The Newest Fabled Creature

There are some genderfluid people who may feel and even call themselves male/men, female/women, or non-binary when their fluidity lands them experiencing those genders, but then there are genderfluid people who only identify as genderfluid, even when they may feel some type of maleness or masculinity, or femaleness or femininity, or neutrality. A genderfluid individual who experiences being a man or a woman is a valid man or woman, but a genderfluid person who only labels themelf as genderfluid is completely valid as a genderfluid person, and is valid as non-binary(spec).

It always gave me a weird feeling, but yeah "pollination" is sometimes used as symbolism to not only sex, but usually conceiving a child. I wouldn't know exactly how it works other than the act of a bee pollinating a flower, to which that flower then has the potentiality of having babies, is probably why some people use it; but as Holmbo said, people don't usually actually talk about bees when using pollination in this format. The analogy is not used a lot, but I've read that type of symbolism in old literature before that was trying to kind of censor sex scenes. The bit about the flowers engaging in their own reproduction would be a lot more accurate and I believe in hindsight it would've been better to use than only using bees for any kind of alloromanticism/allosexuality or service, but there's just this weird insinuation about bees when they pollinate flowers that people often make sexual?? (As I stated above) It gets weird and I never found it ""sexual"" for a bee to do that, but with the symbolism of pollination some people have used the actual act of bees pollinating flowers to symbolize sex in some form or another, too. And the bird part I used to further the "birds and the bees" analogy and because they are typically the actual romantic "counter-part" to bees, where if people used "pollination" to describe sex then I just used birds since they're considered "romantic" (or at least some birds are); but other than that I kind of just threw birds in for the analogy. And thank you, I'm going to try to write the new poem very soon! I also think I could probably write something about how bees (aspec folk) are often having their actions taken as something romantic or sexual when we're not tryin' to be (like the act of a bee pollinating a flower).

Oh, I didn't write about the bees because I thought they were romantic-coded, although I can definitely see as why someone would see the poem as associating them as romantic creatures; so, I did fail in making that clear in the poem. I chose bees (and birds) because of the "birds and the bees" take that parents typically use to explain sex to their kids, which in a sense would tie back into romance because although sex isn't inherently tied to romance at all and is it's own separate thing, parents will usually tell their kids that you'll have sex with someone you "really love"; forgoing all nuance and complexity, such as people who have sex simply because they want to with no romantic love attached. I think I could write a poem about that all on it's own, actually. But, I don't truly know if this explanation is even a good concrete reason for the poem since as you said I could've potentially used vastly different symbolism that would've worked a bit better or more beautifully (especially with all of the facts centered around bees), but it's what I had in mind when writing it; but of course all kinds of interpretations are going to be born which I find amazing. Ooo, actually, you've promptly inspired me to want to write a poem about the aspecuality of bees. To be honest, I could've wrote a poem about the non-romantic life of a bee compared to a bird's, which usually there are birds who mate for life and definitely have babies. Now that I actually re-read what I wrote, although I'm not asexual myself, I can see that it can definitely be read as such! I'd say it's both an aromantic and asexual poem then! Or however else someone wants to interpret it really.

A Bird Beak and Bumble Wings by Memphis Lucas (original poem) I cannot understand the bumblebees Who fly in pairs, or more, to pollinate and make honey Who make more of themselves to love themselves, and to be proud of something I cannot understand the bumblebees Who can do great and beautiful things, sure Born out of passion and a love for birds Who settle down for life to raise young till they're matured I cannot understand the bumblebees For I would not be described as thee A reptile they'll call me, for lacking the love that helps those birds soar above to the trees with those bees A reptile I'll be, yes, for I am not a bird nor a bumblebee I've longed to be, for me I thought dead when I discovered that lack of passion in my heart A passion that made everything dubbed a bee or a bird, from the very start I cannot understand the bumblebees Because my passion is wrought with absorbing the sun Not from an internal feeling that I constantly see burned and burned till that light is completely done I myself can't fly, though I have seen others alike me able to rarely I wouldn't fly, I found, if I were able to No, I wouldn't fly, not even barely I cannot understand the bumblebees And I am not sorry for stating so It is not wrong to be a bird or a bee, of course, but it wrong to be a reptile, though? I have found so many passions of what I make, of what I love But that love doesn't make us what we are, for we would be naught if not for the sun above To be me is to free my skin of the prerequisite to being "alive" My aloneness is free, yes a loveless reptile me Than what could ever make a bird's beak sing or a bumble wing fly

