DeltaAro

vending machine

This shutting down announcement of Arocalypse just fitted into this general doomsday feeling. I think there should be an ??? ?ℕ? of the ????? Party (8. p.m ... till?) but please keep a distance of at least 6 feet from the other guests. Romantic behavior is considered unsafe. There will be free beer...

Input: '2' + 1 Output: '21' Input: '2' - 1 Output: 1

Doctor LBMango, if aros don't get PhDs who will? They have more time!

Since (I hope) nobody desires to eat humans here, I wonder what taste attraction is? So is it about ... licking?❔⁉️ Would still be strange imho. The word attraction certainly doesn't include actually doing it... it means "drawn to"... like with gravitational or magnetic attraction. I guess it's unusual to you how those terms are used here... like there is also platonic attraction and romantic attraction ... and very important differences are glossed over by classifying them all as attractions. It's probably safe to say that platonic and romantic attraction have overall a way less mercurial nature than sexual attraction. They are weaker but long-acting. It's again similar to physics... like the gravitational attraction of the whole Earth can lose against the magnetic attraction of a humble refrigerator magnet. But OTOH gravitational attraction rules the grand scheme of things over long timeframes. Thinking a lot about sensual or aesthetic attraction is probably typical for asexuals, because both can be confused with sexual attraction. But if you've ever felt sexual attraction, you won't confuse it – the difference is very clear and specific. I don't think that sensual and aesthetic attraction are generally strong or enduring enough to make allosexual people reflect about them deeply (contrary to their platonic, romantic and sexual attraction).

Ok, so this has to do something with religion and I'll shoehorn something in about aromanticism... Last Friday I saw all these guys running around with roses in the public, for real. What was this again? Oh... of course. Then I wondered if Valentine's Day isn't like in a really bad time of the year! Still deep in the winter!!! Where do you get the roses from? ? + ❄️ = ? This tradition must be relatively modern. Only after the invention of air cargo ... or at least greenhouses. Is this perhaps ... a celebration of romantic craziness? This is true only for the Northern Hemisphere, of course. Only logically, on the Southern Hemisphere there are some Wiccans and Celtic neopagans etc. who celebrate Beltane on 31 October / 1 November. It switched places with Samhain (Halloween) for them. Sooo... shouldn't Valentine's Day be on a different date for the Southern Hemisphere, too? Like on 14 August? Then we could transport via air cargo the roses that naturally bloom in the Northern Hemisphere's summer to the Southern Hemisphere. And the other way around. Wouldn't that be great?

Normal as “alloromantic”... I find also it rather difficult to distinguish schroromanticism as described in the original post from alloromanticism or greyromanticism (greyromanticism if 6 [romantic] crushes over the course of many, many years are a bit on the low side? Don’t know how many are typical…).

quio-* seems, if we want an analogy to quantum mechanics, more like the particle-wave duality.

A few questions about schroromanticism: (1) If the word is, at the end, an analogy to Schroedinger’s cat, is the schroromantic person in something analogous to a quantum state like ψ = 1/√ 2 ( |romantic〉+ |aromantic〉)? (2) Can it be some other combination of those eigenstates? Or is it, as above 50% - 50% ? Maybe it’s rather ψ = x |romantic〉+ y |aromantic〉) with x² + y² = 1. (3) Is there something corresponding to the collapse of the wave function? Yes, I'm really wondering if I missed something. I haven’t seen anything that corresponds to the wave function collapse by quantum measurement in the description of schroromanticism!? (4) But if there is indeed some kind of collapse of the schroromantic’s wave function, what happens after that? Repeated quantum measurements afterwards would yield the same eigenvalue (0 or 1) or eigenstate (either be |romantic〉or |aromantic〉). Just like with Schrödinger’s cat: |dead〉or |alive〉! (5) Yes, (3) and (4) do fit for Schroedinger’s dating where people can look back at the event afterwards, and then can determine what it truly was. Again, how does this apply to schroromanticism?

