could oh-so-definitely change,, so just keep that in mind!!!!

the best way i think to put it is that it is because orientation is fluid and that they can change that younger people are valid. 

@Tagor it’s certainly okay to say that someone being young may mean that their sexuality may change - that’s the typical and generally accepted as standard/best response to what is normally an incredibly vague question of “idk am i aro or not” with very little/very confusing information to supplement. that’s not a problem period. more of the issue that i’ve seen is the attitude that being young somehow takes away from how aro you actually are. it’s not super common thing i see tho. definitely more on aven from alloaros in threads that get about the same amt of replies. (but also, more vocal minorities in larger communities like aven so)

stuffed animal

generally true? not particularly, but i don't tend to watch much in the way of movies and tv series so comparatively, yeah.

the person below me likes pasta

i'm agnostic/atheistic. i was raised jewish, and it is still very much part of my identity, but it's more of a cultural thing to me than a religious thing. unfortunately, a lot of the people around me were former white christains and carried a lot of the more... pernicious beliefs with them. i avoid them now.

also ig a note but holocaust, people were killed for being jews. not for their religion, but for their ethnicity, and it’s a bit ignorant to infer that jewish is /just/ a religion when it’s also heavily ethnic based - that the holocaust was not (just) a religious terror, but in actuality an ethnic purge.

19 hours ago, Erederyn said:

Yeah, there's an Arocalypse discord! I'm not sure if we can just put the invite link here, so I'll PM it to you :) 

can i get a link to the aro discord too?

(lmao valid) money

oh i totally fucking forgot but yeah merida is my favorite princess lmao.

i thought my sister's obsession with a pop star was stupid as shit.

also i hated romance songs so much lmao. i think that was more the sister thing tho than the aro thing alksdjf;;;

honestly, the signs that i was aromantic were all the way back in middle school. i just... didn't recognize them for what they were. once you've hit puberty it's... probably just gate-keeping when people tell you you're too young to decide. i don't think that is really valid anyway since people — especially kids — should be allowed and will change their identities. at the flip of a coin? absolutely. so, like, go wild honestly. y'all valid lmao

On 12/5/2020 at 11:14 AM, Guest Guest said:

I don't think I'd be comfortable with saying "I love you", because of its romantic connotation.

this is why i say 'i wuv you' instead of 'i love you' because the latter is too serious in its romantic connotation alsdfj;;;;;

21 hours ago, Citrus Poppy said:

Thanks y’all!! I really appreciate your help, and I’ll definitely do some more research!! 
I’ve had multiple squishes at the same time, on people I’d never actually go out with or think about kissing so I’m fairly certain those are squishes. But then there’s someone I’d crush/squish on more than everyone else. That’s basically the same feeling, but I know them better and hang out with them more ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

Thanks again for actually responding to this, honestly this is a huge forum and I thought my message would just get lost!!

that latter sounds a bit like alterous attraction perhaps? it might be worth exploring it anyway! 

regardless, good luck!

4 hours ago, aro_elise said:

hey!  hard to speculate about your romantic orientation without much information, but the indication that your crushes/squishes have all been on guys leads me to agree that you might be on the spectrum of heteroromanticism.  i say that because i don't think i've ever heard of anyone having squishes/platonic attraction where gender is a factor, like i'm heterosexual af (and aro af) and get squishes on all genders.  so it seems like a sexual/romantic orientation thing, but idk, now i wonder.  but your sentiment about being fine with being friends with them doesn't sound like something many alloromantics would say.  maybe gray-aro or something else on the spectrum?  i'd suggest just seeing how well you relate to experiences shared by aros here, and don't worry about choosing a romantic orientation label to describe your experience--if one feels right, great, if you're not sure, that's fine.   

at the same time, i don’t see why someone can’t be “heteroplatonic” or what not. i’ve only gotten meshes (alterous attraction; although for me i would describe my experience as an intense form of platonic attraction) on feminine-aligned people. it may depend on your definition of squishes, because even within platonic stuff there’s a lot of nuances to the kinds of friendships you can have.

1 hour ago, Faeriefate said:

Well, I don't get crushes often anyways. So there's often I go long periods where there's just not anyone I'm romantically attracted to.

Kinda hard for crushes to fade when I don't get them often. So I don't know. 

truth be told, i don't fully get how some people can be like "i'm absolutely this one orientation i've known it since forever." it's a lot of self-doubt and second-guessing for me alskdfj, so... y'know, maybe it might just help describe the way you tend to operate? no one can really look into your brain and say any which way. even if it could be that you've just not found someone you're attracted to, that's... a bit of part of the definition of being aro? not experiencing romantic attraction. maybe you'll find someone who helps you definitively realize one way or the other, but i think until you find such a person, if you're inclined or even interested by the label of aroflux, then you should go for it.

1 hour ago, roboticanary said:

fair play, honestly no point regretting it. if it works out fine great choice. if there are any problems then that was likely to happen anyway, as you said they are in the spaces you are in, this was likely to come to them anyway. you got the message to them in your own time and they can reply or not when they please.

they recently replied! and it's turned out all good. you're right tho, i think they'd have eventually figured it out, so this way we can move forward understanding each a little better now.

same here // i'm on discord too so alksdjf

ok so i just sent a... near 1k dm about this whole mess to the person at 3am and. alskdksl. man this is rlly gonna go into my 3am regrets huh? well, it’s a good thing i finally got it out anyway, now i should go to sleep

...so i actually haven’t watched many romance movies alskdkdls. i tend to avoid them. as such, the “worst” romance movie i’ve watched is howl’s moving castle...? not that it was necessarily a bad movie, but the romance bits felt a bit cheesy to me. and i think it’s mean to be kinda cheesy, especially in comparison to the book (which i do prefer, but that’s more because i appreciate its whimsical and dry sense of humor), so it’s not necessarily a fault in itself. just not something i like is all.

and yes i am in fact just realizing how utterly aromantic that is of me to prefer the less romantic/focused of the two. 

when i was younger, this classmate had a crush on this boy, and it was a lot of entertainment to me. but i genuinely didn’t get why this person wouldn’t just say they had a crush tho. like i even had to convince them to write a letter/i ended up being the one to give the letter for them? i couldn’t understand why they would constantly bemoan and not do shit. they weren’t even that close. there wasn’t like... a friendship to ruin, which i would understand.

Sci-fi

1990