DeltaAro

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.

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.

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?)

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... 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) 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.

@hemogoblin Yes, "vegetables" is an umbrella term, describing a group of human-edible plant parts. And this grouping is of no relevance in botany: An alien 👽 scientist studying Earth's flora would come up with a term like "fruit" but not "vegetable". Vegetables = {tomatoes, carrots, spinach, onions, bell peppers, ...} The elements of the grouping are quite scientifically precise, though: tomatoes are the fruits of dolanum lycopersicum, carrots are the roots of daucus carota, and so on. Gender is not about plants, and instead about humans. But "gender" certainly does not describe a group of humans. Perhaps gender describes the set of all specific genders? Gender = {women, men, enbies, ...} So the specific genders refer to groups of people. Now we notice two important differences to "vegetable": A specific gender like "non-binary" is just as socially constructed as "gender" itself is. But what a tomato is, or a carrot, is not socially constructed! We have no restrictions which groupings of people qualify as a gender. "Nerd" cannot be a gender. Why? But vegetables must at least be human-edible plant parts, not any plant parts. Cotton or oak wood is not a vegetable. So I'd still agree with @Holmbo that gender kind of hangs in the air. Let's make it complex, difficult and verbose! 😉 For now, genders describe groups of humans. Duh... I don't even think that's so vague. The real problem is that this isn't a general answer at all. If someone feels their gender is "nerd", we would conclude that this person is very confused or trolling. Right? "Nerd" is not even remotely contained in the concept of "gender". It's like calling cotton a vegetable - only that we have a good answer here: "Because it's not edible, stupid!"

Maybe you can still insert aroflux, aceflux or genderflux somewhere? If it means romantic/sexual orientation or gender are fluctuating, it should be combinable with other labels. Btw, aroflux aceflux genderflux is the best...😄 Aro Ace Gender TRIPLE 🌩️ FLUX Energy

Well, this website uses Invision, surprising that bots are written for that... but possible. The crypto scams on Tinder I admittedly only know from reporting. Still, I always hear from the people who use dating apps, that because of those and similar occurrences, they strictly only accept people with other social media. So one begets the other. I would only have LinkedIn and a Facebook page I haven't used in years. 🙂

As I said, it was kind of clickbait-y. Of course, you need already be secretive. But I still think that being aro is like the cherry on that cake. 🍰 If they really hate it, yes (even I still use social meda a bit, because it's basically unavoidable). But I've witnessed it, how people suddenly lose much of their reservations about social media when it comes to dating. Though most dating apps are positively scary and involve way more scams than "normal" social media. Like model-type, high-achiever wants to date you and starts to chat with you about her crypto investments. "Today is my perfect day".🤑

It's safe to assume that aros use dating apps only rarely. I know aros can and often are super-extroverted and open. But what if you're not like this, and instead rather secretive, like me? Then this aversion extends to a lot of modern social media. If you're a secretive romantic, maybe romantic desires give you the motivation to act against your character? But this won't happen for me. I'm not a Luddite in the sense of being techno-phobic. But I hate a lot of social behavior that is enabled by modern technology. I mean, remember there was once, a long time ago, a Golden Age in which not every of your stupid mistakes was recorded and readily archived. The elders told me stories about this. Do you suffer introverted + secretive + aro "Ludditism"?

I never understood the romantic need for couple photos as profile pictures. Yeah, you've got a partner, I'm impressed.... NOT. PS: Oh no, I overtook @Apathetic Echidna in the number of posts. 😾I don't want to be an aro silverback!!!

Manga artist who created Soul Eater answers the question of Crona's gender:

It is supposed to be a bad thing even then, because sexualization pushes harmful gender norms and stereotypes. And the notion that one's (or rather a woman's) value derives from sex appeal or physical appearance. Of course this does not apply to Tumblr amateur artists or absurd niche commercial products. They aren't effective in shaping our culture. This is about sexualization in media with some mainstream appeal, like movies or video games. Importantly, not just media you cannot avoid like commercials or billboards. Dead or Alive was strongly criticized for its sexualized content. But you won't see the skimpy girls if you don't actively play the game. That's the issue. Do I see some merit in it? Yes... but mostly not. I don't think there can even in principle be a solution. Freedom of expression (where I include freedom from pressure of non-state actors) with the disclaimer "but only as long as you are not successful" isn't worth anything. The biggest paradox is that people get ever more worked up about assumed indirect harm, often forgetting about concrete, direct harm. Take Cuties again: the movie is a critique of premature sexualization. But the 11-year-old girls starring in Cuties are still real 11-year-old girls. And I don't understand why it is simply assumed with absolute certainty that filming those short, yet disturbing scenes (think: Nicki Minaj performance) was not harmful to them. Maybe not, I hope so. But it wouldn't surprise me. There is also morbid fascination and that's like "I want to see it and I don't want to see it". I remember this feeling when I stumbled upon vorarephiliac art by an actual paleoartist.

