#arophobia

[starryjoy]

aro erasure everywhere man. getting told by the mod of a majority queer subreddit that if I want to post aro content then I should go to the subreddit for this specific thing that has "ace" in the name. like yeah man sure. first of all thanks for not reading at all that I said aro. second of all I'm sure ace people love it when they're told their spaces they made for themselves should be used by people who aren't ace

[satyrradio]

I actually really hate how the "just call me a slur" joke went from being a critique of rainbow capitalism and faux inclusionism to being a way to make fun of nonbinary and aspec ppl literally just. having language.

"Joyfriend? Queerplatonic? Erm.. literally just call me a slur XD" shut the fuck upppp goddamn

[aromanticduck]

"Oh you're alloromantic? But what if you meet someone one day who puts you off romance forever? I think you should put your life on hold just in case that happens."

[franknfurterstriangulardinosaur]

ages ago, I posted an aro positivity post that got a lot of bad replies. “This isn’t aromanticism, this is mental illness”. People don’t realise you’re allowed to be mentally ill and aromantic. You can have a personality disorder and be aromantic. You can be depressed. You can be bipolar. You can be mentally ill and still not want to be in a romantic relationship. It might not be connected but it might be. If you are aro because of mental illness or trauma, then that’s still aromanticism. If you just happen to be aro and mentally ill, you’re still aro. Aromanticism is not mental illness itself but of course, there’s mental illness within the aspec community. There’s mental illness in all communities. It doesn’t deter from aromanticism. Mentally ill aros are valid!

[ugly-anarchist]

People on this site cannot or intentionally refuse to distinguish between systemic oppression and lateral mistreatment and it's a massive problem.

Me talking about how other queer people target me for having masculine traits isn't me saying that cisallohet perisex men are oppressed for being men and feminism sucks and lesbians are evil.

Me pointing out how late diagnosed autistic people treat me like an other for getting a diagnosis early isn't me saying late diagnosed people are privileged and have power over me.

Me saying that aroaces have mistreated me and pushed me out of aspec spaces as an alloaro isn't me saying that aroaces are my oppressors and they don't belong in aro spaces.

"Can the people who are in the same community as me but have different experiences please stop treating me like shit" isn't me saying that I'm the most oppressed person on the planet and no one but me suffers. I'm just asking you to stop treating me like shit. That shouldn't be a controversial statement.

Not everything is about privilege and oppression, sometimes people are just dicks and maybe it's you.

[thermodynamic-comedian]

when i say that there's a disparity in how aromantics and asexuals are treated, what i mean is that romantic asexuality is allowed to exist, but sexual aromanticism is not. what i mean is that all sexual content is expected to be tagged appropriately, and sex-repulsed people can block those tags, but romantic content is almost never tagged as romantic, and romance-repulsed people are just expected to be alright with that. what i mean is that you cannot make a single post about aromanticism without someone tagging it as "ace" or "aroace" (even if you specifically make a banner that says not to do so). what i mean is that i have gotten several hate anons from other aspecs just because i talk openly about being a non-ace aro. what i mean is that all aromantic representation is aroace. what i mean is that the aspec community is incredibly sex-negative. what i mean is that popular aspec media openly spouts alloarophobia and still gets praised as good aspec representation. what i mean is that non-ace aros are expected to seperate our sexuality from our aromanticism entirely because it might make some aroace uncomfortable to acknowledge that sexual aromanticism can and does exist.

there is a fucking disparity, you're just not listening to us.

[thepileofclothesonyourdesk]

[thatqueergarbagerat]

Is this something?

[inezrable]

"You're not actually aromantic, you just have a fear of intimacy"

It's both actually so fuck you

[daybringersol]

gotta be honest, i hate the whole oppression contest between romance-favorable and romance-averse aromantics that’s going on right now. both of those groups are pressured to act like the other. you know why? because people just don’t like us being aromantic. that’s it. nobody’s more privileged than the other, at least not in this context.

if you’re alright with being in relationships, then you’re told you’re not really aromantic. the goal is to make you doubt you’re aromantic.

if you don’t want to be in relationships, then you’re told that aromantics can date, so you should! the goal is to make you more palatable, to make you romance-favorable so then, they can gaslight you into thinking you’re not actually aromantic. or they just straight up call you heartless (shoutout heartless aros, love you guys <2) and/or inhuman, but thats just their true colors showing. they think that of all aros.

and the aromantic people who says shit like that? they’re trying to throw the group they’re not part of under the bus to make themselves either more palatable or less ‘confusing’. they’re scared.

nobody’s winning here. let’s all just shut the fuck up for a second and recognize that these people just don’t want us to be aromantic. that’s it. doesn’t matter if you’re romance-averse, romance-favorable or anything else. they just want us to conform. and if you’re accusing the other side of being responsible for your oppression, you’re playing right into their game.

