Do you think there are topics still not explored fully in the aro community?

[Holmbo]

If so which ones?

[Neon]

The intersection of aplatonic/loveless and aromanticism, aromanticism's effect on feelings towards friends and family, and exclusionism within the community.

Those are all topics I've picked up on, but I've never seen them fully fleshed out.

[Lovebird]

More of a complaint, but elitism & ableism within the aro community

Idk who needs to hear this but calling people psychos/crazy/mentally ill for experiencing romantic attraction and saying romantic love is the equivalent to a mental illness or a curable disease is a spit in the face disabled, neurodivergant and mentally ill folk of all stripes, especially those who have been fighting for marriage & relationship equality.

Also what needs to be heard is that attractional and lack thereof is morally neutral, a person cannot be "bad" for simply being romantically attracted to someone and vise versa.

[nonmerci]

@Lovebirdyeah true. I find the ableism big in this community. In the same idea, there is the "we are aro not psycho" discourse that is also ableist considering that psychopath is an outdated term for a type anti-personality disorder, and these people didn't ask to be evilized for no reason.

I also see someone say that "loveless aro" should not be a label cause for them being loveless is a neurodivergent thing and should not be associated with the aro community. So many problems in that I don't know where to begin.

 

In general I think the aro community discussed a lot how being aro impact your life in an amatonormative society, but we not discuss much about how we fit in the a-spec community at large, or problems that can rise in the aro community (such as allo hate, some amatonormative view on platonic love, aroallo erasure...). You see a discussion from time to time, but I'm not sure this was discussed in details. 

Edited March 10, 2023 by nonmerci

[Mark]

Romantic coding.

Non-romantic relationships outside of QPRs. Especially those involving sexual, sensual and aesthetic attractions.

How a lot of "aro" terminology was coined by asexuals and/or in an asexual-centric  community. Thus can have romance and sex conflation issues.

Edited March 10, 2023 by Mark

[DeltaAro]

14 hours ago, Lovebird said:

Idk who needs to hear this but calling people psychos/crazy/mentally ill for experiencing romantic attraction and saying romantic love is the equivalent to a mental illness or a curable disease is a spit in the face disabled, neurodivergant and mentally ill folk of all stripes, especially those who have been fighting for marriage & relationship equality.

Romantic love was traditionally compared to madness, so it's not something aros came up with.

This goes all back to Plato. He stated that four types of madness are divine gifts: prophecy, mysticism, poetry and love.

Plato praised love as admiration of the Form of Beauty, which our soul had "seen" in another life. It makes the soul remember and long for the realm beyond the heavens (the forms).

So the source of "love is madness" is actually exclusionary to aros.

And while I'd say romantic love in the acute phase can involve altered states of consciousness, this is temporary and something most people experience (and therefore accepted or even expected). Romantic love may involve negative feelings, but overall it's more positive or at least a mixed bag, which is not typically true for mental illnesses.

Edited March 10, 2023 by DeltaAro
shortened

[Neon]

12 hours ago, Lovebird said:

Idk who needs to hear this but calling people psychos/crazy/mentally ill for experiencing romantic attraction

8 hours ago, nonmerci said:

there is the "we are aro not psycho" discourse

I’ve mostly seen the ableism in the reaction to being called neurodivergent (or whatever term the bigot chooses to use). People put down neurodivergent people to defend against the aphobia, implying that the ableism is okay.

[hemogoblin]

Undoubtedly. Context changes with time and inherently creates new discussions. There will never not be topics that continue to need explored.

For now, there is a glaring issue that we definitely owe our multiply marginalized members better discussions of how aro specific issues interplay with other identities and experiences - such as race, disability, religion, etc. - and more importantly, how we can be allies and help stand up for our fellow aros on these issues.

[Lovebird]

10 hours ago, nonmerci said:

@Lovebirdyeah true. I find the ableism big in this community. In the same idea, there is the "we are aro not psycho" discourse that is also ableist considering that psychopath is an outdated term for a type anti-personality disorder, and these people didn't ask to be evilized for no reason.

I also see someone say that "loveless aro" should not be a label cause for them being loveless is a neurodivergent thing and should not be associated with the aro community. So many problems in that I don't know where to begin.

 

In general I think the aro community discussed a lot how being aro impact your life in an amatonormative society, but we not discuss much about how we fit in the a-spec community at large, or problems that can rise in the aro community (such as allo hate, some amatonormative view on platonic love, aroallo erasure...). You see a discussion from time to time, but I'm not sure this was discussed in details. 

As a partially loveless aro, I disagree. It is a very important label, not all of us love everything in sight and that's fine. ND or not it's a good term and I don't understand the push back. It should absolutely be associated with the aro community as it was coined by ND people.