I relate so heavily to how you write romance. I typically gravitate to writing my OCs already together, because it's really hard for me to write anyone falling in love. I have the picture in my mind of what it could potentially feel like and so look like, for two characters to fall in love, but at the same time I end up either writing some form of the characters experiencing alterous attraction (since that's what I mainly experience) or I write them as having a kind of familial bond that would be hard to label as "romantic" because of it. I love writing those types of emotions and relationships, but it's a real ass kicker if I had to write romance and someone who was astute enough recognized the emotions these characters are feeling as non-normative. I often write intimacy between characters no matter the relationship, too, and my alloro friends often assume the pairs as romantic immediately (which can get quite annoying), and you stating how you wrote a platonic pair that were an aroace woman and a gay man reminds me of the aroace man and questioning lesbian I recently wrote lol But that aside, I haven't dabbled into writing smut, nor explaining sexual attraction, in my works just yet. I think I would be fine at it? Like, Hell, I'm allosexual and I struggle in explaining sexual attraction all the time. Going a long time without writing can kind of hamper any confidence, especially in that regard, though. But, despite havin' no experience in that form of writing I think I could write more organic and sane sex, and even sane BDSM for that matter, than what 50 Shades of Grey or any Colleen Hoover book has.

So, I'm still questioning if I'm aplatonic(spec), and most of what I said earlier on this topic is still true. I have friends and I care about them deeply, but I don't have a desire necessarily to form new friends; I often let new people continue and maintain platonic contact with me at the start of knowing them, and usually that's kind of how I form new friendships. I found that I just have been growing more and more uninterested in making these new friendships, despite still liking meeting new people? People who I have known for quite a while, or a long time, I'll still maintain my own end of contact and routine, though it can feel like a contract of some kind sometimes, but it usually doesn't bother me as bad with the people I've known for a time. It's rare for me to want to suddenly be the person wanting to uphold a friendship via constantly texting, making up plans, or checkin' in on them when the relationship is fairly new, but it still happens from time to time. I guess that would be when I am experiencing platonic attraction. I'm a loveless aro and often completely remove myself from any kind of love rather radically, and so don't base my aromantic identity around experiencing platonic feelings or loving my family, even if those things could technically be applied to me. Someone stated how they weren't a pet person, and I'm the same way. Truly? All I want is a cactus (I had succulents but they kind of died on me 🥲), and not an animal I have to constantly pay attention to; like cats, dogs, rodents, or birds. I do often gravitate towards creatures that people advise to not pay any physical attention to at all (other than feeding them and cleaning up after them), like tarantulas, snakes, and fish. But, I usually just have a mild interest in them that quickly fades away.

For any poetry, prose, or short fiction enjoyers or writers on this forum, I thought we could have something to share our writings here that may, or may not, be connected to our aromanticism! If you don't have a poem, piece of prose, or short fiction yourself, then you can share your favorites from authors and talk about what makes you love the piece of literature so much! I was inspired to create this topic from a bar that has poetry nights and I recently have been getting back into the groove of writing because of it! This may not go anywhere, or has already been discussed before, but regardless welcome!

My dream job as a child was singing/becoming an actor, and although I have joined choirs and theater multiple times, I don't think having that as a career would be suitable to me, even though I think I'm somewhat good at both. One dream job that didn't change, even when I had become interested in other avenues, was writing. I'm not entirely sure if I can have a sustainable life off of my writing, but I'm going to try to earn an Associate of The Arts for English/Writing, and then hopefully transfer from my technical college to a four year school where I can just do my Junior and Senior years to get a Bachelor's degree. If I can't exactly live off of writing, I do want to venture more into social work and help organizations that fight for human rights. I did try to look into schools near me that had majors or minors in social justice, but sadly none did; but I can always do voluntary work, and have done some before, and could potentially get an actual job/role with an organization in the future.

Right??? Even when you thoroughly explain to someone how it would not work they still don't seem to grasp it? Like, it's alright if you don't understand, just don't tell me to fix myself basically. I actually hate the idea that "love triumphs over all" when it comes to robbing someone else of their agency. I do not like people that think I'll change my mind, just because they got their feels hurt from forming a crush on me, and I rejected them. I'm "sorry," but no one is special enough to make me change my mind. For me, not being interested in dating and not being able to fall in love is utterly non-negotiable. There is absolutely no compromise. I have told people that I'm single but that I wasn't interested in dating at all, and a few times people have come back to just bother me about it as if I would ever change my mind, and some had become harassment issues until I had to "act like a bitch" to run them off.

It's no problem! I've been trying to find aromantic books for quite a while now, too.

