How many aros exist?

[timo0815]

Does anybody know how many people are ace/aro. I read that 1% of society is ace, but both of it? 

I'd like to know how many are even on this site honestly if there are 10 K people on here, wich are spread across the globe, I don't see myself meeting someone in my area who's aro. 

I find it pretty weird to think about.

 

[Queen of Spades]

On this forum we're cirrently close to 500. There are many aromantics who don't know about arocalypse. 

 

Applying to both asexuals and aromantics: I think there're more of them than statistics show, but either they haven't discovered themselves yet, or they hide. :-?

[techno]

The 1% figure is the only statistic on the matter I've ever seen, and tbh I have to question it. How was this percentage calculated? Is it meant to include all ace-spec people? Are aros a part of this statistic, falsely included as part of the ace umbrella?

 

I don't think there's enough education about asexuality and aromanticism for the 1% statistic to be accurate. In fact I don't think it's accurate. I know at least one other ace person who went to my school, and if only 1% of the world's population were asexual, the chances of that would be highly unlikely.

 

Also, regarding what @Ice Queen said: it's true. This forum (although I'm pretty sure it's a reincarnation of an old one if I have my history correct?) is only a little over a year old. There are definitely plenty of aromantics in the world who don't even know that being aromantic is a thing, let alone that arocalypse exists!

[Untamed Heart]

I'd say it's probably more than we might imagine. And even if the 1% stat is accurate (if it even just applied to ace or aro-ace people), that's still a lot of people, relatively speaking (roughly 7 million? idk maths isn't my strong point  but I did see someone point that out on another forum).

[timo0815]

42 minutes ago, techno-trashcan said:

I know at least one other ace person who went to my school, and if only 1% of the world's population were asexual, the chances of that would be highly unlikely.

Think about it, 1% is every 100th person you meet. In my old school that would have been 170 people. Not too unlikely that it's something around 1%, but that isn't even really important.

 

What bothers me is, that people that are ace AND aro can basically only be less then that 1%.

And between these people in one's area finding one that meets the requirements for some kind of friendship/relation/partnership kind of thing is really unlikely imo. 

 

Basically that <1% minus 50% of it because I'm not bi, and considering the location makes a really tiny tiny number of possible aros to meet

lost in math tho... I don't think that will help anyone lol

[omitef]

@timo0815 I think your odds of meeting possible aros can be maximised by online forums. The first aro folks I met were through an online LGBT teens Facebook community--one person, whom I eventually met IRL, was aro and just happened to live in my town. I've met @xavo and @Euracil from here IRL after I found out we were geographically within proximity. Of course, I'm also American and upper-middle-class, which gives me the cultural and economic privilege to actually go meet up with aro folks I meed online. Not everyone can actually afford to do that with their online aro friends.

[Zema]

2 hours ago, techno-trashcan said:

The 1% figure is the only statistic on the matter I've ever seen, and tbh I have to question it. How was this percentage calculated? Is it meant to include all ace-spec people? Are aros a part of this statistic, falsely included as part of the ace umbrella?

I've read the study. It was taken from a survey done in the UK in 2004 (i think? that's when the paper was released anyway) of ~18,000 people. One of the questions was about sexuality. Here's the relevant excerpt:

Based on this I'd say that this 1% statistic is not counting ace-spec people, only people who are entirely asexual. I'd wager that if the survey specifically asked whether people identified as asexual, the number would have been lower. But in all, I think it's a fairly useful statistic. It definitely warrants further investigation to get a more accurate number. Also, we can't really measure the precision of this statistic either.

 

As for aros? I have no clue. As far as I'm aware, no studies have been done on aromanticism at all. The trouble is, not many people are aware of the split attraction model so simply asking whether people have felt romantic attraction or not wouldn't give an accurate result. I would definitely like to see how many of us there are. And I would especially like to know the proportion of ace to non ace aros. I know that aro aces are ~20% of aces, but how many aros are ace?

 

(For those interested here's the reference to the article: Bogaert, A. F. (2004). Asexuality: Prevalence and associated factors in a national probability sample. Journal of Sex Research, 41, 279–287. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00224490409552235)

[Ettina]

I posted a thread awhile back about a prevalence study of aromantic and varioriented people.

 

Their estimate was 1% aro and .7% ace.

[Holmbo]

Me and a friend from college moved to the same town and when we started hanging out we found out we're both aro.

I think the biggest problem for finding aro's is really that it's very hard to tell. So you might have met several already IRL but you don't know.

[techno]

@Zemaddog Thank you, that was super informative!

 

Based on my observations of this forum alone, it seems like aros have a tendency to hide and blend into the background (it doesn't help that the existence of our orientation is near entirely invisible in most spaces), so it'd be very hard to find one another irl. Better education (ie. informing people that we even exist) would probably be the first step to remedy that.

