Acephobic antagonism in aro spaces

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

Regarding "tag policing". Y'all are definitely right that it's not fair to leave no room for overlap between aro identities and ace identities, arospec identities, etc. That being said, I do have a question- What would you say should be done regarding things such as the aforementioned "Attraction is cancelled" meme? Because while it's not... Not an aro meme, I guess, what really bothered me about it was that the OP tagged it as simply "#aro" "#aromantic" "#aromantic memes", implying that it was an experience that would be relatable to all aros. So while I can understand the sentiment, seeing outright homophobia in the aro tag, as an allo aro, was really upsetting. How should examples like this generally be handled?

[nonmerci]

59 minutes ago, Coyote said:

But I'm not just saying all this to say "it's hard and complicated." I'm saying this because if you want better Google Scholar results, then think in terms of what a potential aro researcher would have to work with. Aromantic research can't follow the exact same trajectory that asexual research did. Unlike sexology, there's no psych field of like... romance... ology. There's psych lit on married couples and stuff, sure, but it's not a perfectly parallel situation. I don't expect psych lit to be very useful to draw on for the purpose. So if someone's trying to publish something focused on aromanticism, at this stage they'd probably need to cite anything in the academic literature that so much as mentions the romantic orientation model in order to establish precedent.... which.... means.....

 

Do you see where I'm going with this?

I see but still upsetting. In particular as I was searching specifically aro articles, so I can quote it for the Wikipedia page. And that really bother me if most of the articles that are here to prove aromanticism is a thing worst talk about are articles entitled "asexuality"... It doesn't mean the articles are not interesting in itself for aromanticism, but still... I think @Magni had faced the same issue as I do : finding articles about aromanticism is hard, though Magni gave me interesting links.

I hope Iit will be better when I'll searched in semi-traditional media : I heard that huffington post has things about aromanticism and that Wikipedia accepts it as a reliable source, I'll check it out in the week.

 

Anyway, my point is still the same : it is hard for aro to emerge as its own community when everything is tying it to asexuality.

[Momo]

3 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

I guess, what really bothered me about it was that the OP tagged it as simply "#aro" "#aromantic" "#aromantic memes", implying that it was an experience that would be relatable to all aros.

 

I'm curious - are you of the opinion then that all things labelled as aro must apply to all aros? That feels... overbearing. I'd even go so far as to say impossible. Individual experience is too diverse for all things to be relatable to all people in a given group.

 

6 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

What would you say should be done regarding things such as the aforementioned "Attraction is cancelled" meme?

 

With regard to this meme in particular, "x is cancelled" is generally a hamfisted attempt to make any point and I'm not a fan. Frankly, I don't believe this meme should be anywhere and I say that as an aroace - the primary audience for it - even if I do sometimes identify with the sentiment personally. That's different to saying it shouldn't be in #aro though. Criticising the meme on it's own merits and saying "this shouldn't exist" is very different to saying "this isn't aro" because while it's mostly specific to aroaces, aroaces are part of the aro community too. Should things only be tagged with the most specific things you can ever think of?

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

4 minutes ago, Momo said:

 

I'm curious - are you of the opinion then that all things labelled as aro must apply to all aros? That feels... overbearing. I'd even go so far as to say impossible. Individual experience is too diverse for all things to be relatable to all people in a given group.

 

 

No, I'm not. That's why I'm asking. If I had some overly specific demands for how things should be tagged, I would not be coming into this thread to ask other people how they should be tagged. That was my point.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Jot-Aro Kujo

[Guest Sennkestra]

26 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

what really bothered me about it was that the OP tagged it as simply "#aro" "#aromantic" "#aromantic memes", implying that it was an experience that would be relatable to all aros. So while I can understand the sentiment, seeing outright homophobia in the aro tag, as an allo aro, was really upsetting. How should examples like this generally be handled?

1. Tagging something as “Aromantic” (or even solely as Aromantic) absolutely does not and should not imply that it is relatable to all aros, especially since the aro community is varied enough that almost nothing is going to fit that standard. So approaching the Aromantic  tag with the mindset that everything in it should be 100% relatable to you is just going to result in disappointment every time. 

