#emotionless aspec

[anti-endo-aspec-space]

know abt stereotype "aspec = emotionless / cold"

know it's harmful. recognize it's harmful. stereotypes are harmful. generalizations are harmful. saying any group shares any trait without exceptions is harmful. because everyone is different and individual.

but like. at the same time. wanna mention that being emotionless is ok. being emotionless is morally neutral. being emotionless doesn't equal being evil.

some aspecs aren't emotionless. they shouldn't be assumed emotionless because aspecs. they shouldn't be fakeclaimed if are emotional. they shouldn't be hated because seen as emotionless.

and some aspecs actually are emotionless. they shouldn't be called bad representation. they shouldn't be hated because are emotionless too. they shouldn't be erased because stereotypes. emotionless aspecs aren't the ones who promote amisia. amisics promote amisia and use ableism towards emotionless people to promote amisia.

emotional aspecs are aspecs. emotional aspecs are valid as fuck. emotional aspecs deserve visibility. emotional aspecs deserve respects.

emotionless aspecs are aspecs. emotionless aspecs are valid as fuck. emotionless aspecs deserve visibility. emotionless aspecs deserve respect.

no actual aspecs are "stereotypes." no actual aspecs are "bad representation." every actual aspec is important. every actual aspec have their place in community and make community better because they're here.

[canonaspecswag]

Canon Aspec Swag Showdown: Data Soong vs Murderbot

Data Soong from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). Data is an android and has no sexual attraction or desire. You can read about him as ace representation here and here

vs

Murderbot from The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Murderbot is a bot-human construct, made from cloned human genetic material and robotic parts. It has human emotions but is sex and romance repulsed.

"Martha Wells: When I was working on the first novella, it didn't seem logical that a SecUnit would be given any kind of reproductive system or any human parts that weren't directly useful for its security function. And the way Murderbot feels about humans, it didn't seem logical for its personality that it would identify with any one gender, or be interested in choosing a human gender for itself, and it sure wouldn't be interested in human sexual relations. So in a way I guess it was a coincidence, since I didn't plan it from the start, it was just part of the process of developing the character as I was writing. And thank you!"

[haarvira]

Hey! I mean no disrespect by this at all I'm just genuinely curious, in your bio it says you're an emotionless / loveless aplaroace, but you're taken? How does that work?

Oh hey, you're fine. So, I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you know that aromantics can still date, and aces can still participate in intercourse or other. You don't need attraction to do these things, though I'm sure it certainly helps! There identities that are on the aromantic/asexual spectrums where they can experience attraction as well or want to participate in these sorts of relationships(ex: romo or sexual positive aro/aces). Now apply this to the broader aspec/anattractional spectrums.

I will say that emotions can be similar. You don't need to have emotions to be in different kinds of relationships.

Emotionless/loveless are terms I go by to describe my overall experience and/or identity. It does not specify how much emotion or love I can experience, it's just easier to go by the terms instead of describing it all, as like with my aplaroace label which does not specify which identities I go by under that.

I also find it matters little to certain people and they treat me like others who experience even less than I do.

Now with all of that out of the way, I am on the aroace spectrums so I do experience attraction to an extent, and I experience it only with my two partners. All three of us have varying and different types of attraction. I also experience some other non-rose attractions to my partners and even for people outside of them, such as communal or community based attraction, impersonal attraction, solaic, et cetera.

You can really have any type of relationship, as long as it's consensual and in good faith, it's really limitless. Maybe you don't care about that and that's totally fine. Labels, identities, relationship styles/dynamics are for us to use or enjoy but it doesn't mean we have to. But I do and it makes me happy. My partners know I support them and wouldn't want either to be in a relationship with me where they are unhappy or discontent.

[loveless-arobee]

My main gripe with the posts that are like "love is love includes platonic/familial/queerplatonic/etc. love" is ofc that they still fully ignore and exclude loveless people.

But what is also quite noticeable is that they also never mention sexual love. Because, it seems, in one stance about love (beside the "everybody loves"), a lot of aspecs still agree with society: that sexual love either just straight-up doesn’t exist, or that it’s inherently bad and abusive (that loving someone sexually without romance is abuse, "only using them for sex" etc.)

And on the other hand you also have aspecs acting like, on a societal level, sexual love is seen as equal to romantic love (with phrasing such as "love that isn’t romantic or sexual is devalued by society"), as if romanceless sexual love isn’t seen as basically the worst thing ever.

