At the moment I can't figure out how to make this into its own page-- I think I might not have the permissions allowed to. So I'll just write this up as a regular post and figure it out later.
CW: Homophobic slurs, mentions of hate crimes, homophobia, transphobia, slurs
How can I tell you're writing the post?
I sign all my posts as Mod Dove and most of them are in Times New Roman font-- what its in right now-- because I am awful at figuring out formatting. My real name is Amber, but I don't really like it. You can call me that if you want, but I prefer Dove for here.
You're being heterophobic/reverse racist/misandrist/Christaphobic/cisphobic...!
That's not a question.
Fine, why are you being heterophobic/reverse racist/whatever/whatever?
Those aren't things. Like. At all. The difference between people disliking someone for being [insert Majority here] and disliking someone for being [insert Minority here] is power. I can dislike someone for being cishet, which I don't, but take two examples. I yell "You cishet!" in the middle of the street. People are probably going to be confused and not really care. That doesn't even happen, like ever.
Go ahead and try it!
But the reverse situation, people will know what the intention is immediately. Depending on where this occurs, the consequences for the victim in the reverse could range from minor to extremely major. Do not go ahead and try this.
One of these actually happens a lot. The other happens in some hypothetical alternate universe.
Tumblr brainwashing ect. ect -- I stopped listening about five minutes ago.
Everyone seems to hate Tumblr. I was actually called a Tumblrina by one of the people who I met on tumblr, so that shows you the creativity of these people.
I've believed in all of this before I got a Tumblr account and most of what I do on Tumblr isn't even relevant to social justice. The eye-opener for me on all of this was a series of books with plenty of sources.
Where did you learn I was wrong? Reddit?
There are plenty of activists who have never even had a Tumblr account and plenty of anti-feminist trash who are on Tumblr. It's not the place. It's the people.
Trans people are attention seeking/not real/confused!
Still not a question.
Anyway, look it up. There's been trans people for years-- the whole gender is binary is a relatively recent invention. Mod Ari listed a bunch of sources for this, so check out their FAQ. Also, there are plenty of animal species where being transgender is the norm, even. It's pretty neat.
You're mean/the other mods are mean!
I tend to stay on the polite side unless I start to lose my patience. In which case I would run as fast as you can in the opposite direction. Other people don't have as much patience as I do. I will get angry if you insult people or ideals I care about.
I don't start out confrontational and try to be patient when I can be, but if you start shit, I will fucking finish it. Don't. Even. Start.
Aphobia/arophobia is...
I would like to stay in my lane in regards to aromantic and asexual issues. I am not aro or ace. Acting as if I understand the aro and/or ace community would be rude. There are plenty of posts by the other mods, who actually are on the aro and/or ace spectrum.
Why do you hate men?
#NotAllEnbies! Some of my best friends are men, how could I ever be a misandrist. I'm related to men, how could I hate them?
I kid. Legit that's how stupid you guys sound. Read your writing out loud next time.
What religion are you?
I don't really have any strong opinions on religion. My working theory is that what's true is like one of those wheel of fortune things, where every single religion/lack of religion has the same statistical chance of being correct.
If I was going to end up converting, I think I'd like to look into Buddhism. I'll get around to it eventually. I'm the worst procrastinator when it comes to religion, probably because I have a terror of nonexistence and I prefer not to think about this kind of thing too much.
America is a Christian country.
Separation of church and state much? Don't force your religion on me and I won't force a lack of any particular religion onto you.
I believe in X religion.
You do you, buddy.
X religion is correct!
You do you. I don't agree with you necessarily, but you do you.
X religion is better than Y religion.
Fuck you, asshole.
X religion is inclined to violence.
Fuck you, asshole.
Every religion is full of assholes. You are one of these assholes. Statistically speaking.
Atheists are meanies.
Some are. Fuck those guys.
People who are religious are meanies.
Some are. Fuck those guys.
The gays...
Fuck you, asshole.
What's wrong with calling them 'the gays'?
I'm in a generous mood, I'll explain grammar to you.
The gays = referring to gay people as a noun.
Gay = adjective
People = noun.
Adjective describes a noun. Using an adjective as a noun is both weird sounding and dehumanizing. "People who are gay" is just a mouthful and sounds weird.
Why are you swearing?
Getting the point across. Also, emphasis.
I don't mean to be offensive but... [offensive thing].
Saying "I don't mean to be offensive" will piss me off. If you don't mean to be offensive, don't say the offensive thing.
What's CW or TW?
Trigger/content warning. Basically, "this post contains disturbing content."
BLAH EXPOSURE THERAPY BLAH BLAH TRIGGER WARNINGS ARE STUPID
Yeah and so are you. Trigger warnings help people avoid relapses of serious illnesses, seizures, sensory overload, flashbacks, eating disorders, and far more that I'm not going into detail on. If you don't like it, it's not like I'm writing an essay on it every post. It's a few lines at the beginning that can literally save lives.
Ignore it if you want.
What's your opinion on reclaiming slurs?
Specific TW for slurs here.
Honestly, I don't really know which ones are available for me to even reclaim. There are some words like f*g, which I know I don't want to so it doesn't matter. I don't want to reclaim b*tch, if only because the zone between 'reclaimed' and 'just being used' is pretty blurry around some people I know. Actually, the only word I know for sure that I'm fine with being reclaimed around me is q**er, if only because I'm lucky enough to never have really heard it in a negative light.
Slurs aimed specifically towards sapphic women like d*ke-- it depends on what I end up with as my gender identity. Same with tr*nny, if only because I might not be trans.
A lot of the time I'm uncomfortable around reclaimed slurs that aren't mine, such as the n word. However, that isn't my lane. I'm white and it's none of my business if people of color are going to reclaim the n word. I can't tell them not to and I don't want to.
That's more your personal opinion on each, who do you think should be allowed to reclaim each?
I don't know. Get back to me on that.
That's not an answer.
And that's not a question. Surprisingly, not everything I have strong opinions about. There's some brands of Discourse in which I don't particularly care for. I don't like slurs being 'reclaimed' for people who aren't comfortable with these 'reclaimed' slurs. I don't like slurs I'm not comfortable with being used for me.
That's it.
Should bi/pan women be allowed to identify as femme/butch?
I'm not even sure I'm sapphic. I'll get back to you on this one.
What is your sexuality?
Person who is attracted sexually and romantically to girls.
Like actually.
Most of the words for sexuality are dependent on gender and I really can't answer that one right now.
What gender are you?
Probably not a girl. Definitely not a boy.
What pronouns should I use?
Thank you very much for asking. They, I think, should work fine enough for now.
Wow, your answers are short.
For someone who's still figuring most of this out, I'm surprised they're not shorter. Also, you're judgey.
