#aro symbols

[it-is-only-a-novel]

Aspec symbols

So I've been trying to gather a list of aspec symbols! Old and new, widely accepted, but also more obscure. Here's my list so far, including links and explanations (in italics) where possible. I've tried also to add in the specific labels that the symbols "belong to" where relevant/possible.

Arospec:

the color green (and anything green)

white aro ring which is worn on the middle finger of the left hand link

aro flag

archery (bow & arrow)

arrows of any type

frogs they are green (this is a more general queer symbol as well) link & link

yellow roses (& yellow flowers in general, seems to be more for alloplatonic aros, since yellow represents platonic love) link

sunflowers (aroallos) aroallo flag colors link

aardvarks link

anglerfish link

manticores link

rats link

nandays and caiques link

griffins link

phoenixs link

anatomical hearts distancing ourselves from the regular outlook on love, and/or love in general may be more for loveless and/or heartless aros

<2 link

succulents green

cacti green & many do not want romantic partners and can be seen as prickly, or want to be prickly

plants in general green!!

"no romo"

hummingbirds (aroallos) link

pineapples (aroallos) link

pizza & ice cream link

kiwis link

the emojis:🫀, 🏹, ↖️, ↗️, 🌻, 💚,🍍, 🍏, 💘 explanations: link

paper crowns references jughead jones from the archie comics link

Acespec:

dragons link

cake cake is better than sex link

garlic bread

the color purple

black ace ring which is worn on the middle finger of the right hand link

ace flag

space

pirates "Ace pirates aren’t interested in your booty" link

wolves

ghosts (demisexuals) link

axolotls

denim vests

cryptids

AVEN triangle

ace cards suits: spades-aroaces, Hearts-Alloromantics, Diamonds-deamisexuals, Clubs-grey-asexuls link

the emojis: 💜, ♠️

some of these are based off this post, and this master post

Aplspec:

the colors blue & yellow in the apl flag

apples (green apples can be geared toward apls that are also aros)

blue heart 💙

bees

iridescence

apl flag

blue roses link

Blue apl ring on the thumb link

based off of this post, explanations are there.

Aspec:

aliens & robots reclaiming stereotypes about dehumanization link

Artemis goddess in Greek mythology focused on her passion for hunting. Represents finding fulfilment in other aspects of life not only sex, romance, friendship, love, and so on. Also used a bow & arrow link and also my own interpretation from reading about her

Many thanks to @merely-a-caricature, @the-big-gayheart, @heartless-aro, @arosunflower, @saffigon, @crab-in-progress, @aroace-thoughts, @apl-aro-narc, @entropy-sea-system, @dateademisexualpersonwho, @legally-x, @askanaroace, @aroace-people-are-lgtbq, @the-amber-droid-dreams, @foolishfynnesse and @itsnotasecret20 I used their posts/reblogs/comments to compile many of these symbols (and I've linked the posts). If I've missed someone, I apologize, it isn't intentional!

Last edit: 23/2/2024

I also want to add, that this post doesn't include all aspec identities, such as agender, afamilial, asensual, and more. They are important parts of the community, but I'm only informed on some, so couldn't include them.

[aroworlds]

This Aro Week, I've made cross-stitched card designs perfect for gifting to your favourite slightly-snarky aromantic.

The free tutorial includes patterns, card and fabric dimensions and a materials run-down as well as instructions on attaching an aida swatch to cardstock and other border techniques.

[just-aro]

question:

anyone have any ideas for aro food symbols? someone wants to make foods for an a-spec affinity group i attended and all i can think of is kiwi lol

[alloaroworlds]

I was very excited to discover miniature arrow charms in the scrapbooking section at my local craft store and a pair of pineapple-print underpants in my unworn spare-clothes stash*. With the addition of a colour-block T-shirt in allo-aro colours, my dolls are being extra aromantic this Pride Month.

(* Autism sensory stuff means the challenge of finding clothes with the right kind of not-hurting-me seams and fabrics, so when garments I tolerate go on clearance, I collect a few spares. I figure it's worth sacrificing one to make a pineapple doll top, though!)

[heartless-aro]

A list of emojis that are aro to me:

🫀 - anatomical heart. using this as a substitute for other heart emojis is pretty aro tbh

♠︎/♠️- spade. more of an aroace symbol than a general aro symbol (because of the ace card suit symbolism). i mostly use it because i like the way it looks aesthetically tbh but it also is a pretty significant symbol for aroaces

🏹 - bow and arrow. need i say more?

⬅️⤵️↗️ - literally any arrow emoji. because ar(r)o(w)

🥒 - cucumber. looks like zucchini. zucchini = slang term for a partner in a queerplatonic relationship

🥀 - wilted rose. because red roses represent romance, and romance is dead (i killed it myself)

💐- bouquet of roses. this one is a bit aro because it contains yellow roses, which are aromantic culture.

🌻 - sunflower. i just think yellow flowers (yellow roses especially, but also just yellow flowers in general) are aro

💚 - green heart. it is green. that is aro.