While I don’t experience love per se, the only type of love I can relate to even remotely is specifically sexual love. I care a lot for people I’m sexually attracted to, and sex is very important to me overall. And let me tell you, me expressing interest in a purely sexual relationship, no matter if I’d label my feelings as love or anything similar, are not ever treated any better than friendships or platonic relationships are.

I’m demonised to hell and back from queer people and non-queer allies and queerphobes all the same for my feelings and opinions on sex. Sex is seen as something that should only happen in very specific situations, and only then is it "good"; any other type of sex is "bad"; it’s just the definition that varies slightly between those groups—and I fit none of their definitions for "good" sex. No one sees sexual love without romance as a positive thing, least of all something equal to romance. (And especially not sexual intimacy and closeness without love and romance (or friendship, in slightly more progressive views, but that’s rare tbh))

Its just very noticeable that the majority of queer people, and between those especially aspecs because they do talk about non-romantic love the most, still don’t see sexual love as something that could just exist. It’s very noticeable when there’s hundreds of posts broadening the definition of love to include literally everything but specifically sexual love. Endless lists about what love is in non-romantic ways, and it’s glaringly obvious that people just do not believe anyone could care for someone they "just" want to fuck, "just" have a sexual relationship with, without wanting to be labelled as friends or anything similar even when they do things other see as friendship because they cannot grasp that people can care for their sexual partners even without having feelings for them that aren’t sexual.

Just still seems very sex-negative to limit sex to be something that either happens between people in a different kind of relationship (usually romantic, but again, some do agree you can have sex with friends, too), or something emotionless between strangers who then never interact with each other again (which is also most of the time treated as a bad thing which should stop).

Point is: Maybe question why you exclude sexual love specifically from your post about non-romantic love. (And at the same time, also stop acting like every person must experience some type of love)

[aroacesafeplaceforall]

Misconceptions about being Arospec/acespec

from here I present a shorter version, please do read the full one!

Asexuality is not:

a medical condition

a choice

celibacy/chastity

waiting (for marriage, or true love, or the right person)

something that can be changed by the right person

... and much more!

Aspec people may or may not:

Want to date

Want to get married

Want to have kids

... and much more!

Aros may or may not:

Have been in romantic relationships in the past

Enjoy consuming romantic media

Have had traumatic experiences from romance or romantic relationships

... and much more!

Aces may or may not:

Have had sex before

Enjoy sex

Be curious about sex

Masturbate

... and much more!

Aspec people do:

Face discrimination, known as acephobia or aphobia, including microaggressions, workplace discrimination, and even corrective rape.

Examples of Micro-aggressions

“You should feel flattered by unwanted attention”

“There is no love without sex”

“That’s not real” or “You’re lying”

“But how do you know if you haven’t tried sex”

“I bet I can change that”

“Romantic love is what makes us human”

“There��s something wrong with you”

Being called cold, emotionless, robots, or inhuman

And so much more of this bullshit.

[mossy-aro]

me: only portraying aspec characters as robots/aliens is harmful representation because it reinforces the idea that aro/acespec people are emotionless, cold, and less than human for not experiencing attraction

also me when i see a robot character actually experiencing attraction: GRRRRR give me back my emotionless asexual aromantic ‘doesn’t understand basic human emotions’ robot rep u fucking bastards!!! 😡

[llilyrose]

llilyrose spends her time analyzing aroace stuff. yay.

isat spoilers afoot

what i especially like about the way adrienne wrote mira's orientation is the lack of room for interpretation. yes they snuck aroace talk into fantasy france, but just stop and think for a minute. what would happen if mira just said "i'm aroace" or "i don't feel love the same way" instead of all the nuance we got to her character in the friend quest convo?

we know she's sex repulsed, we know she's romance repulsed. we know she loves fiction that has those things in it, loves interpreting fictional characters that way, but can't bare to see herself in that situation. it makes a lot of sense with regards to her location (vaugarde, a very sex-positive and romance-adamant country) and also with regards to herself (the way she feels about her environment). Of course she wouldn't blame other folk around her for engaging with their religion the "correct" way, of course she'd internalize all her feelings of being outcast and turn it back on herself.

The fandom respects this! Nobody ships her romantically, or sexually, because we know she's not into that. We know she would never and i know a bunch of people who would punch you for even thinking it!