IMHO this definition gets it right, that's how the word is used. But the emphasis should be on "make" and "attribute". What is sexualized lacks agency and so the word has a negative connotation. But why is sexualization an issue? You need consent for real persons anyway. So here it seems clear-cut. There are fictional or stereotypical characters (e. g. nurses). Alice from Alice in Wonderland is a seven year old child. If you wear a sexy Alice costume on Halloween, you're sexualizing the character. But fictional characters don't feel anything. No harm done. Aside from respect for someone's creations, which is a general issue. (Though the license gives you the permission, do not even think of sexualizing the aro frogs , how dare you!) So sexualization resides in a very murky area: Consent was given, but something makes it questionable. People push harmful social norms and attitudes, for example by sexualizing fictional characters or using sexualized stock characters. And you can argue about this all day long. Because my sensibilities may be different than yours. (Disclaimer: some of the linked material is mildly NSFW) Some people see indefensible sexualization in Cuties (Mignonnes), others in chainmail bikinis. Some reject Ivy from Soul Calibur as over-sexualized but are totally fine with Mad Moxxi from Borderlands. All this is heavily embroiled with the culture wars, so I can't really take it that seriously. This sounds bad. But it's still quite vague. If I go shopping in the supermarket I sometimes wonder if using self-checkout is going to be faster than lining up in the manual cashier lane. In this moment do I not only see what those real humans can offer for me in efficiency? Do I still see them as people? I compare them with lifeless automatons!

Looked at it this way, love is like wealth. We assume it's good to have it. Few people do not desire it. Losing your wealth is an existential threat. People cry themselves to sleep over it. Yet strangely, the correlation wealth-happiness is not clear-cut. The only difference is: being wealthy is not associated with being a good person. I'm psychic, I knew you would defend love! Anyway, I imagine a wandering sage helping people on the way. Never developing any deeper ties. In a broader sense, this is also love, for all humans. Must be an unequivocally good quality, right? But in the modern, narrower sense, love is love to a specific person. It's surprising that arguably the biggest pop culture phenomenon of all times contains the idea that such love may not be so 100% positive:

I love that question mark. Nitpick: question wasn't about romantic love, but all kinds of love, including those that don't give you a drug-like high, like platonic love (except for those who feel squishes). I don't know how old the idea really is. "Ancestors" sounds like paleolithic to me. 🙂 Love is a big thing in Christianity. But other cultures valued honor, wisdom, temperance and courage more. Cynically, one could argue that love won because it is an extremely vague concept, and in one form or another comes easy to all but a few people. Also everything horrible is subsumed under "hate" (though perhaps hate is sometimes good... 😄 ok, seriously maybe not against persons but against bad deeds). And "hate" is the antonym of "love".

The Eastern philosophy of nothingness. In Western philosophy nothingness is very neglected. It seems the 'argument' that goes like "there's nothing to say about nothingness" was too convincing. 🙃 They look the most believable and healthiest. 😉

Silly attempt at humor. Don't try to put too much sense in my posts here. 😉 More seriously, I wonder if this job advertisement is even legal. AFAIK in the UK you need an objective reason for discriminating by gender. And I really don't see why gender should be relevant to selling fish 🐟! 😬

Hi! First Cloud I meet after Cloud Strife!!!

They just want a genderflux person for their fish store. Pretty normal, imho. 🤷‍♂️

I sometimes stole grapes🍇 from local vineyards, purple and green, and while they tasted like the wine produced there, table grapes taste way better. Anyway, I like green ones more. Oh yes... which ones? They must have names, too, like the wine ones, right? But as this thread shows nobody knows them. So a wine connoisseur is a person of culture. But a table grape nerd... I feel it might prompt unsolicited, amateur diagnoses of Asperger's. Weird humans.

So if you're sitting in a pub, this is a meeting of the Grand Lodge of Aro Thelemites in South Dakota?

Reminds me of those looted post-apocalyptic supermarkets. Where there's always something that remains. Like shrimp-flavored waffles or pumpkin latte hummus. So if you look hard enough, you probably come across a nice canned unoped aroallo representation (expiry 1/1/2013).

Pedantic nitpick: Mushrooms 🍄 are not plants but fungi. I like the Ink Cap: it looks soooo ... Goth? Also edible when young. And the Green Brittlegill: because it's gray-green and very tasty.

A huge chunk of LGBTQIA+ is about acceptance of other people's consensual sexual behavior as something morally neutral. So there is an obvious conflict to mainstream, contemporary Islamic teaching, which regards homosexual acts as sinful.

Yes, this is really difficult. Especially in a foreign language. "When it rains, it pours" is a twist on the saying "It never rains but it pours" which means that troubles rarely come alone. But here it also means that Morton's Salt doesn't cake in the container at high air humidity. I wish I would find something that creative in an aro version. 🤔 I love the idea. I imagine they did some Valentine's project at school and aardvark got assigned to deliver the love letters. Carelessly loses them in the rain. She's in a lot of trouble, poor aardvark.