 

2. The potential implications of homophobia isn’t a tagging problem, it’s a homophobic tropes problem - tagging it as something else wouldn’t do anything to affect those implications and tbh focusing on the tags alone just distracts from talking about the actual main issues with the actual content (specifically that fact that while some aro people need to vent about their frustration with being unable to relate to paradigms of romantic attraction or even attraction more generally, it’s also important to not accidentally end up repeating sex shaming, elitist, or homophobic tropes), although this is a somewhat ambiguous case of that.

[nonmerci]

31 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

What would you say should be done regarding things such as the aforementioned "Attraction is cancelled" meme?

This meme is problematic yeah, but at the time I think it is still aro. I mean, the only way to not tag it as aro would to tag it as aroace specifically, and even like that it is still problematic. Because there are attraction that are not romantic nor sexual : squishes, alterous, aesthetical... And sometimes these attractions are very important for aro. I mean there is straight/lesbian/pan/etc aroace, who are people though being both ace and aro still label themselves with "lesbian", "bi", etc because of the other attraction they felt.

 

As @Momo said, the most problematic here is the meme in the first place, because it is weird to cancel something and I get why some people would feel uncomfortable by that.

 

12 minutes ago, Guest Sennkestra said:

Tagging something as “Aromantic” (or even solely as Aromantic) absolutely does not and should not imply that it is relatable to all aros, especially since the aro community is varied enough that almost nothing is going to fit that standard. So approaching the Aromantic  tag with the mindset that everything in it should be 100% relatable to you is just going to result in disappointment every time

Yep. The difficulty here is that though we share things in common (aka, lacking romantic attraction), any experience is unique. Like, it seems that a lot of aros are romance-repulsed, and of course I can relate to it because I am not (at least, when it is not for me). Or there is this list of you might be aro if where I relate only to a few things in a very huge list, and I am still aromantic.

 

In fact this is a difficult debate. To be honest, I think the best to tag things as aromantic if it can apply to aros (even if not all of them), and the thing that is upsetting is tagging something as aro if there is nothing aro in it. We could also create a specific aroace tag (or maybe it already exist? I'm not into tagging at all), but I think it would lead to other problems because then other differences could emerge in the community, and it would have no end. But maybe I am just thinking that because I am not an allo aro submerged by aroace memes?

[Guest Sennkestra]

16 minutes ago, nonmerci said:

I see but still upsetting. In particular as I was searching specifically aro articles, so I can quote it for the Wikipedia page. And that really bother me if most of the articles that are here to prove aromanticism is a thing worst talk about are articles entitled "asexuality"... It doesn't mean the articles are not interesting in itself for aromanticism, but still... I think @Magni had faced the same issue as I do : finding articles about aromanticism is hard, though Magni gave me interesting links.

I hope Iit will be better when I'll searched in semi-traditional media : I heard that huffington post has things about aromanticism and that Wikipedia accepts it as a reliable source, I'll check it out in the week.

 

Anyway, my point is still the same : it is hard for aro to emerge as its own community when everything is tying it to asexuality.

 

Ok, but see, thing here is that there are two facts:

1. There aren't a lot of research articles that talk primarily about aromanticism with asexuality as only an afterthought

2. There are a lot of research articles that talk about both aromanticism and asexuality, especially using asexuality as the starting point

The problem I see with the post quoted above is that you seem to be assuming that if people stopped talking about aromanticism in the context of asexuality (point 2), that somehow that will change the fact that there aren't many articles primarily about aromanticism (point 1)....but it won't. It will just mean that there are no articles about aromanticism at all.

The problem isn't that there are too many articles about asexuality and aromanticism, it's that there aren't enough additional articles about aromanticism in other contexts. That can only be solved by promoting and developing new content. Because, frankly, aro aces are only in a slightly marginally less bad position when it comes to lack of resources - we need a lot, lot more of all types.