What does "X doesn't exist" even mean if X is class? Witches don't exist Numbers don't exist Vegetables don't exist Something different each time. If it's like 1. then I agree that "Gray-romantics don't exist!" implies "You are not gray-romantic!". But if it's like 2 or 3, then no. PS: in the aro-community the label "gray-romantic" is widely accepted and it would be a very unpopular opinion to challenge it. But aren't there labels that would strike us as "strange"? Do we have to accept all labels without criticism? Or is it at least okay if we suspect satire (this suspicion can be wrong! So is it the lesser evil to be a "victim" of satire?) if the definition of the label contradicts mainstream aro ideas?

On a more serious note, “schromantic” is mentioned in “The Invisible Orientation” book: * Participants were allowed to choose more than one answer. Some people aren’t sure how to describe their romantic orientation, or they reject the idea of specifically defining their attraction patterns, don’t find any of the existing definitions useful in describing their feelings, or don’t know whether they have a preferred gender or set of genders. A variety of creative ways exist to express this ambiguity. Terms that have been seen in asexual, aromantic, and questioning circles include WTFromantic, quoiromantic, ambiguously romantic, and Schromantic (describing romanticism in terms of Schrödinger’s cat[3] as having the possibility of being romantic and aromantic at the same time). and probably “schroromantic” is a variant word of “schromantic”?

That sounds very interesting. Thank you for raising awareness about this ignored yet fascinating and important romantic orientation! But I must unveil my former ignorance in this matter and admit that I had never heard “schroromantic” (not to be confused with “schromantic”, a relatively popular and mainstream romantic orientation) until a month ago! Back then some other schroromantic mentioned it. I was surprised and, as usual, first looked it up in “The Uplifting Aro Primer for Times of Need” by Arthur Frogg – yet it was nowhere mentioned in there. And then I wondered if schroromanticism is even real… The schroromanticism issue troubled me and I did not sleep well that night. I always thought myself well-educated about romantic orientations and often boasted that I knew every single one of them! Yet here I was, having never heard anything about schroromanticism. And even having serious doubts about it. I woke up at 4 am after having a nightmare how I deeply offended a schroromantic by ignorantly questioning the very existence of their romantic orientation! And mocking them! Then I went down into the dungeon of my house and consulted my private library. And sure, I did make a find. Schroromanticism was mentioned in a footnote on page 3784 in “The Grand Compendium of Aromantic Knowledge and Lore both Familiar and Arcane” … and I can tell you what was written there exactly fits your own description! So though I am not a schroromantic and was very ignorant about schroromanticism, please note that I have educated myself and now fully support schroromanticism as a concept. tl;dr schroromantic people exist and are valid!

Öööööh... another early sign that I'm aro: I find the word "romantic" has a much nicer vibe to it if written with umlauts: römäntic or with a slashed o: rømantic or with haceks: řomantič or with misused Cyrillic letters: ЯOMДИTIC

I'm gonna say that this is even more simple. If an alloromantic comes here and asks a question, it does cost those who write a decent answer time and effort. I don't think that it is rude not to put in this effort and time. This is an extra-courtesy on top of polite behavior. What can justifiably regarded as rude is that we make a lot of disparaging comments about romantic love and associated behavior. This is something we do actively. It can be excused perhaps because this is a little club here – we don't like plaster the city with giant aro billboards at Valentine's day (“BUTTERFLIES ? in your STOMACH?? ? No, you confuse that with HELICOBACTER!”), run aro TV ads or Google adwords (so that when searching for "crush" you get a link to a site that informs you about "the dangers of romantic love").

