SilenceRadio

I leave for some hours, and it's already rather active... Oh no, Teen Corners are too powerful. Had a fire drill today as well. That allowed me to talk to some more people at my new school.

I've seen more complaints of the sentence than the sentence itself, though I imagine that's because I'm not that connected to the LGBT+ community to begin with. I don't particularly like the way it feels defensive to me. As if my worth hinged on "love", and if it isn't romantic, it has to be another form of love. Like, sure, love might've been part of the reason why I consider myself not cis, but alienation from love is just as much a part of my experience. To be fair, I already associate the slogan "attraction is attraction (is attraction)" with the idea that some people don't experience attraction that can be differentiated into multiple types, and that all they feel is "attraction" as one thing.

A Teen Corner I can actually keep up with? That's neat. I was desperately trying not to think of that remix.

I'm sure some people would see that outside of the scope of polyamory, but there are enough people in aro discussions from what I've seen who are interested in deconstructing the idea that sexual and/or romantic relationships are the only ones that "count" as polyamory. As for the "can't give them the stuff they want", I don't think that has to be the case, as I know many aro or not people who are seeking these family/QP groups.

First, I'd like to elaborate that no one but you can figure out whether you are aro or not. There isn't anything that can "make" you aro or not aro, except taking or rejecting the label. If you want to identify as aro and/or feel like it's a word that fits you, you can. Second, what constitutes as "romantic" is up for interpretation. "Romantic" is a way we can categorize feelings, but it's not anything that is inherent to them. That means that whether you've experienced romantic feelings or not is something only you can determine. Finally, there are varied forms of love; romantic love isn't the only one.

I've seen this talked about here. To be fair, I never expected romance in media to be highly relate to most non-aro folks.

I used to identify as aroace. These days, not so much: I consider myself "asexual" only. Yet my experience with romance hasn't changed: I still enjoy fictional romance from times to times, still don't want a romantic relationship, still reject "romantic attraction" as one coherent thing, still not keen on "love" (and just about anything) as something fundamental to humans. It just so happens that I now consider these experiences to be ace ones for me. I've stopped calling myself aro for multiple reasons: The dual orientation framework of [romantic orientation] + [sexual orientation] was the first one I got introduced to. Later on, I realized that some people lacked sexual attraction, yet still called themselves heterosexual, bisexual, pansexual. Sexual orientation described the gender(s) they were oriented to. I liked that idea, as long as it wasn't universalized, and it made much more sense to me, especially since I just... couldn't conceptualize my own experience with the concept of "romantic orientation". I'm not exactly sure why, but I felt alienated from that framework. It was like separating two things that were one and the same for me, so I dropped it. I was afraid that if I called myself aromantic, people would interpret my asexuality as merely pertaining to the way I feel about sex. I don't feel like reducing my asexuality to sex makes sense: my relationship to romance and my relationship to sexuality are one and the same. Each time I say I'm not interested in men nor women, my dad asks me if I'm asexual. I've had a friend wondering if I was asexual because I didn't want to date. I like having others considering my asexuality as something whole rather than a fragmented piece that can only be about sexuality. If non-aro bisexual people don't have to call themselves biromantic, I don't have to call myself aromantic. I felt dehumanized because of an experience I tied to my asexuality rather than my aromanticism. Even though I was equally fine with not wanting sex and not wanting to be in a romantic relationship, I struggled for months with something that treated my aromanticism as a default and my asexuality as a lie I had fabricated myself. I wasn't a witness to many debates regarding who was "truly" aro in the aro community, whereas I purposefully joined AVEN in a time where people kept debating the validity of the newly suggested definition and criticized the approach to identity that was what allowed me to consider myself (aro) ace in the first place. I associated asexuality with pain, and for a while going back to IDing as just aro felt appealing. That didn't last for long as I encountered one AVEN discussion that seemed to take romantic essentialism for granted (or at least, that's how I interpreted it), which broke the illusion that aromanticism was the only orientation I could claim without being implicitly told I was wrong. Regarding the medicalization of certain types of asexuality, that felt much closer to my experience as someone who briefly wondered if I could take meds to be (or not to be) asexual. I never considered my lack of romantic drive an issue that needed to be fixed: the only thing that needed fixing was how people felt about it. I was (and still am) in my late teens: romantic crushes are often experienced when you're young, so my aromanticism felt secure in a way my asexuality never did (I had a lot of "am I a late-bloomer?" doubts). And running away from it felt like defeat. I've felt like I could be aro for way longer than I've felt allowed to be ace, and so identifying as ace, just ace, without thinking of what the respectability-oriented alloromantic aces or anyone else would think... felt liberating. I feel like aro discussions tend to interest me more though, even two years after beginning to question my orientation. At first, when lurking AVEN, I distinctly remember feeling alienated from all the romance talk. I suppose I've become more accepting of romance as I questioned my orientation? I don't know if it's because I magically keep spending time with just aro aces and very few alloromantic aces in ace communities, though. Most alloromantic aces are single, and some of them either have given up or aren't interested in a romantic relationship, so I've never felt odd for that.