 

This assumption that attention and resources are a zero sum game and the only way for aro folks to get more is to make asexual people have less - or that aro ace people talking about themselves is somehow the main driver of aromantic obscurity rather than, you know, mainstream straight society's blatant and overwhelming amatonormativity combined with the practical realities of being a new and emerging community - is one of the big drivers of a lot of ace-antagonistic attitudes in the aro community right now. 

 

Like, if you find out that someone punched you six times, but only punched the other guy five times, the problem isn't that the other guy got punched less, it's that that third party keeps punching both of you! 

 

(Also, like, just to share some additional context if that helps...I track asexual research on google scholar, and aside from biology texts (the biggest thing to filter through), the vast, vast majority of articles about LGB or LGBT people whose only references to asexuality are that they spell out LGBTQIA, or to mention that someone wrote in asexual in a write in field and was therefore filtered in/out of a group in their LGBT study - a very similar situation to how aromanticism is now mostly showing up in asexual article summaries. But frankly, once ace college students started becoming ace grad students and ace professors and pushing a lot of the current wave of ace research, those studies that tied aces with lesbian and gay folks didn't actually hinder that growth - if anything, it aided it by providing pools of research (however tenuously connected) that they could use as a stepping stone - the way that i hope a new wave of aromantic-interested researchers will soon be able to use the stepping stone that many ace researchers are starting to set up for them. )

 

[nonmerci]

3 minutes ago, Guest Sennkestra said:

The problem isn't that there are too many articles about asexuality and aromanticism, it's that there aren't enough additional articles about aromanticism in other contexts.

That actually something I canted to say, but clearly it seems I failed to it.

Also, I porably should add that I was actually trying to find articles about aromantic allosexual too. And I find none.

Of course, I get it. Asexuality is already something very new in researches, and they began before aros... As you pointed out, there are already not a lot of asexual articles (and I really don't mean that aces are priviledged for that, it's hard to find things... my, just the fact that I find easily asexual articles by searching things about aromanticism, while you didn't by searching things about asexuality, proves that there are still a lot to do here). I was probably dreaming for finding specific aro articles, or articles about not asexual aros. But on the moment I was actually discouraged to see that none exist. That's it.

[sennkestra]

31 minutes ago, nonmerci said:

That actually something I canted to say, but clearly it seems I failed to it.

Also, I porably should add that I was actually trying to find articles about aromantic allosexual too. And I find none.

Of course, I get it. Asexuality is already something very new in researches, and they began before aros... As you pointed out, there are already not a lot of asexual articles (and I really don't mean that aces are priviledged for that, it's hard to find things... my, just the fact that I find easily asexual articles by searching things about aromanticism, while you didn't by searching things about asexuality, proves that there are still a lot to do here). I was probably dreaming for finding specific aro articles, or articles about not asexual aros. But on the moment I was actually discouraged to see that none exist. That's it.

 

My suggestion is this: when you get frustrated by the fact that you can only find mentions of aromanticism in research articles that are also about asexuality, instead of thinking, ugh, they're all tying asexuality and aromanticism together again (many research articles these days actually make a point to acknowledge them as seperate!), or making comments like "it is hard for aro to emerge as its own community when everything is tying it to asexuality"  which implicitly blame aro aces specifically or aces more generally for aromantic obscurity, ask yourself this instead:

 

"Why is it that, outside of aromantic authors themselves, the only researchers and writers who give a damn about aromanticism enough to acknowledge it are asexuals and the people interested in studying them? Why aren't researchers and writers on allosexual subjects also stepping up?"

Because frankly, when it comes to your comment about not finding allo aro specific research papers, asexual research shouldn't be held responsible for generating content on allo aros - allo aros aren't asexual, and that's the whole point! The ability of the tiny niche of ace researchers and activists to influence more mainstream allosexual establishments is limited at best, and we can't blame them for this.

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

Alright, I do see what you guys mean now about the meme being the problem and not the tags. That makes sense. Thanks, everyone.

On that note, though, I have another question. And I do apologize if it seems like I'm making this all about allo aros- I'm not asking these things to be all "me me me", I'm asking because I recognize that yeah, allo aros do have to be careful about acephobia, and I genuinely do want to learn how to be more respectful of aces in my allo aro activism.