🍍- pineapple. since pineapples are an alloaro symbol.

🍏 - green apple. for apl-spec aros because green is aro and apples are apl

🫁 - lungs. as a cold, loveless aro, i have no heart to wax poetic about as alloromantic people often get to do. because of this, i have chosen the lungs to be the internal organ that i glamorize. it just makes me feel included

💘 - heart with arrow. it has an arrow in it, which is enough for me tbh.

[koifishanonymous]

*twirls hair (in a gossipy teen way)* sooooooo. Sorry if this is out of your pay grade you're like the only person I know where to go for this, do you know any discreet queer symbols? If you have any specifically bi/aro (if there's any aro symbols that are specifically demi that would also be cool AF) that would be poggers but tbh I'm just curious period now

Uhhhhhhhhh I'm the demiromantic Tommy anon from fuck knows how long along buuttttttt I might just go by 🫀 anon now (or something along those lines idk)

omg demiro tommy icon anon!! i never thought i'd see you again, so nice to have you here :D

flowers tend to be very good at being discreet and at the same time letting those you want to know you're queer, so give lavender and violets a chance (anything purple goes tbh)

some discreet, but common bi symbols would be the bisexual double moon and just generally the colours pink, purple and blue on almost anything! the colour scheme is pretty recognizable amongst queer folk, but not enough to get hate-crimed, in my experience at least

here's a general list of aspec symbols! they're relatively unknown, so should be discreet, but the ace of diamonds is sometimes used specifically for demiros/demiaces !

hope this helped, anon, have a nice one :)

[ace-aro-queerplatonic-positivity]

Holy shit, I didn’t see this post is from 2014

Holy fuck

AROMANTIC SYMBOLS:

Recently, more discussion has been stirring within the aro community (yay!) about the flag, symbols, etc.

Well we have talked about the flag quite a bit (my personal favorite being the green/light green/white/grey/black). Now, I think it is time to discuss symbols.

Asexuals wear a black ring on their right middle finger as a sense of pride/to identify each other. You have probably heard of this. Within the aro community we have been trying to organize an aromantic version of this, one of the suggestions being a white ring, worn on the middle finger (either left or right) to symbolize aromanticism. the ring idea has been suggested in other colors, but white goes the best with the most clothing. A white ring could be worn with just about any colors, is insignificant to allos, and noticeable enough to other aros. anyone on the aromantic spectrum could be open to wear one.

What do you guys think? Should this be our version of the ace ring?

[radios-universe]

booked my heartstopper tattoo!!!! is it leaves? is it a quote? No! it’s:

<3 jellyfish <3

[it-is-only-a-novel]

Hi, could you by any chance make an the aspec symbols post article somewhere else than tumblr so it could be cited in the wikipedia for aromanticism? Sorry if this is too big an ask.

That sounds like fun actually. But I honestly wouldn't know how to do it. I don't have a blog outside Tumblr.

If there are any suggestions, I'd be happy to see if I can do it. I'm open to starting a different blog or something, any suggestions are welcome.

[aroworlds]

I thought I might also show off some of my cross-stitch patches during @aggressivelyarospec's Aggressively Arospectacular, especially my collection of quoi, nebula and vague patches (as an aro who floats about said trifecta of identities because comprehending attraction and my relationship to it is difficult).

I do have more: these are just the patches I have yet to attach to my backpack and jacket. It's just so much less fun to sew my patches onto things than it is to sew the patches, so I have a huge backlog!

[heartless-aro]

Here’s an old aro meme from 2011, which was before the rise of the “Ace Discourse” around 2015 (which may have started out as backlash in response to The Trevor Project deciding to include asexual people around that time). This meme format uses an aardvark to represent aromantic people. At the time, axolotls were often used in similar memes to represent asexuals, so the aromantic aardvark was chosen as the aromantic equivalent of the asexual axolotl. Aardvarks were considered to be somewhat of a mascot for the aromantic community for some time, though they have become less popular as a symbol in recent years.

[image description: image of an Aardvark with grey, yellow and white in the background. Text says “Parents say they just want you to be happy and get married” at the top and “Oxymoron” at the bottom.]

[alloaroworlds]

[image description: a collection of cross-stitch patches in allosexual aromantic--green, light green, white, yellow and gold--and finished with hand-embroidered edges. Patches include pineapples, dragons, hearts, rainbows, square and zigzag flags, arrows and the words "alloaro", "allosexual" and "pride".]

Because my main project for @aggressivelyarospec's Aggressively Arospectacular is all about the aromantic flag, I thought I'd add some yellow and gold to proceedings with a photo of some of the allo-aro cross-stitch patches I've made over the years.

I do have more: these are just the patches I have yet to attach to my backpack and jacket. Is it more fun to sew the patches then it is to sew the patches onto something else? Absolutely!

[heartless-aro]

what's the story behind aardvarks and yellow roses?