Can I call you queer?
Why would you want to? I mean, sure, I don't really mind that much if you're using it as a general adjective, but why? I'm kinda curious why you're so attached to this particular word. Gee, for people who sometimes accuse us of being too attached to labels, you sure are attached to that one.
Fuck off.
Am I gay/bi/trans?
If you're asking this question, you probably are. Most people who aren't never really think about this question except in passing.
Does monosexual privilege exist?
Nah. There's a difference between people being shits to you because of something -- biphobia-- and people being privileged for not being that. Lesbians don't have to deal with biphobia, but they also have to deal with people being shits for not being into dudes at all.
(Using bi to mean attracted to two or more genders. There are bi people who aren't attracted to men at all, if only due to the specific meaning of the word.)
Bisexual is transphobic/Pansexual is transphobic/General semantics.
Some bi people identify as bi in a transphobic way. Some pan people identify as pan in a transphobic way.
It really does change from person to person. This isn't me dodging the question, by the way. I believe people are individuals.
The gay agenda!
Sorry, I couldn't really hear you over my laughter.
[Insert Marginalized Identity Here] are [Insert Stereotype Here].
No.
You should [insert useless advice I'll ignore here].
No thanks.
My question wasn't here/I didn't like the answer!
Check out Ari's FAQ for more. I'll add more answers in the future if they pop up. I'll also expand on my opinions when I get some more answers.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Dove Makes a Reapperence
TW: dysphoria, transphobia, dating while trans, self hatred, q-slur, self rejection, disconnection
Sorry I took so long getting around to this. I'm actually currently on take 3 of writing this post if only because I don't actually know what I feel.
I think I might be either genderfluid or genderq***r. In that I mean I either go from female to whatever nonbinary state I am now every few months or just have always been nonbinary.
This is my third length of time that I've felt strong dysphoria and/or a non-female identity.
Once could've been a mistake.
Twice could've been a placebo.
But I'm a firm believer in third time's the charm and so I'm reasonably certain this means something. What, I don't know. I don't know a lot of things about this. How does this effect my sexuality? I'm not even sure I was ever interested in men/boys to begin with... but then what?
I'm AFAB and you'd know it by looking at me. No matter what I do I still look like a girl. I get ma'am'd and miss'd. I thought maybe profound discomfort with that was just me being uncomfortable with signs of respect.
I don't think it is.
Little things that I used to like, being one of the 'girls', suddenly just give me a twinge of discomfort in my side.
I guess I'm not cis, but I don't WANT to be trans. Maybe it's all that internalized transphobia. Maybe it's because I have a terror about never being loved. And yes, I know it's messed up to assume no girl would ever want someone who's nonbinary.
Never want me, I guess is what I'm saying. I've made a lot of progress mentally towards loving myself but sometimes it feels like it doesn't matter.
Why should it matter that I think I'M gorgeous? I'm not the one who might go out with myself.
Being cis and a lesbian(?) might narrow my dating fields significantly but I don't want lose any sort of chance at all.
And I know academically that plenty of nonbinary people date fine, but my brain's never liked academic truths.
It's not fair but when have people ever cared about being fair. I want to be able to be girly without being a girl. I want to wear a dress because I love dresses, but when people see me in a dress with my oh so feminine face they'll think she.
It's too much to ask, of course it is. All I know is that I'm definitely not a boy and there what? This is just so many questions and so little answers because I don't have an answer.
Whenever I do the things that make me feel like I don't look like a girl I end up thinking I look like a boy. Which I'm pretty sure I don't. But that's just worse because I don't want to have to chose between boy and girl.
I just am not. It's like I don't even exist and it doesn't help that my two favorite nonbinary characters ever which I project onto like nobody's business -- mainly because there's nobody else for me to project onto-- are constantly misgendered by the fandom.
Don't even get me started on the awful things fandoms do to force nonbinary characters into a box but I digress.
I'm pretty sure half of this isn't even grammatically correct but I don't even care. It feels good to just rant and rave.
I want to wear a dress like a boy and I want to wear a suit like a girl.
It is too much to ask.
That's all I know for sure.
I came out the first time recklessly with an overblown sense of drama. So loudly that everyone knew.
And if I went back on that, said "hey guys, I was wrong," I don't know what would happen. The longer I wait the more transphobic stereotypes sink in, but I'm just too scared to be wrong again.
I don't want to be called a liar.
And a similar thing with my name-- I've changed it once already and people won't be happy if I do.
Respecting name changes, whether because someone is trans or just because they don't like their name, is apparently super difficult.
Jeesh. I'm so tired of telling people not to call me by my original name that I'm not even sure I want to go through that again. It's not that my real name gives me dysphoria, per se, but it does mark me as female. And THAT causes dysphoria.
I want to be whoever I am, but how can I do that when I don't know who I am?
Sometimes I even feel like I'm not even here. Like my body is just going through automatic motions. I don't know if that's cause I'm ADHD or if it's dysphoria induced. Might be anxiety.
People are hard to deal with. Myself included. A lot of this is just flat out stream of consciousness, by the way.
I've got a lot of stress built up and it's nice to just talk about it. Get it off of my back. I'm going to try to blog more often from now on.
Mod Dove
Monday, February 13, 2017
How The Aro Community Can Do Better This Valentine's Day
CW: religion, sex shaming, homophobia, Christianity, probably something else so lmk
...and the rest of the year.
First of all, I just want to clear something up: yes, I'm probably arospec. Specifically, quoiromantic or grayromantic bisexual. I don't think I'll always identify this way, at least not actively, but for now, for the foreseeable future...it works.
But I also want to date. In fact, it's not so much a want as a need, a fixation. I feel empty when I'm single, and crave the attention and affection that comes with romantic relationships. And the one crush I had in high school? I went so all-out for her, it scared me. I would have done anything to be close to her, and because she didn't feel the same way, I was broken and fucked-up and literally couldn't think of anything else for so long. I would jump into a romantic relationship, even an unhealthy, codependent one that I know wouldn't last, with just about anyone, just to fulfill this craving.
I don't know exactly what causes this, but I have friends - aro and non-aro and anywhere inbetween - who are going through the same thing. None of them are sure why I'm like this, but they have confirmed what it probably is: hyperromanticism. It's a symptom of several different mental illnesses and disabilities, it's not inherently tied to actually experiencing romantic attraction, and it's especially common in people whose disabilities (like mine) involve low empathy.
My friend Alex, who's also an arospec wlw with low empathy, has a theory that that's what caused it for both of us. Something to do with us having trouble forming human connections and accessing intimacy because of our empathy levels and how neurodiversity causes us to experience emotion and attraction, so our minds overcompensate by making us crave affection that we're not necessarily comfortable with.