1 hour ago, DeltaAro said:

In Western culture, romantic love was traditionally compared to madness, so it's not something aros came up with. They just interpret it anachronistically and distort it.

This goes all back to Plato*, who calls "eros" (= translated: "love") a sort of "mania" (= "madness"). So aros hear this and think, "Yeah, this sounds on point". And then double down on it and voilà we arrive at "romantic love is a mental illness" (which lost all poetic charm and sounds 100 % clinical).

This is all wrong, since Plato also states that four types of madness are not a negative burden and instead divine gifts:

• the madness of the prophet from Apollo
• the purifying madness from Dionysos
• the creative madness of the poet given by the Muses

and finally the grandest and most excellent madness (you know what comes next...)

• the madness of the lover, from Eros and Aphrodite.

Plato was sex-negative, but his praise of love is so extreme, that it acquires a metaphysical dimension. Love is an appraisal of the Form of Beauty, which our soul has "seen" in another life. It makes the soul remember the realm beyond the heavens, lets it sprout wings and long to fly back to the divine banquet to "feast" on the forms (e.g. Form of Good, Justice, Truth, Equality, ...) and acquire immortality.

So the source of "love is madness" is actually extremely exclusionary to aros.

And while I'd say romantic love in the acute phase can involve altered states of consciousness, this is temporary and something most people experience (and therefore accepted or even expected). Romantic love may involve negative feelings, but overall it's more positive or at least a mixed bag, which is not typically true for mental illnesses.

* of course, he was inspired by older Greek myths. But he was the one who systemized it. And also via Plato it seeped into Christian culture.

Plato 😉

I don't really where it came from because it needs to be stopped regardless. The feelings of disabled arospecs should prioritise the bad takes of those who are obviously NTs who are looking for an excuse to throw people under a bus.

But what makes no sense to also is the people who DO say it's just a feeling you can get rid of that it's just a chemical, when you could say that about literally any emotion! "Romantic attraction is just a chemical!!" so is every other human emotion ever, what do you think serotonin is?? I swear 90% of the aro community fell asleep in psychology class.

[DeltaAro]

1 hour ago, Lovebird said:

I don't really where it came from because it needs to be stopped regardless. The feelings of disabled arospecs should prioritise the bad takes of those who are obviously NTs who are looking for an excuse to throw people under a bus.

Sorry for my long last post. What I mean is: for whatever reason, alloromantics really like to compare romantic love with madness. While paradoxically believing that love is what makes you human!

Both ideas are deeply entrenched in our culture, and aros feel forced to react to them. Of course, this harms neurodivergent people again.

But you would have to teach aros that they should not agree to the ideas of alloromantic mainstream and just interpret them differently. E.g. gleefully agreeing that love is madness. Or the "I assure you, I'm not a psycho because I experience this other type of love xy" groveling. Instead, they should reject those ideas completely.

Obviously, this is not going to happen tomorrow.

1 hour ago, Lovebird said:

But what makes no sense to also is the people who DO say it's just a feeling you can get rid of that it's just a chemical, when you could say that about literally any emotion! "Romantic attraction is just a chemical!!" so is every other human emotion ever, what do you think serotonin is?? I swear 90% of the aro community fell asleep in psychology class.

I belong to the 10 %.   😇 Who knows what emotions are, correlation doesn't mean it is the thing. Lightning isn't thunder.

I don't know what those aros are up to here. It's perhaps a reaction to mystical ideas like "soul mates" which exist for romantic love but not for other emotions like friendship. So saying "it's just chemicals" could exactly mean that romantic love is not fundamentally different from other emotions. I don't know.

[Lovebird]

20 minutes ago, DeltaAro said:

Sorry for my long last post. What I mean is: for whatever reason, alloromantics really like to compare romantic love with madness. While paradoxically believing that love is what makes you human!

Both ideas are deeply entrenched in our culture, and aros feel forced to react to them. Of course, this harms neurodivergent people again.

But you would have to teach aros that they should not agree to the ideas of alloromantic mainstream and just interpret them differently. E.g. gleefully agreeing that love is madness. Or the "I assure you, I'm not a psycho because I experience this other type of love xy" groveling. Instead, they should reject those ideas completely.

Obviously, this is not going to happen tomorrow.

I belong to the 10 %.   😇 Who knows what emotions are, correlation doesn't mean it is the thing. Lightning isn't thunder.

I don't know what those aros are up to here. It's perhaps a reaction to mystical ideas like "soul mates" which exist for romantic love but not for other emotions like friendship. So saying "it's just chemicals" could exactly mean that romantic love is not fundamentally different from other emotions. I don't know.

While it is correct that it won't happen overnight, I just wished more people realised what they were saying on the internet and how they approched certain experiences different from ours. I do plan on making a post... somewhere calling it all out.

