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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