Now what if Adrienne hadn't put this in the game? What if they had just said on their tumblr one day, "mira's aroace," or something. where would we be now? aspec shipping discourse would definitely take the reins. we'd have people shipping her in all kinds of different ways, bending the aroace character to the best of their ability because they could still be into sex, or romance, or whatever. this is TRUE, it's POSSIBLE, but there's no nuance. We wouldn't know the way Mira really feels about these things unless Adrienne told us, so a lot of people would either ignore/"work around" her identity or just wouldn't even know about it to begin with!

Introducing mira's orientation in the way adrienne did leaves no room for discourse. we know if she's sex-positive, sex-negative, how she reacted to finding out she was, etc. It provides so much more representation than a simple "I'm aroace" ever could. It's such a wide label, so finally having CONCRETE information about a canonical aroace's experiences with their orientation is so, so freeing and honestly quite refreshing. and it's worked into the story seamlessly!!!

She's not an emotionless carcass with no capacity for love, she's not outwardly detesting sex or romance at every possible moment, she's simply a well-rounded character who happens to be aroace. You have time to warm up to her before ever even finding out about her orientation! Or having any clue at all (barring maybe the suspicious sketches)!!!!! Aroace people are real!!! We're so real!!!!

Speaking of the suspicious sketches! We know siffrin's alloace (from, like, one line of dialogue), but we don't know if he's sex-repulsed. Adrienne's gone on record to say "aces can still have sex" in reference to siffrin, so I'm inclined to believe he has at least some sort of libido.

When looking at the sketches, both him and mira have a repulsed reaction. I think there are three possible reasons for Siffrin here!

Siffrin is sex-repulsed and has a visceral reaction to them because he thinks it's gross.

Siffrin has no libido because the stress overrides everything in his system. That combined with his ace identity would probably lead to a distaste for the papers.

Some people would NOT GET THE MEMO from the act 3 friendquest. Sometimes when you're writing you have to account for the gamers being really really dense. Some people didn't even understand the Isa friendquest was him coming out as trans basically. Since Ace characters are hard to "prove" unless they explicitly state they dislike sex, this line of dialogue might've just been there to drill it in that Siffrin is ace because the only other place we see that implication is one line in the friendquest. It could even have no tie to his relationship with sex, who knows?

one of these options is not like the others! /silly

I couldn't tell you which one of those it is, but i think at least one of them had to have hit the mark. It's a lot harder to decode siffrin's sexuality when we only get like 5 lines of dialogue total that vaguely even reference it

With this we come back to the issue from earlier: He could be demi, he could be ace, he could be sex-repulsed, he could not! Most people write them sex-repulsed and I'm personally on that bandwagon, but interpreting them a different way isn't any less correct unless you completely ignore the fact they're ace in the first place.

Even sex-positive aces have complicated relationships with sex. Some do it for the gratification, some simply have higher libido and can't think of a different way to get it out, and others only do it to please their partner.

I think writing an ace character as sex-positive should be seen as a character study instead of an excuse to ship two characters together. Is this character the type to even enjoy it in the first place? How often? How do they interact with it? Etc. Which I think is what Adrienne was talking about when she said "aces can still have sex." We don't know about siffrin's identity, we don't have a grasp on the nuance, but we do know he's ace and that he experiences love differently from the way mirabelle does, and the way isabeau does, and the way odile does, and what have you.

I love love love the representation we get in isat. An aroace, an alloace, and someone that a lot of fans headcanon as aroallo though it's unconfirmed. Even if Odile's not aro, we still get that line of dialogue about not finding romance suitable for her at the moment, which speaks true to a different experience altogether. No two characters experience love, experience life the same in isat. That's why i get to make a tumblr text post that's a bit too long exploring the different avenues adrienne took when writing the characters lol :')

[vroomvroomwee]

My thoughts as an aroace person in regards to some Alastor leaks

WARNING!!! MASSIVE SPOILER ALERT BELOW THE CUT!!!!

I don't know if it's just me but having Alastor without any friends at all now that Rosie turns out to be the complete opposite of his friend is kind of disheartening to watch as an aroace person.

Before, we could have overlooked Alastor’s cannibalistic, murderous, selfish tendencies and habits because he was still capable of forming meaningful relationships even if they were somewhat skewered. He had someone at least, he had a friend to gossip with, to turn to in times of need, someone who understood him and who he saw as an equal.

And now that's just... gone?