 

What's the best way to approach the topic of actual homophobia/sex shaming within the aro community without instantly putting aroaces on the defensive? I know "waaaaah but aceys are hoOoOmophOoObiIiIIic one time I said a guy is cute and a ace said I should be burned at the stake" etc. etc. is classic acephobic rhetoric, and I don't want to repeat that, but like... Yeah, sometimes people legitimately do say things that are homophobic or sex-shamey, and that needs to be addressed. So, how can this be addressed in a respectful way, and in a way that won't instantly make aces feel nervous due to past experiences with aphobes?

[Momo]

16 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Yeah, sometimes people legitimately do say things that are homophobic or sex-shamey, and that needs to be addressed. So, how can this be addressed in a respectful way, and in a way that won't instantly make aces feel nervous due to past experiences with aphobes?

 

2 hours ago, Momo said:

Criticising the meme on it's own merits and saying "this shouldn't exist" is very different to saying "this isn't aro" because while it's mostly specific to aroaces, aroaces are part of the aro community too.

 

I think I can summarise my previous comment better and it may give you a better guideline: your arguments should be centered around bringing the community together and explaining why things are problematic or hurtful rather than trying to divide the community and push problematic things out of your sphere so you don't have to see them.

[sennkestra]

24 minutes ago, Jot-Aro Kujo said:

Alright, I do see what you guys mean now about the meme being the problem and not the tags. That makes sense. Thanks, everyone.

On that note, though, I have another question. And I do apologize if it seems like I'm making this all about allo aros- I'm not asking these things to be all "me me me", I'm asking because I recognize that yeah, allo aros do have to be careful about acephobia, and I genuinely do want to learn how to be more respectful of aces in my allo aro activism.

 

What's the best way to approach the topic of actual homophobia/sex shaming within the aro community without instantly putting aroaces on the defensive? I know "waaaaah but aceys are hoOoOmophOoObiIiIIic one time I said a guy is cute and a ace said I should be burned at the stake" etc. etc. is classic acephobic rhetoric, and I don't want to repeat that, but like... Yeah, sometimes people legitimately do say things that are homophobic or sex-shamey, and that needs to be addressed. So, how can this be addressed in a respectful way, and in a way that won't instantly make aces feel nervous due to past experiences with aphobes?

 

FWIW, aces are not strangers to having serious conversations about how to avoid homophobia and sex-shaming, because these are issues that have been endemic in our communities for years (as they are for many communities) and that many of us are constantly having to remember to push back on. For any specific instances of homophobia, I would just call it out as problematic the way you would content from any other aro group, whether it's ace aros, straight aros, cis aros, etc.

The only thing to avoid, I guess, is implying that if an aro ace accidentally (or even delibertely) says something homophobic or sex-shaming, it's because they are ace, rather than because they just need to do some more work to unlearn problematic assumptions just as all of us do to some extent. On a more general level, it means acknowledging that aro communities have homophobia and sex-shaming problems of our own as well that we need to work on, and that they weren't just brought here by aro aces - they are something that's endemic to the overall culture that we're all embedded in and that all of us have inherited. (In general, I think the aro community definitely has a lot of areas where we could use a lot of work on that - and it's not just the ace folks or the straight folks here who are saying potentially problematic things).

Edited March 27, 2020 by sennkestra

[Coyote]

Sennkestra you keep making good points but the Arocalypse software doesn't let me hit "like" on guest posts. ;-;

 

[EDIT: whoops, I took way too long to post this apparently. Failed to refresh the thread and check for new posts first.]

 

Anyway -- that "attraction is cancelled" meme didn't strike me as homophobic, just careless, in that you'd think the poster would be aware some people have started using "cancelled" to mean "bad." But if that's not what they mean, then... Well, it's not clearly spelled out, but I figure is it's expressing a sentiment similar to the stuff I want to say as venting on other topics sometimes -- kind of an... assertive giving-up-on and pushing-away of a whole concept. I assume a similar sentiment is experienced by aros who don't experience any attraction or who don't care for the "attraction" model as a way of talking about their experiences -- I've definitely from aros who get sick of attraction talk in the aro community.

