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Aro History Timelines?


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13 hours ago, pressAtoQUEER said:

Okay, so this focuses on the inclusion of asexuality as a part of bisexual history, but keep in mind that the aromantic community split off/was borne from the asexaul community, so the histories are one and the same in a lot of spaces for a lot of time: https://bi-asexual.tumblr.com/post/161938628812/aphostraphe-pls-give-me-1one-reason-aces-have

I know, I know - that's a tumblr link! But it's got tons of cited sources (take a look at the book recs) and it wouldn't be fair of me to just copy'pasta all that work over here ignoring the work OP put into compiling those resources.

It's definitely from an ace perspective. Can't see anything obviously allo aro applicable.
In terms of The Golden Orchid association this existed long before romantic relationships (and marriage) became normative. Which happened later in China than Europe, possibly even post 1949.

This Kinsey reference seems to be more about the desexualisation of disabled people too.
 

13 hours ago, Coyote said:

Well that seems... questionably applicable, then. I mean, I hear what you're saying there, but just because aromanticism as we know it here traces back to early ace communities doesn't mean that... all ace history is de facto aro history. That seems like just making the same ace-and-aro-inherently-go-together mistake that Alex (Jot-Aro Kujo) was just talking about.

It's the all too common issue of the only depiction of aro being in an ace context. Which tends to imply aro as a subset of ace. Even without the intent of allo aro erasure this is a problem.
 

6 hours ago, bydontost said:

The two following books talk about scales to measure sexual orientation, and that the distinction between no sexual interest and sexual interest in men and women can't be accurately captured in many of them. Those scales can measure exclusively sexual interest (like Sell Assessment of Sexual Orientation) , or sexual and emotional/affectional interest (like Klein Sexual Orientation Grid, which includes emotional and social preferences or Shivley Scale of Sexual Orientation, which asks about sexual and affectional). It's possible that when the books talk about "asexual" they may be also talking abut "aromantic", but this really depends on the scale and definition a lot.

Even if you treat the last one as a kind of split attraction it's unclear if "affectional" is intended to mean "romantic" or not.

 

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3 hours ago, Coyote said:

That's certainly... personal testimonial. Which counts for something, sure. Does this mean that people exclusively sexually interested in one gender could get grouped as bi if that sexual interest didn't extend to wanting to get married? That's what this would imply. Do we have any personal testimonial from those people themselves?

Yeah, it is, true. That's what it implies. I only have access to this statement

 

3 hours ago, Coyote said:

So are we equating "affectional" to "romantic" here?

 

No, but I'm guessing this is how it can be interpreted by at least some people, and they're usually not reporting how many friends of a certain gender they have

 

3 hours ago, Coyote said:

If.... you think these links should be added to my timeline compilation, I can do that. Is that what you're linking them for?

No, no, just pointing out that sexual orientation measures aren't always only about sexual experiences/desires. I think it's worth talking about somewhere, but not documenting in this compilation

 

3 hours ago, Coyote said:

the reason I necro'd this thread in the first place is that Ax responded to "I don't know [anything] about [a long intertwined history between the aro and bi communities]" with "Are you seriously gonna sit there and say 'there is no denying that the history of the two movements (asexuality and aromanticism) is highly interconnected' and then turn around and talk about the connection between the bi and ace communities while claiming you don't know of any such connection between the bi and aro communities? [...] The bi community housed aros when we didnt have a name, just like it did aces."

 

The idea being, I guess, setting aside the "if something's true of aces then it's true of aros" idea, that there's a particular history there that someone deserves to be scolded for not knowing.

 

Is this... that? Is this the community history between the bi and aro communities?

I mean... I don't see anything wrong with this..?? If aro and ace communities were interconnected and ace and bi communities also were, then like... at least the aroace people were connected to the bi communities too. For myself, I can say that I definitely mistook my 0 romantic attraction to everyone as being biromantic ( @Jot-Aro Kujo possibly feels the same) and I'm bisexual.

 

2 hours ago, Mark said:

It's definitely from an ace perspective. Can't see anything obviously allo aro applicable.

If asexual was a category used in research some years ago, then it can be compared with concepts that also appeared in around that time, but aro is a new concept and doesn't really have a 1:1 translation to a concept that existed. Possibly some allo aros did what some do now - were in some relationships that were based on friendship and sex. But it's possible we'll never know. Aroaces are part of the aro community too tho, so like things that apply to them are part of the aro history too. Tho not all aro history, obviously.

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25 minutes ago, bydontost said:

I think it's worth talking about somewhere, but not documenting in this compilation

 

Okay. That makes sense to me then.