Here's a survey on gray identities (such as grayromanticism and gray-asexuality).

There was a whole discussion regarding the ace/aro distinction in the comment section of this post. Aroaces feeling like a misrepresentation of aces or aros is a long-running issue.

But all the food will taste bad. I can convince my cat to stay on my lap without them scratching me or wanting to leave.

"Everything you touch becomes a pencil"

Sounds harsh. I know some trans people who wonder if they're faking the faking just so that they can think they're like other trans people who experience impostor syndrome... sometimes it goes that far. I feel that too, I can't present how I want to so I feel like I can't really correct people on my pronouns because my brain just goes "well, you look like your AGAB" and throws a lot of internalized transphobia at me. It is always important to remember that gender =/= presentation,but it can be hard when self doubt creeps in. I suppose that's part of the "gender trinary" I'm starting to hear about. Pronouns aren't meant to be "earned". We wouldn't tell cis women that they must dress very femininely in order to be gendered correctly, so I would extend that to nonbinary people. There isn't one single "nonbinary look" because there isn't one single nonbinary gender (and even if there were, that would still be incorrect, as people who belong to same gender group tend to still be varied). Plenty of nonbinary people "look like their AGAB", but I wouldn't argue that it means they aren't nonbinary, so I can at the very least avoid invalidating myself because of what I look like. And that doesn't just apply to nonbinary people, but to trans people of all kinds. Closeted trans men and women aren't less of their genders because they can't express themselves, or feel fine dressing the way they always have. Gender is an internal experience, in spite of what we've been taught.

It's my AVEN username. I kept it even though the original context for it doesn't make much sense on Arocalypse... I think that's when I realized that maybe the context wasn't as relevant as I thought it was. Originally meant it to be "RadioSilence", but it had been taken on the other website, so I wrote it in French instead. I just wanted something related to the silence, and so I picked that.

