DeltaAro

2 hours ago, A User said:

hows it homophobic aint it gay as hell

Yeah, that's a bit of a strong word, she's bi herself. But everybody must admit: the original song is chock-full of cliches (which were already old in 2008). So it hasn't aged well. I just find it super annoying and cringe, while the aroace version is very creative and funny in a good way.

On 2/1/2023 at 2:31 PM, Holmbo said:

I've never heard of medication affecting romantic attraction. Interesting question. I suppose in theory it could affect it by changing mood and maybe also feelings of attachment.

It's said about SSRIs that they blunt romantic feelings (see here), but they obviously aren't an ADHD medication.

If I knew the exact meds OP is taking, I could search for their side effects. But not knowing them, I don't have the desire to sift through all this huge amount of misinformation and exaggeration on psych meds (still a hot button topic).

15 minutes ago, aro_elise said:

cuddling and petting dogs and some other animals, yes!  not humans because they're not cute (used as a synonym for 'hot' is obviously different, and i don't find babies/children cute)

Cats yes... 🐈‍⬛ meow!

Though I used the word "cute" for humans, I actually don't think adult humans are ever really cute... (I guess I just adjusted myself to the romantic language to call grown ass men or women "cute" ... though my actual reaction to this is "what?"). Sexy or hot, maybe but not "cute".

I can understand "cute" applied to babies and small children to some degree. I mean they're much smaller for starters (not a > 50 kg human clinging onto you).

1 hour ago, ArrowAce said:

I am touch starved imo, i seriously want hugs and stuff. I just don't receive them often enough. 

*hug*

If a ya know situation happens with a lot of touching, once in a blue moon, I'm good for a year. But theoretically I can feel touch starved, I guess.

I can't say that I dislike specific types of touching, but if it has a romantic vibe to it, it can feel uncomfortable. Which is most true for cuddling.

Also, I don't like LOOOOONG touching. Cuddling is always kind of looong. And after 30 minutes at least, you need to get away from me. I need to breathe.

Some people can cuddle for hours and I would find this extremely uncomfortable. Even the cutest, cleanest and nicest humans have some peculiar bad / annoying qualities that I just cannot stand for too long.

On 1/24/2023 at 6:42 PM, Nix said:

Cuddling I don't like at all, except with my mom maybe?

With cats maybe?

On 1/24/2023 at 6:42 PM, Nix said:

Kissing (three times) is sort of the national greeting here, but I don't really like that.

🤒🦠 Coronavirus says: "I approve this greeting. Thank you for helping me remain an issue!" ☣

18 hours ago, MulticulturalFarmer said:

Is this a game that you can purchase on steam or is it an android app?

It's on Steam but you need a powerful graphics card (RTX 3070). Personally, I played it on a PlayStation 5.

I'm a fan of the Isekai genre, so I pre-ordered the game undeterred by the reviews of the demo. 🤪

On the positive side the combat system with all the variety of magic is pretty good. Also it starts in New York City (which you visit later again

) ... as a playable area.

So it has a certain weird factor to it. Including Frey's magical talking bracelet "Cuff" who is like a mix of condescending British gentleman and an annoying customer service chatbot. It probably would've been better as an Indie and if they just doubled down on this weirdness.

I would wait for it until it's on sale. And hopefully they at least patch the lighting...

Anyway, I'm now playing: God of War Ragnarök. Just started. The graphics and art direction are are just amazing. 😵

10 hours ago, Nix said:

Worth it though, it is still such a cool world. Obviously I’m playing it on ‘story’ mode because I am so, so bad at sneaking.

Yessss, that's in my pipeline! Gonna play it as soon as I finish GoW.

I'm done with Forspoken. It took me 14 hours. After Tanta Sila I got bored and just rushed the rest. I was very hyped for it, but feel disappointed. It was such a cool concept... 😔

Graphics looks very last gen, world is extremely bland and generic, and the lighting is broken. 70 € is way overpriced. This is not an AAA game, not remotely.

On 12/4/2022 at 9:24 AM, queer_kaleidoscope said:

So I'm waiting for the Symphony of the Lonely Aro in Bb Minor ... (obscure and terrible)

On 2/2/2023 at 11:33 AM, Lovebird said:

It's super validating to meet other apl arospecs. I felt alone for the longest time because all aros would talk about is how friendship & platonic attraction is "more important" than romance and such. Which made me feel a bit unwanted I slowly realised I was apl, so I tried forcing myself to experience platonic attraction, didn't work lol.