 

If we're interpreting the message as an attack on attraction-experiencers, then that would include people like me, an ace, because I definitely experience physical attraction. But it didn't occur to me to feel attacked by it so much as just like... annoyed... that people are publicly posting declarations like that without being clear about what they mean by it.

 

I figure this could work as a passable vent post in a select context -- just "I'm sick of this thing, get rid of it, it's cancelled" -- if everyone understood that it was being said in the register of non-serious venting, but... That's the thing: that calls for a culture of distinguishing your "emotional equivalent of vomiting to get something out of your system" posts vs. posts that are actually meant to be shared and circulated as general proclamations. For example, in a small private group chat, or a non-rebloggable viewlocked post, or on a niche subreddit... That would be a more responsible way to share those kinds of jokes, if at all.

 

Tumblr doesn't really allow for any of those options, though, which causes a problem when people keep wanting to use it as a community "home base" (so to speak) for sensitive subjects. People end up caught between "this is my blog, I should be able to talk about my own experiences on my own blog" vs. "literally anything I say here could be reblogged beyond my control, taken out of context/encountered out of context, and get someone angry with me, so I have to be careful to always be perfect and impersonal and unobjectionable at all times." The best way to resolve that tension, I figure, is to diversify community access points (ex. with places that actually allow for some privacy or limitations) and reserve using public Tumblr posts for when that's actually an appropriate tool.

 

As for what should actually be done about the specific case... well, those are the things that I'd want them to understand, conceptually, although good luck telling someone on Tumblr via Tumblr to stop posting certain things to Tumblr.

 

2 hours ago, nonmerci said:

I see but still upsetting. In particular as I was searching specifically aro articles, so I can quote it for the Wikipedia page.

 

Yeah, I get what you're saying. And in that case: I think in order to address that goal, what the aro community needs to do right now is start soliciting the attention of reporters and researchers for interviews. I don't have much experience with this kind of thing myself, but there are people who do, and if you track them down and ask how they did it, then you might be able to take a page from their strategies. You also might put out a call for aros in academia/aros with academic connections/aros in journalism/aros with journalist connections to see if anyone's looking for a new project -- it's not like these kinds of things necessarily need to come from outside the community, after all. Who's in a position to be able to forward these goals right now? That's what I'd look into.

 

Edited March 27, 2020 by Coyote
ninja'd

[nonmerci]

1 hour ago, sennkestra said:

"Why is it that, outside of aromantic authors themselves, the only researchers and writers who give a damn about aromanticism enough to acknowledge it are asexuals and the people interested in studying them? Why aren't researchers and writers on allosexual subjects also stepping up?"

Because frankly, when it comes to your comment about not finding allo aro specific research papers, asexual research shouldn't be held responsible for generating content on allo aros - allo aros aren't asexual, and that's the whole point! The ability of the tiny niche of ace researchers and activists to influence more mainstream allosexual establishments is limited at best, and we can't blame them for this.

Again, this is not what I said. I don't blame asexual for that, I just point a fact. I actually don't blame asexual for not talking about allo aros. I don't even imply that the researshers were ace in the first place. I perfectly understand why it is the way it is right now, as I say in my previous post. In fact we are saying the same thing...

Edited March 27, 2020 by nonmerci

[Ch0c0]

I want to thank our aro militants active on other platforms for warning us about our bad visibility and the various unacceptable behaviours. They should be addressed but we should avoid overreacting. Useless venting about the queeragamic debate below...

Spoiler

I'm just sad that some people have this negative nombrilist attitude and get offended so easily. Offended because of sex (Oversharing! - How did you get born?), because of no sex (Also oversharing! Do you also get angry at the nuns and the Virgin Mary?). This is anti LGB too? At the end of the day nobody is identifying as a criminal or promoting hate. Sometimes people are being childish (incl. ignorants or dorks) and you have to educate them...then shut them out if they are real jerks.

