Rook on the Hook

I haven't been playing a ton of games lately because I've been on the road so much, but back before it picked up again I was playing a ton of Deep Rock Galactic, Red Dead Redemption 2, Stardew Valley, Resident Evil 2 and Dead By Daylight. When I get a little more free time I want to replay Enderal and Fallout: New Vegas, as well as finish all the DLC for Control.

I had a black ace ring I wore for a few years, but unfortunately my hands somehow grew like 4 ring sizes and it no longer fits. I've been thinking about getting a green tungsten ring (as I just don't care for the aesthetics of white rings--especially on my own skin tone--and I think green rings are cooler and fit the symbolism of the flag better) but they're somewhat pricey and between lifting pretty frequently and getting back into martial arts I worry about outgrowing it again. I don't really have any other pride stuff aside from the D20s I've lined up in a vague approximation of the aro and ace flag because it just organically happened that I have green, purple, white and steel dice, but I am in the market for either an aro flag pin or a patch to throw on my bomber jacket!

I've been playing around with lighting and linework a lot lately to try and prep for drawing a short, noir-inspired comic, so here's some recent art of one of my aro characters, Kit! My old felt pens were pretty dry and crusty but I had an absolute blast breaking them out again.

I definitely relate. The years I spent living as a butch woman in my exceedingly male-dominated drone and GIS classes were isolating, to say the least, and now being the only trans man on any given construction site can be challenging. If it's any comfort, I've met a ton of women in STEM (queer and otherwise) working in the environmental industry. Geotechnical engineering, archaeology and biology in particular seem to have pretty even gender-ratios in my experience. And yeah, nothing but love to the theatre gays but it's very weird going online and seeing that all the STEM and especially the blue collar gays who make up my IRL queer community are completely absent from the discussion and culture.

Big fan of Nico Sanjrani in the Expanse TV show. They have like 5 minutes of screen time and are a somewhat morally dubious person but seeing a middle aged character who I could relate both my body and gender presentation so heavily to at that point in my transition hit me really, really hard when I first watched the show. It was one of those "oh!! Maybe I do have a future ahead of me after all!" moments.

As an aro who used to be very into MBTI this thread feels very targeted XD I don't really put a huge stake in MBTI anymore, but I'm an ISTP, and every other ISTP I know is pretty apathetic about dating, whether they're aro or not. I also know an aro INTP and INFP, an aro-spec ESTP, and an ace INFJ.

Welcome to the community! I also figured out I was ace-spec when I was pretty young (15 or 16, if memory serves, though I didn't accept that I was aro until I was 19 or 20), and even though I figured it out through having a very openly ace friend, it was still pretty isolating at the time. That said, I'm very happy to say it's gotten way easier now. I'm surrounded by friends who both know and respect my orientation, having tons of fellow aro and ace-spec friends, and while I was met with the expected "You're still young/you haven't met the right person yet" rhetoric I expected when I initially came out to my family, that's gotten better with time as well. I've never made a particularly large deal of coming out as aro and ace-spec. I usually just mention it offhandedly whenever it's relevant (whether I explicitly label myself as aro versus just saying sex and dating aren't in my list of priorities really depends on the audience), or come out by making a joke about it. It's one of those things that gets easier and easier the more you do it, and I've been doing it for so long that I'm really not phased when people react poorly anymore. There just isn't anything people can say to me that I haven't already heard countless times, and having actually changed my mind on my sexuality to a certain degree, "You'll change your mind!" really doesn't feel like a bombshell gotcha anymore. Like okay? If that bridge actually exists I'll cross it, but it's silly to define my lived experiences based on hypotheticals, and it would've been equally silly to do so back when I identified as ace.

I was just going to say that Elatsoe's been on my reading list for ages now! I'll have to check out A Snake Falls to Earth as well. I've also been meaning to check out some of Becky Chambers work too, so maybe I'll start with To Be Taught, If Fortunate. For my part, I haven't read many published books with canon aspec representation, but a lot of my writing buddies either are aspec or write aspec characters, so I've read a ton of aspec literature outside of traditional publishing, to the extent that I frequently forget just how dire the aspec rep situation is in the wider world. Like, I could name at least 30 canonically aspec characters but I don't think I could point to any published work and go "This is good aro and/or ace rep" outside of my own headcanons. All my aspec rep has been homegrown, and while there's something really special and authentic about that, it doesn't exactly do anything for wider cultural conversations about aromanticism and asexuality.