It never happened to me (or I gladly forgot about it), but many people told us here that they were literally (!) called heartless, robots, psychopaths, serial killers (seriously... wtf). So this explains the overcorrection that aros want to portray themselves as not this way, i. .e very social and interested in other people as friends.

Of course, I don't mean they just pretend, no they (except for a few aplatonic aros who want to fit in) really feel like this. But otherwise they wouldn't feel the pressure to make a big deal out of it.

On 1/31/2023 at 8:26 AM, Nix said:

awww so cute...  makes me think of another reason for preferring cats: cats are the Internet animal

I imagine the royal cat living in the Pharaoh's Palace as Ramses' pet. How much more could a cat achieve? But even she felt something was still missing. Something, something she vaguely intuited that in the far future would make her species reach their full potential! The destiny... to become a living meme machine.

😺 > 🐶 for me!

Also, felines are more of an aro pride animal than canines.

On 1/27/2023 at 5:58 AM, Alaska Native Manitou said:

🐺 are not dangerous.

There's always a push to extirpate 🐺 in the EU, to overrule the 2019 CJEU decision that they're protected. That's a real political demand. Half a billion people seemingly can't deal with just 17k wolves. 😔

I envy you. I'd give my Lamborghini, my cruising yacht, and my luxury mansion for such a friend. As they say, true friends is something money can't buy... *sigh*😔

I just accidentally came across this band and post it for the similarity to my username... sadly it's not a genre I like, but the artwork is really great. 😃

On 10/26/2022 at 11:16 PM, Alaska Native Manitou said:

The book that changed my life is Custer Died for your Sins by Vine Deloria, Jr.

  What a mysterious title. It can't be just the literal meaning, though it is true. What's with the Jesus allusion?

8 hours ago, whatistheromance said:

This forum 😉

Anime subtitles!

I'm a real homme de lettres. I read so much.

16 hours ago, Nix said:

And I have the physical board game of ‘Thud!’ 

I didn't know about 'Thud!', interesting ... it looks like a variant of Hnefatafl. It even has a similar aesthetic since it's usually played on a cloth board.

Cluttercore!!! 😄

I'm playing Forspoken right now...

58 minutes ago, Nix said:

I did not read al the Tiffany Aching ones, but I did read all the rest ;) Most I borrowed from my local library.

That's ok, they aren't labeled "A Discworld Novel". 😉

I was browsing the books and saw the Maurice novel and bought it without reading the blurb because.. cats. And then wondered why it was labeled "Story of Discworld". After some pages it dawned upon me that I wasn't in the target audience. 😅

   Read?
1    x  The Colour of Magic
2    x  The Light Fantastic
3    x  Equal Rites
4    x  Mort
5    x  Sourcery
6       Wyrd Sisters
7    x  Pyramids
8    x  Guards! Guards!
9       Eric
10   x  Moving Pictures
11      Reaper Man
12      Witches Abroad
13   x  Small Gods
14      Lords and Ladies
15   x  Men at Arms
16      Soul Music
17   x  Interesting Times
18      Maskerade
19   x  Feet of Clay
20      Hogfather
21      Jingo
22      The Last Continent
23      Carpe Jugulum
24   x  The Fifth Elephant
25      The Truth
26   x  Thief of Time
27      The Last Hero
28   x  The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents
29   x  Night Watch
30      The Wee Free Men
31      Monstrous Regiment
32      A Hat Full of Sky
33      Going Postal
34      Thud!
35      Wintersmith
36      Making Money
37      Unseen Academicals
38      I Shall Wear Midnight
39      Snuff
40      Raising Steam
41      The Shepherd's Crown

I was more patient in the past... still I can't imagine reading them ALL...

1 hour ago, Nix said:

I have 21 of them on my bookshelf :)

I sold everything, all books. 😃 E-Reader... minimalism... but nowadays cluttercore is a trend and 21 discworld books are a good start. I just kept the two maps from the Discworld and Ankh-Morpork.

On 11/28/2022 at 6:41 PM, Nix said:

My all-time favourite books are the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett.

  🐘 🌍 🐢WOW, did you read all 41 of them? 🤪

I remember there was a topic... oh here it is...