Likely most people don't think so far and instead simply conflate sex and gender on the concept-level, but okay... now we're back to if gender should be seen as an ascription by society or rather as a self-concept (self-description)? There is an ascription/self-concept-spectrum for social groupings: Economic class is mostly ascribed (with some odd exceptions like Bruce Springsteen is accepted to implicitly identify as "working class" though he's objectively wealthy). Some is more in-between: you can call yourself a "nerd", and you may be called a "nerd" by others - no matter how you reject that label. Religious group is mostly accepted as a pure self-concept (self-description). Certainly, saying to Tiger Woods that he's not a real Buddhist is regarded as a very aggressive comment, a personal attack, while saying to Bruce Springsteen that he isn't really working class would be accepted. I obviously don't know what every trans person or everyone who deeply engaged with their gender thinks about this. But the current trans mainstream idea is from my observation that gender should be a self-concept (therefore, what TripleA wrote is not mainstream). That is, we should apply neither the idea of a brain sex nor the "if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's a duck" approach (for an extreme example see here. semi-NSFW). Of course, here the usual definitional-loop-problem "Let's X-people decide what 'X' means... doesn't that sound fair? But ... but ... how do we then know who belongs to X in the first place?" rears its ugly head. In sum, I don't think the trans mainstream idea of gender can be logically defined and defended. Sounds hostile, but I'm really willing to change my mind, if someone can give me a coherent definition / justification "It's not logically coherent" is not sooo bad. It's only sounds bad because of the idealisation of Enlightenment rationalism in our culture. It can be like the concept of "free will", which can only be grasped in a mystical sense but then is (probably) too important to be simply dropped.

A lot of strange romantic insider jokes revolve around "still be friends".

Whatever mismatch is felt here, it might in some (?) cases be just like... noticed ... without any distressing feelings, aka dysphoria. A major problem is the terminology "gender assigned at birth". Because the the state doesn't put "gender" in birth certificates, passports, ID cards. Instead it says "sex" here. So they assign (?) sex. Or maybe they rather determine (?) it. Which complicates everything again. Because would it make you trans if it said "sex: male" in your official documents? Or would you rather think that someone made a rather obvious mistake? If sex is not real, it would be a strange situation. Like the world's government believing that humans can be classified according to fantasy races. As if they wrote "race: forest elf" in your birth certificate and truly, truly wholeheartedly believed that you are literally, objectively a forest elf.

But "significant" here means "statistically significant", which I don't deny. What I mean is that by examining the brain you cannot conclude what the person's native language is. It gives you only a rough estimate better than pure chance.

The weirdest thing is that the other person makes it feel as something enormous was at stake. It's as "enjoyable" as a job interview to me. You're supposed to sell yourself, to dress and impress. With the difference that the job interview can lead to something very desirable. I wouldn't react as negative as dread/anxiety/nausea (anymore), but more like annoyed / uncomfortable. I don't personally understand how some aros manage those situations fine, but some do.

First, I wonder if there's any evidence for the brain having a sex (in the sense of structural differences). Then it would only explain the feeling of being male / female. But there are many more genders. Does "genderfluid", "agender", "bigender", "pangender" etc., which are all supposed to be different, in each case relate to a certain brain structure? It seems more like a social thing to me. PS: if physicalism is true, there would, of course, by definition be a specific difference between the brains of those who identify as "pangender" and those who identify as "agender". But we don't mean that, right? Like we don't talk about the brain difference between Spanish and English-speakers, which is not something on the level of structural difference we can observe with current technology. Not everyone who fails to conform to the assumptions/stereotypes about their sex and has (even serious) problems with that fact has the desire to identify with a different gender. So much is certain. Also I don't know if feeling gender-dysphoria is a necessary condition of being trans. And if it were as you say, then removing the social pressure would mean there wouldn't be any more trans people. But as said before, that's not a definition. What social roles qualify as "gender"? Only a small subset. Belonging to the demi-monde, being an "IT nerd" or being a healer/shaman... those are all social roles in different cultures, which don't have anything to do with gender. Intuitively it is clear that if we learn what "two-spirit" means we recognize it as gender-related or as a gender. But what might be a precise definition of "gender"? An understatement, imho.