Far, far moreso for my sexual orientation than my romantic one, but my gender absolutely affects how my aromanticism is perceived. Being very traditionally masc-presenting to the point that people generally assume I'm a cishet man while being aromantic and--if not quite allosexual, greysexual and sex favorable enough that most people would never know otherwise--means unavoidably dealing with the stereotype of being a misogynistic player who sees women as only sexual objects to be used, whose sexuality is inherently predatory because it's not "redeemed" by romantic love. It's certainly not a stereotype exclusive to men (the predatory lesbian stereotype comes to mind), but it's been pretty telling just how differently people treat my orientation since transitioning. At the same time, I find myself having to justify my complete disinterest in romance a lot less often than I did when living as a woman. No one expects me to have been daydreaming of my wedding day since I was a little kid anymore, and people just accept at face value that I'm more focused on other things. It's really a double-edged sword, where I can be unapologetically aro without question so long as I just never talk about my sexuality. And that's not only pertaining to circles where I'm stealth. Transphobia and gender essentialism can combine with stereotypes about aros in some pretty ugly ways, and it's unfortunately not uncommon to run into some really vile assumptions in spaces I would have assumed were safe. I can only imagine how much worse it is for transfemmes, who are automatically assumed to be dangerous and predatory even before you throw aromanticism into the mix--doubly so for transfemmes of color. All that said, I do sometimes wonder if having to understand my romantic and sexual orientation as nuanced things on a broad and non-linear spectrum is at all related to my comfort with not putting a strict label on my gender. It definitely seems like my allo trans friends are a lot more deadset on having the perfect label for their gender than I am. I'm already living in shades of grey, so why would I sweat whether I'm nonbinary or not when the answer has no bearing on what pronouns I like and what I want from my body?

Personally, I find it pretty easy and interesting writing established couples--especially those who are well past the honeymoon phase--but I cannot for the life of me write a story about people actively falling in love because I just don't have that experience. Like, the experience of caring deeply about a person and the challenges of dealing with all their idiosyncracies and difficulties is something I've lived, and don't think changes all that much between romantic, close or queerplatonic, nor familial relationships, but it is very hard to write a traditional love story because such stories are actively alienating to me. It's like trying to paint a picture with colors I can't see. I might get the shape of things right, but it's just not going to be emotionally resonant in the same way. Honestly though, I'm perfectly happy with that. Writing people who've been together a long time tends to mesh really well with the themes I gravitate towards. There's definitely a lot of compelling ways to approach the idea of the inherent tragedy and reward of caring deeply about other difficult and damaged people through the lens of falling in love, but I think older couples really lend themselves to exploring the work necessary to make any relationship work and lends it a more hopeful tone where yes, it's hard, and yes, the world can be brutally unfair, but people find ways to persist and find peace. Roleplaying's a totally different ballgame though. The quicker, more improvisational pace really throws a wrench into things for me, and while I do have canonically alloro tabletop characters, I just don't explore romance in their stories, and the majority of my funky lil guys wind up being arospec by default. While it can make GMing for players who want romantic subplots more challenging, it's never really an obstacle when playing, as both of my gaming groups know I'm aromantic and don't try to actively engage my characters with romance. Having that understanding goes a long way, and it even makes it so we can still all enjoy playing systems that are mechanically geared towards romance. Hell, one of my favorite TTRPG characters came out of such a system, and having an incredibly oblivious aroace in the cast was a fun contrast with all the other characters and suited her story role as the well-meaning but profoundly out-of-touch source of increasingly comical problems really well.

oh that's super cool! I've actually been thinking about starting a bone collection myself, I just don't know if I have the storage space for a bunch of long bones in addition to my reference collection of local flintknapping materials.

