Magni

so, there's a lot of overlap of genderqueer with stuff like butch lesbians bc queering gender and stuff (I'm not explaining that the best, but there is history of overlap), so I'd say that yeah you could definitely be a genderqueer lesbian. There's people who identify as nb lesbians etc too. One open-ended definition of lesbian I've heard is "People who aren't men who are attracted to people who aren't men", so looking at it that way could be helpful? Also like.....there's lots of discourse originating from parts of the lesbian community that are very exclusionary/gatekeeping and tbh there's not much point caring about what exclusionists think of the labels you use, just use the labels that are most comfortable for you.

I find stuff like discord servers is great for online social interaction, especially bc it is a more group setting as opposed to one-on-one. In discord servers I'm on, people have been hanging out in voicechat while someone streams playing a game or have been watching streams of shows using Kosmi; perhaps something like that would work well for you?

From what I understand, the original usage of the "A" in LGBTA was for "Alliance", rather than allies. Which is a nuanced difference, but I think originally it was more about being an alliance between these different queer identity groups, but then people started changing it to allies, then ace & aro communities were like wait if the A is representing any group of people it should be us not straight allies.

I do identify as agender but I don't think it should be under a-spec. A-spec makes sense as a word for including the ace & aro spectrums and addressing issues faced by these communities which are often shared, whereas agender is not shared under that, if anything agender is tied to nonbinary and other gender terms bc it is a gender identity not an orientation like aro and ace. Also it just....doesn't make sense to me? Agender isn't a spectrum like ace and aro are, "agender-spectrum" isn't like an established thing so why would it be grouped under a-spec. But yeah, while agender can also be represented by the "A", I really don't think it should be included in "a-spec", and that's my opinion as an agender person. (not here to argue about the origin of terms etc but saw some people asking if agender people wanted it to be under a-spec etc and I am an agender person with strong opinions on subject so wanted to share).

So, I wanted to start actually putting together some google docs. Currently I have the links set so people can comment, which should mean you can suggest edits but they need to be approved, bc I am a bit wary about outright posting a editable link where anyone could theoretically access. If people DM me though I would be able to give them a link with access to outright edit it. So, this document is for compiling sources, and I already copy pasted some stuff that we've put in this thread: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1X3MugUx9LDTrKVG9bv9XSWaIa0CeOCb2D8156NKoCAc/edit?usp=sharing This is where we can start drafting the actual article: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DSpagYV508Aubm5guBjg-uuAA0NdahL_ygTknRX_ngs/edit?usp=sharing I vaguely tried to put a start at various section headings for things to write about but I'm not very good at actually doing the more in depth word things, but people who are good at that part it would be good to start working on that aspect? I feel we've compiled a fair many sources and should start thinking about how to put it together, and then can consider what other resources we might need.

Seems to me that the gender question could be better worded, as Man/Boy vs. Woman/Girl rather than Male vs. Female

Hmmm guess I'm also staff now....back to 0

Thanks to everyone who submitted! I just posted the roundup, found here.

I agree for aro allo flag but not on aroace bc there's not a concretely agreed upon aroace flag so it wouldn't make sense to include in a wiki. (wanted reply to this one thing but should reply to other stuff here later in general when have more mental energy)

Yeah, that sounds interesting. In general I think it's fascinating how gender roles interact with expectations of romance. Hmm also stuff like....in middle school I felt alienated from other girls bc I wasn't "boy crazy" since not interested in romance, and stuff like that where feel different from post people of gender can overlap with other feelings of gender and stuff?

Yeah, I'm currently in college but one of my biggest worries for after I graduate is I doubt my ability to live alone and independently, especially because of disability reasons. And I doubt my ability to find a friend I could live with and stuff, so yeah I wish communal living was more of a thing.

I like how this poll is phrased such that not indicating anything about relationship beyond whether or not share a sleeping space, because I have complicated feelings about any sort of relationship which has changed over time, but ideal living situation has consistently been wanting to live with someone but not sharing sleeping space.