[starryjoy]

thinking about all the aromantic people who died thinking they were broken. thinking about all the aromantic people who died settling for "at least I care about this person". thinking about all the aromantic people that died without ever being able to know why they couldn't reciprocate the feelings of anyone, men, women, people of other genders and more. thinking about all the aromantic people that died being called sluts that never found the right person to marry. thinking about all the aromantic people that died that had to tell themselves that it was fine, they were fine, this marriage will be okay and it will be for the future of their lineage, while crying themselves to sleep every night. thinking about all the aromantic people that died that we will never know about, because being aromantic isn't even close to a possibility in the mind of society at large. because love is supposed to be the force that saves everything. because love is supposed to bring everyone together. because to love is human.

[ceilidhtransing]

I've cropped out the username because I have absolutely no desire to start drama or make a personal “callout” or have people go harass someone or anything like that (and if you take this kind of thing as an opportunity to go and be horrible to another Tumblr user then that is terrible and you should stop), but wow, I have never seen such a clanging example of amatonormativity. I don't think OP necessarily meant it this way, I don't think they meant any harm, I don't think they're consciously arophobic or something - it's far more likely that they're simply unfamiliar with aspec issues, and I always prefer to assume good faith - but I want to talk about this post anyway because it provides a really good and explicit example of the way society just sort of... asserts the centrality of romantic attraction and entirely forgets aromantic people exist.

I do want to first say that I actually agree with the initial point this post is making. Romance as a genre is unfairly derided as some kind of “lesser” form of art, and this derision very frequently comes with generous helpings of misogyny. I totally agree that romance is not at all an unintellectual or superficial thing to write about, and it's bad that it gets treated that way and that readers and writers of romance get so often mocked and condemned. Romance is a totally valid genre and enjoying it doesn't make you vain or stupid or superficial.

HOWEVER. As an aromantic person I find the rest of the post just... I don't know, it's just so perfect as a probably unwitting expression of baked-in cultural amatonormativity. It's brilliant. It's so funny to me. I can almost do a line-by-line breakdown of the way it so completely forgets the existence of aromantic people. In fact, let's do that.

It is so fundamental to us. The issue here should be pretty obvious. The assumption that romance is some integral part of The Human Experience and that it's fundamental to All People is pretty much amatonormativity 101. It reinforces the idea that people who don't experience romantic attraction are “lacking”, forever sitting apart from The Human Experience, and possibly in some way not quite fully human, since we don't experience the thing that is apparently so fundamental to humans.

To want to love and be loved. The post seems to be incorrectly equating “romance” with “loving and being loved”, when in fact there are many people who don't experience romantic attraction yet absolutely love and want to be loved. (And of course loveless aros, aplatonic people, various folks who don't “want to love and be loved” also exist, and it's important to emphasise that this desire, just like romantic attraction, is also not necessarily integral to all people.) “Love” is not automatically “romantic love”, but this post seems to imply that romance is the only, or default, form in which love can exist.