Science, you say? I'm an archaeologist, and do paleontological monitoring on the side. I don't really get to do much serious scientific analysis, since I work in environmental compliance and mostly do fieldwork, but I love the more technical side of things and have an academic background in paleoclimatology. The cool part about being an aro arch is that I can just say yes to digging holes in the desert for months at a time without worrying about how it would affect my partner XD

I had such major issues with being assumed to be a completely sex-repulsed alloace after telling people I was aroace that I completely stopped publicly IDing as ace because people were being too weird about it. At least when I exclusively ID as aromantic and people have no idea what that is, I have the opportunity to explain it and what it means to me personally, rather than having stereotypes based off very limited representation automatically applied to me. That said, I do feel pretty fortunate in that I actually do have a lot of people in my life who understand it. It's partly because through sheer happenstance a lot of my friends are also aspec, but I also can't understate how much just being vocal about it and explaining things to people has made a difference in feeling understood in the long run. Maybe they don't totally get it, but I don't really need them to. Just knowing I won't have to give the Aromanticism 101 lecture if I want to talk about how being aro has affected some aspect of my everyday life is such a relief and it was so worth giving that Aromanticism 101 lecture upfront.

I want to like travelling alone, but it usually just winds up feeling like work, and a lot of the time, my travelling preference is not travelling at all. After weeks to months of living out of a cheap motel room, only able to keep in contact with loved ones over the phone, and no company off-work hours unless I want to navigate trying to meet strangers in a bar in what are usually pretty insular communities, the last thing I want to do is spend more time alone and away from home. Really, I think it would be accurate to say I like travelling alone a lot, but I do it so often that it's ruined as a hobby for me, just like I love hiking, but absolutely do not want to join my friends for a weekend hike after a 60 hour week of surveying in the hills. It's a factor in why I enjoy my job, not something I do for fun on my own time. If I'm going to go through the hassle and expense of even more travel, I want to do it with someone whose company I enjoy as a primarily social experience, be that friends or family. As far as day trips go though? I adore a solo adventure. I definitely appreciate when schedules line up and a friend can join me, but I love the freedom of just being able to go and do cool things, and I operate on the assumption that I'm going alone and if anyone I invited can make it it's an added bonus. All in all, I think my work-life affects how I travel far more than being aro does. Really, I think the only way my aromanticism plays into it is that I am a lot more free to take per diem work in the first place, as I don't have any obligations to a partner, and even that's specific to me being non-partnering.

Oldest here. I have a gay cousin on my dad's side and my paternal grandad was bi. One of my older cousins on my mom's side has conspicuously never had a partner though, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't kiiiind of hoping I might have a fellow aro or arospec.

I've absolutely felt this at times, being aroace and having a very nebulous gender (to the point where I've given up on labelling it beyond generally transmasc because waffling back and forth between "I'm just a very masc agender person" and "No I'm just a trans man with complex feelings towards gender" was getting exhausting and accomplishing nothing), but the thing that really helped me was recognizing that no... none of these identities are the absence of identity. Lack of attraction and lack of identification with a specific gendered identity, sure, but they still deeply color and affect our lives, and there are so many unique and interesting and deeply human aspects to being aro, ace or agender. Faced with such pervasive amatonormativity, allonormativity and gendering, not fitting into any of these molds is an important and significant identity and way of existing. In some ways, it can be more significant and affecting than just experiencing the expected things in a different way than expected.

Oh absolutely, and I think this is pretty natural. For me, on the occasion that I do describe myself with one of these labels, it's pretty invariably repulsed, but there's a lot more nuance to it than just "Yikes! Romance!" I'm always repulsed when it comes to romance and romantic intentions involving and/or directed at me, but when it comes to other people engaging in romance I'm generally pretty indifferent and sometimes favorable (though there can be and is a certain level of discomfort with certain expressions of it--which is something that isn't by any means a uniquely aro or even romance-repulsed aro experience--and a vague sense of discomfort with many of my culture's romantic norms), and when it comes to fiction it varies WILDLY depending on how it's executed and whether I was hardcore relating to a character only for their entire story and personality be absorbed by the dreaded obligatory romantic subplot -_- But in general when it comes to fiction I am more often than not mildly repulsed and a romance has to be either off to the side and not terribly relevant or really well executed to swing me to indifference or favor. Most of the time I just sit there like "...Can we please move on already?" or "Rest in peace well written friendship... you were nice while you lasted."