 

[Mark]

On 03/05/2017 at 10:23 PM, techno-trashcan said:

The 1% figure is the only statistic on the matter I've ever seen, and tbh I have to question it. How was this percentage calculated? Is it meant to include all ace-spec people?

My personal experience would tend to imply at least 2-3 orders of magnitude less. Something more like one in every ten or one hundred thousand people.

 

On 04/05/2017 at 0:40 AM, Zemaddog said:

As for aros? I have no clue. As far as I'm aware, no studies have been done on aromanticism at all. The trouble is, not many people are aware of the split attraction model so simply asking whether people have felt romantic attraction or not wouldn't give an accurate result. I would definitely like to see how many of us there are. And I would especially like to know the proportion of ace to non ace aros. I know that aro aces are ~20% of aces, but how many aros are ace?

Part of the split attraction model is that sexual and romantic orientations are independent variables. So you wouldn't expect aro aces to be any more common than allo aces.
Yet what you often see in, both here and in other aro forums, is aro aces are very common. Even making up more than half the active posters, if not the lurkers too. Whereas aro hets often look like a tiny minority. Which is really odd. Considering that heterosexual is the most common human sexual orientation and asexual is the least. About the only thing which does seem correct is more bi/pan/poly sexual people than homosexual.

I suspect that this is an issue of awareness including self awareness. Possibly aros who are otherwise normative (cis gendered, heterosexual, monogamous, inclined towards nesting behavior, etc.) are more likely to take on board "you'll change"; "you haven't met the right person yet" and similar toxic memes.

[Zema]

53 minutes ago, Mark said:

Part of the split attraction model is that sexual and romantic orientations are independent variables.

I'm not sure where you got this idea from. The results from the 2014 aven survey throws this completely out the window. Take a look at this pie chart from page 7:

(Data includes responses from the entire ace spectrum where N=10,880) This gives us rough proportions for the romantic orientations of all asexuals. In order for two variables (e.g. A and B) to be independent, they must satisfy these porperties for all events in each variable (actually, each of these is just a different way of writing the same thing. But that means that if one of these properties holds, then all the others do too):

• P(A given B) = P(A)
• P(B given A) = P(B)
• P(A and B) = P(A)P(B)

If we assume that the proportions above are the true proportions, we can say that they are probabilities. Let's take a look at heteromantic. 22% of aces are heteromantic. This means the P(Heteromantic given Asexual) = 0.22. In order for heteromantic to be independent of asexuality, P(Heterosexual given Asexual) = P(Heteromantic). I'm sure that we can all agree that way more than 22% of the world population is heteromantic. Given that asexuality is a sexual orientation and heteromantic is a romantic orientation we can safely say that they are not independent variables. If you think about this without crunching the numbers this makes sense. If sexuality and romantic orientation really were independent, then the proportion of asexuals with each romantic orientation would mirror the proportions in all other sexualities. And well, it seems more logical to me that most people have matching sexual and romantic orientations.

 

Even if we just look at aro aces, 19% of the world's population would have to be aromantic in order for asexual and aromantic to be independent. And that number just seems way too high. We currently have no data on the number of aromantics in the world, so there is a possiblility that 19% of the world's population is aromantic. But I think this is very unlikely.

 

Although I must say I do think it is likely that there are more allo aros than aro aces. Even if just 1% of allosexuals are aromantic, that's still five times more allo aros than aro aces (P(Asexual and aromantic)=P(aromantic given asexual)P(asexual)=0.19*0.01=0.002. This means that 0.2% of the world population are aro ace).

 

I do agree with the rest of what you have said. Allos aros are seriously underrepresented in aro communities, and to me this seems like an issue with visibility.

[DeltaAro]

On 5/3/2017 at 11:58 PM, Untamed Heart said:

I'd say it's probably more than we might imagine. And even if the 1% stat is accurate (if it even just applied to ace or aro-ace people), that's still a lot of people, relatively speaking (roughly 7 million? idk maths isn't my strong point  but I did see someone point that out on another forum).

It's 70 million, Aro-Nation had the population of the UK. Now we just need an uninhabited island, and it's going to be great.

[NullVector]

On 5/7/2017 at 8:10 AM, Zemaddog said:

Even if we just look at aro aces, 19% of the world's population would have to be aromantic in order for asexual and aromantic to be independent. And that number just seems way too high. We currently have no data on the number of aromantics in the world, so there is a possiblility that 19% of the world's population is aromantic. But I think this is very unlikely.

 

I mean, it could be that high. There may be plenty of 'aros in romos clothing' out there - playing along with romantic stuff because they think they need to do that (to get into sexual relationships, for example). Meanwhile assuming that they are the only person in the world thinking/feeling what they privately think/feel. Especially since the majority of people are heterosexual, but that's also where awareness of romantic identities / the split-attraction model is lowest, by far (a lot of cis-het people just haven't spent much very much time at all thinking hard about what 'romantic' actually means as a concept *raises hand - this was me until a few months ago*). 

