#i may be aroace so technically this doesn’t apply to me but that still makes me a QUEER MUSLIM

[burujbodega]

me, finding a new source teaching islam that looks credible: :D

the source: can you be muslim and gay? yes!

me: alhamdulillah!

the source: it’s like lying or drinking! you can’t say you’re a gay muslim tho :/

me: oh for the love of—

[cat-sapphics]

Hey!

I follow the" aroace lesbian" tag and your recent posts have come up in my feed so I just wanted to say that being arospec, acespec (demiromatic graysexual, both labels in the aromantic and asexual spectrums) & lesbian is completely OKAY and you should not let anyone tell you the contrary. Especially uneducated people so 😚🤍

Many aroaces use the term aroace to encompass being in both aromantic and asexual spectrums; this means you experience little to no romantic/sexual attraction and that's more than valid. You can be both arospec and aspec! 🔥 Or arospec and asexual. Aromantic and acespec 🥺🤝

The way YOU experience romantic and sexual attraction is just different to the average allo person, & that doesn't make it any less valid. Attraction is an abstract concept and we shouldn't be putting ourselves into boxes but letting feelings be that, feelings.

Your experiences are necessary and important to our diverse & big aro/ace communities as an aroace lesbian! An aspec person is that who experiences little to no romantic attraction. That's it. THAT'S OKAY 🥰

And being an aspec lesbian is more than valid too, it's not a contradictory term because the little and fluctuating romantic & sexual attraction you DO experience, is ONLY towards women/nb so; I don't see why lesbian isn't a term you can't use. A lesbian is a women/nb female aligned person who experiences romantic, sexual and/or emotional attraction towards women/nb female aligned people. Check, check & check ✅

All in all, ace lesbians, aro lesbians and aroace lesbians are ALL part of the lesbian community & our unique experiences with romance and sex are necessary and valid for it 💓

Sorry if this got long, hope I made my point clear. Aroace lesbians have always been lesbians so don't let any exclusionists steal your peace 🧡🤍💖

thank you!! thank ya thank ya thank ya!! i really appreciate it <3

i will say, i think some of the anons i got did make some valid points (obviously not everywhere you look but they at least gave me something to think about in general) but it really took me by surprise how condescending and disapproving they all were. super uneducated too, i said i experience attraction differently or at least less frequently than average allo people and like ?? that doesn't mean i'm secretly a self-hating lesbophobe ?? you don't get to determine that for me if i'm genuinely happy even though i participate in lesbian discourse and am passionate about keeping the definition specific and closed ?? lol i didn't redefine lesbian or take away its initial meaning so it really had me peeved

i think most of their comments reflect on how they don't believe in aromanticism and asexuality being a spectrum, which i guess i invited by my own doing since i have some conservative and exclusionary views on the lgbt community and that affects my following/audience, but my response to that is that i use these labels because they bring me personal comfort. when i say i'm demiromantic i don't mean that alloromantics have zero standards when it comes to a potential partner or are completely mesmerized by the idea of hook-ups, just that the connection they need to start crushing comes within a decent time period with a personal connection, but not a super strong and deep and loving one that makes it exceptionally hard to fall in love despite however much we may desire to. the label doesn't exist to imply something bad about """normal""" people, it exists to name an experience many people have but to an intense degree. so, yes, it's a pointless social construct, it probably means nothing to you and that's fine, but it still means something to me. i'm not crying oppression or marginalization, and i'm not claiming that i'm lgbt on the basis of being demiromantic/greyasexual, but through being a nonbinary lesbian. that's the difference between mspec lesbians and aspec lesbians, is one is actively harmful to multiple groups and actually Does spawn from a place of internalized lesbophobia and/or biphobia, and the other is just "mmk this is just for me and affects nothing at all, it doesn't drag you into anything at all, i still qualify for lesbian the way you (should!) see it as technically even if you do believe it's redundant, so just... leave me alone" cause it reflects more on them than me when they make it their business by unfairly assuming things about me

