Ettina

I think that's because you're still a kid. In adulthood, saying you have a best friend can come across as childish, or else they assume it's someone you've known since childhood and continue to use the same term even though you're not still actively seeing each other every day.

I've felt like the opposite is true for me. I've wanted kids for a long time (and now I'm pregnant! Finally!) and I've gotten a lot of flack from people who think I shouldn't reproduce for various reasons - because I'm disabled, because I'm not planning to raise them in a stereotypical mother + father family structure, because I need assistive reproduction and "why don't you just adopt?" (as if adoption is so simple and easy), because they think aromantic means loveless, and because there's a number of people who think no one should reproduce and conveniently target anyone but the fertile heteros who are producing the majority of children. My family has always supported me, though.

Most of the aro advocacy I see treats aroaces as the default aros. Mostly because a lot of it is borne out of aroaces feeling alienated by allo-ace centric ace communities.

Update: I'm pregnant!

Procreation doesn't require sex. I'm pregnant and I've never had sex. Also, human overpopulation is a myth to deflect attention away from the problem of unequal resource distribution due to capitalism.

Aroace and childfree are different things.

I've been trying to conceive via sperm donation, because I want to be a single parent by choice. Anyone else aro and want to have kids? I feel like aro spaces are often overwhelmingly childfree to the point where sometimes I feel erased because I'm aro and one of my biggest dreams is to be a parent.

Same. I'm sex-repulsed and romance-favorable, personally. For me, romance-favorable feels important to mention in aro communities, because I sometimes feel alienated by the assumption that all aros dislike romance and have negative reactions towards romance.

Plus, I feel like the concept of aspec is valuable for aroaces. It's important to acknowledge the split-orientation folks too, but aroaces shouldn't have to feel forced to divide themselves between two separate communities for something that is often a unified experience in the same way that gay, lesbian, straight, etc are for people with non-split orientations.

Personally, I don't find "fetishizing" a useful term, and I feel that it's pretty much inextricably linked to kink-negativity to the point where I'd be happy just completely tossing that term in the trash heap. A lot of times, when people talk about "fetishizing" as a harmful thing, what they're really talking about is objectification. Which is treating someone else as if their thoughts/feelings/desires don't matter, all that matters is how they can meet your desires. The fact that you seem to be more inclined to have squishes on trans guys doesn't strike me as a concern at all. What's important is how you actually treat the trans guys in your life, not what types of attraction you feel towards them.

I'm an aromantic bi-asexual. In my case, I'm grey-ace, so I do feel attraction sometimes, and when I do, it can be to multiple genders.

But do they see them as guys, or as butch girls who they're willing to humor because they're cute?

33% alloromantic ace 33% aroace 25% aro I'm surprised allo ace was so high. I think it's confusing not being romance-repulsed with feeling romantic attraction.

To me, including allies under LGBTQIAA+ makes about as much sense as including white people under POC. I don't need to be included in the POC umbrella to be anti-racist, so why should we include allies in the LGBT+ umbrella? Being an ally doesn't make you part of the group, it makes you an ally of the group.

I'm not sure if I'm autochorisromantic or not, but it's definitely adjacent to how I experience romance. I don't feel romantic attraction, but I do find romance fun to fantasize about or read about sometimes.