If you don't think every great work of literature. philosophy. metaphysics. was ultimately about romance. I don't think you were paying enough attention. OK this is the line that elevated this post from “sigh, more casual amatonormativity to scroll past” to “I just have to respond to this”. Where to even begin with this assertion. This is a level of “assuming romance is central to everything humans ever do and ever create” that I've almost never encountered before. It feels like a manifestation of the tendency for alloromantic people to declare that, because romance is very central for them, it is thus central to Everything. And I'm homing in on “romance” because the post doesn't say “ultimately about love” - which would still be a reach, but less of a reach - it specifically says “ultimately about romance”. As an aromantic person who is an academic at heart and highly educated in the humanities and social sciences, the idea that my ability to understand literature and philosophy and metaphysics is somehow greatly hampered by the fact that I don't experience or relate to romantic attraction is just... what??? This idea is really very funny to me but also genuinely pretty insulting, even though I'm sure it wasn't meant that way. Not only does it feel like the summation of every patronising “oh, you couldn't possibly understand” directed to aromantic adults who are, in fact, entirely capable of understanding, but it also flattens the incredible breadth of human intellectual experience into “being about romance”. I sometimes find myself wishing that alloromantic people would peak outside the bubble of amatonormativity and realise that actually, there is an enormous swathe of human experience and intellect and creativity and expression that has nothing at all to do with romantic attraction and romantic relationships. And no, stating that, I don't know, the Book of Job is not actually about romance has nothing to do with our society's misogynistic denigration of romance as a genre; it has everything to do with the fact that the Book of Job is not actually about romance. (And if you aren't familiar with Job or for some reason don't consider it a “great work of literature”, replace with whatever other example you can think of; there are many.) It's insulting to imply that aro-spec and/or ace-spec people are somehow less able to participate in art and literature and philosophy etc because we might bring a perspective that doesn't include romance or sex at all and we're just not capable of understanding that Actually Romance And/Or Sex Is Central To Everything. It's genuinely absurd to argue that all the pinnacles of human intellectual achievement really, at their core, come back to romance, and it speaks to our very blinkered society's tendency to declare things like “everything is really about sex” or “everything is really about romance” or “everything is really about breakups” or whatever and then look at aro-spec and ace-spec people like we're aliens and go “but like... how do you even live?” Newsflash, there is so much more to life than romance and love and sex. You can live an entire, very fulfilling, very meaningful, very thoughtful life without these things being at all relevant to you. That's not to dismiss those things as minor or unimportant - they are indeed very central to a lot of people's lives, and they're not “dumb” or “shallow” or whatever - but they're not central to everyone's lives, and they're hardly The Only Things In The World.

And if your response is something along the lines of “well OK there's a tiny minority of people who don't engage with romance and/or sex, or relate to it in the same way most people do, but that doesn't mean that romance isn't still at the core of humanity, or that all the most important things don't still have romance at their heart”, imagine telling a woman that “well, you can focus on a career if you want, but what's really fundamental to being a woman is being a wife and mother - in fact, motherhood is the most important thing in the world, it's fundamental to women, it's what all women's literature is about”. Or, hell, telling a person of any gender that “parenthood” is the central pillar of all of humanity and that every great work of art ever produced is ultimately about parenthood and obviously parenthood is fundamental to everyone's being - forgetting that actually some people will never be parents, and implying that their childlessness makes them less able to understand The Human Experience. That might give you some small idea of what it's like to be an aspec person and be repeatedly told that feelings you don't experience and relationships you don't have and attractions you don't relate to and acts you don't engage in are somehow Fundamental To Humanity and are what lie at The Core Of Everything: how excluding that is, how alienating that is, how oppressively stifling that is.

Feeling that love and/or romance and/or sex are very important to your own life is totally valid, but I wish alloromantics and allosexuals could be more capable of opening their minds and imagining and empathising with an existence for which these things aren't central. Our lives aren't lesser, or emptier, or sadder, or shallower for lack of romance or sex. Our experiences are part of The Human Experience. Our perspectives on art and life and relationships and philosophy and humanity and everything else are just as valid. We are just as capable of profundity, of creativity, of insight - because romance and sex aren't “at the core” of any of these things. We are here, and we're tired of being forgotten, ignored, sidelined, dismissed, erased, talked over, talked past. It would be great if society at large actually remembered we exist once in a while, and that our lives are just as beautiful and important as anyone else's.

[aropride]

(ID: two memes using the "it's 2024 i'm done arguing / if you hate X i'm straight up murdering you" meme format. the first says "aromantics" and has a picture of the aro pride flag, and the second says "asexuals" and has a picture of the ace pride flag. end ID)

[bloomshroomz]

Aroallos are often treated as inherently "more sexual" than other allosexuals. Here's why that assumption happens, and why it's bullshit.

Relationships are often treated as inherently hierarchical and strictly defined, due to amatonormativity and a-spec erasure. It usually goes something like this:

You can't have sex without romance. Sex is "dirty" and needs to be "balanced out" or "justified" with romance. Sex is exclusively physically stimulating, and therefore shallow, unless done in emotional service to romance.

Wanting to have sex with people outside of a romantic context is seen as "using" people, inherently. You're "using" them for their body, because you "don't care enough" to love them romantically. Your desires are deemed to be inherently predatory.

