Holmbo

I didn't use to think that aromanticism needed a more thorough definition than the current but recently I've been thinking that maybe just talking about romantic attraction is too limited. Since attraction is such a hard term to define so perhaps the definition should be more related to love than attraction.

I feel similar. Gender is not particularly important to me so I have a hard time relating to people who are concerned about it. I wonder though if gender confidence (if that's a phrase) is something you don't notice when you have it. Like how people who have money don't think about money. Or someone who's white saying, I don't think about race.

After reading this thread I tend to agree ? Nothing against the participants of the discussion of course, just that I was flabbergasted by how different meaning we give to the word. I think I will try to avoid the word in the future and give more specific description instead.

Probably To me platonic is synonymous with friend. So to say aplatonic suggest someone who doesn't form friendships.

Just cause someone doesn't get squishes doesn't mean they're unable or unwilling to form platonic bonds with others. Platonic attraction seems to me as too vague a term to be useful, but if there is a way to describe it I don't think it's just about getting squishes.

Good initiative for a poll. I wonder if we perhaps shouldn't use aplatonic in that sense though. Because I've seen aros (mainly on reddit) saying that they want to use that to describe how they don't form platonic bonds. I think that's a more intuitive use of that word.

I've heard good things about that one, but also that it's very complicated

Pizza

No more cats! Winston Churchill

I haven't thought about it before but I think I find it useful. It seems appreciation is more cerebral than attraction? One is aware why one finds something pleasing.

Maybe a way to reclaim friendship is to make up new words for relationships that are less close than friends. Like one that describes the concept of "friendship of utility" mentioned earlier. Right now I can only think of two terms colleague and acquaintance. Are there others?

I get what you mean. If I were to bring it up I might do some milder version. Like, this passages misses other kinds of love that are also valid.

Welcome! Now to my obligatory question of all scifi fans. Have you seen the Expanse? . ?

I was just thinking. Do alloromantic people get squishes too? I don't see why some of them wouldn't. Have you ever heard of it? Is it just cause we don't get crushes that we need a word to not confuse it with a romantic crush?

What a great topic and interesting responses! Is the concept of "attraction" useful to you? Since I'm gray ace, I use it for feelings of sexual attraction. It happens mostly with characters on tv and movies. Maybe because I can be more relaxed about it then, and not worry about having to interact with them. What about the concept of "platonic attraction," in particular? I don't use it. But I might find it useful to understand another persons experience. I'm not against people using it For you, what is the dividing line between a "feeling" and an "attraction"? Sometimes I'm a bit unsure if the feeling is sexual attraction or just some general mood of arousal that just happen to come across me at that time though. So it's a bit confusing. If someone was using attraction in a non romantic or sexual sense... I'm not sure how to explain what that would mean but I think I'd understand if someone was using it in a sentence :D

Yeah this is really the underlying issue I feel. Cause many allos are lonely too and could use close friendships. Imagine being in a divorce and having no close friends. Your only close relationship gone.

I was on a weekend trip with a long term but not very close friend. Basically we've been part of the same friend group for a long time. As we hung out for so many hours we talked a lot about our lives and I learned that she'd never been in love and felt like her looking for a partner was mostly cause she really wants to have children. I told her about me being aro and what it meant. I don't think she knew about the term before so I'm curious if now she'll begin to think about herself as aro too. Sometimes I wonder about all the potentially aro people I might have met. I wish there was a way to bring up my romantic orientation more casually. It always feels too personal. I would like to find more aros and to increase awareness. Not gonna lie, this made me laugh. I'm sorry she wasn't supportive though. My mother said maybe I just have asbergers when I told her. ?

National treasure

So, I have a game I think is fun but I'm not sure how to play it online. Normally it's played with only two people. But I think it can work. The setup is that you take turn to post the name of a person and forbid categories. For example if I start by posting: Emma Thompson. The next poster might respond with: no more humans The next poster might then say: Chewbacca And the fourth poster might say: no more wookiees As the categories add up its harder and harder to find a person to post. The general rule is that you're only allowed one word as a category. Ok I'll start: Emma Thompson

I suppose different vocabularies could be considered part of culture? Like amatonormativity, or of course all different labels of romantic orientation. I also think that anti-romance sentiments are part of aro culture. Not that all aros are romance repulsed, but it's certainly there. And because romance is most often very earnest it can come of as kind of cynical and disillusioned.

I agree. I shared the post mostly cause I find it interesting to speculate about what factors determines romantic orientation, and if genes could be any part of it.

I found this reddit post very interesting. About an aro who analyzed his genom and is musing about how it might relate to his orientation.

You're dissing all my GREAT suggestions ? Now it's your turn to make one then.

Lots of replies. Yay! That was kinda my thought though. That we exclude a lot and end up with just a few works which we deemed the most generally accessible aro content. This doesn't mean they will be the best aro content, likely most people will have other favorites that they prefer. We could also do it like @Apathetic Echidna suggested and kinda just rate things based on the aro rating system. The thing is, I don't have anywhere to put an extensive list of aro content so I wouldn't really know what to do with such a list. Or like the friend of @The Angel of Eternity suggested, to have two categories. Maybe one could be with sex and one without. It wouldn't have to be categories as ace and allo either really, since not all ace are sex repulsed. Maybe more useful criteria could be: globally accessible, and light on obscure cultural references. I agree with it's flaws (and also the aspect of taking it out of it's original context) Maybe a better metric would be at least one woman with a distinct speaking role?