I dunno. I suppose he has (or at least had) a relationship with Mimzy, but both of them know she's only using him based on what Husk said in regards to her "visits". I'm not counting Niffty because she's more of a worker for him.

I think having him be completely and irreparably evil who can't even form friendships is kind of leaning towards that part of his character as an excuse for why he doesn't have any romantic relationships either and I just hate that. It also plays in to the aro/ace people are emotionless robots who are incapable of love trope which I am completely sick of at this point.

I could be thinking too deep into this and I might just be in a gloomy mood considering everything that happened these last few days but I'm wondering if any other aspec people feel like this

[twst-hottest-takes]

Hot take: I think Rook is AroAce.

The main reason I think this is because he loves everything equally. He treats everyone and everything the same way, and before anyone says "He chose Neige over Vil in Book 5." He only had one vote, and canonically Neige did better than Vil. He loves them both equally, and he loves everything equally. But I feel like this love is strictly platonic and not romantic or sexual in nature, and I know this is a Disney game, but even in the jp version the characters are very open about having crushes on each other, and from what I've seen in the jp version Rook doesn't think of anyone romantically.

I'm sorry if any of this is harmful stereotyping for the AroAce community, I myself am not AroAce.

That's a valid read of his character I think.

Technically, I can't put stock in calling it canon, but this read really tickles my fancy. We have to remain with the mindset that any given character's attractions and preferences are left open for the sake of appealing to whatever kind of fan-content people want to plop them into, so we can stick it in the "headcanon" section. The idea that an aromantic and asexual character can exist without being turned into an emotionless robot is always appealing.

Also I just love the irony of a character so passionate about love and beauty being like "Nah, I'm not looking for that kind of relationship personally. Keep being beautiful though!"

Thank you for your take!

(Also I think the only thing people would find offensive is the idea of being lumped into any category with Rook, but that depends entirely on how much they love or hate him as a character. However, I am only ostensibly aspec so if a true aroace could come in and clarify they are more than welcome to.)

[canonically47]

and no i don't like how aspec is a back-up headcanon for that one character you don't ship with anyone or you don't find attractive. i hate scrolling through headcanon slideshows and seeing that one ugly character being aspec, i despise seeing a post say that one character in a group of friends that you don't ship is aspec. and i don't like how you also headcanon the 'emotionless' ones as aspec too. how you treat them like machines. how you see a robot character and slap the aspec label on them. and this is not because i am against aspec headcanons, by god no, it's because it's that one headcanon you slap on a character almost like a punishment. you couldn't find them a partner, you didn't think they were worthy of love, you found them ugly. because that's all you view us aspecs, freaks of nature who cannot be understood; worthless background characters without substance. you fail to see the beauty in our identity, in our content, and you project that onto the characters you dislike, and we can tell. this is why fandoms are so unaccessible to us, because you misunderstand, dislike, and hate us, and you cannot even see it. you don't even know your mistake. and you don't even want to know it.

[leikeliscomet]

The constant emotional whiplash between the lesbian and aspec communities is really getting me cus if you went into lesbian spaces and started going 'remember not all lesbians are hairy man-hating ugly feminist man-looking weirdos and we can be gender conforming normal women too <3'' you'd get (rightfully) whacked on the head for throwing lesbians under the bus for cisheterosexual validation meanwhile in the aspec community you can other and pathologise sexlessness and lovelessness with weird essentialist notions on the regular and straight up call people emotionless, robotic and prudes and it's called 'raising awareness about the spectrum' and get 2k notes.

[anti-endo-aspec-space]

tw amisia and ableism discussion

[pt: tw amisia and ableism discussion]

interesting how a lot of amisia is based on ableism / tied to ableism.

know discriminations intersect. know lots of discriminations intersect with ableism specifically. but still. it's very noticeable when talk abt amisia.

stereotypes how aspecs are emotionless and cold so are bad people / monsters / abusers. ableism. may be seen in treatment with people with personality disorders, low empathy, flat affect, etc.

stereotypes how aspecs are "just don't understand" things, just "not mature enough", etc. intellectual ableism. ableism towards neurodevelopmental disorders. etc.