Hi, I'm running carnival of aros this month and the topic is aromanticism and gender, the call for submissions can be found here. I wanted to start this thread to encourage people to talk about the subject and hopefully getting conversation going will help encourage people to post submissions. Also, I know tumblr isn't for everyone, so if people do post submissions they can reply to this thread with a link to their submission as another way to get it to me. I chose this topic because I feel my aromanticism affects my experiences with gender. I'm nonbinary, specifically agender, and I also use the term arogender as a descriptor. It took me much longer to identify my gender, in part bc I misattributed my desire to wear baggy "neutral" clothes like t-shirts as being due to a desire not to be perceived as "attractive" due to me being aro and ace. There's also an interesting symmetry between my identities since they are all defined by what I do not feel rather than what I do feel, and it's difficult to notice the absence of something. Also, in general I think it is fascinating how so much of conventional gender roles seems to be intrinsically tied to relationships and what is considered desirable? So yeah, feel free to share any thoughts and experiences on this thread, and I hope people feel inspired to post submissions for CoA

@HotRamen from AUREA compiled a list of aro characters during ASAW, the google sheets doc is here and was linked in this article about ASAW. It's a cool list they compiled and has information on the type of representation and stuff

Yeah, I think in general there are people who are interested but it's the kind of the thing that feels overwhelmingly big, and then the logistics of organizing interested people can be difficult. It would be ideal to put together a bit of a team to work on things? Forum thread is great starting point for making things visible but long term makes sense to work from google docs and, ideally imo, would be good to have a groupchat on discord too. I'll probably make a post on tumblr linking to this thread at some point, possibly later today, to try and get more interest. It would be good if people who are at all interested in helping commented on this thread and, if possible, talked about what they feel they can help with? I'll start: Things I'm good at and can contribute to: I'm pretty good at people organizing and setting the ball moving on working on things I can hyperfocus on gathering research stuff and have ideas for organizing information I feel somewhat competent at writing research papers and knowing how to cite stuff in general (I'm a college student and have written several big papers like that, but mainly do STEM stuff) Things I'm not so good at: While I'm good at hyperfocusing on stuff in short term, I'm not great at independently checking up on doing things unless other people are also doing the thing and reminding me I'm not great at knowing how to phrase the word things, so while I can gather research and have an idea of what to talk about and how to organize it, it's harder for me to focus on actually wording it well, so people who are capable of synthesizing the information in a nicely worded format would be helpful I've never really edited wikipedia stuff so someone who has actual experience with that would be helpful Edit/Addition: I made a tumblr post about this here