It's an extremely common experience (and one I'm currently struggling with a lot). Doubting doesn't necessarily negate who you are. Impostor syndrome is easy to have when you don't (always, fully) identify with the gender you were assigned at birth, because we get a lot of messages on how being trans and/or nonbinary is either not possible, or that we need specific requirements in order to be so, and we're afraid of not being the gender(s) or lack thereof that we want to be or feel we are. But that sort of doubt seems to be common enough for some people to consider it a "symptom of being trans", so I wouldn't worry too much. Here's a non-exhaustive list of a couple of things I tend to do or tell myself: Weak or absent gender dysphoria I don't consider myself to have gender dysphoria, because I don't feel like the discomfort that I have about gender is significant enough or particularly different from cis people. That doesn't really matter anyway, since I don't believe that you need to have gender dysphoria toward your assigned gender in order to be trans/nonbinary. That's partially because multigender people who ID with their AGAB are a thing, and partially because requiring that one applies a medicalized concept that is not universal to trans/nonbinary people to their experience in order for it to count doesn't appeal to me at all. You don't need to prove your pain (which can be a hard task) or to experience it to deserve being recognized as your gender identity. Gender dysphoria can come and go as well: it's not because you're not upset everytime you're misgendered that you're not gender dysphoric. Discomfort with your assigned gender, your AGAB feeling "off" to you, preferring pronouns and/or gendered terms not typically aligned with your assigned gender, feeling more authentic as a different gender or as none... there are many ways one can be trans/nonbinary, and all of these ways are valid reasons to ID that way. Even if you don't seem to fit any narrative, there's always the possibility of carving a new one. Lack of evidence, feeling the need to prove your gender(s) or lack thereof Gender is an internal experience, and therefore it is quite hard to attempt to prove it. We often assume that we're cis until proven otherwise, which can make sense at first but is overtly prioritizing one option over another. Part of the reason why I find it hard to identify as cis again isn't because it's obvious that I'm not cis, but because I can't find any good reason to. Everytime I've tried to rationalize it, it was either through a narrow understanding of gender ("I have no body dysphoria and feels nothing gender-wise, therefore I am cis") or by acting as if I had some "duty" to be cis to "prove" that cis people could question their gender for a long while and prove other gendered expectations wrong. But personal identification shouldn't be based on the comfort of others. And trying to find out if me being nonbinary is due to internalized prejudice (despite still partially IDing with my AGAB and always having had respect for people regardless of their gender) doesn't really lead me anywhere, because no one can actually fully work out on their biases and completely get rid of them. It's a life-long process. I'll never be introspective enough for some people. That shouldn't stop me from exploring non-cis possibilities, especially because... ...that internalized prejudice could actually be transmisia! Thinking that it's fine for other people to be trans/nonbinary but that I couldn't possibly be that, be an "Other", fall outside "the norm"... that's transmisia. So even if I somehow convinced myself that I should be cis, I at least owe it to myself and others to work on that sort of prejudice, and IDing as nonbinary even for a while wouldn't work against that goal at all, quite the opposite. It's not because you can be cis that you should. Your experiences can be close to cis people's without you having to be cis because gender is a spectrum and nonbinary is a broad umbrella with a lot of varied experiences that can sometimes be very different from each other. Gender can be fluid and abstract instead of static and unchanging. You don't need to have had "signs" that you were trans when you were younger in order for the person you are now to be who they are. You don't need to have an origin story in order for the way you exist now to matter. The past shouldn't hold you back from doing what you feel is best for you. As I said before, sometimes it doesn't make much sense to consider myself cis. One trick I've managed to do sometimes is look at different genders that I tend to feel alienated from and see if that sort of alienation is similar toward my assigned gender. It can allow myself not to take being cis for granted and recognize how the arguments for me being nonbinary may not be so bad compared to the ones for me being cis. Alternatively, when I invalidate myself because I don't do something or feel something that I "should", I ask myself if I would expect the same from a cis person and if I would still respect their identity. I believe cis women can be okay with being misgendered and even like it while still being cis women, but suddenly I don't react when I'm misgendered and that means I'm not nonbinary? Yeah, something's off here. Spotting double standards like this is satisfying to me. Try to surround yourself with nonbinary-related stuff, whatever that might mean for you. Normalizing the existence of nonbinary people, by reading about nonbinary folks discussing with each other for example about community issues or interacting with them, helps me feel less like a fraud and makes me recognize that nonbinary people are just part of the gender diversity like cis and (other) trans people. On being "really trans/nonbinary" It's quite easy to think of oneself as "just a faker". That we're simply mistaken in our identities, and that in reality we don't fit the "rules" for being trans/nonbinary. Except there is no rule, other than considering yourself a trans and/or nonbinary person. The choice is ours. No transmedicalist, no TERF, no other trans person, no one, can determine what your gender is, but you. I know that makes it harder to deal with self-doubt for me, because that means I am my own critic. Sometimes, a good night sleep's is enough to stop the doubt for a moment, but it doesn't always eliminate it. I don't think you can even fully do that. Ultimately, it's okay to doubt, because that means we recognize how important it is, that we're taking it seriously... not that it's a requirement either. Some people invalidate themselves on not being serious enough, me included. I think that stems from the same thing that requires "proof" for being trans, but takes cisness for granted. Sometimes, when I believe I'm just a cis person pretending to be nonbinary, I remind myself how harmful the idea of "real trans people" is and how my own internalized transmisia might perpetuate that. People feeling more free to do things about gender they wouldn't have done otherwise is a good thing, and restricting gender just reinforces the norms that hurt... well, a lot of people, including trans/nonbinary people. Using those more "logical" arguments can sometimes work for a while when I'm not particularly confident about being nonbinary. Even if I find out I'm not nonbinary, then that's fine, as long as it's what I actively want and prefer. For some of us, exploring our gender is less a straight line and more back-and-forths. That's okay, what matters is doing what makes you happy gender-wise. I like to remind myself how happier I am being nonbinary, and how I feel much better like this. Even if I was somehow some "cis invader", I feel like it'd be worth it for how pleased it makes me (despite the times when I'm not so pleased by it). Hopefully that might give you some food for thoughts, or perhaps I have missed the mark. That would depend on the kinds of doubts you have. Then again, I've identified as nonbinary for... uh... at least two weeks? after questioning my gender for an entire year, so I'm probably no authority on the matter.

Oh boy, do I relate. Makes sense! Labels are tools, after all.

I identified as nonbinary after I conceived of myself as aro, and I've never been interested in having a romantic relationship ever since I was a kid, so I don't relate much to that, though I can totally get how relieving it can be to understand that being (romantically) loved isn't a requirement for a fulfilling life. I feel like it was the opposite, in fact. That since I realized I wasn't interested in partnering with anyone, there wasn't much as much of a need to apply the concept of gender to myself. Some orientations are based on your own gender in addition to others (straight, gay, lesbian...) and some aren't (ace, aro, bi, pan, which are gender neutral in a way). Granted, it's not the sole reason as to why I'm nonbinary, but I feel like it was a small factor. I've seen someone talk about that before:

Hi @lovelyleaf! Nice to see you here. Have you looked into "quoiromantic"?

Here's a survey on quoi identity. You can find more info on "quoi" here.

Jim, James, Jacob, Jo, John(ny)/Jones, Jack, Jay, Jasper, Jeff, Jeremy/Jeremiah, Jessie, Joel, Julian...