 

26 minutes ago, bydontost said:
4 hours ago, Coyote said:

Is this... that? Is this the community history between the bi and aro communities?

I mean... I don't see anything wrong with this..??

 

Is that a yes? I can't tell if you're saying "Yes, that is the community history between the bi and aro communities" or if you're asking "What would be the problem with it if that's what I were saying?" ....And I don't want to respond to one if what you meant was the other.

 

48 minutes ago, bydontost said:
3 hours ago, Mark said:

It's definitely from an ace perspective. Can't see anything obviously allo aro applicable.

If asexual was a category used in research some years ago, then it can be compared with concepts that also appeared in around that time, but aro is a new concept and doesn't really have a 1:1 translation to a concept that existed.

 

For reference -- and this is just talking generally about where I'm coming from on this -- here's an example of intersecting-LGBT-and-asexual-history that is arguably not relevant for "aro history" per se (and also more sexological than communal, but anyway): Bell and Weinberg's Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men & Women has some sections on an "asexual" subgroup within their "homosexual" research participants. This "asexual" label is one assigned by the researchers, and their criteria for it are pretty sex-specific, in a way that necessarily would have excluded people with higher/moderate levels of "sexual interest" or sexual activity, who would have been sorted into a different group.

 

If somebody then extrapolated from there to say that this example demonstrates shared conceptual history for aromanticism & gayness, I'd say that jump wouldn't make sense -- and, if anything, that would be actively doing a disservice to the idea that aromanticism isn't inherently an ace thing.

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59 minutes ago, Coyote said:

Is that a yes? I can't tell if you're saying "Yes, that is the community history between the bi and aro communities"

Yes, that is the community history between bi and aro communities - that I know of, in the sense how anything about this can be known anyway. There could be other, better sources, but I don't know of them. I was just agreeing with @VoidArcana that it seems like a weird reasoning to tie aros and aces, and aces and bis, but then deny the tie between aros and bis.

 

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

For reference -- and this is just talking generally about where I'm coming from on this -- here's an example of intersecting-LGBT-and-asexual-history that is arguably not relevant for "aro history" per se (and also more sexological than communal, but anyway): Bell and Weinberg's Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men & Women has some sections on an "asexual" subgroup within their "homosexual" research participants. This "asexual" label is one assigned by the researchers, and their criteria for it are pretty sex-specific, in a way that necessarily would have excluded people with higher/moderate levels of "sexual interest" or sexual activity, who would have been sorted into a different group.

 

If somebody then extrapolated from there to say that this example demonstrates shared conceptual history for aromanticism & gayness, I'd say that jump wouldn't make sense -- and, if anything, that would be actively doing a disservice to the idea that aromanticism isn't inherently an ace thing.

 

I used up my willingness to dig through this today, so I'm going to believe you and yeah, in this case I wouldn't claim that this part of ace history (if it can be classified as ace history with asexuality being more attraction-focused nowadays) is also aro history, that wouldn't make any sense. If there were researches that took into consideration sexual as well as emotional, affectional or romantic preferences and labelled them all together, then depending on the scales (hetero-bi-homo spectrum vs. heterosexual axis and homosexual axis) I would consider some of them caught aros in either bisexual group (first type of scale) or bisexual or asexual (second type of scale). With the first scale, allo aros and aroaces would be together in bi group and with the second, it'd be possible for allo aros to be in the bi group and aroaces in asexual group. Buuut I'm not sure how it's actually calculated/used, so those are my thoughts on how imperfect tools may be simplifying some things

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1 hour ago, bydontost said:

Yes, that is the community history between bi and aro communities - that I know of, in the sense how anything about this can be known anyway.

 

Okay. So you're saying that the community history between bi and aro communities is

  • The Golden Orchid Society, a collection of organizations in South China that began during the Qing dynasty and existed from approximately 1644 to 1949, which practiced marriage between women (to women) and nonpartering/solo marriage
  • The concept of sexological orientation models which include "emotional preferences" and "affectional preference"
  • A Tumblr post saying "There was a 2 (or more?) point kinsey-like scale used among me and my queer friends in HS"

?

 

1 hour ago, bydontost said:

I was just agreeing with @VoidArcana that it seems like a weird reasoning to tie aros and aces, and aces and bis, but then deny the tie between aros and bis.

 

I figure it's perfectly appropriate to say "I don't know" when one doesn't know, which is the thing that @flergalwit did. If anything, I wish people would take that approach more often.

 

If we had a case of someone actively denying something/saying something for sure wasn't the case, then on this topic I'd raise an eyebrow at that too, to say the least, but luckily that's not what we're dealing with.