I've been hyperfocusing on researching and I've found many links, and will put some of the most useful ones here. I've been searching using google scholar for anything mentioning "aromantic" and "aromanticism". Many things I've found primarily discuss asexuality but also explicitly mention aromanticism. Between that and paywalls, some of the best articles I've found in full are thesis papers, and I'm unsure how "official" they would be considered for our purposes. Mentions but not much depth on aromanticism: 1. https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://scholar.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1090&context=mcnair acknowledges aro spectrum and it paralleling ace spectrum; mentions how, for example, aromantic may be less welcome in queer spaces than biromantic ace and other problems aro exclusion in queer spaces; mentions queerplatonic; 2. http://172.104.209.62/tuljournals/index.php/perceptions/article/view/147/144 talks about queer media representation and say "aromantic asexuals are almost entirely unrepresented" 3. https://philpapers.org/archive/JACLFB-2.pdf Parallels bi & a-spec erasure; uses the word allosexual; discusses how people dislike a-specs for not conforming to expectations for intimate relationships and how it's more prominent for people who are aro rather than just for people who are alloro ace. 4. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=L9CwDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT123&dq="aromantic"&ots=I2uTh1HQ5l&sig=dhnQc4qdKzxm4-49-Qt_v5r-iDY defines aro, grayro, and demiro; "the fact that many definitions for aforementioned words mainly only exist in online social media groups (such as tumblr and reddit) underscores the continuing invisibility [of a-spec community] in academic contexts" (out of ace people) mentions how heteroromantic and aromantic people feel alienated from queer/lgbtqa groups without other queer identity (consistent with stuff from 1st article) 5. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2018.1531281 analyzes queer intimacy/relationship diversity and specifically acknowledges aro (though really not much good detailed info) 6. https://munin.uit.no/bitstream/handle/10037/8108/thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y argues why Katniss from Hunger Games can canonically be considered aromantic (also, interestingly, this is specifically aromantic without really mentioning asexual) Comparatively better in depth info on aro stuff: 1. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&context=jj_etds Mentions anyone of any sexual orientation can be aromantic and that some aromantic people do date Conflation of asexual with aromantic and how that's misunderstood stereotype, microaggressions such as parents reacting more negatively to perception of kids being aro when coming out as opposed to just ace (so, acknowledges some of microaggressions tied more to being aro than to being ace) mentions media with microagressions, and specifically the aromanticism and asexuality of Jughead Jones being erased by TV show. 2. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ela_Przybylo/publication/337089696_Asexual_Erotics_Intimate_Readings_of_Compulsory_Sexuality/links/5dc48588a6fdcc2d2ffb683e/Asexual-Erotics-Intimate-Readings-of-Compulsory-Sexuality.pdf mentions connection between aromantic and amatonormativity mentions aromantic as part of a spectrum 3. https://digital.library.ryerson.ca/islandora/object/RULA:5628/datastream/OBJ/download/For_lack_of_a_better_word__neo-identities_in_non-cisgender__non-straight_communities_on_Tumblr___.pdf (this one might be my favorite) talks about neoidentities on tumblr, talks about communities finding words which "official"/academic sources tend to not acknowledge mentions and defines "less common" identities including nebularomantic, idemromantic, akoi/lithromantic, and recipromantic; generally acknowledges diverse experiences of aro spectrum acknowledges that while asexuality gains recognition, aromanticism is still relatively unknown *** Things can talk about in article: can mention aro characters, this has Jughead & Katniss, would want to look into others Some stuff for discussing aro spectrum and various identities some stuff acknowledging alienation/dehumanization/microaggressions against aromantics, and it being different or worse against aro aces than against alloro aces several things explicitly acknowledging that people can be aro and not ace (aka allosexual), though unfortunately hard to find stuff going into more depth on that since most things look at aro aces. can elaborate some stuff of connections of aromantic with amatonormativity and with relationship stuff Future Research: discussing aro history and organizations with sufficiently "official" sources? there's many stuff mentioning things like the founding of AVEN, parallel stuff about arocalypse and AUREA seems reasonable to include. more research for more aro characters can bulk stuff up with some, along with aro celebrities ideally; can include discussion about how very rare any representation is

So apparently embeds are not working; I made a post with many links and some of the links to other forum posts automatically embedded and then when I tried to post it, it gave me a "403 error", but when I changed the embeds back to plain links, then it worked.