I think it's a bit of that, and maybe also a defense mechanism because of how gay sexual attraction is demonized and gay romantic love is seen as inferior - and, in Alex's case, it probably also has to do with their abusive ex. But I do have to say, as a mental health major, I think they (Alex is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns) definitely have a point about the empathy thing.
So, yeah, now that that's established...
I honestly get so sick of the aro community at this time of year.
Fellow aros, Valentine's Day is not evil. It was not created to oppress us. And by demonizing it and everything else associated with romantic love, you're throwing many marginalized people under the bus - some of them other aros.
Here's how:
First of all, don't discourage sga people from kissing and showing affection in public, talking about our attraction, giving sex ed that isn't heteronormative, being unapologetically sexual and romantic, and making media that shows sga couples. Don't expect sga people to hide our attraction in front of you, whether by not coming out to you at all or just by never talking about our sexualities. Donate to LGBT rights organizations and resources like youth shelters and soup kitchens and GSAs, regardless whether or not they cater to non-LGBT aces and aros.
Especially donate to LGBT resources that specialize in the liberation of Jewish, Muslim, black, indigenous, Latinx, Arab, Chaldean, disabled, poor, refugee, undocumented, and Desi LGBT people - that's who needs it most, at the moment, because we're living in a fucking fascist dystopia in the U.S., an economic and political superpower with immense influence on the rest of the world, and these people are going to be the first ones targeted, the ones who are the most vulnerable. Everyone needs to protect them, in any way they can.
Oh, and by the way? Speaking of fascism, it wouldn't hurt to punch a Nazi or ten. Or any fascist, really. But if you can't punch a Nazi, that's cool. Just take part in leftist/antifascist resistance in any way you can.
Also, something a bit more personal to me. If you find out that a friend of your same gender or gender alignment has a crush on you, you're not obligated to return it or date them, but do respect their feelings as legitimate and be kind. Don't be disgusted. Don't stop showing platonic affection toward them or expect them to stop showing it toward you. Don't make fun of "alloromantics", ridicule crushes and romantic feelings, or say that you would hate it if someone asked you out or had a crush on you.
After all, unrequited love is hard enough. But unrequited gay love, especially toward someone who we already know isn't ever going to feel the same way?
Your friend is probably already hyperaware of every interaction they have with you, terrified that their feelings are inherently predatory...especially if they aren't cis. This is hard enough for us. I know because I've been there.
I've been the scared baby bisexual - and a trans bisexual at that, stereotyped as predatory for both my gender and sexuality - desperately in love with a cis aroace girl, feeling sick every time she joked about how freakish attraction was and how much she'd hate it if anyone ever felt that way about her. Don't be like that girl, making your friend feel like shit when they're already in a vulnerable place.
If friendship and dismantling heteronormativity are really that important to you, prove it. Because if you act like same- and similar-gender attraction is repulsive to you, if you make your sga friends afraid to confide in you about their crushes and you're not supportive of their relationships, you are not only upholding heteronormativity, you're also being a terrible friend.
A lot about how the "LGBTQIA" community only cares about LG. I guess all bi and pan people are in cis m/w relationships. Also lesbians oppress bi men now. Oh, and cis bi people have no privilege over trans people, ace/aro gay people either aren't really gay or aren't really ace/aro (or both, most likely), and gay people who aren't cis can just go fuck themselves.
Oh, not to mention white, class, non-sex working, islamophobia/antisemitism-exempt, western, and transmisogyny-exempt privilege. But yeah, I, an American middle-class white nonbinary bisexual gentile who doesn't experience transmisogyny and has never done sex work, am totally oppressed by homeless Jewish trans lesbian sex workers of color who are living in predominantly black and brown countries that were nearly destroyed by how white militarism and colonialism radicalized innocent, scared, impoverished young men into becoming terrorists.
Not that you shits will acknowledge that these hypothetical lesbians are, in fact, lesbians. Doing that would reveal how fucked-up, anti-radical, and elitist your "we hate gays, but like in a feminist way" bullshit is. You'd rather assume all (or even most) gay men and lesbians are middle-class, white, abled, cisgender, etc., because that rationalizes your hatred toward them. As if MOGAI types, especially those in the ace and aro communities, aren't predominantly middle-class and white themselves.
Fuck off. I was a MOGAI once, a middle-class white one at that. And I promise, hating gay people doesn't make you special or radical. It just makes you a homophobe.
Okay. Um. I missed my afternoon medication dose today, which probably explains why I'm barreling off the rails here. Also I have to piss like a racehorse, which I somehow didn't notice for like two hours because I was hyperfocused on this post. Fun with ADHD.
Anyway, homophobia=bad. My head=achy and unfocused and jittery, because there should be Ritalin in my bloodstream and there's not and it's too late to take it now. I blame you people. Also, it's mostly buzzed now, because I had time to kill before work today and there happens to be a hair salon in the same strip mall where I work. But that's a whole 'nother story.
Um. Let's see...okay. I remember what I was about to say now. Something about how there's a ton of aro discourse about how marriage is inherently regressive and capitalist and according to the aro community, aromanticism exists in direct opposition to that while gayness doesn't.
Homophobic assumption that gayness and aromanticism are mutually exclusive aside, I can see the logic there. I mean, the nuclear family (which is generally expected from married couples) is remarkably easy for capitalism to manipulate, compared to alternative structures like chosen families and intentional communities.
First of all, there's all this pressure to keep up with the archetypal Joneses and compete against everybody else in order to die with the Best and Most and Most Expensive shit, and if we're all just working together and helping each other that pressure isn't there as much.
Second, with nuclear families there's also pressure for one or two people to be the breadwinner of the household and provide not only for themselves, but for everybody else in the family unit. And then they're busting their ass everyday until they're stressed and sick and the emotional bonds within the family are falling apart, and then someone's going to need therapy, which is expensive and requires the aforementioned breadwinner to work even more, and it becomes a vicious cycle that relies largely on the exploitation of the lower classes and the comfort of the rich.
Third, nuclear families need more resources than other living structures. You have a neighborhood with five nuclear families, each with three to five members? Each of them is going to need their own house, their own food supply, their own set of tools, their own car.
But what if they'd been pooling those resources? They could go buy one bigger house and live there together, then share the initial cost, bills, property taxes, and mortgage. They could carpool and save some gas money, as well as reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and be a little more environmentally friendly while they're at it. They could share one or two sets of tools. They could share food, and because there would likely be less need for all adults involved to work full-time, they could even grow some of their own food. And anyone in this household who is disabled, sick, or elderly would have other household residents there to care for them.