 

I'm not saying I think it is that high - just that I don't know and it could potentially be.

What is it that specifically makes you regard a 1 in 5 figure as 'very unlikely' ?

[Queen of Spades]

1 hour ago, NullVector said:

 There may be plenty of 'aros in romos clothing' out there - playing along with romantic stuff because they think they need to do that (to get into sexual relationships, for example). Meanwhile assuming that they are the only person in the world thinking/feeling what they privately think/feel. Especially since the majority of people are heterosexual, but that's also where awareness of romantic identities / the split-attraction model is lowest, by far (a lot of cis-het people just haven't spent much very much time at all thinking hard about what 'romantic' actually means as a concept *raises hand - this was me until a few months ago*). 

 

This sounds plausible, especially in aromantic allosexuals' case - media keeps mixing sexual and romantic attraction up. I, for example, thought for a long time that "to fall in love" was euphemistically used for "becomin sexually attracted to". Also, I'm affectionate and I'm sure I'm not the only one, so some may have even more trouble perceiving the fact that there's something different about them. I did sense there was something about me, but couldn't quite put my finger on it, I just thought I was...strange :-?. 

2 hours ago, DeltaV said:

It's 70 million, Aro-Nation had the population of the UK. Now we just need an uninhabited island, and it's going to be great.

Why not take all alloromantic allies (as in those who believe in, accept, and understand us) and go to Mars?xD.

[Mark]

On 08/05/2017 at 7:28 PM, NullVector said:

 

I mean, it could be that high. There may be plenty of 'aros in romos clothing' out there - playing along with romantic stuff because they think they need to do that (to get into sexual relationships, for example)

Or sensual or emotionally close. Indeed anything outside the mainstream definition of "platonic".

 

On 08/05/2017 at 7:28 PM, NullVector said:

 Meanwhile assuming that they are the only person in the world thinking/feeling what they privately think/feel.

They could even pull off being able to do romance/amantonormativity. If they are not, too, romantically repulsed.
 

On 08/05/2017 at 7:28 PM, NullVector said:

Especially since the majority of people are heterosexual, but that's also where awareness of romantic identities / the split-attraction model is lowest, by far (a lot of cis-het people just haven't spent much very much time at all thinking hard about what 'romantic' actually means as a concept *raises hand - this was me until a few months ago*).

I'm not sure that even the most "liberal" sex and relationship education covers any of this.
It might not be a bad thing if everyone were expected to think about sexual and gender identity to the extent that is often the case with trans people.
 

On 08/05/2017 at 9:15 PM, Ice Queen said:

This sounds plausible, especially in aromantic allosexuals' case - media keeps mixing sexual and romantic attraction up. I, for example, thought for a long time that "to fall in love" was euphemistically used for "becomin sexually attracted to".

This runs deep in many societies. Even when you take out monogamy of the equation. With the likes of polyamory often stressing the importance of romance or it's "just sex".

 

On 08/05/2017 at 9:15 PM, Ice Queen said:

Also, I'm affectionate and I'm sure I'm not the only one, so some may have even more trouble perceiving the fact that there's something different about them. I did sense there was something about me, but couldn't quite put my finger on it, I just thought I was...strange :-?.

Just though I was weird thirty (or so) years ago. The words I needed hadn't been coined. Still think I'm a misfit, TBH.

[Zema]

On 09/05/2017 at 3:58 AM, NullVector said:

What is it that specifically makes you regard a 1 in 5 figure as 'very unlikely' ?

That's a good question. I don't doubt that there is a possibility that it could be that high. I guess it's just a gut feeling. To me it seems more likely that the upper bound is 10%, and that's being generous. I think it's more likely to be around 1-5%. Of course, I have literally no data on this. This is just a guess and we won't know even an approximate proportion until 1) The idea of romantic orientations and aromanticism are more wide spread, & 2) A proper survey of at least a few thousand people is done. Until both of these happen, it's all speculation.

[techno]

Unfortunately the AVEN survey is a convenience sample, so the sample proportions are not an unbiased estimator of the population proportions (if we're considering the population to be all asexuals worldwide). We also have to consider the fact that the distribution of ages is skewed, and very few older asexuals were surveyed, which could also present a bias.

 

But of course, as @Zemaddog pointed out, it's all speculation anyway seeing as the AVEN survey is pretty much the only data we have. We can't even determine conclusively with any sort of statistical legitimacy whether aces are more likely to be aro than non-aces unless we know the expected proportion of the world that is aro in the first place, which is what this thread was asking in the first place! However I do have to agree that 19% of the population being aro seems unlikely if we're just going by speculation based on the limited data we have. If 1 in 5 people were aro, I don't think we'd have a visibility problem; with that many people, we'd likely have ourselves a much bigger social movement surrounding aromanticism. If 19% of the world had this shared experience, people would probably know we existed!