This forum has been pretty chill with not throwing around casual ableism, but other places are not so kind, the aromantic subbreddit is the worst contender for it and is the reason why I'm so hesitant to enter aro spaces as I don't want to seem like I'm worse than a serial killer for having a spouse while being arospec.

[nonmerci]

6 hours ago, Lovebird said:

While it is correct that it won't happen overnight, I just wished more people realised what they were saying on the internet and how they approched certain experiences different from ours. I do plan on making a post... somewhere calling it all out.

This forum has been pretty chill with not throwing around casual ableism, but other places are not so kind, the aromantic subbreddit is the worst contender for it and is the reason why I'm so hesitant to enter aro spaces as I don't want to seem like I'm worse than a serial killer for having a spouse while being arospec.

Yeah totally agree.

I may be wrong but I feel like a lot of people in the aro subreddit are still young or still figuring things out and discovering the community. So they are not aware yet of what is problematic to say or not. I think it is less the case here where people discuss for a longer time about the different experiences that exist, so they are more open to diversity. At least it is just a guess.

 

We also have good moderators here and we all thanks them for their work. So I think casual ableism would be soon moderated.

 

9 hours ago, Neon said:

I’ve mostly seen the ableism in the reaction to being called neurodivergent (or whatever term the bigot chooses to use). People put down neurodivergent people to defend against the aphobia, implying that the ableism is okay.

Oh yeah. Which is even more annoying cause from what I see, it seems to have more ND people in the a-spec communities than in the allo ones. So even if all ND people are not a-spec, denying the intersectionality is just weird.

Some people just want to have the perfect aro and will throw under the bus all the aros that don't fit or that deny their ideal. I suppose our community is not unique in that, you find people like that everywhere. But it is a problem that needs to be more addressed.

[Lovebird]

1 hour ago, nonmerci said:

Yeah totally agree.

I may be wrong but I feel like a lot of people in the aro subreddit are still young or still figuring things out and discovering the community. So they are not aware yet of what is problematic to say or not. I think it is less the case here where people discuss for a longer time about the different experiences that exist, so they are more open to diversity. At least it is just a guess.

 

We also have good moderators here and we all thanks them for their work. So I think casual ableism would be soon moderated.

 

Oh yeah. Which is even more annoying cause from what I see, it seems to have more ND people in the a-spec communities than in the allo ones. So even if all ND people are not a-spec, denying the intersectionality is just weird.

Some people just want to have the perfect aro and will throw under the bus all the aros that don't fit or that deny their ideal. I suppose our community is not unique in that, you find people like that everywhere. But it is a problem that needs to be more addressed.

I agree, it's often a lot of baby aros, young ones at that, typically doing this. I think it's due to many being raised in conservative religious enviroments where the white cishet amatonormitive patriarchy was pushed upon them by parents, other family members and religious schools - they learn about LGBTQIA+ identities, culture and community, realise they're aro/ace and being unable to have a healthy outlet to let out their inner trauma, reinstill an anti-romance stance which I've noticed often manifests itself in ableism and sometimes outright homophobia & biphobia.

I've also noticed similiar sentiments among baby aces in the asexual community. All of this being used to instill a sense of pride and acompilation in being "unique" and how they're immune from bad things happening to them due to being aspec plus lack of accountability.

[nonmerci]

7 hours ago, Lovebird said:

I agree, it's often a lot of baby aros, young ones at that, typically doing this. I think it's due to many being raised in conservative religious enviroments where the white cishet amatonormitive patriarchy was pushed upon them by parents, other family members and religious schools - they learn about LGBTQIA+ identities, culture and community, realise they're aro/ace and being unable to have a healthy outlet to let out their inner trauma, reinstill an anti-romance stance which I've noticed often manifests itself in ableism and sometimes outright homophobia & biphobia.

I've also noticed similiar sentiments among baby aces in the asexual community. All of this being used to instill a sense of pride and acompilation in being "unique" and how they're immune from bad things happening to them due to being aspec plus lack of accountability.

Yeah you are probably right. I just saw a topic about it in another aro place, and it just seems to me that some people don't get that mocking another group of people is not a healthy or respectful way to deal with amatonormativity. It is easy to become antiromance when you've been hurt by it, but it is not the way to go. I think for some it goes away when they mature and take confidence, but not everyone sadly.

[Lovebird]

4 hours ago, nonmerci said:

Yeah you are probably right. I just saw a topic about it in another aro place, and it just seems to me that some people don't get that mocking another group of people is not a healthy or respectful way to deal with amatonormativity. It is easy to become antiromance when you've been hurt by it, but it is not the way to go. I think for some it goes away when they mature and take confidence, but not everyone sadly.

I've seen people in the community think that disabled people being unable to get married is "funny", like idc what you think of the concept of marriage is as a whole but I'd rather have 1 million disabled people get married right now and not lose their benefits then anyone lose their right to get married. I don't like the idea of marriage for myself despite also being disabled and partnered but I'm going to fight like hell for my disabled comrads who have been fighting for it for decades.

