CW: description of romantic attraction, mentions of homophobia and internalized amatonormativity
On Tumblr today, a prompt showed up for Aro Week: write about your discovery of aromanticism.
The first time I ever heard the word aromantic, I had never heard of romantic orientation. I was sixteen years old and closeted, and after having had homophobes repeatedly tell me that same-gender attraction was only about lust, greed, and selfishness, I, like many other SGA people, was emotionally fucked-up and fiercely defensive about my ability to love.
And that is an ability I have. I love incredibly strongly. Just not romantically. But the form of love that was valued in my culture, above all others, was romance. And while straight people, not SGA people, are responsible for the existence of amatonormativity, SGA people often replicate it in our own communities.
When I first began getting involved in the LGBT community as a closeted, sixteen-year-old bisexual who called herself - I didn't realize at that point that I was a they - a straight ally in front of her family in order to avoid suspicion, I began learning about asexuality (a friend of mine had come out to me as gray-ace a few months earlier, actually, but I hadn't really understood at the time what that meant) and encountered asexuals who also called themselves aromantic. This, I assumed, meant they didn't fall in love with anyone. I also assumed, or at least wanted to believe*, that this was an identity that only asexuals had. And I wasn't asexual.
Then there came junior year. And junior year, oh lord. I got my second crush ever, not counting the puppy-love thing I had for a girl in my first grade class. It was terrifying. And the fact that my feelings for her - my very ability to feel romantic attraction - kept switching on and off, between platonic and romantic, probably made it worse. I'd never been more freaked out by anything in my life. What was this thing, what were these new feelings? Why did I sometimes get butterflies when I talked to her? Why did I think about her all the time, or want to hold her hand and kiss her, or feel immense happiness bubbling up inside me every time I saw her? Was this was all those romance novels were talking about? Did I have a crush - and on a girl who would never be able to feel the same way, at that? If so, why did this feel so...different? Why did it make me so uncomfortable?
At seventeen years old, why was I only feeling like this now? That clearly wasn't normal. It was kind of like how my gray-ace friend described her sexuality, except with romance. Was that a thing? Could you be aro, or grayro anyway, and not ace?
Apparently, yes.
During February of that year, a new social networking site started up. It was LGBTQIA only, which delighted me because I'd had bad experiences before with shitty dycishet allies who thought they knew more about my community than I did and I just wanted LGBTQIA people to have something to ourselves. It's called Skittlr, and much to my frustration it's been having some technical difficulties lately. But when it's working, it's actually pretty great.
On Skittlr, you can start up your own group. So...Lesbians Under 18, for example, or Multisexual Women, or Gay People of Color, or Transmasculine Club, or fan groups (Undertale is a popular fandom on there) or religious groups or political groups. One such group was for aromantic-spectrum, or arospec, people. Having heard the term aromantic before, and having friends who identified with it, I decided to Google it and find out what it really meant to be aromantic.
This was among the first results of that Google search. Little or no romantic attraction to others...it sounded close, but not perfect. The FAQ said you could be aro and not ace. I looked near the bottom of the page. Gray-romantic...I wonder what that is. So I clicked on the link.
And what I found brought tears to my eyes. Experiencing romantic attraction, but not very often...desiring relationships that weren't quite platonic or romantic...there was a word for me. I wasn't a freak, or a slut, or a bad stereotype of sapphic women.
So I joined the arospec group and listened to people talk about their experiences, then listened to my aro friends talk about theirs in real life. So much of it resonated with me. Grayromantic. It felt like coming home.
On Tumblr today, a prompt showed up for Aro Week: write about your discovery of aromanticism.
The first time I ever heard the word aromantic, I had never heard of romantic orientation. I was sixteen years old and closeted, and after having had homophobes repeatedly tell me that same-gender attraction was only about lust, greed, and selfishness, I, like many other SGA people, was emotionally fucked-up and fiercely defensive about my ability to love.
And that is an ability I have. I love incredibly strongly. Just not romantically. But the form of love that was valued in my culture, above all others, was romance. And while straight people, not SGA people, are responsible for the existence of amatonormativity, SGA people often replicate it in our own communities.
When I first began getting involved in the LGBT community as a closeted, sixteen-year-old bisexual who called herself - I didn't realize at that point that I was a they - a straight ally in front of her family in order to avoid suspicion, I began learning about asexuality (a friend of mine had come out to me as gray-ace a few months earlier, actually, but I hadn't really understood at the time what that meant) and encountered asexuals who also called themselves aromantic. This, I assumed, meant they didn't fall in love with anyone. I also assumed, or at least wanted to believe*, that this was an identity that only asexuals had. And I wasn't asexual.
Then there came junior year. And junior year, oh lord. I got my second crush ever, not counting the puppy-love thing I had for a girl in my first grade class. It was terrifying. And the fact that my feelings for her - my very ability to feel romantic attraction - kept switching on and off, between platonic and romantic, probably made it worse. I'd never been more freaked out by anything in my life. What was this thing, what were these new feelings? Why did I sometimes get butterflies when I talked to her? Why did I think about her all the time, or want to hold her hand and kiss her, or feel immense happiness bubbling up inside me every time I saw her? Was this was all those romance novels were talking about? Did I have a crush - and on a girl who would never be able to feel the same way, at that? If so, why did this feel so...different? Why did it make me so uncomfortable?
At seventeen years old, why was I only feeling like this now? That clearly wasn't normal. It was kind of like how my gray-ace friend described her sexuality, except with romance. Was that a thing? Could you be aro, or grayro anyway, and not ace?
Apparently, yes.
During February of that year, a new social networking site started up. It was LGBTQIA only, which delighted me because I'd had bad experiences before with shitty dycishet allies who thought they knew more about my community than I did and I just wanted LGBTQIA people to have something to ourselves. It's called Skittlr, and much to my frustration it's been having some technical difficulties lately. But when it's working, it's actually pretty great.
On Skittlr, you can start up your own group. So...Lesbians Under 18, for example, or Multisexual Women, or Gay People of Color, or Transmasculine Club, or fan groups (Undertale is a popular fandom on there) or religious groups or political groups. One such group was for aromantic-spectrum, or arospec, people. Having heard the term aromantic before, and having friends who identified with it, I decided to Google it and find out what it really meant to be aromantic.
This was among the first results of that Google search. Little or no romantic attraction to others...it sounded close, but not perfect. The FAQ said you could be aro and not ace. I looked near the bottom of the page. Gray-romantic...I wonder what that is. So I clicked on the link.
And what I found brought tears to my eyes. Experiencing romantic attraction, but not very often...desiring relationships that weren't quite platonic or romantic...there was a word for me. I wasn't a freak, or a slut, or a bad stereotype of sapphic women.
So I joined the arospec group and listened to people talk about their experiences, then listened to my aro friends talk about theirs in real life. So much of it resonated with me. Grayromantic. It felt like coming home.
*I'd been a Catholic who'd been told for years that I was a dirty slut if I had sex outside of a committed romantic relationship, if not marriage; consequently, I felt incredibly uncomfortable with anyone who was sexually attracted to people they weren't romantically attracted to. I'd also been told that bisexual women were hypersexual and untrustworthy, and that same-gender attraction was disgusting. Between the three of those...well, if you're told often enough that you're subhuman and unworthy of love, eventually you're going to believe it.
ReplyDeleteAnd I also had a lot of issues to deal with, concerning nonromantic sex. You can imagine how much all this fucked me up.