Allosexual aros: do you feel erased by aroaces?

[Acecream]

Just wondering because I feel like when aromantic is shown and talked about everyone seems to mix it up with asexuality

i’m an aroace person myself and I feel like aro-representation should be a bit more allosexual than it is. Even in the aro-awareness week I saw a lot of posts on social media that were mentioning asexuality while I felt it would be necessary to part my aro from my ace identity (yes maybe they interact with each other, but they still are two different parts of my identity) and I fear that aroaces would be a bit gatekeeping...

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

Oh, yeah. For sure. This is something we talk about all the time. 

[vvv]

I'm pretty new to explicitly identifying as arospec, so I don't feel like I could say I feel erased, but I definitely notice that I see aroace more represented than aroallo. 

I'm pan/bisexual and have identified as such for over half of my life, so I'm kind of used to that in a way. I think things are better from when I was a teen, but bi-erasure is still common and controversial. I imagine asexual erasure is more rampant, though. 

[Angrboda]

That's a good point. I do get tired of people lumping the two together & assuming that I'm ace, just because I'm aro. That said, I do think that we're slowly becoming more understood.

[roboticanary]

Less so as individuals, but I do get the sense that if a group claims to focus on aces and aros it will always be aces first with maybe a nod towards aromanticism. On the one hand I understand that a lot of these groups started as ace groups but as far as I am concerned if you take the name aro that should be something worked for rather than just tack the name on and call it a day.

[Mark]

On 3/18/2021 at 5:44 PM, Acecream said:

i’m an aroace person myself and I feel like aro-representation should be a bit more allosexual than it is. Even in the aro-awareness week I saw a lot of posts on social media that were mentioning asexuality while I felt it would be necessary to part my aro from my ace identity (yes maybe they interact with each other, but they still are two different parts of my identity) and I fear that aroaces would be a bit gatekeeping...

Even if they don't mention they are also ace having only aroaces gives a very limited perspective on aromanticsm.
Including that, like other perioriented people, aroaces can more easily confuse and conflate romantic and sexual.

[Acecream]

4 hours ago, Mark said:

Even if they don't mention they are also ace having only aroaces gives a very limited perspective on aromanticsm.
Including that, like other perioriented people, aroaces can more easily confuse and conflate romantic and sexual.

That’s true. So I’ll try to push alloaro voices on social media more than telling about my own experiences when it’s (only) about aromanticism.

but it’s not that easy bc everytime I tell ppl about asexuality I have to clarify first that being ace does not mean being aromantic and everytime I’m telling about aromantic I have to clarify first that being aro does not mean being asexual and that my own experiences may not be the ones most ppl have.. So it’s a bit confusing where to find my own place lol

[Artemis's Aro]

Yeah a little. I feel like we're often an after-thought on positivity posts, and most of the aro representation I've found (already sparse) was aroace content instead of aroallo. I don't mind it too much since I still relate a lot to the aro aspect of it, and since we don't have much representation in general, but I'd love to see more aroallo stuff around. 

Edit: also I just remembered that when I came out to my friends literally all of them assumed I was also ace. So yeah, I think a little bit more aro-allo rep would be welcomed. 

Edited March 30, 2021 by Artemis's Aro

[Scoop]

I'm really surprised a decent amount of people said they don’t care whether aro rep is allo or not. Aroace rep and aroallo rep are often significantly different. If I take aro out of the equation for example, I relate way more to my allo friends than I do my alloace friends.

Also if being aro is considering by a majority of people as inherently aroace then no matter what people feel about the situation, it straight up is erasure. The definition of aromantic doesn’t mention sexuality and yet there are dozens of aros - myself included - who have had people assume they're ace when what they said is: "I am aromantic". 

Saying all that tho I personally don't feel erasured by aroaces lmao. Interesting question haha. You've got me asking myself what do I feel vs what do I think. 

[Guest June]

Yes, all the time. I'm very much allosexual but it was annoying during aro awareness week all the discussion was centered on aroaces, love my aroaces but dang lol