What are the chances of meeting another AroAce person in real life in the wild?

[Harvest-Unity]

Man that sucks. I hate how much power caretakers can have over their clients, especially intellectually disabled and/or high support needs autistic people, and how language/discussions around '''adult''' topics like gender and sexualiy are often restricted. 

[HelloThere]

10 hours ago, Harvest-Unity said:

Man that sucks. I hate how much power caretakers can have over their clients, especially intellectually disabled and/or high support needs autistic people, and how language/discussions around '''adult''' topics like gender and sexualiy are often restricted. 

A notion I generally despise. "Adult" topics definitely shouldn't be talked about for younger kids but by their early teens I will likely show little restraint on topics like gender, sexuality, and most social issues. Honestly by teen years I think that at least most of the world should be revealed because I can't imagine how bad it could end up being if I wasn't educated on this type of thing until later. I'm 15 and it took me until I was around 14-15 to really understand the whole LGBTQ+ community, and I'd strongly suggest that others try to educate themselves as much as possible. Sure ignorance may be bliss (that's why early childhood exists) but knowledge is power.

[kira-]

On 6/8/2023 at 1:35 PM, Whirl said:

I've met one aro person completely in the wild once! Like others have said, looking out for pins and other signifiers is a good way to find other aro and ace folks.

In my case, the person I met was wearing an aro pin! I just walked up to them and said like "Oh! Me too!" They even gifted me the pin, which I thought was so sweet of him. 

Being visible about your identity and being a source of information is also good for meeting other aroace people. For example, one of my uni friends is probably also on the aroace spectrum! I lent her my copy of loveless and she's been texting about her low-key identity crisis the past few days lol. She's still figuring herself out though.

Loveless is literally the best book ever

[HelloThere]

5 minutes ago, Kira- said:

Loveless is literally the best book ever

I’d love to get a hard copy at some point, and sit down with some music on and just waste away relating to all of that and seeing other experiences.

[kira-]

Just now, HelloThere said:

I’d love to get a hard copy at some point, and sit down with some music on and just waste away relating to all of that and seeing other experiences.

For now we just have to accept the ebook…

*sighs in pain but also in content*

[HelloThere]

Just now, Kira- said:

For now we just have to accept the ebook…

*sighs in pain but also in content*

Yeah true.

[Holmbo]

6 hours ago, HelloThere said:

I’d love to get a hard copy at some point, and sit down with some music on and just waste away relating to all of that and seeing other experiences.

Is there no hard copy?

[SimonB]

I'm 40 and randomly met two other A-spec people over the last year, one Ace and the other AroAce, both in their 30s.

Since I didn't even know asexuality or aromanticism were a thing until a year ago, and I wasn't intentionally seeking out AroAce folk and met both of those people by chance, my perspective is probably a little skewed; it seems super easy, barely an inconvenience 😉

But seriously, until last year I'd not properly dealt with my depression for over 20 years, and so stayed inside all the time, barely spoke to anyone other than family. Once I pushed myself to go outside in order to help myself feel better, that led to meeting new people, and then since being ace was new on my mind I spoke about it with some of them and that's how I met the two other A-spec people. We've since become friends but I don't know that they would have brought it up if I hadn't done so first, they weren't wearing badges or the like.

And now more recently I've been attending a monthly AroAce meetup here in Frankfurt, went to a CSD demonstration a few weeks ago, and appeared as a guest on an AroAce podcast last week. So I'm greatly increasing my chances of meeting other AroAce folk in real life 🙂

Edited June 21, 2023 by SimonB

[HelloThere]

1 hour ago, SimonB said:

I'm 40 and randomly met two other A-spec people over the last year, one Ace and the other AroAce, both in their 30s.

Since I didn't even know asexuality or aromanticism were a thing until a year ago, and I wasn't intentionally seeking out AroAce folk and met both of those people by chance, my perspective is probably a little skewed; it seems super easy, barely an inconvenience 😉

But seriously, until last year I'd not properly dealt with my depression for over 20 years, and so stayed inside all the time, barely spoke to anyone other than family. Once I pushed myself to go outside in order to help myself feel better, that led to meeting new people, and then since being ace was new on my mind I spoke about it with some of them and that's how I met the two other A-spec people. We've since become friends but I don't know that they would have brought it up if I hadn't done so first, they weren't wearing badges or the like.

And now more recently I've been attending a monthly AroAce meetup here in Frankfurt, went to a CSD demonstration a few weeks ago, and appeared as a guest on an AroAce podcast last week. So I'm greatly increasing my chances of meeting other AroAce folk in real life 🙂

Bro going on a podcast sounds awesome, later on in life I’d LOVE to do that.