 

AUREA, Coyote, nonmerci and all other members here working on the education (wiki, press,...) are also fighting by prevention the Tblr misinformation and inaccurate memes.Thank you all for this! Hopefully dissemination of clear ressources will help the aro and the non-aro.

[Coyote]

Um, thank you, I think.

 

Anyway, I had a thought earlier -- I suspect that some people might not be aware of how the concept of "asexual privilege" has been used against aces before ("before" here meaning, like, before 2015), so I'm thinking of putting together a primer on the subject, in case it could help. Granted I haven't seen the exact phrase "asexual privilege" itself in an aro community context, but as I discussed earlier, some of the language seems to operate off the same basic idea, and so at the very least I'd like people to understand.... what exactly that's reminding me of.

[LauraG]

So I've seen something new that I'd like to share on this thread, however, I've not contacted the two people involved in the conversation as per the discussion @Jot-Aro Kujo and I had earlier in this thread. The thing is, I'm 5,000% positive that me, as an individual, saying something would go over extremely poorly. Would Alex, or someone else (preferably an allo aro someone else) be willing to reach out to those people if I shared the post privately? Pending, of course, taking a look at the post in question. I'd understand if you didn't want to touch it.

 

Mostly, I'm just concerned that these people will be considered right by a large portion of the community if there aren't people opposing those ideas, particularly other allo aros opposing those ideas, because aces just get dismissed.

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

3 minutes ago, LauraG said:

So I've seen something new that I'd like to share on this thread, however, I've not contacted the two people involved in the conversation as per the discussion @Jot-Aro Kujo and I had earlier in this thread. The thing is, I'm 5,000% positive that me, as an individual, saying something would go over extremely poorly. Would Alex, or someone else (preferably an allo aro someone else) be willing to reach out to those people if I shared the post privately? Pending, of course, taking a look at the post in question. I'd understand if you didn't want to touch it.

 

Yeah, feel free to send it my way, I'd be happy to do what I can.

[bydontost]

I think memes, such as the "attraction is cancelled" one may be a bit insensitive, may be not reletable to some, but theyre there to turn some frustration into humor. I can see memes that could easily say "romance is cancelled" which would be insensitive to a whole lot of people, but it's a meme, it's good for those who relate to it. I follow groups with political memes that im usually into, but I dont like all of them, sometimes they go too far in making fun of upsetting things, but maybe someone else needs to make fun of this particular thing right now to feel better with how shitty the world can be.

On 3/27/2020 at 8:23 PM, sennkestra said:

My suggestion is this: when you get frustrated by the fact that you can only find mentions of aromanticism in research articles that are also about asexuality, instead of thinking, ugh, they're all tying asexuality and aromanticism together again (many research articles these days actually make a point to acknowledge them as seperate!), or making comments like "it is hard for aro to emerge as its own community when everything is tying it to asexuality"  which implicitly blame aro aces specifically or aces more generally for aromantic obscurity, ask yourself this instead:

 

"Why is it that, outside of aromantic authors themselves, the only researchers and writers who give a damn about aromanticism enough to acknowledge it are asexuals and the people interested in studying them? Why aren't researchers and writers on allosexual subjects also stepping up?"

Because frankly, when it comes to your comment about not finding allo aro specific research papers, asexual research shouldn't be held responsible for generating content on allo aros - allo aros aren't asexual, and that's the whole point! The ability of the tiny niche of ace researchers and activists to influence more mainstream allosexual establishments is limited at best, and we can't blame them for this.

is it possible to be frustrated that all mentions of aromanticism are in papers that either focus on asexuality too or are about asexuality, and know that it's definitely not on asexuality researchers to write about aromanticism..?? bc i find that im frustrated, but I definitely don't blame aces or asexuality researchers for... not changing their scientific interests i guess. bc I am frustrated, and definitely not disappointed in those researchers specifically, or expecting ace communities to generate that spark for researches, etc., and am far from blaming anyone for this state of things. still, frustrated, and it's generated by the situation at large

 