I agree this is an important thing we should work towards doing. And yeah, it is an irritating problem where we need "official" academic sources in a way that is rather gatekeeping against queer communities such as ours. Now, I don't really have much knowledge or experience with Wiki, so someone who knows more would be useful, but I'm gonna try to gather information that we could use as a starting place at least? Also, I hope we can keep this thread on topic to productively work towards a solution for this problem rather than getting sidetracked by arguments and specific things that don't matter much and would be better in a different thread. Links to other forum threads about this issue: 1. This one you already linked to: https://www.arocalypse.com/topic/2857-aro-representation-in-lgbt-places/ 2. This other thread from spring 2018: https://www.arocalypse.com/topic/1326-wikipedia-article/ Links to sources of info that might be useful for compiling info: 1. There were a fair many articles from news sources that may be considered more official during ASAW, some linked in AUREA's roundup post here: https://www.aromanticism.org/en/news-feed/asaw-2020-recap 2. Research page from AUREA, there's not a whole lot that is directly about aromanticism that would be considered "official" by wiki's standards unfortunately, but there's a fair bit discussing stuff like Amatonormativity which presumably could be discussed as part of an article: https://www.aromanticism.org/en/research There's other stuff under resources there including other organizations, mainly ones that are ace & aro, wiki might not particularly like those kind of sources but maybe having multiple organizations discussing same things would be sufficient? Current Wiki articles useful for content ideas: 1. Section under romantic orientations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romantic_orientation#Aromanticism presumably, best approach would be to expand what is currently there and work on developing into full individual article thing? apparently amatonormativity already has its own article? which makes sense bc of the context it was proposed with, but yeah... looking through the links in the aro section there can help us gauge what sort of thing would work. 2. Aromantic Wiki: https://aromantic.wikia.org/wiki/Aromantic Wiki/Wikia is kinda separate not official thing, but it can provide ideas about what things can be talked about and we can work on finding more proper sources. One thing to possibly add to bulk up article would be various arospec identities, if we can find adequate sources discussing them. 3. Asexual Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asexuality Is useful to look at parallel examples for common ground and there is common ground between our communities historically and also in the structure/timeline of our communities gaining visibility. Also, possibly some of sources that are cited for that might mention aromanticism too. They have a section for "in the media" with ace characters, something similar could be useful 4. Nonbinary wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-binary_gender not as much overlap as asexual, but another more "new" queer community that could be useful for inspiration. Wiki Editing Policy stuff: 1. Official editing policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editing_policy 2. This is something from diverse group discussing wiki editing stuff that might be helpful?: http://www.artandfeminism.org/ and pdf/powerpoint from them: http://www.artandfeminism.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/AF_QuickGuideforEditors.pdf 3. What wiki considers reliable sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources *** So, I hope this is a good starting point and that we can get more people interested in helping work on this

Ooh interesting thread. I am neurodivergent bc I have ADHD (and possibly autism too). I am somewhat physically disabled due to various things. I also marked mentally ill bc I have depression. I would consider depression to fall more under mentally ill, though people could also feel it falls under neurodivergent bc sometimes it is something that is permanent even if manageable, whereas I consider my ADHD to be neurodivergent and not mental illness. Overall, the categories should be vague and allow room for people to self define what fits them best. Also, I just generally think it's fascinating how so many aros do seem to be neurodivergent with stuff like ADHD or autism, it's like ah yes I have found the people who are like me in many many ways :)

Perhaps wording a bit harsh bc emotions, but like....I don't consider that personal insults? If I dislike someone and find them stressful to interact with then I will express that/don't see why I should hide that. I find most forum discussions exhausting and stressful, if I'm addressed and I see it I feel compelled to respond and keep responding even when it's time consuming and stressful and it pretty much always ends with me feeling upset rather than satisfied. If you're gonna refer to a post I've made, especially in context of disagreeing or expressing disapproval with it, then I would like to know so I can defend my perspective if feel the need, but ideally would be not doing so to start with. And I tend to dislike people I only ever have negative interactions with, and get increasingly irritated the more I interact with them. re: second part about queerplatonic etc a) I did put a disclaimer above that part saying it was explaining a frustrated perspective and wasn't being delicately worded and fact checked b) was less that alloromantic people can't do qpr's but more that....comparatively, the need for such a term seems more inherently implied by aro experience? (idk if that makes sense) c) I'll admit I'm probably a bit bitter due to ex-irl friends claiming they understood and reflected my emphasis on friendship only to contradict it with their actions. I'm gonna close this tab on computer to try and avoid checking it bc I'll just upset myself increasingly more and feel compelled to respond to what I see, so don't expect me to respond further bc I don't want to.