And weddings are also pretty capitalist. When you factor in the costs of the clothes, the food, the decorations, the reception hall, the entertainment, the gifts, the honeymoon...and for what? So you can spend your lives together? I know plenty of people who are already doing that without being married.
Getting married (and following "appropriate" heteropatriarchal gender roles within that marriage) is also so pushed on people, especially women. And yeah, that can be incredibly damaging, but it doesn't benefit all "alloromantics" and can benefit cishet aros (because some aros want to get married). It doesn't benefit LGBT people at all, yet the only time I ever hear non-LGBT aros and aces criticize marriage as an institution is when sga people talk about marriage equality.
So yeah. Dismantle capitalism. And if part of that means that you don't want to get married, then good for you.
But...honestly if your only anti-capitalist activism is not wanting to get married, your activism is ineffective at best and self-congratulatory liberal garbage at worst. And if you're disparaging LGBT people who want to get married or insulting the traditions of PoC and religious minorities for whom marriage is an important cultural and/or spiritual rite, your "activism" is only further upholding existing power structures that social justice, by definition, seeks to dismantle. Really, you - and many of the marginalized people you interact with - are better off if you have the fanciest, most bourgeois fairytale wedding ever, then join your local leftist organization, donate money to food banks and abortion providers, shelter Jewish people from Nazis, and go to Black Lives Matter protests with your spouse.
This has been a personal issue for me, especially what with figuring out I'm aro and bi and navigating the whole complicated intersection of religion and sexuality, since I converted to paganism and developed an interest in Aphrodite.
For those of you who don't know, I was raised Roman Catholic, but am now mainly Hellenic polytheist - someone who believes in the Greek pantheon (aka the Theoi) and practices the pagan religion associated with them.
I explain this in my FAQ - speaking of which, other mods, make your own FAQs because quite frankly you three have barely done anything to contribute to this blog and I can't be the only one writing, so you each have until March 1st to do the fucking job I brought you onto this team for in the first place. Any mod who doesn't complete their FAQ and/or a post longer than three paragraphs by then is fired.
Anyway.
Like a lot of pagans, my practice is rather monolatristic. That is, I believe in multiple gods, but I only actively worship one. This practice is actually strangely similar to Catholicism - many Catholics pray to and revere Mary, John the Baptist, Joseph, and the angels and saints, even celebrating feast days for them and giving them offerings, but if you ask, they'll be adamant that they only worship the Holy Trinity.
In my opinion, this similarity (bordering on syncretism) is partly because of how religion was used as a tool of imperialism and partly because many polytheists and pagans were raised Catholic and brought some of their childhood beliefs and traditions with them when they converted.
Anyway...I'm reluctant to even call it worship. Honor, maybe? It's just...there's such a huge double standard between how western Christianity and polytheistic religions are perceived.
Nobody batted an eye when I told them that I believed devoutly (and evangelically) in a religion known primarily for its reverence of a zombie demigod who was born from a virgin mother and died to save humanity from the personification of all evil - but if I casually mention that I worship a pagan goddess of love, sexuality, and beauty, suddenly everyone loses their shit. After all, according to the media, no one even believes in the Theoi anymore; you can fucking forget about worshipping them.
When I was sixteen, after a long and emotionally hellish series of events connected intimately to my Christian faith, I realized that I didn't believe in the Devil and concluded that the Bible held little relevance to me as a result. I also concluded that, now left with a strong faith in God and miracles but without a religion to invest that in, I needed to find something else to believe in. After about two months of soul-searching and internet research, I found paganism and knew it was for me.
I was reluctant to commit myself to any particular pantheon or deity, though. Especially not one like Aphrodite, who many Hellenic polytheists see as hyperfeminine. How could I, a nonbinary tomcat, devote myself to a goddess who exuded feminine sexuality - a concept that I felt alienated from?
But I eventually just...felt drawn to her. After all, love - whether romantic or otherwise - was a big part of my life. My politics revolve around sex-positivity. And I just...felt something resonate when I listened to Aphrodite devotees describe their beliefs.
To me, Aphrodite represents all the positive values I learned from my Christian upbringing - loyalty, gentleness, compassion, love, social justice, caring for the vulnerable - while also rejecting the negative - misogyny, purity culture, proselytization - and brings something entirely original and creative to the table, something hard and soft at once, something as gentle as silk against your skin, as rough as stubble scratching your face during a kiss, and as powerful as the best orgasm ever. She represents beauty in all the best ways and everything love has the potential to be.
Ever since I first began considering oathing myself to Aphrodite, the aro community's negativity about romance and everything associated with it has pissed me off on a whole different level. After all, romance - even if it's something I have an incredibly complicated relationship with - is a big part of my religion and it's something that my goddess rules over. So it's pretty insulting to me, that there's this huge group of people mocking it, acting like it's a bad thing and anyone who sees it as important is oppressing them. Like, I get it, you don't have to like romance, but do you have to devalue it when it's quite literally sacred to so many people who already have enough shit directed at them for their religion?
And it causes a fixation with romance. It causes people to need romantic relationships that they don't necessarily want. It can cause someone to have a mental breakdown if someone doesn't like them back. It can cause someone to fall heedlessly into codependent relationships, value romance above literally everything else, and crave romantically-coded affection in a way that nothing else can truly satisfy.
Hyperromantic people embody many of the stereotypes that the aro community has of "alloromantics". What this means is that if you're aro and make jokes about how romance-obsessed "allos" are, you're making jokes about a symptom associated with several mental disorders. If you're aro and make jokes about romance-obsessed "allos", or if you're ace and make jokes about sex-obsessed "allos" (hypersexuality is also a trait associated with neurodiversity), you're ableist.
Allonormativity and allosexism, for one thing, don't exist. Aphobia is not a real axis of oppression, and certainly not one that all non-ace and non-aro people benefit from.
There's also no material difference between ace people and non-ace people, and aro people and non-aro people, at least not in terms of privilege.
As a grayromantic wlw, I've had romantic crushes (well, a romantic crush) on women. I want to kiss women, go on dates with them, marry one, build a life with one, maybe have children with one. Yes, romantic attraction is confusing to me. Yes, I have a hard time differentiating between romantic feelings and friendship sometimes, and between romantic and sexual attraction.
But homophobes won't care about that! They're not going to ask if I'm arospec because they don't know and they don't care. If I'm in physical danger because of who I'm attracted to, aromanticism won't have anything to do with it; homophobes will simply see me kissing a woman, cuddling her, going on dates with her, holding her hand, dancing with her, whatever, and react violently based on that. SGA aces face all those same risks because they have many of these same desires and feelings.
All sga people do, to some degree, because we all have in common that we're attraction to people of same and similar genders and are oppressed under homophobia. For that reason, I feel far more unity with wlw (especially neurodivergent and/or non-cis wlw) who don't identify as aro than I do with aros who aren't sga.