 

To be fair, all data surrounding orientation and gender is a little shaky, since both concepts are so complex and many people's experiences are fluid, confusing, or hard to fit into whatever succinct boxes a survey provides. So this, in my long-winded way, is essentially me giving a shrug emoji to the whole thing.

[SamwiseLovesLife]

On 03/05/2017 at 10:05 PM, Ice Queen said:

On this forum we're cirrently close to 500. There are many aromantics who don't know about arocalypse. 

 

I've been on Aven for months and I had no idea about this site until I heard it in an obscure youtube video

[LunarSeas]

Awareness is indeed the biggest obstacle to getting any kind of accurate count of aromatics. I too thought I was a straight woman, but I kept having problems in relationships. I thought maybe I just want ready, didn't find the right guy, my sex drive is too high, I'm maybe scared of commitment, blah blah, this and that, mountains of self doubt and loathing, etc....

 

Reading about split attraction and aros was a revelation, though I had to sit with it and really think, because I also lived under the assumption that romantic attraction was tied to sexual attraction, at least in some ideal way. I would have never even known such a thing exists if I didn't have a few ace friends in my online circles. Funny how reading about split attraction in the context of allo aces is what clued me in about myself, because I thought "I'm whatever the opposite of that is."

[Mark]

7 hours ago, LunarSeas said:

Awareness is indeed the biggest obstacle to getting any kind of accurate count of aromatics. I too thought I was a straight woman, but I kept having problems in relationships. I thought maybe I just want ready, didn't find the right guy, my sex drive is too high, I'm maybe scared of commitment, blah blah, this and that, mountains of self doubt and loathing, etc....

Being immersed in a culture of amantonormativity with it's very narrow (even for allos) concept of what a "relationship" is can blind many people to the possibility that they could (simply) be trying to do the wrong thing.
Romantic relationships for aros can be the equivalent of tree climbing for fish.
 

8 hours ago, LunarSeas said:

Reading about split attraction and aros was a revelation, though I had to sit with it and really think, because I also lived under the assumption that romantic attraction was tied to sexual attraction, at least in some ideal way.

Not just sexual attraction. With many other things, such as affection, also being highly romantic coded.
Often with it being more taboo to want to do many of these things with friends than in a sort of "null relationship" context. (Often "casual cuddling" can be more difficult to find than "casual sex" too.)

 

8 hours ago, LunarSeas said:

 Funny how reading about split attraction in the context of allo aces is what clued me in about myself, because I thought "I'm whatever the opposite of that is."

I can find being that being the "opposite" of allo aces is makes a lot of sense to me.
Whereas I can feel I don't really belong with aros who are repulsed by sex, kissing, touch, dating, etc.
 

[Holmbo]

On 2017-05-08 at 7:25 PM, DeltaV said:

It's 70 million, Aro-Nation had the population of the UK. Now we just need an uninhabited island, and it's going to be great.

 

Yes! Let's do it.
We can't have kids though because they wont be like us. We'll have to just keep requiting new people from the rest of the world.

[DeltaAro]

11 hours ago, Mark said:

Whereas I can feel I don't really belong with aros who are repulsed by sex, kissing, touch, dating, etc.

Yeah, some of us have quite peculiar preferences... but they didn't develop in a vacuum and instead in a society marinated in romantic love. Though I wonder how do you aromantically date?

[Mark]

1 hour ago, DeltaV said:

Yeah, some of us have quite peculiar preferences... but they didn't develop in a vacuum and instead in a society marinated in romantic love. Though I wonder how do you aromantically date?

Take out the romantic element and it's "hanging out" with someone, possibly doing romantic coded things.
Certainly the term "friend's date" exists so probably "QP date" should.
Similarly what would you call "hook up" where was the potential for something ongoing to result?

[DeltaAro]

On 5/4/2017 at 0:13 AM, timo0815 said:

What bothers me is, that people that are ace AND aro can basically only be less then that 1%.

And between these people in one's area finding one that meets the requirements for some kind of friendship/relation/partnership kind of thing is really unlikely imo. 

Show some solidarity! Why can't you be friends with allo-aros? At least with them you won't be temporarily forgotten when a new romantic partner appears.

3 hours ago, Mark said:

Take out the romantic element and it's "hanging out" with someone, possibly doing romantic coded things.
Certainly the term "friend's date" exists so probably "QP date" should.

It's the “lack of relaxedness” of traditional dates that make them so romantic to me... if you remove that, it doesn't feel like a date anymore.