same applies to me being greyasexual. still trying to figure out if it means that i experience sexual/physical attraction less frequently, less intensely, or both, but does that matter?? genuinely?? this is also redundant but i didn’t wanna leave it out of the paragraph about me being demiro fk;ljslkgbdvhbs. the aro disapproval part isn’t acceptable at all but i can at least see it since romance is so normalized and is a core part of, y’know, lgb relationships; the greyace disapproval however....... i don’t wanna label it as acephobia because i don’t really believe in aphobia being a thing, but it still kinda rubs me wrong to claim that sexual/physical attraction is a requirement ykyk... NOTHING WRONG WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEX OF COURSE (i myself kinda wanna try someday if that works out) i just think frowning upon someone who doesn’t UNLESS they try to claim they’re lgbt on that basis is.................. not really cool. i really hope people who read this understand what i’m trying to say and don’t label me as an ace inclus who thinks aphobia and oppression are real, i was just trying to make a point about my personal experiences oops lmao

and then it became "aroace means NO ATTRACTION AT ALL" okay... so i'm angled aroace, that's a sub-term since aroace is literally an umbrella term, actually (unlike lesbian, shit's complicated ykyk). "YOU'RE NOT AROACE THEN"....... they don't even like the idea of oriented aroace now either, so like, what then, are aroace people just never allowed to feel love or positive feelings from other people ever? jesus christ. i'm not even getting into this, i consider aro/ace identities to be secondary to describe one's attraction so this debate should not be as important as, say, discourse centering the L, G, B, or T. it's just dumb all around tbh

hope i addressed all the arguments against it, but i can't really care at this point if i missed something :/ i'll probably get a mean anon about it so don't worry!! /s jslgjgjkshkj;lhfp

speaking of, i've had to delete so many anons and even turn off the option to ask anonymously because of this discourse. it's so pointless in my opinion, so i've just stopped giving them my time unless i think it's worth answering - but even then, i try to keep it fairly short. i genuinely was not expecting my take on (cishet) ace discourse to turn into myself failing to be seen as a "real lesbian" despite literally meeting its definitive qualifications and then it just kept building up ?? stan behavior tbh, especially since plenty of them obviously come from the same users

i apologize for the rant. i just never really felt like i'd be listened to if i tried to explain my identity, so i gave up and just tried to ignore my way out of it. so i really genuinely appreciate your ask, especially since i can identify you. it really feels like i actually have someone on my side now, so even if you ever disagree i'd know you wouldn't harass me about it. it really means a lot, i really needed this from you and i don't wanna dump more shit but i feel that you deserve to know. so thank you again <3

[arocharacteradvice]

A minor plot point of my story involves the mc getting in a qpr with his aroace friend. I’ve thought a lot about making sure not to break the aroace chara’s boundaries, but I’m slightly worried I might be overlooking the mc’s desires? If the aroace chara doesn’t want to do things like have sex/kiss but those are things the mc would want from him, would it be wrong to put them together? The aroace chara encourages the mc pursuing other people for those things. Is that good enough?

So, I’m not going to make a definitive statement as to whether putting these two characters into a qpr would be ‘wrong’ or not. I also can’t give much specific guidance as I haven’t read your story and this is a very nuanced topic. (Which isn’t your fault, I’m just explaining why my answers might seem vague) What I can do is give some pointers, and poise some questions of you that might help you figure out if this is a healthy dynamic.

I’ll be addressing the aro side of things obviously as this is an aro character advice blog, but you can go to ace blogs for more info on that, and to be honest most of the advice I’ll be giving can likely apply to both areas.

Ok so first off: You sound like you want to respect the aro character, and not have the mc pressure them, which is a very good start! But I feel like you may still be viewing the dynamic as one where mc wants something, the qp can’t give it, and his boundaries are a problem that need to be solved, just with another relationship in this case rather than ‘curing’ the aro or having them give in.To be honest this is probably on some level because the mc is the main character. As a writer, you tend to think in terms of your protagonist’s goals.

(also, as a note, if you were at all thinking about having the qp giving in and kissing the mc anyway, unless this is portrayed as very very negative, Don’t Do That for the love of positive representation)

Anyway! Please, please be clear in your writing that one person looking for a certain thing out of their relationship, and another person not looking for it, doesn’t mean the first person is hard done by and suffering horribly by compromising. It’s simply a matter of incompatibility in that area.

Especially when the situation with your characters is that one wants romance, and the relationship is queerplatonic. It’s an explicitly purely platonic relationship style! This isn’t a case of person A ‘overlooking’ their desires because of person B, this is a case of person A entering a relationship they know full well will Not be romantic, still feeling unsatisfied because it’s not romantic, and person B having to suggest solutions to something that isn’t technically a problem. Imagine getting frustrated with a waitress because they wouldn’t kiss you. Why would you expect them to? A qpr isn’t a romantic relationship with one ‘faulty’ partner. Don’t treat it as such.