I see I was mentioned by things and I feel irritated and obligated to respond. I would like to point out, I prefaced my statement with "from what I understand," linking to where I'd seen it, and if anything was asking for correction if I was misinformed rather than spreading misinformation. (and I did not respond further to the conversation bc I left for a halloween thing then was busy with a 15 page paper that weekend so by the time I had time for it, I'd forgotten/it was less relevant/had lost track of conversation.) This is also linking to a post I made....I'm not entirely sure what point you're trying to make with this or why you cited this post as evidence of it? Like, I feel almost offended, especially because I do identify with aplatonic/aplatonic-spectrum/demiplatonic (just posted a thing for carnival of aros explaining my experience with that which does kinda influence how I independently define it). I copy-pasted the definition from AUREA & included the link, which then has link to the original coining (which tbh reading through that thread is confusing and seems to get off topic). Is it because I said it was coined by neurodivergent aroaces? That's what I've seen on multiple prominent posts: 1. "Used mostly by neurodivergent aros...." 2. "for aromantic people" 3. "for aromantic people" Like, the posts I read if anything only mentioned it being for aros, I remembered that it like other things was sourced from AVEN so I said it originated with aroaces, and mainly was mentioning that part since I'd only copied the one definition rather than both and still wanted to acknowledge the fact that it's related to neurodivergent experience. Like, maybe all the other posts I'd seen aren't accurate but it's not like I was just making stuff up, why would you use my post with only 27 notes as an example of this misinformation when all three of the posts I just linked have well over 1,000 notes and would be what's mainly spreading the misinformation? (it almost feels like you're seeking out stuff to criticize about me..... @Coyote I do not like interacting with you, you're the main reason I don't go on the forums much anymore bc interacting with you is exhausting, and you know maybe part of why you get so much pushback is you're irritating to deal with and it always feels condescendingly argumentative such that people are inherently inclined to disagree with you). Oh also, we did see reply to that post and got an ask about it elaborating on other definitions/aspect of aplatonic and am planning to post/reply to that at some point (but like I only just got done with final exams, things take time and energy and focus) *** Big agree on this. (Disclaimer: the following is intended as elaborating on this train of thinking/why people feel this way....not saying it's factual origin etc but explaining a perspective, don't get mad at me for being factually inaccurate on some nuanced wording thing) 1. Like, intuitively and etymologically, queerplatonic being based more in the blurry lines of friendship/platonic implies a relation to more aromantic experiences. If someone's alloromantic ace, and in a romantic non-sexual relationship, then that can just be called a romantic relationship? Whereas if an aro person is in a queerplatonic relationship, there's not really another term. 2. even bigger mood; like, genuinely, the more alloromantic aces I met irl after starting college, the more alienated I felt from the ace community, in large part bc of amatonormative things they said or did.....and there's stuff online too but in general easier to dismiss online stuff whereas getting it from people irl makes it all the more alienating. And like, online, all I saw in the ace community was people talking about stuff relating to dating while ace and stuff, which I could not relate to, and felt alienated by, and is also part of why it didn't make inherent sense to me for queerplatonic to be tied to ace stuff more than aro stuff bc it feels more logically linked to the aro side of my experiences. And like....there's a general sense of feeling left behind in invisibility by the ace community, which I think does generally contribute to these feelings.

(Inspired by this tumblr thread) We tend to focus a lot on spreading awareness and community building, which are important, but it's also useful to consider other aspects of aro activism, including more political issues. Here are some issues which occurred to me: 1. Marriage: The legal benefits of marriage and lack of alternate options….having some way to declare someone as “family” for purposes of medical leave and such without requiring marriage/romance. Also, partnering with the polyamory community on this because they also face issues with the current system of marriage. 2. Adoption: the adoption system has lots of issues in general with what sort of parents they consider “capable” and how that can be an issue against queer people in general, but more specifically, so single aro people can better adopt children if they wish. 3. Workplace Protections: the queer community in general still needs protections against discrimination, but it does affect us too, and it would be important to include not only that they can’t discriminate against people for their sexual orientation, but also their romantic orientation. (This is the issue I personally would be most concerned about tbh) 4. Education: along with wanting schools to teach about queer identities in general, making sure Aromantic is included. 5. Healthcare: this has some overlap with my first point about “spousal” benefits, but generally making sure aro people aren’t discriminated against in healthcare. This includes mental health, and making sure we could seek therapy without having to educate them about our identities or have our identity medicalized. Additionally, I believe there is something about single people receiving less aggressive treatment options and therefore having worse outcomes, so preventing that kinda thing too. 6. Support Networks: most adults seem to get their social needs met via their romantic partnerships, or find community via religious groups. There’s generally a need for non-denominational groups to provide support and community, because people generally need that sort of thing, and feeling isolated can be detrimental to people’s health. One form of this might be lgbtqa+ community centers in general, ones that are alcohol-free community resource centers (which other parts of the queer community want too). So, what are some other aro-related political issues you can think of? Or, elaborate on any of the aforementioned issues and which things might be more feasible to work on, etc.

