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I agree. I was trying to say that if, for example, I was addressing a group of people as “gay men”, I would expect that people who do not see themselves as part of that group would likely not continue to listen to the rest of my message. I see what you’re saying, and I have made an edit to the original post. I know that many aro people are not ace (I’m not, either), but I’m going to use an example from ace communities here. Maybe most ace people use ace to mean “no attraction”, but there are some people who may use it to mean “no interest in sex”. I don’t feel that it’s my place to say that the people in the latter group shouldn’t say they’re ace. My intention in making this post was to talk about how there are likely already some people in this community, reading this post, who do use aro to mean “no interest in relationships”. I consider this group of people to be aro, and it’s ok if we disagree on that. I feel you on this (if that’s ok to say). It sucks to be thrown under the bus by people you thought would understand you to make themselves more palatable to people of the majority/“default”. I imagine that the way I feel when people say “aro people still love their friends” or “aro people still feel empathy” as someone who doesn’t experience those things may be similar to how you feel when people say that aro/ace people can still experience attraction or have relationships. I really appreciate you sharing your experiences; it’s helped me understand a different perspective!

I agree with this! I see your point. Yes, I think aromantic can and should include people in history who were likely aromantic. I live somewhere where "aromantic" isn't known. I also think aro can include those who may identify as aro if they had the language for it. I phrased that poorly, my apologies. What I mean is that I would not use aro to include those who know the term and have decided not to identify as aro. See here for a more in-depth discussion on "be" vs. "identify as". Feeling that they "need to fix themselves" isn't the only reason someone may not identify as "aro"; if someone (who knows the definition of aro) says that they're not aro, even though they fit the definition, then it doesn't make sense to me to consider them 'aro, but hasn't accepted it yet'. (I'm not saying that this is what you meant, I just using this as an example to explain my view more clearly). You absolutely were aromantic a year ago, and I'm really sorry that I made you feel otherwise. I should have said that most things can be political. Politics isn't only related to the government. This post may explain it better than I can. Using the example in that post: a child drawing a house is not political, the same way an aromantic person existing is not political. However, what the child considers a house influenced by systemic factors. Similarly, what is considered a family (e.g. the nuclear family) is influenced by systemic factors. This is what I mean by political. Moreover, aromantic advocacy is related to the government; working towards equality for aromantic people, in our current society, has to involve the government. I appreciate your response! I... do not find this a fair assumption to make of other people. There are reasons other than being in denial that someone may choose to not use "gay" as a self-descriptor. Being in denial would be denying that they experience same sex attraction. Saying that they don't describe themselves as "gay", possibly preferring to be unlabelled or to use a different label, is not what I would consider being in denial. I understand that many people consider "experiencing same-sex attraction" and "being gay" to be equivalent, but I do not. I feel that I have explicitly said this, so I would appreciate if someone could help me out with how I could make this more clear! In addition, see this discussion about how "being" and "identifying as" may be different. Genuine question, I can't tell whether you are stating this neutrally or whether you have additional thoughts on it. Could you kindly clarify for me? I'm sorry that you've experienced this, and I want to work towards a future where people don't view aro people this way. I want to gently challenge this; I think that it's possible to increase the number of people who are accepting of aro people's experiences. Maybe not most people, but more people. I see that it's a difficult experience for you to have your loved ones not understand, and I hope that you can meet people who accept you for all of your experiences. I do mostly agree with this. At the same time, I think it depends on what someone is trying to achieve with coining a new word. Are they just doing it for fun and expect that no one else will use it? They can make all the words they want! If they're trying to build a community, though, I agree that making a new term without discussing with other members of the community first is often a futile attempt. However, if no one ever came up with new words, we wouldn't have the term "aromantic". I think if someone first discussed with other people and also have a means of sharing a new term with a large group of people, it can be useful.