And I really don't care much about cishet aro men or cis aroace men. What do I inherently have in common with them, beyond that we both feel that our relationships with romantic attraction differ from what we see as typical? And even then, it's really not the same. Those cishet aro men can easily simply call themselves straight and escape even the slightest prejudice for their sexualities, especially if they're white, dyadic, abled, etc.
But I can't, as a wlw, claim straightness without lying about who I'm attracted to. I can't say "I identify partly as a woman, and I'm attracted to women, but I'm straight." Even in relationships with cis men, I still face biphobia and homophobia because of my attraction to women.
I can, however, choose not to call myself aro, and face no material difference in how I'm treated for my sexuality. I also have many of the same needs and desires in relationships as non-aro people, because I enjoy those things, because I'm hyperromantic, and because sexual attraction is an emotional subject for me - the way I view women, sexually, is different from how straight men view them because the way men and women (and nonbinary people who align with either of these) are encouraged to approach sex is different and I don't live in a vacuum where I'm completely unaffected by that.
Other bi women, as well as pan women, lesbians, and wlw of other orientations, whether ace, aro, or neither, relate to these feelings in a way that only wlw can, because our relationships with sexual attraction and our feelings on sex are things that are very specific to wlw. Regardless of our relationship with romantic attraction, we tend to view sex in a more intimate, emotional lens that only other wlw can truly relate to. Because of this and other factors, I don't relate to the dominant aro narrative that removes all emotion and intimacy from sex, and that makes anything related to deriding "alloromantics" that much more cringeworthy to me.
Where is your solidarity with us?
When you insist that aros can't be straight, are you aware of what you're saying about me? That you're invalidating my sexuality in order to support my oppressors? After all, if aros can't be straight, can we be bi? Am I less bi than other bi people? Isn't that biphobic - saying that bi people's sexuality depends on our preferences and our relationship status? Are my friends who are bi aces, lesbian aros, etc., less gay or less bi than other gay and bi people? Why are you expecting us to choose one side of our attraction over the other?
When you say that all aros are valid, that ace positivity is for all aces - are you including us?
No, you aren't. You're only coddling privileged aces and aros, assuring them that they can opt into oppression, and scaring vulnerable aces and aros, mostly neurodivergent people and teenagers, into thinking that people hate us for being ace or aro.
You aren't including us. You don't care about us. It's time you started to.
***
By the way, I started writing this on February 10th and finished on February 13th. This might explain some things about the date and details that I mention in the post, such as getting my hair cut, getting home from work, taking my medication, etc.
...and the rest of the year.
First of all, I just want to clear something up: yes, I'm probably arospec. Specifically, quoiromantic or grayromantic bisexual. I don't think I'll always identify this way, at least not actively, but for now, for the foreseeable future...it works.
But I also want to date. In fact, it's not so much a want as a need, a fixation. I feel empty when I'm single, and crave the attention and affection that comes with romantic relationships. And the one crush I had in high school? I went so all-out for her, it scared me. I would have done anything to be close to her, and because she didn't feel the same way, I was broken and fucked-up and literally couldn't think of anything else for so long. I would jump into a romantic relationship, even an unhealthy, codependent one that I know wouldn't last, with just about anyone, just to fulfill this craving.
I don't know exactly what causes this, but I have friends - aro and non-aro and anywhere inbetween - who are going through the same thing. None of them are sure why I'm like this, but they have confirmed what it probably is: hyperromanticism. It's a symptom of several different mental illnesses and disabilities, it's not inherently tied to actually experiencing romantic attraction, and it's especially common in people whose disabilities (like mine) involve low empathy.
My friend Alex, who's also an arospec wlw with low empathy, has a theory that that's what caused it for both of us. Something to do with us having trouble forming human connections and accessing intimacy because of our empathy levels and how neurodiversity causes us to experience emotion and attraction, so our minds overcompensate by making us crave affection that we're not necessarily comfortable with.
I think it's a bit of that, and maybe also a defense mechanism because of how gay sexual attraction is demonized and gay romantic love is seen as inferior - and, in Alex's case, it probably also has to do with their abusive ex. But I do have to say, as a mental health major, I think they (Alex is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns) definitely have a point about the empathy thing.
So, yeah, now that that's established...
I honestly get so sick of the aro community at this time of year.
Fellow aros, Valentine's Day is not evil. It was not created to oppress us. And by demonizing it and everything else associated with romantic love, you're throwing many marginalized people under the bus - some of them other aros.
Here's how:
- Many companies, such as Lush and Adidas, feature same-gender couples in their Valentine's advertising. While capitalist, this is a good thing - it shows wlw and mlm as human beings. It shows our relationships as healthy, loving, and positive, rather than as something shameful that needs to be hidden away. Yet there are many aros who complain about this.
Yes, it is okay to be uncomfortable with romantic affection, especially if you're a trauma survivor. It is okay to be romance-repulsed.
But it is NOT okay to look at specifically sga relationships and ask the people involved to tone down the affection that they are very likely unsafe showing much of the time. If you are uncomfortable with romance, there is no way to do this without being homophobic. It is your responsibility to remove yourself from the situation, especially if you aren't sga yourself.
If your romance repulsion is the result of mental illness? Seek out spaces that don't have PDA. Use your coping mechanisms. Go to therapy. Take your medication. Do what you need to do, but do not EVER tell a gay couple that they aren't allowed to kiss and hold hands in public. Being disabled doesn't exempt you from being a shitty human being.
And if you're a cishet aro or cis aroace who is uncomfortable with gay couples being affectionate?
First of all, fuck off. LGBT people aren't obligated to give a fuck about your feelings when it comes to how we express our attraction.
Second, the hell is your problem with sga couples specifically? None of you seem to have an issue with straight people kissing in public, with your straight friends talking about their relationships and crushes. You might be assholes about it, saying shit like "well have you ever tried NOT HAVING these feelings lol xD xD xD" when asked for relationship advice, but you don't tell them they're not allowed to talk about it at all.
I actually have a story about this. About two years ago, back when I was still in my Catholic youth group days, I was at a weekend youth conference. This was the same weekend Skittlr was established, for context, and it was also shortly after I'd come out to my friends and shortly before I entered MOGAI hell.
My roommates and I had just gotten settled into our hotel suite and one of them was letting me use her phone to go on Skittlr, since I didn't have a phone or an account of my own yet. So I, being the hormone-driven seventeen-year-old I was, with no available wlw around, immediately started looking up girls my age. And saying how pretty they were.
It wasn't even that sexual. Like, if I'd been saying that I wanted an orgy with each and every one of them, if I'd been masturbating to their pictures, sure, I could understand the discomfort.