On 8/4/2021 at 8:47 PM, roboticanary said:

If that's the Well Street, I don't want to see the Unwell Street.

Anyway...

If I were moderating a documentary about romance, it would be like this.

Take an adult missing years of lived experience about a thing and let them interview others about this very subject.

7 hours ago, milk said:

and i am currently learning how to use blender!

Oh, I tried to learn it, but it was too complicated for me. 😔

7 hours ago, milk said:

i love these frogs 

Yes, the frogs are the best!!!

On 1/18/2023 at 5:30 PM, Frogrobin said:

If I ask her to stop, she shuts up about it and talks about something else, but doesn't apologize and resumes eventually, after some days.

You can train people by getting always instantly mad and not speaking to them for some time. That's the only way they learn.

But I reserve this treatment for annoying family members, not friends. Because if your friend doesn't really care for your feelings or respect you, what's the point?

On 1/19/2023 at 7:38 AM, Holmbo said:

That's a good point. The interpretation is not the same as the expression.

But doesn't "imposed" give a very strong sense of deliberation though?

Maybe "attached"?

"Assumed" would be wrong, because that's just the state of lacking information, which you could get by asking the individual.

On 1/19/2023 at 7:38 AM, Holmbo said:

It's not like our attraction is a choice. If I was a heterosexual woman I might be sexually attracted to another woman that had gender expression which I associate with a man. That doesn't mean I'm denying that she's a woman. It's just my bodies response.

IMHO, it is your mind reacting here, not the body. Like grief and anger have physical signs, but they're mainly part of our mental life and not a simple bodily reflex.

Otherwise, I agree that sexual attraction is largely involuntarily...

Warning: mention of transphobic slurs, violence

On 1/19/2023 at 7:38 AM, Holmbo said:

If orientations are to have any meaning we also have to acknowledge that gender interpretation is different from gender identity. Or we should make new kinds of categories for attraction.

Now as it is, the conflict is inevitable. What has to yield: sexual and romantic orientation or gender identity? What deserves more respect?

I don't think that's a purely academic question.

On 1/20/2023 at 12:38 PM, AstrophelDragon said:

I'm the exception too.

But anyway being genderfluid I feel like could give me a unique perspective on this, but it's hard to explain. I feel my gender changing. Yesterday I woke up as mostly a boy, by the end of the day I was more neutral. Other days I'm a girl the whole day, or my gender disappears. Despite this, I don't know exactly what gender is. I just know that at different times identifying as different genders is what feels right (and like, sometimes there's dysphoria that will also tell me what's wrong). So gender is basically this internal sense that a person has (or maybe doesn't, ex. agender or genderless). And then it's reinforced and categorized by society. What causes it, I don't know, but it exists somewhere.

While I knew that there is genderflux or genderfluid, I thought that maybe genderflux was itself a gender.

So "genderflux" is instead used for the state of oscillating between different genders, and not necessarily between female and male.

14 hours ago, hemogoblin said:

From a nonbinary point of view, I don't understand the point of restricting gender as something rigid or specific

What I wrote was meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Just trying to find out, what gender means.

Social construction, vagueness or family resemblance are often cited, but AFAIK those approaches do not mean "anything goes":

• E.g. money is socially constructed, but whatever money is (dollar bills, gold coins, arrow heads, seashells, ...) it must be fungible. It cannot be anything.
• Vagueness... the paradox of the heap... nobody can determine the number of how many grains a heap of sand must have. But ten grains are still not enough.
• Take Wittgenstein's example of games: yes there is no "essence of games", but that doesn't make the term "game" meaningless.
  We could at least make a list like this: can be joined freely, has fixed rules, consequences are negotiable, participants make an effort, outcome is undetermined, some outcomes are praised as wins.
  A game doesn't need to fulfill all of these criteria, but most.

We can say that gender just means an inner sense or psychological state. Then gender becomes quite empty. Like a white canvas on which everyone can "paint" their own ideas of gender.

I'm not convinced that emptying a concept so radically of meaning is always liberating. If we take Wittgenstein's example again, in the dystopian world of the Hunger Games, I'd actually like to say "The Hunger Games are not games but bloody murder" and be understood.

Sure, games are just objects and not humans, so that may be the important difference.

14 hours ago, hemogoblin said:

nerdgender/nerd as gender sounds effing awesome to me

I couldn't care less if people identify as nerdgender. Personally, I don't understand why anyone would want or need a gender.