I'll give an example of what frustrates me - a character from a cartoon was recently confirmed by an artist to be aroace. the title of an article that talked about it - "A crystal gem confirmed as asexual". I saw it, thought "cool, good for aces for the rep!!" and moved on. later, I see that aven rt'd the article, but they added a caption: the gem was confirmed asexual AND aromantic. i got angry!! how am i supposed to know that she was also confirmed as aromantic if the damn title doesn't mention it? she's also aro rep, that I could be telling other aro people about!! am I supposed to click on every article that mentions asexuality in hopes that maybe somewhere in the body it says that actually someone is aromantic too, that something includes aromanticism too, etc. And I don't blame aces for being more estabilished, more visible and all, but the situation that we're in is suboptimal. take a look at the article in question: https://www.cbr.com/steven-universe-crystal-gem-confirmed-asexual-peridot/. It mentions asexuality 20 times and aromanticism - 4 times. All 4 times as either "asexual and aromantic" or "asexual/aromantic". It's a singular example, but it starts weighing on you when it's a pattern. there's no one to blame for it, except for maybe the concept of sexual orientation for becoming so prevalent in today's society and the fact that because of that asexuality is more known. ideally, what id like is for the title to mention aromanticism too, and for it to be mentioned 20 times as well.

 

On 3/27/2020 at 7:23 PM, Guest Sennkestra said:

The problem I see with the post quoted above is that you seem to be assuming that if people stopped talking about aromanticism in the context of asexuality (point 2), that somehow that will change the fact that there aren't many articles primarily about aromanticism (point 1)....but it won't. It will just mean that there are no articles about aromanticism at all.

The problem isn't that there are too many articles about asexuality and aromanticism, it's that there aren't enough additional articles about aromanticism in other contexts. That can only be solved by promoting and developing new content.

I'm... not sure if a lot of people think that people should stop writing articles that are about both asexuality and aromanticism and that'll mean more aro articles will appear. there for sure are some, but it sounds so bizarre that I can't imagine that the majority of people could think that

 

On 3/28/2020 at 5:19 AM, LauraG said:

So I've seen something new that I'd like to share on this thread,

im curious now

[Coyote]

Started compiling notes for the Asexual Privilege post, and I'm at a crossroads here. I'll try explaining in bulletpoint format to kinda take this chronologically, but it concerns the issue of Linking To Examples.

• To explain how people have used the "asexual privilege" concept, I plan to link to some posts from 2011 that show people saying the things they said.
  • This is so people can understand exactly what I'm using as a reference point and how these conversations unfolded in the past.
  • It's also so people can confirm for themselves that I'm not misreporting/misinterpreting things.
  • Afaik most of the people involved on the anti-ace side of that debate either aren't around anymore or aren't active under the same accounts.
• To explain how people are reviving a similar concept today, I'm not sure whether to provide a paraphrased summary or link directly to examples.
  • If I didn't link to examples, I would have to just very closely describe what people are saying and say, basically, trust me, this is really a thing that people are saying.
  • If I did link to examples, they would either be examples that 1) people have been given and refused the opportunity to apologize for/have not been retracted or addressed, even when prompted about it, or 2) are not really saying anything wrong, per se, just saying things that help to contextualize and elaborate on the picture.

So do I restrict myself to paraphrasing of other's words w/o citations, asking people to just take my word for it, or do I include links to what exactly the contemporary issue looks like?

It's also occurred to me that while I know of at least one aro-specific post about how aro aces can support aro allos, I don't think I've ever encountered anybody publicly writing on the flip side w/ an aro specific bent. This post idea would be no replacement for that, but I do think it would make sense to cover the issue and probably link to this as an explanation.

[LauraG]

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

So do I restrict myself to paraphrasing of other's words w/o citations, asking people to just take my word for it, or do I include links to what exactly the contemporary issue looks like?

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

If I didn't link to examples, I would have to just very closely describe what people are saying and say, basically, trust me, this is really a thing that people are saying.