(It’s a bit of a different situation with sex, as qprs can be sexual, but that’s not my area)

Sure, some qprs have more romantic coded elements, but they’re not an expectation. If you’re going to write a qpr, please understand that actions within them are on an equal playing field. kissing and having sex have no more inherent value than holding hands or watching a movie. It’s about what individuals want. 

I’m also not trying to say that your mc doesn’t matter. Just that your bias could possibly be tipped towards him. He is compromising by not being able to kiss his qp, and the qp is probably compromising in a bunch of ways too. Maybe the qp wants to live together or get a dog or matching tattoos or go to heavy metal concerts together, and the mc doesn’t. There’s Stuff like that in all relationships, you just need to start also viewing romantic coded activities as Stuff, only with more cultural baggage.

On the topic of the mc having another partner: that sounds to me exactly like a compromise on the qp’s part. Did he go into this relationship wanting it to be polyamorous? Because it sounds like this is something he’s doing for the mc, especially as you say this is about the mc specifically having other partners, not the two of them as a couple becoming open. Even if the qp is enthusiastic about it, doesn’t mean it’s something he particularly wanted out of the relationship, just like the mc didn’t particularity want a non-romantic relationship. 

I would also question you as to why the qp is enthusiastic, and whether that’s a character choice or something you’ve done to benefit the mc. Maybe examine whether you have a negative gut reaction to the mc not seeing someone else for kissing/sex, and if so, work on unlearning that. I’m not saying that in your specific situation, the qp must feel pressured or not good enough, but it does happen and it’s worth thinking about how aros would feel seeing a character they’re meant to identify with happily telling their partner to see other people for desires the aro can’t fulfill. I know I personally would feel uncomfortable with it unless it was really well written, as I’ve been in a similar situation myself. 

Again, some people are fine with letting their partner do that kind of thing, or are polyamorous in the first place, but I would be very very careful about how you present it, (other aro blogs, and the qpr tag, may help) and consider whether it makes sense for the qp to feel this way based on context and their characterization. 

I hope this hasn’t sounded too harsh. I’m very aware that you could have considered all this already, but I feel like I need to cover a lot of ground because I don’t know specifics about your characters and this is a stupidly complicated topic.

A few things to consider adding in or developing further: 

Both partners entering or being allowed to enter other relationships. This might change the tone from ‘aros aren’t enough so my mc needs someone else to make up for it’ to ‘no one person has to fulfill either character’s desires!’. 

Having the mc realise that he doesn’t actually don’t need to date someone else. Not in a way that reinforces toxic monogamy or the idea of soulmates, but presented as him just working through amatonormativity and decided he’s cool without kissing anyone.

Showing what both characters get out of the relationship, rather than just what the mc doesn’t get. For instance maybe there’s a show just the two of them are into, or the qp buys the coolest presents, or if one is home late the other always waits for them to start eating dinner. Just small things that present them as good for/happy with each other rather than focusing on the one area of incompatibility. 

Showing why the qp wants to be in this relationship. I think this would help aro readers feel comfortable, as it’s kind of opt in for aros to date as opposed to alloromantics assuming they will, if that makes sense. We also, as a community, tend not to value our own goals and wants. Does he want that partner label to be able to easily explain what the mc means to him? Making that explicit would probably make him more relatable, and help stop aro readers projecting discomfort onto him. Explaining what makes the relationship fulfilling for him would also show that he doesn’t have to lower his expectations just because he’s not willing to be in a romantic relationship.

You don’t have to employ all or any of these ideas to make the relationship work, I just wanted you to have some options if you read my earlier advice on what not to do and though ‘heck, I did do that though’. You might also want to get some aro sensitivity readers to go through some later drafts of the story, though do be aware that some aros would be uncomfortable seeing an aro character in any kind of relationship. Not every aro will want to read what you write, but that’s ok so long as you consider those who will.

tl;dr: Don’t show the aro character’s boundaries as a hurdle, just a different relationship expectation than his partner. Consider why you’re writing the aro character the way you are, and take into consideration what they both enjoy about their relationship.

Good luck! And I’m so sorry for the long post!

- Mod Kaladin