I cannot explain the level of aromantic vibes I get from Hobie Brown. I guess it's because of him being punk, and I get how he's very no labels and there's lots of punks in general who are like that, so when I say he feels very aro to me, or very non-binary to me even, I say it as not to actively label the character as such, but just what I connected with from his presentation (to which a few of the things about being punk is all about breaking binaries, restrictive systems, being anti-establishment/corporation, androgyny, DIY, and so many others things that I feel disrespectful not remembering to list). Also, what I love about his character so much was the nod to how he let Gwen crash with him, and at first you may think, "Oh? Why did you like that aspect?'' and it's because of how very trans-coded Gwen's story was that if you read her running away from her own universe being because her of father not being able to accept her at the time, then Hobie letting her take refuge with him at his place was because he saw her for who she was, and was one of the few people to immediately see her (which was what technically happened anyway, but yeah I loved it).

I absolutely love songs where they associate "dancing" with mingling, and so I often put songs about the singer not wanting to dance onto my aro playlist: We Don't have To Dance by Andy Black Dance With Me by Topline Addicts (another song that I added from this band was Bea Arthur) I Don't Wanna Dance by COIN But, I also love this band called Mom Rock and two songs I put on my playlist was Bullseye (the song says "Everyone has a heart the shape of a bullseye" which feels a bit amatonormative, but at the same time the people in the music video reject love letters and run from Cupid's bow n' arrow, so I thought it was still a great song to add) and Grand Romantic Life (very much either about someone who doesn't know they're aro or the singer could be interpreted as aro singing about allos).

I also had took part in some celebrity crush conversations to fit in, too. I also did the whole entire aromantic-moment-when-you-picked-who-was-your-crush thing, where I knew I didn't have a crush on this dude in middle school, but when my friends asked me who I liked I felt so on the spot that I picked some guy playing basketball during gym class lol It's kind of funny thinking back on it now. I knew the guy's name, but when I picked him all I said was, "That Guy™️ hunched over on the court." 💀

I haven't read this book yet that I'm about to suggest, so I don't know how good it is, but I have seen it recommended on AUREA's website - "Stuck In Her head" by Kylie Wang and Liana Tang. It has an aromantic (possibly main?) character, and is overall about two girls' relationships evolving over time and their own relationship with each other slowly morphing into something else. I heard that an animator from the Spider-verse movies made the cover and I thought that was cool! I love how there's queer artists and allies working on the Spider-verse films, given the trans story and advocacy with Gwen, how Peter B. kind of seems to just emit bisexual energy, and then an artist working on a cover for an aromantic book.

I honestly can't see what it's cracked up to be in terms of being alloromantic. I try to be understanding of course, since lots of people I know are definitely alloromantic, and when they get heartbroken I try to console and see it from their point of view (and I often compare their romantic heartbreak to when I have had bad falling outs with friends). But, I just can't see the benefits. I'm happy that I am with friends and family, and having a romantic "special someone" sounds utterly draining and promising to be a bad decision. Of course, I try to be optimistic for my friends and family, and I'm always happy when a relationship works out in the end, but sometimes the thought, "Are they faking it for each other?" enters my head despite knowing that they are not - despite knowing that it's just my aromantic brain thinking that way.

The only times I ever engaged with "celebrity crush" conversations was when I associated the "crush" part with my gender envy and would constantly be thinking of the characters an actor/actress has played and not the actual person. One time in high school my whole entire class entered that type of topic, but they made it clear that you didn't need to have had an actual crush on the actor, so I felt more free in engaging in it; and to which lots of guys in my class started talking about Ryan Reynolds.

I kind of never associated hand-holding as romantic for a long time, so when I saw people doing it at a young age I just thought they were wanting to be physically close in that regard, and I kind of only ever saw my gal-friends do it with each other so there was a ton of platonic feedback around doing the action. Now that I'm older all I ever hear is "how romantic" hand-holding is, and I often don't like doing it. I kind of only ever hold hands with family members or friends, to show them I'm there and I feel like when I hold hands with people I care for platonically and familially it has a more deeper and sacred meaning than any romantic interpretation, but I still often don't do it. Sorry to quote you for a second time, but I absolutely despise this, too. I normally put a lot into my appearance nowadays (or I just fuss over myself too much), and so it has became quite normal to my family and friends for me to look more up kept, or for me to constantly check my hair. But, when I first start doing that around the time my hair was cut super short (boy's cut) my mom kept on asking me why I was fussing over myself, why I was wearing a unique combination of clothes, why was I yada yada yada. I ended up telling her, "It's because I want to signal "to my people,"" and that got her to shut up lmao

A good friend would not be this obsessive over you. I understand jealousy, lots of people do, but then it is the person's responsibility (the person experiencing the jealousy) to communicate that and not let it control their actions; or, at the bare minimum, not allow themselves to start being a dick because of it. If it's safe to do so, since you said you're worried that she'll do something, try to talk to her about it with a list of all of the times she has been doing this to you. If you feel like you cannot conversate with her, then quietly try to change your dorm situation to where she's not your roommate. You deserve to hang out and keep up relations with your other friends without fear. A good friend wouldn't make you scared in having relationships with other people that have been going on for much longer than your relationship with her.