I currently wear a black ace ring (despite the fact that I mostly ID as aro with my aceness being a footnote) because it's the more recognized of the two rings and because black rings just look plain awesome, but I have contemplated getting an aro ring. I'm thinking I'm gonna opt for some sort of green metallic ring though, as I've not been able to find any white rings I like the look of, and while black represents aceness on the ace flag, white stands aesthetic and platonic attraction on the aro flag, whereas green is for aromanticism. I was able to find a few with all the flag colors but those were just a touch too blatant for my tastes. Plus I feel like anyone who knows the black ring would be able to deduce the meaning of the green ring. I have also contemplated trying to make my own white ring though, since I feel like with my mini painting skills I could successfully make a white ring that doesn't either look blank and underwhelming or garishly ornate and shiny.

To some extent yes. I think it would've saved me a lot of anxiety in dealing with realizing I was aro like 5 years into a relationship that had always been a little bit uncomfortable to begin through no fault of my partner's, and if I wasn't as romance repulsed as I am I think I might've easily gotten into some bad situations, but ultimately, I learned a lot of valuable things from those experiences, and it wasn't like I was unaware of aromanticism being a thing (I was quite lucky in that regard). I was just in denial, and I think I needed the time it took for me to come to terms with and embrace my aro identity, and ultimately benefited from that self-exploration.

I agree with pretty much everything mentioned, though some things I'd like to see that didn't get mentioned much (if at all): -More in-person networks of support. There are so few in-person aro events and groups to begin with, and of those, even fewer are focused around providing resources and aid to each other. Given that singleness is still very challenging to navigate, both socially and financially, in many places I feel there is a real need, and while I haven't been able to find any statistics on aro youths, if we assume that they overlap enough and are comparable with those of ace youths... yeah... it's not good, given that ace youths have a greater prevalence of anxiety and depression and a comparable suicide risk compared with LGBT+ youth in general (https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/asexual-and-ace-spectrum-youth/) . Especially given how AGGRESSIVELY amatonormative teen culture is and the pervasive message among teenagers (at least here in the U.S.) that your worth and likability are determined by whether you can get a romantic partner and that you are a worthless failure, I think it might even be harder for aro youths than ace youths, and between the invisibility of the aro community and the complete and utter lack of aro-specific resources and aid in the offline world, I worry for their mental health. -More uplifting of voices from non-Western/EuroAmerican cultures and voices of PoC aros and arospecs, alongside greater acknowledgement of how much our conceptions and definitions of what it means to be aromantic are deeply rooted in an often very white, western worldview. Furthermore, more educational information and resources in languages other than English, and, ideally, in formats that are accessible to people who might not have internet access. I want perspectives on and experiences of aromanticism from all over the world, and I want to understand the challenges that come from being aro in various cultures

I'm sure plenty of people already mentioned "Never Been in Love" by Will Jay and "I am Not a Robot" by Marina and the Diamonds, so here are some other songs that, while not really as distinctly aro to me, have resonated a LOT with my aro experience. "Run-Time" - Imogen Heap (cannot tell you how much this song resonated with me when I realized, in the middle of being in a 6 year long relationship, that I was aro) "Wish I Never Loved You 2.0" - J-Marin & Bolshiee (it is so wonderfully refreshing to find a song about the struggles of a toxic relationship and have it be EXPLICITLY platonic, and deal with that with the sheer emotional weight the topic deserves.) "Steady, As She Goes" - The Raconteurs (probably not the intention but GOD if this whole song doesn't feel like a critique of amatonormativity and the pressure to get married and have a spouse and just to be seen as normal and functional) "I'll Find a Way" - Zack Hemsey (okay the part I read as aro is a very minor part and could easily be read as romantic as well but it's an overall incredible and powerful song and the lines "You are not the only way to make me whole/And I won’t ever turn my heart to stone" resonate very deeply to me as an aromantic who cares very deeply about people but detests the idea of being incomplete without your "other half")