Hey, thanks for the responses everyone! I didn't mean to start a discussion and then not respond, it was finals week haha. I should have phrased what I was trying to say differently. I didn't mean that the definition should be changed altogether. My point is that someone describing themselves as aro is a choice. I think a main cause of disagreement is that some people are using "be aro" to mean "have a specific internal experience", whereas I'm using "be aro" to mean "describe oneself as aro". Yeah that's totally understandable! It'd be cool if you wanted to come up with a word for your experience, other people would probably resonate with it too. It's interesting to see how varied people's experiences can be; I'm the opposite in preferring broad labels. Thanks for sharing! Hmm I guess we differ on this, as I don't see this as necessarily a bad thing. I've seen "anyone can be aro (or ace) nowadays" used as an argument to exclude grey and demi people too often to find this reasoning compelling. (To be clear, I'm not saying that you're excluding anyone, just that the phrasing reminded me of that.) Just curious, what are your thoughts on people who use "orchidromantic" labels? Would you consider them to fall under the aro umbrella? I believe that people can inherently have certain experiences, but that having these experiences and identifying as (i.e. being) aro are not the same. In a hypothetical scenario where two people have the exact same experiences, and one identifies as aro and the other does not, the latter person is not aro simply because they do not consider themselves aro. Using a different example, are people inherently tall or inherently short? This is determined relative to the average. People are inherently their height, but whether or not they're considered tall depends on other factors. In my home country, I'm tall, but in a western country, I'm short. That doesn't mean my height has changed, just the label. This is what I'm trying to say about the label of "aro" being influenced by external factors. This isn't quite what I was trying to express; would you mind pointing out which parts specifically gave you this impression? I don't think that attraction-based labels are less than other ones. They're just more common, and I wanted to offer a different perspective. Hmm not really?? My main issue with attraction-based definitions is that I often see them come hand-in-hand with the idea that someone must be born with a experience for it to be legitimate. This talks about that in more detail. If most aro people find the definition of "no attraction" useful, that's great! I didn't mean to say that we should change the definition altogether. I mean that people calling themselves aro is a choice, not that the internal experience is a choice. (If it matters, I would fall under the "never experienced attraction" camp if I conceptualized my experiences that way.) Sure, I can't choose to experience attraction, but identifying as aro is a choice I'm making. In a less amatonormative world, my experiences would be the same, but I may not feel the need to identify as aro. The more salient aspect of my own aromantic experience is the more visible part: not being in a relationship. This is definitely affected by attraction not being as openly discussed in my culture as in western culture. Yeah, that was not the best choice of words on my part. I was hoping that the use of "typical" would be understood as not including QPRs. To clarify, I did not mean to imply that aro people cannot be in relationships, romantic or otherwise. I have a similar experience actually, and I think it's cool that the same experience can lead us to having different perspectives. I appreciate your detailed reponse! I guess this is where we disagree. My reasoning is that there's power in numbers. If more people identify as or identify with (I consider these to be different) aro, it shows that just because something is the majority, that doesn't make it "normal". My view is that more people in a minority group does not "dilute" the minority, rather it weakens the majority. Totally a fair assumption to make based on what I shared. If it changes anything, I also do not experience attraction. Curious about your thoughts on "orchidromantic" labels! I responded to this above, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on whether there is a way to describe romantic relationships without using the word "romantic". I see your point. However, many groups are heterogenous, and that's something that comes up in a lot of research and the generalizability of findings. Aro already encompasses many different experiences, from no attraction at all to grey to demi to everything else. In a research setting, the experiences of aro people could be anaylzed both as a whole, as well as separately based on more specific groups. I don't see these as mutually exclusive. Everything is political. I have different feelings and I'm making a political statement that my different feelings do not make me less human. Additionally, responding to your use of "born with", what are your thoughts on "caedromantic" labels?

Edit: I just wanted to say that some aromantic people may personally use a definition of aro that is different from the “little to no attraction” one, and that I consider them to fall under “aromantic”. I am not saying that we need to expand the definition necessarily. Original post I'm thinking about how people use the label "aro" (& other queer labels). TL;DR: moving towards a definition of "aro" that is not based on "attraction" would benefit many people. [Edit: Don’t know how to cross out text; ignore previous sentence.] Rather than asking yourself "is what I experience 'attraction'?", "is 'aro' a useful term for me" may be a more helpful approach. I am resistant to labels being viewed as a one-to-one descriptor of "attraction" and something that someone inherently is, rather than the construct that sexuality/orientation labels are. I don't see my sexuality (or gender) as something that I was born with, but rather something that is highly dependent on the sociocultural context I live in & my experiences. I chose to label my experience of ambivalence towards a typical highly committed relationship (referred to as "normative relationship" hereafter) as "aro". It's not something I inherently am, and it's not something I "realized". It's something I am actively making the choice to label as something that is central to my worldview. Other labels I use are deliberately broad and has connotations of resistance: queer, trans, mad. I don't think that labels are neccessarily "terms that describes your experiences as accurately as possible", but rather tools to signify that I align myself with the values & experiences of a group. People who do experience normative "attraction" and choose not to enter normative relationships may have more shared experiences with other aro-identified people than they do with people who have normative relationships. If we move away from an attraction-based definition of "aro", more people may see their experiences reflected in the label. The more people identify as aro, the more the "default" of normative relationships will be exposed as being constructed. I would love to hear other people's thoughts on this!