You can't have romance without sex. Romance needs to be "justified" with sex, otherwise it's "just platonic."

Wanting romance without sex is seen as "failing" your partner.

Sex and romance are to happen exclusively between two people.

Romantic relationships are more important than all other relationships, except for maybe family. And remember, sex is strictly confined to romance, which therefore means that sex is also more important than nonsexual/nonromantic connection.

Friendships are always less important than romance, and therefore, less important than sex as well. They exist at the bottom of the hierarchy. That's why we have phrases like "more than friends" to describe romance.

In other words, sex = romance, and sex/romance > friendship.

When you take away the romantic elements, you're left with this:

Romance is no longer there to "balance out/justify" the sex, making the sex apparently "more sexual" and "more dirty" and "less emotional" than it would be if it were romantic.

Your sexual desires are deemed inherently predatory.

Sex takes precedent over friendship and nonromantic emotional intimacy in the original hierarchy. Therefore, sex must take precedent over all forms of emotional connection if you're interested in sex without romance, and sex also cannot spark emotional stimulation or connection on its own.

Due to the previous points, you get reduced to a largely "physical" creature, with few or no emotional needs or desires. You are also assumed to disregard the emotional needs and desires of others.

Friendships are still less important than sex. So, even if your friends are the people you're having sex with, it's implied that you don't care about your friends, and you only value them for their bodies. Sex is an insult to your friendships.

Of course, this is bullshit. All of these "rules" are bullshit.

This is how it actually works:

You can have sex without romance. Sex is not "dirty" does not need to be "balanced out" or "justified" by romance. Sex can be emotionally stimulating and fulfilling without romance (though it doesn't have to be, and that's also fine).

There is nothing predatory about having sexual desires/intent without romantic desires/intent. There is nothing predatory about having sex outside of romance, so long as everyone consents.

You can have romance without sex. Romance does not need to be "justified" via sex.

You are not "failing" your partner by not wanting to have sex. You might be sexually incompatible if sex is something they want, but that is not "failure" on anyone's part.

Sex and romance can happen between as many people as you like, as long as everyone is on the same page about things.

Romantic relationships, as well as familial relationships, are not inherently more important than any other type of relationship.

Friendships are not inherently less important than other types of relationships. There is no inherent hierarchy.

Sex is not an insult to friendship. Having sex with your friends does not mean you only value them for their body.

Wanting sex without romance does not inherently mean that sex takes precedent over everything else. For some people, it does, and that's fine. But that's not usually the case, and it should not be assumed to be the case.

Quoting some stuff from myself and others:

People tend to assume that aroallos are always hypersexual, or always loveless, or always prioritize sex above all else when it comes to their relationships with people. And all of those things are valid experiences, but they don't apply to me personally. I've been trying to put it into words... People think that a lack of romantic attraction necessitates an amplified sexual attraction. Like just because I'm aro, I must be "more sexual" than other allosexual people. It seems like people think sexuality has to be "balanced out" with romance. But I'm not particularly sexual; I'm just not ace. [...] there's nothing wrong with prioritizing or emphasizing sexuality. But that's not an inherent aspect of being aroallo, and it doesn't describe me personally. The primary purpose of my relationships is emotional connection. Sex is just a cool thing that I may or may not do with people.

- Myself [Feb. 1, 2024]

I hate that when I announce that I'm aro, but not ace, people are like "yes fuck nasty I respect it 😏😏" like okay girl sure I do that but do you think I don't experience longing for human connection ? You heard non/aromantic and thought "wow, you must be so good with one night stands no emotional attachment whatsoever". Like no, I still (and you're not gonna believe this guys) care about the people I may or may not sleep with ?? Hello ??

- max-nicoxposts [June 4, 2024]

Alloaro culture is always being expected to either be asexual or hypersexual; nuance was something meant for others I suppose.