Yellow Roses

Ok so yellow roses are a bit more straightforward to explain, so I’m gonna start there. Outside of the aromantic community, yellow roses traditionally symbolize friendship. Because of this symbolism, when the first aromantic flag (the four stripe flag with green, yellow, orange, and black, shown below) was published on the website for the National Coalition for Aromantic Visibility (NCAV), the flag included a yellow stripe which represented romantic friendship, friends with benefits, friendship dating, and queerplatonic relationships.

The redesigns of the flag also included a yellow stripe (to represent lithromantics) though I’m not sure whether this was at all inspired by the yellow stripe in the original flag (if anyone knows please lmk). Still, it’s an interesting piece of aro history for sure. We still see yellow being used to represent platonic attraction sometimes (notably, on the queerplatonic flag), so there could be some link there as well (though that’s a bit of speculation).

Before the “ace discourse” era on here, I also used to see yellow roses by themselves being used as a symbol of aromanticism by aromantics due to platonic love being intrinsic to how many people experience their aromanticism. It wasn’t as common of a symbol as, say, aardvarks or spades, but it was common enough to be recognizable as a symbol. It was especially used as a symbol of platonic love and attraction within the aro community, as one might expect. Here’s a screenshot of one instance of this that I found digging through old posts by @aromanticaardvark on Wayback Machine. The post is from 2015.

I’m not sure why, but I’ve always personally liked the yellow roses as an aro symbol even if I don’t entirely relate to the platonic love symbolism (in fact, I could be considered aplatonic, though I don’t often label myself as such).

I actually use the blue roses in my header as a nod to the old yellow rose symbol, in case anyone was curious about that. (I chose blue roses instead of yellow since, as I said, the platonic love symbolism isn’t particularly relatable to me. Plus blue roses are often used to symbolize unattainable or unrequited love, which I thought was fitting since I myself am unattainable, and any romantic feelings directed towards me will forever be unrequited).

Aardvarks

So, I’m about 90% sure that the aardvark symbol was started by @aromanticaardvark, who used to be one of the big name blogs in the aro community (though their blog has been inactive since 2016). Back when advice animal memes were a thing, the person behind the Aromantic Aardvark blog used to post aromantic-themed advice animal memes which featured an aardvark. (An example of one such meme originally posted on the Aromantic Aardvark blog in 2011 is shown below).

In 2015, Aromantic Aardvark received the anonymous ask “What does the aardvark have to do with it?” to which they replied “Nothing, really, it’s just alliterative. Aromantic Aardvark was founded when advice animals were a common meme here on tumblr, and my friend and I thought it’d be funny if there were an aromantic meme. That aspect of the blog eventually went away however, and it became more of a general resource/advice blog for aro spectrum people.” This would seem to imply that the use of aardvarks to symbolize aromantics originated on the Aromantic Aardvark tumblr blog.

This would make sense seeing as Aromantic Aardvark was one of the early aromantic blogs, and was even linked on the NCAV website back in 2014.

Aardvarks were used pretty commonly as an aromantic symbol for a while. Notably, the AroPlane forum, where a lot of early discussions about aromantic symbols and flag redesigns took place, used a drawing of an aardvark in its website banner (see below).

I’m honestly not quite sure when aardvarks started to decline in use as an aromantic symbol though.

[cremecheezy]

Special mention/shout-out to @bloggingboutburgers for publishing her aroace comics and being the reason why I know aromantics exist--also part of the reason I chose to do research and how I found out I was arospec too

To spreading aro and ace awareness <3

[heartless-aro]

For those who are newer to the ace and aro communities, the black ace ring and white aro ring are very important symbols to know. Outside of our pride flags, they’re among the most prominent symbols of our community. I’ve even seen them referenced outside of English-speaking ace and aro communities (specifically on the cover of a Japanese book on aromantic and asexual identity + in a couple internet articles), which I thought was pretty neat

Ace rings and Aro rings. What are they?

An ace ring is a black ring, usually worn on the middle finger of the right hand, that indicates you are on the asexual spectrum. An aro ring is the basically the same thing just white and worn on your left hand on the middle finger. Placement is important since other communities us rings to identify themselves. Many people on the spectrum don’t know about the rings, so it is often times a more personal symbol. It’s just a really neat way to embrace your ace-ness and/or aro-ness.

Some people go with plain black and plain white., but others like their rings with a little bit more to them. Some people might go out even further and get rings that are dragon-like. I will explain the meaning of dragons in the ace community in a later post. There are even rings out there with the ace of spades (and other suits) which the meaning of that is explained in one of my previous posts. There are also cool rings out there that are less subtle that have the aro flag colors, ace flag, colors, and the sunset aroace flag. Overall, just the normal ace ring, a black ring with embellishments, and any other ace symbols are used by people! People have all sorts of different rings that fit within the aro/ace ring vibe.

Feel free to reblog and get this info out there! ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ

[117-opossum-teeth]

<2 hand symbol anyone ??