#tw internalised amatonormativity

[our-arospec-experience]

i'm aroace and have bpd. my friendships can be so intense and i've had many people in my life i retrospectively call "crushes" or "people i was in love with". i always tell people i'm aroace in roundabout ways with a bunch of disclaimers and "maybe it'll change! just not right now!"s because otherwise they'll talk to me as if i'm demi or just jaded and haven't found the one. but i know how i feel. i've always felt this way.

still, i crave intense relationships and become incredibly attached to people, who i can't pursue romantically because i don't love them romantically. it's heartbreaking to love someone the most i could ever love someone but to them it'll likely never be worth as much as a romantic relationship. hearing stories of aroace people in happy relationships that respect their aromanticism gives me a lot of hope, but i just don't hear those stories a lot.

I'm sorry you've had such a tough experience, I hope you have people in you life who support you for who you are.

[micaathogwarts]

the words Aromantic and Asexual seems to get scrarier with time for me

TW: I'll discuss my fear of not being accepted for my identity, not finding a place in society because of it. +long post

For context: I'm 21, closeted ace and on the aro spectrum, never had a relationship or a crush before. This is obviously just my experience, i think that maybe also other people feel similarly in some way. I don't have many chances to talk to other aro/ace people so I'd love to hear from you! If you agree or not with my little rant, If you feel in somewhat similar or if you have different experience! obvs asexuality and aromanticism are spectrums and everyone have unique experiences so I'd love to hear yours!

(P.S. english is not my first language so I hope this is overlall understandable! plus I hope it does not sound as some kind internalised aphobia or discrimination: I am really proud and happy in my identity yet I am afraid that is will not be positively percived or understood)

I distintively remember being 15 and seing these words for the first time. I remember the confusion and the weird sense of understanding and belonging. But also I remember thinking "it is kinda ok if i am ace, my family would never know, ask or get mad because I don't have sex". (this may sound like a weird thing to think but understanding that you are queer, that others feels things differently than you, in a traditional, conservative enviroment may be scary and i though this would be easier).

I mean obviously i understood a lot about me and others in that moment, and I'd be lying if i say that my identity never made my feel distant or isolated from friends and other teens. (classmates talk about their crushes, relationship, experience all the time. Adult and professor akwardly talking about attraction and "active sexuality" as something normal, scientifical, biological that will eventually happen to everyone). But I have always been kinda shy and I was a good student in highschoold, adults and friends never questioned about me too much. True, maybe romantic relationship are kinda expected during your teenage years but everyone around me seemed to think that I was just "shy and focused". Ace and Aro label seemed much easy to hide and, most importantly I feelt like if others would ever come to know of it, it would not be a big deal.

But few years can make a great difference in what society expects from you. Once highschool was over it seems like being "shy and focused" was not worth of any praise anymore, quite the contrary actually: relatives started asking if I had a "boyfriend", closer family members started wondering if I liked girls, closer friends, who usually did not discuss relationship before, started looking for partners, dating and sharing their experiences and often it felt like I was just left out of the conversation. I started realising how I misjudged the situation before: being aroace is not as invisible as I though and it is actually a big deal!

It is a big deal and I didn't realise cause i greatly understimated how much of a big deal romance and sex were to everyone else in "adult" life. I realised that Hetero/Amatonormative Relationship are seen like a compulsory step to take in life, necessary to grow up, necessary for a stable adult life: I realised it by seeing that 75% of instagram posts written by students on university page are about realationships, sex, love, finding other attractive (it is almost like I forgot about a fundamental side quest: get a partner, for the main quests: get a deegree) I realised it by hearing my friend asking each other about their dates and encouraging eachother to join dating apps. I realised it by seeing online how people talk about celebrities love life, from the young woman who broke up with her boyfriend and in now a "different" person to the way people comment when they hear a boy in his 20s saying he had never kissed anyone. Love is compulsory, everyone my age is either in love or should be looking for love....

And I feel like it will only get worst: soon the people I grew up with will all be in relationship or looking for love and my closet will get more and more see-through with time and as much as I am proud of my identity I am deeply afraid of others reaction to it. And then they will get marryed and maybe I will not, and this society is weirdly couple-shaped, I almost cannot imagine living fully alone for the rest of my life.