But I hadn't been saying that. Hence my confusion when the girl - who, at the time, had identified as a cis aromantic asexual - who'd lent me her phone began to look like she'd just sucked some deodorant.
I'm not good with facial expressions, generally, but I recognized this one. It was the same expression Ella had worn, right after I came out to her, right before she stopped sleeping in the same room as me. It was the expression that every non-sapphic woman wears when she's confronted with the reality that a woman in her life is sga - when she's uncomfortable with that, because she assumes our attraction to women makes us inherently sexually volatile and predatory. And then she tries to hide her discomfort, because she realizes that wlw aren't going to eat her shit and smile. That expression is never any less heartbreaking to see.
And it made me understandably nervous. I'd finally found someone I could trust, someone who didn't see my sexuality as a sin. She even had other wlw friends. What was the problem?
"What, doesn't Melissa talk about girls?" I asked, referring to a friend of hers who was an out lesbian.
She laughed uncomfortably. "Well, not in front of me."
That shut me up pretty fast.
The truth was, I'd notice pretty quickly, none of her sga friends talked about our same- and similar-gender crushes and attraction in front of her, or in front of our other non-LGBT ace and aro friends. And it's no wonder, when so many people in the ace and aro communities treat same-gender attraction like it's disgusting, deviant, excessive, and inappropriate.
But none of these cishet aces, cishet aros, or cis aroaces, these Valid MOGAI Radikweers, said a word about m/w attraction expressed in front of them, even though it was expressed in a much less reserved way because no one had to fear rejection for showing it.
But if a mlm couple posts a selfie where they're just. just fucking hugging and smiling at each other? And captioning it with something sweet and romantic? Aros will screenshot that image, share it everywhere they can think of, and complain about how amatonormative the picture is - how these men are hurting aros by being in love. Because you know, gay attraction is always rewarded in our society over fucking friendship.
And with wlw they're even worse. Of course they're worse. Calling the women misogynistic slurs, saying how whenever they hear someone describe themselves as lesbian or sapphic they assume that person is terrible, throwing bi women under the bus by using us as pawns against lesbians and then pitching a hissy when we don't take it lying down. Every fucking time.
Cishet aros and cishet aces and cis aroaces tolerate sga people and support us as long as they continue to think of the LGBT community as some fun club and our identities as a silly abstract concept, just a way that we identify for funsies. They see us as conditionally acceptable when they see our attraction as tame and sanitized, when they can pretend that we're just like them. Seeing sga couples kiss and hold hands and talk about how much they love each other and are attracted to each other reminds them that we're not - and that's when they start talking shit about, for example, how aces need to be "protected from the sexual nature of the LGBT community" and how there shouldn't be kissing allowed in LGBT spaces because it might make aros uncomfortable.
Furthermore, it reminds them that we share a bond and a history and a culture and a legacy that they never will. It reminds them that we do not exist for their consumption, that our community, unlike everything else in the world, is not about them - and that it exists to unseat them from their position of power and privilege. They don't want to see us happy and in love and celebrating our attraction for the same reason non-ace, non-aro cishets don't: they see themselves as neutral and righteous and pure while also seeing us as fundamentally sinful, obscene, repulsive, and most of all threatening.
How can the aro community do better?Cishet aros and cishet aces and cis aroaces tolerate sga people and support us as long as they continue to think of the LGBT community as some fun club and our identities as a silly abstract concept, just a way that we identify for funsies. They see us as conditionally acceptable when they see our attraction as tame and sanitized, when they can pretend that we're just like them. Seeing sga couples kiss and hold hands and talk about how much they love each other and are attracted to each other reminds them that we're not - and that's when they start talking shit about, for example, how aces need to be "protected from the sexual nature of the LGBT community" and how there shouldn't be kissing allowed in LGBT spaces because it might make aros uncomfortable.
Furthermore, it reminds them that we share a bond and a history and a culture and a legacy that they never will. It reminds them that we do not exist for their consumption, that our community, unlike everything else in the world, is not about them - and that it exists to unseat them from their position of power and privilege. They don't want to see us happy and in love and celebrating our attraction for the same reason non-ace, non-aro cishets don't: they see themselves as neutral and righteous and pure while also seeing us as fundamentally sinful, obscene, repulsive, and most of all threatening.
First of all, don't discourage sga people from kissing and showing affection in public, talking about our attraction, giving sex ed that isn't heteronormative, being unapologetically sexual and romantic, and making media that shows sga couples. Don't expect sga people to hide our attraction in front of you, whether by not coming out to you at all or just by never talking about our sexualities. Donate to LGBT rights organizations and resources like youth shelters and soup kitchens and GSAs, regardless whether or not they cater to non-LGBT aces and aros.
Especially donate to LGBT resources that specialize in the liberation of Jewish, Muslim, black, indigenous, Latinx, Arab, Chaldean, disabled, poor, refugee, undocumented, and Desi LGBT people - that's who needs it most, at the moment, because we're living in a fucking fascist dystopia in the U.S., an economic and political superpower with immense influence on the rest of the world, and these people are going to be the first ones targeted, the ones who are the most vulnerable. Everyone needs to protect them, in any way they can.
Oh, and by the way? Speaking of fascism, it wouldn't hurt to punch a Nazi or ten. Or any fascist, really. But if you can't punch a Nazi, that's cool. Just take part in leftist/antifascist resistance in any way you can.
Also, something a bit more personal to me. If you find out that a friend of your same gender or gender alignment has a crush on you, you're not obligated to return it or date them, but do respect their feelings as legitimate and be kind. Don't be disgusted. Don't stop showing platonic affection toward them or expect them to stop showing it toward you. Don't make fun of "alloromantics", ridicule crushes and romantic feelings, or say that you would hate it if someone asked you out or had a crush on you.
After all, unrequited love is hard enough. But unrequited gay love, especially toward someone who we already know isn't ever going to feel the same way?
Your friend is probably already hyperaware of every interaction they have with you, terrified that their feelings are inherently predatory...especially if they aren't cis. This is hard enough for us. I know because I've been there.
I've been the scared baby bisexual - and a trans bisexual at that, stereotyped as predatory for both my gender and sexuality - desperately in love with a cis aroace girl, feeling sick every time she joked about how freakish attraction was and how much she'd hate it if anyone ever felt that way about her. Don't be like that girl, making your friend feel like shit when they're already in a vulnerable place.
If friendship and dismantling heteronormativity are really that important to you, prove it. Because if you act like same- and similar-gender attraction is repulsive to you, if you make your sga friends afraid to confide in you about their crushes and you're not supportive of their relationships, you are not only upholding heteronormativity, you're also being a terrible friend.