I can see how this can be difficult. I was initially in a QPR with a friend of mine who is alloromantic allosexual, and although we later on had to break up because I found that I'm completely non-partnering, talking to them about their needs and communicating that they can ask me anything, as long as they respected my boundaries as I respected theirs, was very important and was the top priority of our relationship. Talk to your partner, I'm sure she would be understanding of your predicament as you had been understanding of her identities. Respect and understanding should go both ways for partners no matter what the relationship is nor the identities, and in this case it should go both ways for an allo partner and aspec partner.

That sounds awesome as fuck! I'm sorry that your mom reacted like that, but I love your classmate for going out of his way for you to be validated. I love it when people can surprise us like that, whether they look up what you describe online and find the identity, or they already knew it from the get-go. I have heard some of my aro-spec friends get told by other queer people before that they should, "Wait a bit longer to know for sure," or "They're too young to write off love," or "You're too young to know in general." All of which is bullshit, but a punk friend of mine who is aro-spec had someone who was queer say something along those lines to him, and he told them that "they're still too young to know they're not straight." Yeah, that's kind of reaching down to the arophobe's level, but at the same time he was the kind of person to immediately talk shit back without meaning to, and it did shut the person up.

I often struggle so much to write anything, but when I think about wanting to write I often think about making romantic stories (usually they're queer), or aromantic stories. I've role-played before in D&D sessions and have had characters that were alloromantic (this was before I ever questioned if I was aro), and I also had characters that preferred to be single. Nowadays, despite potentially wanting to write romance still, I don't think I can roleplay an alloromantic character anymore without feeling like I'm forcing my character to do something. If I played another alloromantic character again, they would have a perception of love coded through an aro-lens where it would be very non-normative, and it would feel like I'm performing more than just performing my character, if that makes any sense. And often when I think back on my alloromantic characters, I realize that back then I felt no difference in the platonic relationships I had with other characters and the romantic interests my character had.

You can be aromantic and enjoy romantically coded, or full on just romantic, things! Action =/= attraction.

I get how you feel, and it's alright to end up questioning everything again because of those thoughts. I don't have much advice, other than if identifying as aro/aro-spec makes you feel the most comfortable, then you are aro/aro-spec. For the possibilities you listed, that is for you to do a deeper dive on, for no one else can truly know what you're feeling other than yourself, but the second possibility you mentioned I have actually experienced and potentially other aros have experienced, as well. I know in my hearts of heart that I don't want a romantic relationship and I just can't feel romantic feelings towards other people, with me only experiencing the occasional alterous attraction, but I have had intrusive thoughts about marriage and getting with someone romantically, or Hell, even deliberately thinking to myself, "Maybe I should just get with someone because then everything will be more socially easier for me, if only a little." These thoughts are always unpleasant to me, don't spark any joy, and feel more mechanical than my singlehood, which the latter feels a lot more natural to me and makes me a lot more happy. Sometimes, I'll feel this phantom sadness of not having a partner/partners, but at the end of the day I know it's amatonormativity making me feel that way, for that "sadness" isn't preluded with a genuine desire to be with someone, and is just the coexisting feeling with my fear of the world making everything a lot more harder on me and many others for being single. I'm not afraid of being alone romantically, and I'm not actually sad that I don't have a partner, it's just the foundations of benefits and rights that single people don't get compared to married people, is what scares me - is what drives me to think those unpleasant romantic thoughts. I know with a lot more advocacy and recognition, that single alloros and single aros can get the benefits that they need to be able to actually live in society, and to be able to take care of their loved ones/friends/family/pets/etc, but for right now we have to constantly worry for ourselves in a way that people who do desire romantic relationships and marriage don't have to do.

This would probably be my first ever ASAW where I celebrate? As in, just being more active on the aromantic side of things, and trying to find aro creators to support - especially aros of color with Black History Month going on. I would love to buy more aro pride stuff, but I still have to be discreet about that side of me; though I did get away with buying a "No Romo" patch just recently.

I'm aroallo, and from recently retaking the Myers Briggs/16Personalities test, I got the INFP-T (Advocate) type.