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14 minutes ago, Coyote said:

Okay. So you're saying that the community history between bi and aro communities is

  • The Golden Orchid Society, a collection of organizations in South China that began during the Qing dynasty and existed from approximately 1644 to 1949, which practiced marriage between women (to women) and nonpartering/solo marriage
  • The concept of sexological orientation models which include "emotional preferences" and "affectional preference"
  • A Tumblr post saying "There was a 2 (or more?) point kinsey-like scale used among me and my queer friends in HS"

?

Only the second one. Third is an example of 2nd imo.

 

15 minutes ago, Coyote said:

I figure it's perfectly appropriate to say "I don't know" when one doesn't know, which is the thing that @flergalwit did. If anything, I wish people would take that approach more often.

Okay, sorry, they said they didn't know about such a history for aros and bis, but do know of such a history with aces and bis. I mean... do you gather what I'm trying to say at all? ?

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1 minute ago, bydontost said:

Only the second one. Third is an example of 2nd imo.

 

Okay. That... indicates some preexisting concept of... components to orientation besides sexuality per se. If anybody sets out to argue that that idea was never around pre-2000, we do have that ready as a counterpoint.

 

What it doesn't indicate, to me, is community history, in terms of people actively affiliating with each other on the basis of aro/bi identification. That's sexological history, not bi community history. We don't even know anything about the people who applied those particular models to themselves afaik, or if that was even used by anybody besides theorists and researchers.

 

Just now, bydontost said:

Okay, sorry, they said they didn't know about such a history for aros and bis, but do know of such a history with aces and bis. I mean... do you gather what I'm trying to say at all?

 

I can gather what you're saying if you're saying ace history = aro history, and otherwise... I don't gather what you're saying.

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1 hour ago, Coyote said:

What it doesn't indicate, to me, is community history, in terms of people actively affiliating with each other on the basis of aro/bi identification.

 

Oh, oh, OH! Thanks for being so patient and saying it like this ^^^. I can see now I was definitely misunderstanding your question earlier! I was definitely just thinking you were meaning general queer history (which is heavily shared between groups), not specifically-defined-community's-history. I was, kinda misleadingly, using "community" more to refer to a group of people that could potentially be united under a specific label rather than a specifically defined and named community, so I definitely contributed to my own misunderstanding there, lol.

 

In this case, gotchya, sorry about that, - and no, I don't have any resources (nor personal anecdotes) for this.

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On 3/8/2019 at 3:02 AM, sennkestra said:

Explicit canon representation of aro characters besides bojack and rafael (I suspect there have been some webcomic and YA novel characters by now, but I don't follow either of those very closely. Also, does anyone know if Bojack has any aromantic characters? I know they named drop the word but not sure if they ever link it to any specific characters, and I don't really want to actually watch the whole show)

I haven't read the whole thread yet, so sorry if anyone else mentioned this but The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue has an aroace character who is also the protagonist of the next book, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy. I know the author has written other slightly more problematic books (particularly I seem to remember her overstepping a bit with the trans community, for lack of a better way to put it), but those two were pretty good. Also, this doesn't exactly count because it's not in the show (and arguably the show is one of the most romantic things I've ever seen), but Neil Gaiman did tweet this about Good Omens last year, and I was just kind of impressed that he knew the word, tbh: 

 

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  • 2 months later...
On 3/8/2019 at 8:32 PM, sennkestra said:
  • Any non-english language activity
  • Explicit canon representation of aro characters besides bojack and rafael (I suspect there have been some webcomic and YA novel characters by now, but I don't follow either of those very closely. Also, does anyone know if Bojack has any aromantic characters? I know they named drop the word but not sure if they ever link it to any specific characters, and I don't really want to actually watch the whole show)

well this one fits two categories as it is French, and it may not (yet) be explicitly stated within the show, the creator of Miraculous Ladybug has tweeted about the characters. I don't actually follow the show, but apparently fans are not surprised but they also seem to not think will actually be named in the show. 

https://alexseanchai.tumblr.com/post/616144855708696576/omg-astruc-just-said-on-twitter-that-max-is-rather

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  • 4 months later...

Regarding Aro spaces in German: The only thing I found when I last searched is the (A)romantic subforum of the german AVEN (https://www.aven-forum.de/viewtopic.php?t=11886) which seems to have been created in 2015 (but this really is only a place for aro ace people).

I also just found this dutch (?) AVEN site which dates its explanation of "aromantic" to 2011 (https://du.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Aromanticus)

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