stereotypes how aspecs are "just traumatised." say "just trauma" in my face and get hit by younger protector [not literally]. ableism towards trauma and trauma disorders. trauma isn't something that makes you "not completely yourself." (okay it may feel like that but it's not okay to treat someone other with this idea. and trauma recovery often includes accepting that you can't untraumatize and become your "untouched" imaginary version. so have to accept who you are with trauma and be in peace with it). trauma isn't something that you can and have to live in the past easily. some trauma changes people permanently. some trauma forms people. trauma isn't something not important that hides "actual individual" under itself. trauma is experience. forming experience.

stereotypes how "something just wrong with your body." physical ableism (don't know if it's actual term). so what? not every body have to be same. not every body have to work "properly." not every body's "proper" work looks like most bodies' "proper" work. and so on. also idea that physical disabilities is something additional that hides "actual normal real body" under itself. which is. extremely ableist perspective. (don't know how to word it better).

so yeah. not every body has to work similar. not every mind has to work similar. people are allowed to live their life right now and not wait until they "get rid" of "wrong additional things" (disabilities) and become "normal" (abled). this way of looking on disabilities is harmful, wrong, and extremely ableist.

(not mean being aspec is always caused by disabilities. aspecs may be abled and may be disabled. just unpack how stereotypes abt aspecs are connected with ableism and talk abt ableism and disabled people because of it).

[rainbow-fandoms]

acefluxness

as an aceflux person, sexual attraction is so confusing to me bc one day i'm like 'wdym you look at a person and want to nail them' and then the next day i AM that person and think, 'how did i ever not understand this' and then it happens all over again

i thought i was ace for so long until i started feeling sexual attraction and i was like, 'haha it was just me being immature' NO YOU ARE ACEFLUX. i proceeded to have a crisis and then discovered that being aceflux exists (shock)

the internet did not help you are either "normal" or "asexual and emotionless" like i still feel romantic attraction all the time don't listen to the internet people. unless it's a quiz you found on r/asexual. then indulge because ace people are icons.

i love all my aspecs everyone looking at these tags is an icon and you are worthy of love, romantic or not. also i love all the aceflux flags whoever designed them ily. and can i just say asexual does not immediately correlate with aromantic? different identities thank you very much.

all in all, if you are aceflux or any identity on the ace spectrum reading this, you are valid and i love you, and all of you are wonderful (provided you don't invalidate others' identities because i've seen a rise of that in the community recently and wanted to mention it) but yeah you guys are awesome :)

[real-total-drama-takes]

I think we’re finally normal about queer people on the queer site and then I look at what’s winning on the sexuality headcanons poll

All the undesirable characters that are still nice are aspec all the hated characters (bar Wayne) are straight all the mean girls are lesbians all the flamboyant boys are gay everyone else is bi all the dumb blond(e) peppy characters are pan all the emotionless characters are aspec

I’m tiredddddd I’m 15 I grasped the fact your sexuality doesn’t dictate your personality since I was 10 some of you are grown adults why do I peek into those polls and suddenly we’ve regressed to 2015 Tumblr???

-���

[mayflores]

sorry to be on my 2014 tumblr discourse bullshit but like ever so often there will be a post floating around the aspec/ace community that says something along the lines of "We need ace characters that FUCK and FALL IN LOVE to prove to the ALLOS that asexuals are HUMAN and not Robots/Aliens!!!" which pisses me off because it's basically conforming to the notion that having sex and experiencing romance are requirements for being considered human. Like there are ways to say that you want more people to be aware of how broad the spectrum is or that the 'emotionless ace' trope is harmful is without letting sex-repulsed aces and aromantic people catch strays lmfao

[our-queer-experience]

i wish i have the same experience as other aspecs tbh ,,

as someone who identifies as loveless/emotionless n grayaplatonic n struggles w things such as empathy n compassion, i have a very hard time relating to n feeling happy (as happy as i can manage at least as someone who experiences emotions weaker than the average human) about aspec positivity posts that are just like “its ok to have friends! its ok to be physically affectionate w ur friends w out it being sexual or romantic!”

like, i get that they mean well, but it still hurts as someone who doesnt really want friends alot of the time, n when i do i v rarely feel what most ppl would call “love” towards them (tho what i do feel towards them is still positive) which makes it where i v rarely wanna be physically affectionate, but which leans into my already existing slight dislike of physical affection,

i wanna be able to relate to aspec posts that say that they wish they can cuddle their friends w out someone assuming theyre dating, actually get happy about posts that say the words “i love you”, wish i could relate to posts that talk about wanting close friendships that dont lead to romantic relationships

does this make sense ? idk tbh

thank you for sharing, that sounds difficult