Judging by my dash, aromantics are morning people and asexuals are evening people.
Very scientific.
The question is, what about aroaces? Do they just never sleep?
Never. Aroaces don’t need sleep. They are the past, present, and future. There is none of this “morning” or “evening”. There is only Aroaces. And pizza.
friends, countrymen. its 1am and i was thinking about this and slowly getting angrier so here we go.
the “intra-community discussion” about ace people is fucking acephobic as shit.
every argument about how ace people (specifically “het” ace people and to a lesser extent aro ace) can get around in life without facing oppression for their ID is literally ripped right from “but BI people who date the other sex dont face oppression!” grouping of arguments. you know, the kind that requires you a) never openly identify (kind of like saying closeted gay people arent oppressed) and b) face no discrimination and othering in a culture that is heteroSEXUAL to the max and crams all kinds of stereotypes and prejudice and internal hatred down our throats.
ace people, heteromantic or otherwise, have a fucking place in our community.
no, they do NOT face the same discrimination leveled at lgbtqi people–NO SHIT SHERLOCK. cis lgb people dont face transphobia and lg people dont face biphobia and none of us face intersex issues but for intersex people. yet HERE WE ALL ARE, somehow sticking together for survival because even tho we DONT face the exact same discrimination by GOD it can feel familiar across spectrums.
ace people have long been associated with gay men and lesbians–read up on this post for more, but needless to say the whole ‘sex denying women and men’ thing makes society uncomfortable in a VERY similar way to “women want women and men want men”. HELLO SPINSTER MOVEMENT.
theres also the little fact that a fuckton of ace people also happen to be trans. let me tell you, i myself have been way more fucked up from internalized hatred of my asexuality than i have literally EVER my trans identity. and its fucking painful to see friends who accept you so easily when it comes to your gender turn around and make your asexuality into a fucking joke and insult.
“but im not COMFORTABLE having het-ish people in the community, it makes me feel unsafe!”
well SHIT having terf lesbians around sure doesnt make ME feel great, but theres unfortunately no way to revoke their lgbtqia community rights (that i know of) so SUCKS huh? guess you’ll have to deal with that the same way a lot of us have to deal with parts of our community being rampantly transphobic, racist, ableist, sexist, and any mixture therein!
the lgbtqia community is not going to be somehow delegitimized from having het ace people come in (reminds me of the temporary panic of TRANSTRENDERS ALL AROUND US somehow… hurting trans people??). hell ANY ace people coming in. the community safe spaces will not ravaged by desperate fake asexuals somehow wanting access to safety and i dont fucking know, painting everything beige cuz we’re boring? what even is the big fear.
i guess theres a fear that we will all of us be more and more mistaken for being assumed straight b/c its not like thats happening aLREADY or anything, and is in fact fueled more by ignorant people that were fucking clueless already and not the actions of evil het ace people dragging us down.
or a fear that people will FEIGN asexuality to gain secret club member access, cuz its not like they can feign that with homosexuality or transgender identities if they are so inclined. FUCKING brilliant.
“but i want to make fun of ace people who say and do really stupid shit” hell i do too! i’m not saying dont drag assholes. i’m saying dont associate the entire community with the loudmouths, kind of like i try not to associate all cis lesbians with terfs or gay men with being creepy personal space invaders.
and dont deny us the chance to try and make a safe space for ace teens and ace adults in the community who go through life feeling broken, othered, and coerced in relationships otherwise.
Anyone else besides me wear their ace ring somewhere other than the right hand middle finger?
I wear mine on my left hand ring finger (like a wedding ring) and I’m wondering if anyone else breaks that norm.
I wear mine on my left hand middle finger as my right middle finger broke badly when I was young and has a very large middle knuckle that I can’t get rings over! I hope to get a black and white ring so I can show my ace and aro pride together!
Being an aromantic asexual is weird. We defy not one, not two, but three societal norms; heteronormativity, compulsory sexuality, and amatonormativity. It gets even weirder when you’re indifferent (even favourable!) when it comes to sex and romance because you think your experience is universal, that everyone feels the way you do. It’s not feeling wrong and broken and out of place. It’s feeling normal, and then realizing that you aren’t.
Thinking (read: assuming) that you’re straight for most of your life and then finding out you’re not is weird. Mostly because once you realize you’re not straight, it dawns on you that you feel the same way about boys that you do about girls and non-binary people. And then you wonder if you’re pansexual because they’re attracted to all genders, and you have to be attracted to someone, right? And then that thought is immediately dismissed because you don’t feel attraction, at all. But it doesn’t stop you from contemplating every other sexuality and romantic orientation, because you’ve been taught that everyone wants sex and romance.
And then you remember: you like sex and romance in fiction. You like seeing your friends in happy, healthy, consenting relationships, and you’d always assumed that one day, you’d be in one too. But you’ve never pursued one. You never had more than a fleeting interest in boys, and lingering but still platonic affection for your female and non-binary friends. Those “crushes” that you had in elementary school? Maybe not crushes after all, because God knows you haven’t had one in nearly eight years. The most powerful feelings you’ve had for another person have been squishes so intense that you had to look back and question if it was actually romantic attraction (spoiler: it wasn’t).
And then there’s that epiphanic moment when things start to fall into place. Why you were always so vehement that soulmates could be platonic too. Why the idea of loving someone more than your best friend is incomprehensible (because romantic love is always shown as being more. Hello amatonormativity). Why when you ship fictional pairings, there are people you want to get together romantically, people you want to be friends so bad, and the ships that you like the most are the ones that could go either way. Why you desire emotional closeness and intimacy with the people in your life, but that had always been conflated with sex and romance so you wondered if what you wanted was more than friendship. Why you want to take the expression “more than friends”and burn it to the ground because there is no vocabulary for friendship that exceeds “best friend” without crossing over into romantic and/or sexual territory.
You realize that your ideal relationship isn’t necessarily romantic. It’s best friends who cohabitate and snuggle and hold hands and go on adventures to the library together. Kissing and sex? Well, that’s more of an afterthought. A “yeah, that’ll probably happen somewhere in there.” An assumption, because you’ve been taught that primary, monogamous relationships are always romantic and sexual. You reflect and see that there are very few things that you see and inherently romantic, and that there is a lot of cross-over between things you consider platonic, sensual, and romantic. A grey area that you can’t define.
Being an aromantic asexual is weird, because while I’ve always said that you don’t need romance and sex to be happy, I now realize that it applies to me too.
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Note from mod fitz: This has to be one of the most moving descriptions of this I have ever read. This exactly describes how I felt coming to the realization that I was not straight, and I think had I read this when I first began questioning it would have made things go a lot smoother for me. Thanks so much for submitting!
Delicious Fish 