First off, be wary of any advice that involves doing weird exercises to temporarily deepen your voice or stretch out your vocal chords (like humming and tilting your head back, which is the one I see most often), these do work, but only temporarily and frankly not all that drastically, and can cause damage to the vocal chords. In general, if it hurts or is really tiring your voice out and leaving your hoarse, its not healthy for your voice. There are much healthier, more comfortable, and more sustainable ways to make your voice deeper and/or more masculine, and those are what you should focus on. There are a LOT of little technical things you can do, but I've found that it's really not all that complicated, and just takes practice and a lot of time spent goofing around with your voice. The main things to focus on are: 1.) Opening up your throat and relaxing the muscles as much as possible. This is by far the biggest thing that I feel changes the quality and depth of my voice--even my head voice sounds more masculine when I keep my throat relaxed. It can be hard to relax everything at first, especially if you're used to speaking with a really restricted throat, so one thing you can try is saying "Doh-pah," trying to go a little lower and more open each time you say it, until you can't feel any tension in your throat or neck. From there, just try and speak while keeping things just as relaxed. You'll probably find it's kind of hard to articulate and speak normally at first, but the more you do it, the more natural it gets and the easier you can switch to a nice open voice. If by chance you're a brass player like me, think about how you'd relax your throat to play a nice, resonant low note. 2.) Speak from your chest voice. If you're not sure how to switch into it, place a hand on your chest and just try to speak lower (but naturally and without forcing it too hard) until you can really feel your voice vibrating there. 3.) Use good breath support! I find a deeper voice takes way more air, and better breath support makes you sound much more confident--which I've found actually makes more of a difference in passing than vocal pitch alone. 4.) Try to keep your mouth a little bit more closed when you speak. It helps things resonate a bit more which can make things sound deeper. 5.) Imitate male voices you like! The way you speak is as important as the depth of the voice you speak with, and sometimes you can achieve a very masculine vibe even with a higher pitch. It's a way easier way to learn a more masculine inflection than trying to break down what a masculine inflection even is (which varies somewhat from place to place and is somewhat subjective in the first place) and it can just be plain fun. Learning to do impressions of other people's voices is also a great way to learn vocal control and how to manipulate your own voice (which will help with every other part of voice masculinization), and you can take bits and pieces of each until you have a voice that comes across as more masculine but still very personal and unique to you.

I think the easiest way to describe it is alone but not in isolation. Everything else is secondary. I just want a small, truly private space to myself that I have complete agency over--with easy access to at least some outdoor space--with an actual community around me where I don't have to drive or spend money just to spend time with people I care about and can rely on people and have people rely on me in turn. Unfortunately, with the way things are going in my area, I'll consider myself lucky if I can just share a reasonable space with a reasonable amount of roommates I get along well with in a location that leaves me with commutes that average less than 2 hours.

Initially I just kind of clung to the assumption that I was straight and labelled myself as such, even whilst having every identity my ace friend mentioned resonate way more with me. After a while I went "Well okay there's probably something to that but no way I'm ace right? I must be demi and hetero. Duh. That makes more sense than me just being straight therefore it is absolutely correct!" That went on for a frankly comical amount of time, where it got to the point where it's like "Okay if I'm demisexual I am EXTREMELY demisexual..." before I eventually just accepted that...yeah no. I'm just plain asexual. That made me question the assumption that I was heteroromantic, but, between assuming that the strong platonic love I felt for people must have been romantic because surely love that strong couldn't be for people who were jUsT fRiEnDs and really not wanting to reckon with what being aro might mean for my relationship, I came to the conclusion that because gender didn't make any difference to me, I must be panromantic. Flash forward a few years of feeling more and more trapped in my perfectly healthy and enjoyable relationship and feeling unreasonably weird and uncomfortable every time he started talking about the future and I decided to finally do some serious research into what being aro was like, and lo and behold it was all the story of my life.