Firstly, it wouldn't be mixed up with the autism spectrum, a-spec has been used specifically for ace & aro, and the misconception that it is appropriating language from the autistic community was spread by exclusionists to discredit us. As for shortening name while still conserving searchability....I'd say change "Social Group" to a single word, such as community or just group. Additionally, you can reframe the way it mentions the places, so perhaps "Ace and Aro Group (at/of) Liverpool & Wirral". This would make the actual name "Ace & Aro Group" with a sub-title for the places. Aside from the name, you might also want to mention in the description of your group that it is inclusive to "Anyone who is ace and or aro, including aro allos" etc. to make it more explicitly inclusive. Secondly, one subtle thing which I think actually is very impactful is being cognizant of the colors you use on things. If I see an organization that's labelled ace and aro, but everything on their website/etc is purple and there's no green, then I'd interpret that to mean they're heavily ace-focused and they haven't actively worked towards aro inclusion aside from just tagging it on to the name. So visual representation of stuff should generally be equivalent. (On a related point, if you're going to list out demisexual and gray asexual in something alongside aromantic, include the corresponding aromantic identities too because otherwise it kinda implies that aromantic is yet another sub-category of asexual when it's not). Other suggestions for community building & inclusion: I talked to some people who organized an ace group who were talking about how there was a need to have some meetings for demisexual/gray-asexual/sex favorable aces to talk about those things while not making sex-repulsed aces uncomfortable, so balancing those community needs. Point being, it might be useful to have some meetings which are specified as open to more discussion on sexual things, making it more welcoming to aromantic allosexuals along with aces who are more sex-favorable. (though, feasibility of that kinda depends on if you or another organizer feel comfortable facilitating such discussions, or if enough people in your group would be interested in such a thing, but it is something to consider). Another thing to consider is romance repulsion; one of the things which initially made me more distanced from the ace community was that so many discussions seemed to revolve around romance. And this doesn't mean having to make it outright not allowed, but generally making it clear that people who are romance repulsed can be accommodated to feel comfortable in the discussion, similar to how you'd treat sex repulsion. (I've had ace people I knew irl outright dismiss me when I expressed discomfort with something because of romance repulsion, and generally issues with that have made me uncomfortable in an irl queer group because it was made clear that I couldn't even express my discomfort without people getting irritated with me about it, because unfortunately society really doesn't respect romance repulsion). Resources you might be interested in: https://www.aromanticism.org/news-feed/community-building This talks about community building stuff in general, but there is some stuff specifically about aro spaces and stuff too. https://www.aromanticism.org/en/resources-1 This has lots of aro resources, but if you scroll down to "offline resources" there are several groups listed which might give you some inspiration for naming things.

@Mark Varioriented was mentioned as part of Mixed Orientation Identity; we will cross-list it to include both terms more visibly. We will not add Quoiplatonic because we already have aplatonic spectrum and mentioned it can have any prefix assigned to it, such as demiplatonic; quoiplatonic would fall under that category and therefore is already included. Though, we may edit the definition of aplatonic-spectrum to list quoiplatonic as an example alongside demiplatonic. We will rephrase the definition for monogamy repulsion; you are encouraged to email us at contact@aromanticism.org to help form an accurate and concise definition. This is the source we have for omniaromantic & panaromantic, and in it the two terms are listed as synonyms with a single definition for them both. The use of these prefixes in this context is not analogous to how they are used in pansexual and omnisexual. Rather than being a descriptor of genders towards which people are attracted, in omniaromantic & panaromantic it is used to convey a lack of all attractions; presumably, the person who coined it made both terms since the pre-fixes are both associated with the meaning "all". Overall, they will not be listed separately because that would require having separate definitions. Lush & Swish are both listed in the arospecawarenessweek's glossary. They list this post as the source for both of these terms (though it is unclear whether they coined the terms or just popularized them). *** As a general reminder, we prefer to get feedback via email at contact@aromanticism.org because it is easier for us to keep track of.