- On a related note, stop with the hate against marriage equality.
After the SCOTUS decision in 2015, I heard a lot of things from the aro community.
A lot about amatonormativity, of course, because gay romance is apparently incredibly dangerous to aros...somehow.
A lot about monosexism, because we can't let gay people be happy without bringing up how incredibly privileged they are - just as bad as straights, really. Homophobia, who? Also, bi and pan people never marry people of their same legal gender and especially never marry those awful monosexuals. Unless we're marrying straight people. After all, monosexism doesn't count if you're straight.
Oh, not to mention white, class, non-sex working, islamophobia/antisemitism-exempt, western, and transmisogyny-exempt privilege. But yeah, I, an American middle-class white nonbinary bisexual gentile who doesn't experience transmisogyny and has never done sex work, am totally oppressed by homeless Jewish trans lesbian sex workers of color who are living in predominantly black and brown countries that were nearly destroyed by how white militarism and colonialism radicalized innocent, scared, impoverished young men into becoming terrorists.
Not that you shits will acknowledge that these hypothetical lesbians are, in fact, lesbians. Doing that would reveal how fucked-up, anti-radical, and elitist your "we hate gays, but like in a feminist way" bullshit is. You'd rather assume all (or even most) gay men and lesbians are middle-class, white, abled, cisgender, etc., because that rationalizes your hatred toward them. As if MOGAI types, especially those in the ace and aro communities, aren't predominantly middle-class and white themselves.
Fuck off. I was a MOGAI once, a middle-class white one at that. And I promise, hating gay people doesn't make you special or radical. It just makes you a homophobe.
Okay. Um. I missed my afternoon medication dose today, which probably explains why I'm barreling off the rails here. Also I have to piss like a racehorse, which I somehow didn't notice for like two hours because I was hyperfocused on this post. Fun with ADHD.
Anyway, homophobia=bad. My head=achy and unfocused and jittery, because there should be Ritalin in my bloodstream and there's not and it's too late to take it now. I blame you people. Also, it's mostly buzzed now, because I had time to kill before work today and there happens to be a hair salon in the same strip mall where I work. But that's a whole 'nother story.
Um. Let's see...okay. I remember what I was about to say now. Something about how there's a ton of aro discourse about how marriage is inherently regressive and capitalist and according to the aro community, aromanticism exists in direct opposition to that while gayness doesn't.
Homophobic assumption that gayness and aromanticism are mutually exclusive aside, I can see the logic there. I mean, the nuclear family (which is generally expected from married couples) is remarkably easy for capitalism to manipulate, compared to alternative structures like chosen families and intentional communities.
First of all, there's all this pressure to keep up with the archetypal Joneses and compete against everybody else in order to die with the Best and Most and Most Expensive shit, and if we're all just working together and helping each other that pressure isn't there as much.
Second, with nuclear families there's also pressure for one or two people to be the breadwinner of the household and provide not only for themselves, but for everybody else in the family unit. And then they're busting their ass everyday until they're stressed and sick and the emotional bonds within the family are falling apart, and then someone's going to need therapy, which is expensive and requires the aforementioned breadwinner to work even more, and it becomes a vicious cycle that relies largely on the exploitation of the lower classes and the comfort of the rich.
Third, nuclear families need more resources than other living structures. You have a neighborhood with five nuclear families, each with three to five members? Each of them is going to need their own house, their own food supply, their own set of tools, their own car.
But what if they'd been pooling those resources? They could go buy one bigger house and live there together, then share the initial cost, bills, property taxes, and mortgage. They could carpool and save some gas money, as well as reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and be a little more environmentally friendly while they're at it. They could share one or two sets of tools. They could share food, and because there would likely be less need for all adults involved to work full-time, they could even grow some of their own food. And anyone in this household who is disabled, sick, or elderly would have other household residents there to care for them.
And weddings are also pretty capitalist. When you factor in the costs of the clothes, the food, the decorations, the reception hall, the entertainment, the gifts, the honeymoon...and for what? So you can spend your lives together? I know plenty of people who are already doing that without being married.
Getting married (and following "appropriate" heteropatriarchal gender roles within that marriage) is also so pushed on people, especially women. And yeah, that can be incredibly damaging, but it doesn't benefit all "alloromantics" and can benefit cishet aros (because some aros want to get married). It doesn't benefit LGBT people at all, yet the only time I ever hear non-LGBT aros and aces criticize marriage as an institution is when sga people talk about marriage equality.
So yeah. Dismantle capitalism. And if part of that means that you don't want to get married, then good for you.
But...honestly if your only anti-capitalist activism is not wanting to get married, your activism is ineffective at best and self-congratulatory liberal garbage at worst. And if you're disparaging LGBT people who want to get married or insulting the traditions of PoC and religious minorities for whom marriage is an important cultural and/or spiritual rite, your "activism" is only further upholding existing power structures that social justice, by definition, seeks to dismantle. Really, you - and many of the marginalized people you interact with - are better off if you have the fanciest, most bourgeois fairytale wedding ever, then join your local leftist organization, donate money to food banks and abortion providers, shelter Jewish people from Nazis, and go to Black Lives Matter protests with your spouse.
- Stop throwing religious minorities under the bus.
This has been a personal issue for me, especially what with figuring out I'm aro and bi and navigating the whole complicated intersection of religion and sexuality, since I converted to paganism and developed an interest in Aphrodite.
For those of you who don't know, I was raised Roman Catholic, but am now mainly Hellenic polytheist - someone who believes in the Greek pantheon (aka the Theoi) and practices the pagan religion associated with them.
I explain this in my FAQ - speaking of which, other mods, make your own FAQs because quite frankly you three have barely done anything to contribute to this blog and I can't be the only one writing, so you each have until March 1st to do the fucking job I brought you onto this team for in the first place. Any mod who doesn't complete their FAQ and/or a post longer than three paragraphs by then is fired.
Anyway.
Like a lot of pagans, my practice is rather monolatristic. That is, I believe in multiple gods, but I only actively worship one. This practice is actually strangely similar to Catholicism - many Catholics pray to and revere Mary, John the Baptist, Joseph, and the angels and saints, even celebrating feast days for them and giving them offerings, but if you ask, they'll be adamant that they only worship the Holy Trinity.
In my opinion, this similarity (bordering on syncretism) is partly because of how religion was used as a tool of imperialism and partly because many polytheists and pagans were raised Catholic and brought some of their childhood beliefs and traditions with them when they converted.
Anyway...I'm reluctant to even call it worship. Honor, maybe? It's just...there's such a huge double standard between how western Christianity and polytheistic religions are perceived.