[roboticanary]

I think now we have a bit more aromantic research, e.g. the aro census it would be interesting to see a bit more in terms of asking 'what should we do with this data'.

there's all this effort put into finding these things out about the community but does that really inform what we do afterwards.

[nonmerci]

8 hours ago, Lovebird said:

I've seen people in the community think that disabled people being unable to get married is "funny", like idc what you think of the concept of marriage is as a whole but I'd rather have 1 million disabled people get married right now and not lose their benefits then anyone lose their right to get married. I don't like the idea of marriage for myself despite also being disabled and partnered but I'm going to fight like hell for my disabled comrads who have been fighting for it for decades.

My that's crazy. I don't know why I'm surprised disabled people can't yet married in some countries, of course humanity discriminates about this. 😡

[DeltaAro]

8 hours ago, nonmerci said:

My that's crazy. I don't know why I'm surprised disabled people can't yet married in some countries, of course humanity discriminates about this. 😡

AFAIU this wasn't about a legal ban and instead about losing all disability benefits if a disabled person marries.

Aros who find this funny are aspiring aro Dr. Evils, of course.

The official "logic" behind it is: "You get these new benefits of marriage, so we take your old ones".

[MulticulturalFarmer]

Well, I'd like to talk about the intersection of being intersex and aromantic, I mean, there's trans people on here who talk about the intersection of the two, but it's not the same as all intersex people aren't trans (some people consensually get on hormones and surgeries, and I say consensually as there's a history of nonconsensual surgeries on intersex infants). I haven't seen much discourse/dialogue on it, but I know that discrimination is still rampant against us in LGBTQ+ spaces in general, so that could be a part of it. 

[MulticulturalFarmer]

On 3/10/2023 at 2:46 AM, Lovebird said:

More of a complaint, but elitism & ableism within the aro community

Idk who needs to hear this but calling people psychos/crazy/mentally ill for experiencing romantic attraction and saying romantic love is the equivalent to a mental illness or a curable disease is a spit in the face disabled, neurodivergant and mentally ill folk of all stripes, especially those who have been fighting for marriage & relationship equality.

Also what needs to be heard is that attractional and lack thereof is morally neutral, a person cannot be "bad" for simply being romantically attracted to someone and vise versa.

Kinda tangential, but I also think that many aro people (primarily but not exclusively folks who are interested in QPRs) get married too for a variety of reasons such as personal safety, ease of combining finances, health insurance (i'm sure this is more of a USA thing though).

[Lovebird]

2 hours ago, MulticulturalFarmer said:

Well, I'd like to talk about the intersection of being intersex and aromantic, I mean, there's trans people on here who talk about the intersection of the two, but it's not the same as all intersex people aren't trans (some people consensually get on hormones and surgeries, and I say consensually as there's a history of nonconsensual surgeries on intersex infants). I haven't seen much discourse/dialogue on it, but I know that discrimination is still rampant against us in LGBTQ+ spaces in general, so that could be a part of it. 

I'd love to see more discussion on the intersex community in general, I know not every intersex person considers themselves LGBT+/Queer, but in my country they were always considered part of the community as they were the ones that build the foundation for trans people in my country.

[Queerdo]

Wouldn't mind more discussion on the construction of romance and cisheteronormative values.

[Holmbo]

8 hours ago, Sad aro said:

Where begins the arospec part of the romantic spectrum? I think it's important to keep the community this including and welcoming, but still it feels quite common to not fall in love quite often and that it can be complicated to know what you feel for someone. 

Yeah I agree that romance is kinda elusive as a concept. It's so subjective too. I know several people who don't experience romantic attraction but they don't choose to identify as aro because they still want a romantic relationship.

[nonmerci]

25 minutes ago, Holmbo said:

Yeah I agree that romance is kinda elusive as a concept. It's so subjective too. I know several people who don't experience romantic attraction but they don't choose to identify as aro because they still want a romantic relationship.

Yeah I think that something to talk about : anyone in the grey area is free to ID as aro or as allo. Just saying cause once I saw someone says that they are all aros even if they don't ID as such and we should tell them they are aro cause they don't ID as if just cause of amatonormativity... And I was just there thinking : let people ID as they want.

[Holmbo]

23 hours ago, Sad aro said:

I guess that if you should define as arospec or not, depends on if you feel that it's helpful for you or not. A delimitation should be used to argue to the rest of society why we need an arospec awareness and avoid misunderstandings like "by rights, everyone is on the arospec", not to gatekeep within the community. 

 

At the same time, we should rise awareness that allos also are on a romantic spectrum and can be fluid. No human is static.

 

 

Agree romantic spectrum is a useful term for society in general.