Everyone uses it slightly differently. It is very mystifying. "Aromanticism" is a straight-forward and simple term compared to "gender"! The only commonality is that gender is some sort of social grouping. But that's not a definition. Because the question arises what kind of social groupings qualify as "gender"? Certainly "Trekkie", while it can refer to a social grouping, is not regarded as a gender - in contrast to "woman", "man" or "kathoey" (I think). So though I've never seen this stated explicitly, gender seems (?) to retain some connection to biological sex*. Like, it has to be inspired by or be in analogy to the social grouping arising from distinguishing people by their biological sex. Maybe like we talk about "parent", which is inspired by biological parenthood, but can also refer to something social and legal, as with adoptive parents. If we drop that, gender can only be accepted as an intuitive, primitive notion (a concept that can not be defined in terms of previously defined concepts). * Some claim that biological sex is socially constructed. This is a very complex question and touches the deepest philosophical issues of scientific anti-realism and the nature of truth. In a mathematical model for population genetics, (binary) biological sex is used and not gender. So isn't biological sex a real, objective, observable property? Yeah, but as we see with superseded scientific theories like classical mechanics, just because a model can be successfully applied and make correct predictions, it does not mean its concepts are real (Newtonian force with its instantaneous action is not real). Still biological sex isn't as abstract and remote as Newtonian force. I certainly think in concepts like "biologically male". It's part of normal life, e.g.: As biologically male I don't need cervical cancer screening. There are exceptions of course, but they're so rare I do not think they apply to me in the absence of any evidence. No. I do not experience any sense of gender. So I go with the biological sex: male. Where I live biological sex is the brand name and gender is the knock-off. ?‍♂️

Well, in this case it would be far-fetched to suspect it. But as my last obviously satirical post in this thread (which some people still took at face value) made clear, I’m in general not so convinced by this line of reasoning. The usual procedure in a democracy is that changes in societal attitudes lead to changes in the law. But the reverse is also true, and to some degree dangerous. I gave the example of the ban of the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization according to the Yarovaya law which is easy to make sound reasonable. Any argument against it OTOH will sound long-winded, abstract and dogmatic. The problem is … it comes from … Putin! I simply don’t think that Putin has the well-being of his citizens in mind, but rather it’s another attempt to define what it means to be a “good Russian” (= change the public opinion in a way that’s useful to him), to put it very mildly.

I can’t wrap my head around this “gender assigned at birth”. Example: Mary Read was born in Kingdom of England in 1685. Her mother had married a sailor and had a son.[1] After her husband disappeared at sea, Mary's mother became pregnant after an extramarital love affair. Read's mother attempted to hide the pregnancy by going to live with friends in the country. Shortly thereafter, her son died, and she gave birth to Mary. In financial distress, her mother decided to disguise Mary as her dead son, in order to receive monetary support from her late husband's mother. The grandmother was apparently fooled, and mother and daughter lived on the inheritance into Mary's teen years. Dressed as a boy, Read found work as a foot-boy, and, then, employment on a ship. Without fixing the whole thing by biological sex, I don’t see how to make sense of the trans label when confronted with stories like this. Certainly, if Mary Read herself only reluctantly took part in this whole deception and it made her uncomfortable that people regarded her as a boy/man (male = the gender she was assigned to at birth), it does not feel right to call her a trans woman.

In the wilderness of nature, having no functional legs puts you at a disadvantage. Autism probably not. I think that‘s an important difference, which the social model of disability as described in the Wikipedia article, does not address.

Well, the female-male duality is a huge progress compared to the following: It was necessary for woman to be made, as the Scripture says, as a "helper" to man; not, indeed, as a helpmate in other works, as some say, since man can be more efficiently helped by another man in other works; but as a helper in the work of generation. – Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologiae, First Part, Question 92 but it still strikes me as a bit archaic.