(obv I know that aroace people can have relationship, I am aware I may even fall deeply and desperatly in love tomorrow morning but what I was trying to say is that if I still be as I am in this moment the way my closeted identity will suface always more and I am afraid of how others will treat me then.)

(I know this all posts sound dramatic, i hope it is not too unreliable tho!)

[lumi-procrastinate]

some tw cus things here are getting shitty: tw depression and tw mentions of grooming minors.

for the sake of your comfort and wellbeing, if you find these topics triggering, please click away from this post.

just a little more rant cus why the hell not and a reminder to all minors: DO NOT CHAT WITH STRANGERS ONLINE ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE STARTING TO FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE AND IF THE TOPICS THEY BROUGHT UP IS NOT SUITABLE FOR YOUR AGE [especially if they asked for your age and after finding out you're a minor; they started talking weird things]

about the depression part-

[this is based on my experiences and is not a representation of every aspecs' experience, everyone has a different experience even if they identify in the same term]

pretty sure I had an even major episode back then as a minor before I understood that I'm in the aroace spectrum.

In fact, one of the bigger causation of that to me was amatonormativity itself and how aspecs were painted as this 'loveless' being because we don't feel the same way as them.

Added to that was my [previously undiagnosed] AuDHD which made me grew an internalised arophobia back in the day and added another fuel to my self loathing.

Also, may I add how ironic for most aphobes to point out that aspecs [especially adults] are grooming children only for them to prove their point by grooming children into fetishes and kinks?

Yeah, remember that discord server exclusively for aroace peeps that had minors questioning their identity to only be targeted by aphobes who talks to them into 'finding their actual sexuality' by talking about things unsuitable for their age?

They're predators ffs.

so another re-reminder to all minors who somehow read until here; DO NOT CHAT WITH STRANGERS ONLINE ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE STARTING TO FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE AND IF THE TOPICS THEY BROUGHT UP IS NOT SUITABLE FOR YOUR AGE [especially if they asked for your age and after finding out you're a minor; they started talking weird things]

So within two days of each other, Fox News writes an article comparing aromanticism and asexuality to pedophilia, and then Matt Walsh releases a video saying asexuality is a mental illness and asexuals are tricking teenagers into having depression.

Not sure what’s going on right now over in Conservative World, but it’s a hell of wild U-turn for them to suddenly switch from “Oh no! The left is sexualizing our children!” to “Oh no! The left is asexualizing our children!”

[one-mopeyboi]

Mitch and Maysie, a Hunger Games headcanon

(Warning for some amatonormative thoughts Haymitch has towards himself)

The outlier districts are more conservative.

Haymitch Abernathy grew up thinking it strange that he never had crushes on anyone (when even his kid brother ran away after giving a little girl flowers) or took anyone to the slag heap (when even Bannock Mellark took Daphne Lipp), but he thought he had to date someone.

If it has to be someone, it’ll be someone who he can actually stand, was his rationale, so that fell onto his only friend, Maysilee.

She snuck toffees for him to take home to his little brother behind the counter despite how her sister Marjorie would glare. (He rarely sees Maysilee’s other best friend, but he always snuck for Larkspur Everdeen a stack of bank notes so her littlest daughter could get some more food. That’s the best he could do)

She was the only audience to ever hear him play the fiddle, and danced to match. (At his kid’s toasting he does dance. It should be Abram Everdeen in his place, but still.)

On rainy days they sat together looking out the window of her upstairs bedroom. (He sees the boy and the girl’s silhouettes in the door of Katniss’ house and decides against an extra bottle of whiskey)

They snuck out the district fences following Abram Everdeen to decorate the pine trees the way people did before the Dark Days. (Willow and Bran come to tell Grandpa Haymitch what they learned at school : back when this district was still called Virginia, there was a tradition called Christmas)

He didn‘t even let his brother or ma call him Mitch, only her, for she was Maysie. (That one privilege, though, was never given to anyone else)

They never kissed, or went further, but make no mistake - that kind of love wasn’t the only kind.

They agreed to pretend to not know each other in the Arena, only making an alliance as if they were strangers who just happened to be from the same district.

The Games took his girl.