- Anon [May 28, 2024]

Aroalo culture is someone assuming I'm ace when I say I'm aro, and when I say I'm actually aro and bi they react with "so you're just a predator"

- Anon [May 27, 2024]

there's nothing wrong with being a man and wanting to sleep with men and not date them. it doesn't make you proof queer men are sex-crazed. there's nothing wrong with being a woman and wanting to sleep with women and not date them. it doesn't make you proof queer women are predatory. being alloaro doesn't make you a derogatory stereotype. you deserve respect, no matter what

- pansyboybloom [Jan. 16, 2024]

So much of the arophobia directed towards aromantic heterosexual men seems to be rooted in willful ignorance about what aromanticism actually is and how allosexual aromanticism differs from sexual objectification. Aromanticism is experiencing little to no romantic attraction towards others. That’s it. It isn’t the same as sending unsolicited dick picks to strangers or reducing women to their bodies. When a misogynistic man disregards a woman’s personhood in favor of treating her as a sexual object, it isn’t because he doesn’t experience romantic attraction to women. It’s because he chooses not to value women as people.

- heartless-aro [Dec. 30, 2023] [I highly recommend reading the full post. I only included one section here due to length.]

and if you're aromantic, you also have to be asexual. because sex without romance is immoral and dirty and abusive. and every aroallo is an invader who's trying to destroy your perfect, pure, sex-negative aspec community. if an aromantic is not asexual, they are not a valid aromantic. if you've ever found yourself wondering why aplatonics and aroallos alike have their own small communities instead of just being a part of the wider aspec community, this is why. you drove us away. and your acceptence of aromanticism is still entirely conditional.

- thermodynamic-comedian [May 29, 2024] [also recommend reading the full post]

[ugly-anarchist]

People are now calling aros homophobic for saying "love loses" and disliking the phrase "love is love"

I don't dislike the phrase "love is love" because I'm aro and I hate the concept of love and I want to trample on queer joy and I don't understand the meaning behind love is love.

I dislike the phrase "love is love" because I don't believe that minorities should have to say "we're just like you!" In order to be accepted. I dislike it because it doesn't apply to all queer people, (including bisexuals, gays, lesbians, etc) but people treat it like it does. I dislike it because it's a product of a sex-negative society that deems queer people to be disgusting sex pests and instead of going "that's fucked up because there's nothing wrong with sex" people go "that's fucked up because we're not like those dirty disgusting predators who want sex without romance (coughalloaroscough)". I dislike it because arophobia is rampant in the queer community and people will throw us under the bus for points and have. (Stonewall UK posted a tweet acknowledging aros during aro week and other queer people called us predators and implied we were cishet invaders) I dislike it because the word love is shoved onto aros and whenever we say "please don't" people just redefine it to force it on us. I dislike it because there are better alternatives. I dislike it because rainbow capitalism has taken it over. I dislike it because it just feels a bit overused and cliche at this point. I dislike it for plenty of reasons, from legitimate to petty. Because I'm a person, not an evil aro who wants to destroy the queer community.

Aros, for a very long time, have had the word love used against us as a tool for our oppression. (Yes, love can be used to oppress people) And a lot of aros are sick of not being represented in queer spaces. The community puts so much emphasis on romantic love in an effort to not be the stereotypical sex obsessed queer but that leaves out aros. And people will be like "it's to uplift gays, bis, and lesbians" but there are aromantic gays, bis, and lesbians! I'm an aromantic bisexual person! I am directly harmed by the whole "we're not dirty sex pests, we can love (romantically) just like you!"

I, and many other aros, dislike the phrase love is love because it leaves us behind in the dirt. We often feel like the dirty side of queerness that no one wants to acknowledge. Saying "queer love is real love" isn't a bad thing, but having that be the one and only thing queer people ever talk about leaves out a portion of the community and we're allowed to talk about it.

"Love is love" doesn't represent me as a bisexual aromantic person. Not everything has to represent or include me but it would be nice if just one thing did. My version of queer joy is not represented by love is love and I just want a fucking alternative that does include it!

[Don't tag as ace/aroace or derail]

[thermodynamic-comedian]

there's something so profoundly isolating about being aromantic, but not asexual. because every aromantic experience is boldly labeled an "aroace experience", or even just an "asexual experience", even when it has nothing to do with asexuality. there's no room for non-asexual aromanticism to exist. so you learn to avoid all of it.

the aromantic tag is filled with posts about asexuality, so you learn to not explore it. other aspecs assume you're asexual or imply that you "should" be, so you learn to avoid aspec spaces. other queer people accuse you of emotional abuse on the basis of your identity, so you learn to avoid queer spaces.

it doesn't feel like there's any space out there for us, any support that isn't pulled out from under us the second we say "hey, um, actually, i'm just aromantic, not aroace."