I just thought that such genders wouldn't actually be used.

The reasoning was: there are xenogenders, like catgender or robogender, because people cannot describe their experience in a human-gendered way. Nerdgender isn't on the male-female-neutral-triangle, but contrary to a xenogender you use a human category to describe it.

14 hours ago, hemogoblin said:

I love that, coming at this from an outside of the binary perspective, I'm able to view gender as weird, wonky, and limitless. There are not certain things it has to be. There are not certain things it can't be. It's whatever someone's personal feelings are, whether that does happen to be a binary gender or a gender out of the binary or multiple genders or fluid genders or indescribable gender(s) or poetic gender(s) or whatever. I believe everyone deserves that freedom and should be respected for it.

Ok, that's clear then, "anything goes".

15 hours ago, Holmbo said:

Is it though? I'd argue gender expression is what influences sexual and romantic attraction rather than the identity. Most peoples attraction doesn't change if they were to change pronouns.

I had already commented on this, but deleted it since it became again rather convoluted.

You're right that the gender identity of someone doesn't have much if any impact on sexual or romantic attraction felt by others. But I also don't believe it's just "gender expression".

I would describe it as "externally imposed gender".

People are attracted to the persons they categorize as their preferred gender according to their own criteria. I guess, an average lesbian woman isn't likely to question her sexual orientation and change it to pansexual because she finds self-identified nonbinary Miley Cyrus attractive. Miley will instead be put in the "women" box.

But error of this categorization (wrong "imposed gender") can still happen. So it cannot be presentation alone. If an average straight man cluelessly looks at famous drag queen Courtney Act, who gives a very convincing femme presentation, and thinks "sexy..." the whole thing is going to unravel fast if that man "finds out". This knowledge would likely make sexual or romantic attraction mostly impossible.

I assume that it's impossible to create a theory of gender that allows full freedom, is not normative but still consistent. And we haven't even considered xenogenders...

So imho something should be said about the lack of consistency, seriously. Because it is not subtle, but very obvious and cannot be explained by social constructivism, vagueness of concepts or family resemblance. Since gender is an important source of happiness for many people, we might just accept the inconsistency, but it shouldn't be simply ignored.

18 hours ago, Collie said:

I blast my life at full volume

Yeah, have fun!

For me, introversion and secretiveness are closely related. I never imagined that there are people who can combine being very introverted with being very open.

On 1/14/2023 at 11:59 AM, Holmbo said:

What does identifying with your gender mean if it was only a social construct? What does it mean to be a woman for example. We know it's not physical attributes and not which hormones we have. So is it personality, what makes us feel like a gender?

I once thought, that gender is the subjective psychological relation or attitude towards masculinity or femininity. And from this the socially constructed gender identities arise.

But this doesn't work, because what does it then mean to not have a gender (agender)?

And not all genders relate to masculinity-femininity, but there are also atrinary genders and xenogenders that don't fit. Perhaps "gender" is simply undefinable and unanalyzable.

Some peculiar properties of gender:

• it is relatively fixed
• it is a part of people's identity
• it is very important for sexual and romantic attraction, less so for Platonic attraction
• single-gender spaces do not come naturally (if a family speaks Japanese, their child will speak Japanese. But gender isn't like language or culture, it's not "contagious")
• people with a certain gender tend to like having their gender expressed in language if we speak to them (pronouns)
• there are assumptions or stereotypes about genders, regarding appearance, behavior and personality
• nearly all genders are exclusive, you only can have one gender (maybe genderflux is the exception?)

18 hours ago, hemogoblin said:

EDIT: You know what. Changed my mind.

Sorry if my last post upset you. I don't know why, I didn't invalidate anyone's gender identity or something like that.

The idea is pretty simple and should be uncontroversial:

We sometimes have...

1. one unified thing, that we understand well, but divide it in an arbitrary manner.
   Color (concept in sense physiology) => "Indigo", "azure" and "teal" (those are arbitrary, social things)
2. a multitude of things we understand well, but group them together in an arbitrary manner.
   Onions, carrots, spinach ... (botanically well-defined) => "vegetables" (arbitrary)

And gender is not like 1. or 2.. Instead the multitude of genders (male, female, nonbinary, ...) is as mysterious as the concept of gender in general.

So gender is something very subtle.