Yeah, I kind of hate when people paraphrase? Because then it's hard to know yourself whether they're misinterpreting people or whether they have a point. For example, I know @Jot-Aro Kujo has gotten upset about how people bring up shared ace & aro history before, and my first instinct was that those complaints were talking about people making corrections when others make inaccurate claims about the history of certain terms (*cough* queerplatonic), until I encountered someone who just brought up that allo aros wouldn't have the words to talk about themselves without aces just at the mere mention of an allo aro person, and I was like "wait, wtf this happens this way? that's messed up" and realized that my interpretations of Alex's paraphrasing were probably inaccurate.

So I've tried to give examples when I talk about things now, because I realize people's interpretations of paraphrasing is subject to both my interpretation as the writer and then the reader's imagination of what I must be talking about, both of which might be inaccurate.

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

To explain how people have used the "asexual privilege" concept, I plan to link to some posts from 2011 that show people saying the things they said.

• This is so people can understand exactly what I'm using as a reference point and how these conversations unfolded in the past.
• It's also so people can confirm for themselves that I'm not misreporting/misinterpreting things.
• Afaik most of the people involved on the anti-ace side of that debate either aren't around anymore or aren't active under the same accounts.

I also wonder how people from older conflicts would feel about things being brought up after a long time. Like, people might not want to get back into certain drama if you message them after a while has passed, and might get upset at you bringing it up if you were to try to approach them.

[bydontost]

2 hours ago, Coyote said:

• To explain how people are reviving a similar concept today, I'm not sure whether to provide a paraphrased summary or link directly to examples.
  • If I didn't link to examples, I would have to just very closely describe what people are saying and say, basically, trust me, this is really a thing that people are saying.
  • If I did link to examples, they would either be examples that 1) people have been given and refused the opportunity to apologize for/have not been retracted or addressed, even when prompted about it, or 2) are not really saying anything wrong, per se, just saying things that help to contextualize and elaborate on the picture.

So do I restrict myself to paraphrasing of other's words w/o citations, asking people to just take my word for it, or do I include links to what exactly the contemporary issue looks like?

my prefernce would be to have actual examples when you can find them. it's hard to judge for yourself with people paraphrasing...

[Momo]

2 hours ago, LauraG said:

Yeah, I kind of hate when people paraphrase? Because then it's hard to know yourself whether they're misinterpreting people or whether they have a point. For example, I know @Jot-Aro Kujo has gotten upset about how people bring up shared ace & aro history before, and my first instinct was that those complaints were talking about people making corrections when others make inaccurate claims about the history of certain terms (*cough* queerplatonic), until I encountered someone who just brought up that allo aros wouldn't have the words to talk about themselves without aces just at the mere mention of an allo aro person, and I was like "wait, wtf this happens this way? that's messed up" and realized that my interpretations of Alex's paraphrasing were probably inaccurate.

Echoing this. Paraphrasing is, at best, just adding an extra layer of bias on everything. At worst, it can completely rewrite and change the meaning of what was said.

[Mark]

On 3/27/2020 at 2:00 AM, Guest Sennkestra said:

Yeah, I think part of the issue is that because ace communities and aro communities overlap or at least bump into each other a lot,

It might be better to say they intersect.
 

On 3/27/2020 at 2:00 AM, Guest Sennkestra said:

 This comes in the form of people/groups procaliming "aspec" projects or spaces without actually putting in the work to actively include all groups (though tbh, while everyone gets shafted by this, agender folks probably get shafted by this lip-service "aspec" approach even more); but also in the form of people assuming/demanding that groups that cater to one of these groups must also serve all "aspecs" equally even if that's far outside their actual scope.

I wonder if if this might describe the majority of "aspec" projects, groups, organisations, etc.

[Lokiana]

On 3/26/2020 at 9:00 PM, Guest Sennkestra said:

This comes in the form of people/groups procaliming "aspec" projects or spaces without actually putting in the work to actively include all groups (though tbh, while everyone gets shafted by this, agender folks probably get shafted by this lip-service "aspec" approach even more)

Just a question for y'all, and this is slightly off topic so pardon me: do you consider agender people to be on the a-spec? I've heard conflicting answers and am curious what y'all's thoughts are.