that feel when you finally have a use for relationship terminology, but none of it makes sense to you because all of it is predicated on the assumption that you subscribe to the dichotomy of “romantic” vs “[queer]platonic”– not to even mention the equally taxing concept that is “alterous”.
qpraroaceandmiscellaneous: queerascat: anonymous said: “I’m quite surprised with the commentary about color-swapped flags being problematic, since nowadays I don’t see any complaints directed at them. I’ve always heard the aro flag that just replaced purple with green was “made by someone problematic”, so I’m glad you brought that post to light (there’s also the issue of that being the most popular androsexual flag), but… I don’t think you need to worry much :p (re: this post) …honestly, what surprises (and embarrasses) me is the fact that i even forgot about how problematic those flag designs are because, reflecting back on it now, i remember color-swapped flags being part of a larger issue that eventually became at least somewhat prominently discussed on Tumblr? that larger issue being the nature of the relationship between the asexual and aromantic communities, a topic that i hardly see discussed at all these days. which is…
i’d make a quasi-linkspam of a post about the many times and ways that i’ve had aro aces tell me that i can’t do / say / talk about / feel / understand something because i’m “romantic”, but more than likely i’d get accused of being arophobic instead of, you know, pointing out a legitimate problem within the aro ace community that ought to be addressed.
…can i just say that it is beyond shitty that despite questioning my romantic orientation openly for the first time 2 years ago and having explicitly disidentified with ”-romantic” anything for a year at the very least, now more than ever i feel like i could and would never identify as being anywhere on the aromantic spectrum because of negative experiences that i continue to have re: having both my identity and my experiences assumed, ignored and polarized by some aces on the aromantic spectrum? because yeah, that’s really shitty imho. edit: oh lookie here. rediscovered a video where i openly questioned my romantic orientation for the first time back in 2014. oh well, doesn’t matter now. never identifying as aro or -romantic anything anyway.
anonymous said: hey i just wanted to comment towards your post about the fracturing of the asexual community. i think that has to do with the history the ace community has on tumblr. two, three years ago, the argument wasn’t whether aces belonged to the community; the argument was ‘you aren’t asexual if you aren’t sex-repulsed’, which was debated and disputed for a very long time until terms like grey-, demi-, that sort of stuff started to come out and become more popular and accepted. the discourse used to be ‘a is for asexual, not allies’ and about being sex repulsed. and i think that the struggle to find validity in /their own community/ has caused a lot of splintering that has affected how people treat the ace community today. NOT to say they are to blame for how they’re treated, by any means, i don’t want it to come…
….you know, considering how much talk there is in the ace community about how asexuality and aromanticism exist on a spectrum– of “grayness” and differing types of attractions with occasional attention paid to diversity of one kind or another– it both amazes and frustrates me how so many of the same people who speak of these things still seem to operate based on the very same assumption that exists within society at large: that everyone is (allo)romantic and / or (allo)sexual by default unless explicitly stated otherwise. while i understand that aces (and aros) internalize and subsequently have to unlearn amatonormativity and sexnormativity (and heteronormativity) just the same as everyone else and that there’s also likely an element of self-defense / self-preservation involved, it is beyond frustrating every time i see or am subjected to microaggressions from aces who adhere to the very same “______ by default unless otherwise stated” mindset that…
actually acknowledging the fact that they do not exist as two mutually exclusive groups of people, ie. aromantic asexuals vs (allo)romantic asexuals.