Nobody batted an eye when I told them that I believed devoutly (and evangelically) in a religion known primarily for its reverence of a zombie demigod who was born from a virgin mother and died to save humanity from the personification of all evil - but if I casually mention that I worship a pagan goddess of love, sexuality, and beauty, suddenly everyone loses their shit. After all, according to the media, no one even believes in the Theoi anymore; you can fucking forget about worshipping them.
When I was sixteen, after a long and emotionally hellish series of events connected intimately to my Christian faith, I realized that I didn't believe in the Devil and concluded that the Bible held little relevance to me as a result. I also concluded that, now left with a strong faith in God and miracles but without a religion to invest that in, I needed to find something else to believe in. After about two months of soul-searching and internet research, I found paganism and knew it was for me.
I was reluctant to commit myself to any particular pantheon or deity, though. Especially not one like Aphrodite, who many Hellenic polytheists see as hyperfeminine. How could I, a nonbinary tomcat, devote myself to a goddess who exuded feminine sexuality - a concept that I felt alienated from?
But I eventually just...felt drawn to her. After all, love - whether romantic or otherwise - was a big part of my life. My politics revolve around sex-positivity. And I just...felt something resonate when I listened to Aphrodite devotees describe their beliefs.
To me, Aphrodite represents all the positive values I learned from my Christian upbringing - loyalty, gentleness, compassion, love, social justice, caring for the vulnerable - while also rejecting the negative - misogyny, purity culture, proselytization - and brings something entirely original and creative to the table, something hard and soft at once, something as gentle as silk against your skin, as rough as stubble scratching your face during a kiss, and as powerful as the best orgasm ever. She represents beauty in all the best ways and everything love has the potential to be.
Ever since I first began considering oathing myself to Aphrodite, the aro community's negativity about romance and everything associated with it has pissed me off on a whole different level. After all, romance - even if it's something I have an incredibly complicated relationship with - is a big part of my religion and it's something that my goddess rules over. So it's pretty insulting to me, that there's this huge group of people mocking it, acting like it's a bad thing and anyone who sees it as important is oppressing them. Like, I get it, you don't have to like romance, but do you have to devalue it when it's quite literally sacred to so many people who already have enough shit directed at them for their religion?
- Stop throwing hyperromantic people under the bus.
And it causes a fixation with romance. It causes people to need romantic relationships that they don't necessarily want. It can cause someone to have a mental breakdown if someone doesn't like them back. It can cause someone to fall heedlessly into codependent relationships, value romance above literally everything else, and crave romantically-coded affection in a way that nothing else can truly satisfy.
Hyperromantic people embody many of the stereotypes that the aro community has of "alloromantics". What this means is that if you're aro and make jokes about how romance-obsessed "allos" are, you're making jokes about a symptom associated with several mental disorders. If you're aro and make jokes about romance-obsessed "allos", or if you're ace and make jokes about sex-obsessed "allos" (hypersexuality is also a trait associated with neurodiversity), you're ableist.
- Stop using the word "alloromantic" and any variations of it.
Allonormativity and allosexism, for one thing, don't exist. Aphobia is not a real axis of oppression, and certainly not one that all non-ace and non-aro people benefit from.
There's also no material difference between ace people and non-ace people, and aro people and non-aro people, at least not in terms of privilege.
As a grayromantic wlw, I've had romantic crushes (well, a romantic crush) on women. I want to kiss women, go on dates with them, marry one, build a life with one, maybe have children with one. Yes, romantic attraction is confusing to me. Yes, I have a hard time differentiating between romantic feelings and friendship sometimes, and between romantic and sexual attraction.
But homophobes won't care about that! They're not going to ask if I'm arospec because they don't know and they don't care. If I'm in physical danger because of who I'm attracted to, aromanticism won't have anything to do with it; homophobes will simply see me kissing a woman, cuddling her, going on dates with her, holding her hand, dancing with her, whatever, and react violently based on that. SGA aces face all those same risks because they have many of these same desires and feelings.
All sga people do, to some degree, because we all have in common that we're attraction to people of same and similar genders and are oppressed under homophobia. For that reason, I feel far more unity with wlw (especially neurodivergent and/or non-cis wlw) who don't identify as aro than I do with aros who aren't sga.
And I really don't care much about cishet aro men or cis aroace men. What do I inherently have in common with them, beyond that we both feel that our relationships with romantic attraction differ from what we see as typical? And even then, it's really not the same. Those cishet aro men can easily simply call themselves straight and escape even the slightest prejudice for their sexualities, especially if they're white, dyadic, abled, etc.
But I can't, as a wlw, claim straightness without lying about who I'm attracted to. I can't say "I identify partly as a woman, and I'm attracted to women, but I'm straight." Even in relationships with cis men, I still face biphobia and homophobia because of my attraction to women.
I can, however, choose not to call myself aro, and face no material difference in how I'm treated for my sexuality. I also have many of the same needs and desires in relationships as non-aro people, because I enjoy those things, because I'm hyperromantic, and because sexual attraction is an emotional subject for me - the way I view women, sexually, is different from how straight men view them because the way men and women (and nonbinary people who align with either of these) are encouraged to approach sex is different and I don't live in a vacuum where I'm completely unaffected by that.
Other bi women, as well as pan women, lesbians, and wlw of other orientations, whether ace, aro, or neither, relate to these feelings in a way that only wlw can, because our relationships with sexual attraction and our feelings on sex are things that are very specific to wlw. Regardless of our relationship with romantic attraction, we tend to view sex in a more intimate, emotional lens that only other wlw can truly relate to. Because of this and other factors, I don't relate to the dominant aro narrative that removes all emotion and intimacy from sex, and that makes anything related to deriding "alloromantics" that much more cringeworthy to me.
- Stop throwing other aro and ace people under the bus.
Where is your solidarity with us?
When you insist that aros can't be straight, are you aware of what you're saying about me? That you're invalidating my sexuality in order to support my oppressors? After all, if aros can't be straight, can we be bi? Am I less bi than other bi people? Isn't that biphobic - saying that bi people's sexuality depends on our preferences and our relationship status? Are my friends who are bi aces, lesbian aros, etc., less gay or less bi than other gay and bi people? Why are you expecting us to choose one side of our attraction over the other?
When you say that all aros are valid, that ace positivity is for all aces - are you including us?
No, you aren't. You're only coddling privileged aces and aros, assuring them that they can opt into oppression, and scaring vulnerable aces and aros, mostly neurodivergent people and teenagers, into thinking that people hate us for being ace or aro.
You aren't including us. You don't care about us. It's time you started to.
***
By the way, I started writing this on February 10th and finished on February 13th. This might explain some things about the date and details that I mention in the post, such as getting my hair cut, getting home from work, taking my medication, etc.
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