[SimonB]

4 hours ago, HelloThere said:

Bro going on a podcast sounds awesome, later on in life I’d LOVE to do that.

One trick is to make your own podcast 😃 Having done that for nearly two years, it felt easier to be a guest on someone else's, though listening back to myself in such a different context I definitely have some verbal mannerisms I want to work on. What kind of podcast would you like to appear on yourself?

[HelloThere]

3 minutes ago, SimonB said:

One trick is to make your own podcast 😃 Having done that for nearly two years, it felt easier to be a guest on someone else's, though listening back to myself in such a different context I definitely have some verbal mannerisms I want to work on. What kind of podcast would you like to appear on yourself?

Maybe just like some aroace podcast online where we can talk about our own experiences and stuff, I generally talk a lot but oh boy would listening to myself talk suck. XD

10 minutes ago, SimonB said:

One trick is to make your own podcast 😃 Having done that for nearly two years, it felt easier to be a guest on someone else's, though listening back to myself in such a different context I definitely have some verbal mannerisms I want to work on. What kind of podcast would you like to appear on yourself?

Mostly though I’d just love to talk to other aro’s and ace’s in an online chat while playing games, maybe making some pride stuff in those games. You know that just sounds really fun. :D

[TheApothiAroace]

I think the true population of aroace people is 0.2% of the world population so that means roughly 16 million aroace world wide which means around a 1 in 500 chance to meet an aroace person.

[HelloThere]

22 minutes ago, TheApothiAroace said:

I think the true population of aroace people is 0.2% of the world population so that means roughly 16 million aroace world wide which means around a 1 in 500 chance to meet an aroace person.

The overall amount of people who’re aro or ace at ages 18-24 are 4%. Assuming that 75% of them are right, it’d be about 3% and 20% of that (thats about the number of aro’s who are ace and vice versa) it’s about .6%. This could be grossly wrong but I doubt that it’s incredibly low.

[TheApothiAroace]

13 minutes ago, HelloThere said:

The overall amount of people who’re aro or ace at ages 18-24 are 4%. Assuming that 75% of them are right, it’d be about 3% and 20% of that (thats about the number of aro’s who are ace and vice versa) it’s about .6%. This could be grossly wrong but I doubt that it’s incredibly low.

Figure around 0.8-1%ish of the world is ace then multiply that by the population of aces who are also aros (29.5%) then you get a number in the 0.2% range.

 

Statistics of aces who are aros were gotten from: https://acesandaros.org/learn/demographics-of-ace-and-aro-communities

Ace population is purely a best guess speculation.

[HelloThere]

4 minutes ago, TheApothiAroace said:

Figure around 0.8-1%ish of the world is ace then multiply that by the population of aces who are also aros (29.5%) then you get a number in the 0.2% range.

 

Statistics of aces who are aros were gotten from: https://acesandaros.org/learn/demographics-of-ace-and-aro-communities

Ace population is purely a best guess speculation.

Oh yeah, I’m willing to bet that the actual number is probably a lot higher than most think. It’s all just guesses, and most people’s feelings are fluid so we’d never be able to be sure until education became incredibly common.

[TheApothiAroace]

2 minutes ago, HelloThere said:

Oh yeah, I’m willing to bet that the actual number is probably a lot higher than most think. It’s all just guesses, and most people’s feelings are fluid so we’d never be able to be sure until education became incredibly common.

What I’m thinking is that there are allos who are actually demi or greyromantic/greysexual (which is technically still aro/ace-spec) but they just don’t realize it and classify themselves as pan, bi, gay, etc.

[HelloThere]

3 minutes ago, TheApothiAroace said:

What I’m thinking is that there are allos who are actually demi or greyromantic/greysexual (which is technically still aro/ace-spec) but they just don’t realize it and classify themselves as pan, bi, gay, etc.

Oh yeah, that’s a pretty good possibility.

[TheApothiAroace]

4 minutes ago, HelloThere said:

Oh yeah, that’s a pretty good possibility.

Also when you look at the percentage it seems incredibly low but when you look at the population (roughly 16 million) then that number seems a lot larger, still a bit small though.

[HelloThere]

20 minutes ago, TheApothiAroace said:

Also when you look at the percentage it seems incredibly low but when you look at the population (roughly 16 million) then that number seems a lot larger, still a bit small though.

Yeah, it’s still small but that’s a lot of people generally.