[jamescarstairs]

just thinking about how much amatonormativity fucked us over, how a lot of aros discovering they're aro go through a moment of such self hatred of their aro identity that they go "i can't be this". That the idea of romantic love and love in general is something that makes us human and if we live without love what is the point of living at all. But they are wrong about that, so wrong. There's so much more to life than love.

i just want to say to questioning aros, to aros who have just figured out they're aro, and especially to loveless aros. Even to aros who have known they're aro for a while and have still not been able to find acceptance. You may hate who you are now but there's so much joy and light in the world, in your life, even without love. Love is not the be all and end all. You are not broken, you are not inhuman, there is nothing wrong with you. Your aroness is part of you and it is beautiful. You will get to a place where you embrace your aromanticism, you will come to love/accept it. I know this because I was you. There is a light at the end of this dark tunnel and you will thrive. It may hurt now but you'll become stronger and tougher and realise just how much your life matters and how much happiness there is within your life even without love. I know it might sound lonely and scary at first but you're not alone. You've never been alone. Just because you're aro it doesn't mean you'll end up unhappy or lonely. Even if the whole world is against you there's still a community just like you. You'll never be alone, not truly. And I hope one day you truly do end up accepting your aroness. Because it's one part of you that makes you whole.

[aroaceconfessions]

TW: aphobia, internalised aphobia, allonormativity, amatonormativity

So yesterday I came out as ace to my psychiatrist and I was so surprised that he immediately said "that's completely normal. A lot of people are like that." And I was so confused because?? Aside from my friends, I've never gotten such response about asexuality.

Earlier this year I told my mom that I don't want to get married and have a child and she was being hella aphobic even though I didn't outright say that I'm asexual. The other psychiatrist I've met before also pathologized my asexuality saying that it might be a symptom or a side effect from my depression even though I repeatedly said that my lack of sexual desire doesn't bother me at all, so I was surprised that my current psychiatrist is totally cool about it and even assured me that it's normal and nothing wrong with me—because I was preparing for rejection. I was preparing to defend my identity and I was already assuring myself that whatever he said, my identity is valid. I was NOT prepared to receive acceptance and understanding because I've never got that except from my friends.

I mean, I know I'm normal, and there's nothing wrong with being asexual, but I live in the society wherw it's seen as something wrong or abnormal, so I've always expected rejection and invalidation whenever I think about coming out. But my doctor's response changed my outlook significantly: rejection isn't inevitable. Not everyone will reject us for who we are and we deserve respect, acceptance, and understanding.

[jamescarstairs]

this arospec awareness week i want to talk about something that I always seem to talk about but no so much on here, in detail.

romantic relationships aren’t more than any other form or relationship.

Having a romantic relationship isn’t the be all and end all. And stop prioritising them, and/or belittling platonic relationships as “just friends”.

Saying, for example, “just friends” implies that platonic relationships are lesser than romantic relationships they are not. [blog post & twitter thread]

Putting romantic relationships higher on a pedestal to other non-romantic relationships tells aromantic people that their non-romantic relationships aren’t good enough, aren’t strong enough. And tells us that we should want something “more”. As if to say “how can you be content with life with just those types of relationships”. 

Which leads a lot of aromantic people, who don’t ever want to date, into believing they need to “fix” themselves by getting themselves into a romantic relationship. Something they know they don’t want, because society reflects us as inhuman, broken, strange. Because who would ever want to be “forever alone” right? I know this because I was that person, before I realised I was aromatic I forced myself into a relationship. 

And guess what happened when I realised I was aro whilst I was still in that same relationship. I denied it, i pushed it down, i tried every other identity on the aro spectrum because there’s no way i could be “like that”. Because being somewhere else on the arospec meant i was more “human” / more “normal” because at least then someday, somehow I would experience romantic attraction... right? (by “like that” i mean never experiencing romantic attraction ever)

But I am. I don’t ever experience romantic attraction and I’m glad to be in a place where I love this part of me, and I no longer need to deny it. Obviously I have bad days but overall over the past couple of years I can now say I love being aromantic. I’m aromantic and that doesn’t need to change. I don’t need to be fixed. And my non-romantic relationships aren’t lesser than romantic ones.

(I talk a lot more about being aro (and ace) on my wordpress blog and my twitter.)