I think a huge part of the ignorance about aromanticism is that people fundamentally misunderstand aro relationships because they simply do not have any frame of reference for what it would be like to live without romantic feelings. Non-aro people completely miss the point when they imagine their life as exactly the same, but with the romantic feelings and relationships removed, and extrapolate that that’s what aro people’s lives are like, because for a lot of people… it’s not.
It’s the same misunderstanding when cis people try to imagine what it would be like to be trans by thinking “what if I wanted to be a boy?” and straight people imagine their partner and their relationship as exactly the same, just another gender.
That’s why we get all this bullshit where allo people act as though all relationships must fit neatly and obviously into either ‘romantic’ or ‘platonic’ categories, because… their relationships do. That’s why we hear stuff like “lol what you are describing is a friendship!” when aro people talk about QPRs, because for them, any relationship that lacks romantic affection is a friendship. Because they are not imagining their life without a relationship that is committed, incredibly intimate, exclusive, and prioritised above all others.
Aro people can still desire a level of intimacy and commitment with somebody that everybody else gets from romantic relationships, without wanting a romance: sharing everything – space, money, belongings, time – having a level of emotional and even physical intimacy that is not common in friendships, being committed to one another, making that relationship a priority above other things in your life, basing major life decisions around that relationship… these are all things that most people fulfil through romantic relationships, and aro people can desire that kind of intimacy without feeling or wanting romance.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand QPRs or the aro experience. You don’t have to understand it to respect it. At some point you have to acknowledge that you don’t understand because you have not experienced it, you have no frame of reference for it, and you will never really know what it’s like because those are not one of those people. The validity of aro people’s experiences does not hinge on whether or not non-aro people understand or accept them.
happy birthday to me! im 22!
it’s also national coming out day! im a lesbian! and likely asexual!
i’d like to take a moment to remind everyone that im a lesbian. not for any particular reason, just because the thought occurred to me and felt good and i want to say it
talked to my therapist and she told me its up to me and only i can decide what the right label if any is for my sexuality.
You’re more than just dysphoria and a target of transphobia (img source)
this is why I’m against the narrative of “being LGBT is defined by suffering, if you don’t suffer you don’t belong to LGBT or Pride”. it’s incredibly damaging to queer people, especially queer kids who are just figuring out how their sexuality or gender identity figures into their overall identity. this narrative shoves them back into the closet if they don’t suffer “enough”, and how much one must suffer is completely arbitrary
also hey most young folks dont have super diverse experiences under their belt yet due to being, like, young. there are only a few narratives of queer suffering out there, and thus the definition of queer suffering and what that looks/feels like is very narrow and doesn’t always apply to a lot of queer youth.
so, like, promoting the concept of “LGBTQ = suffering” means queer kids may not recognize when something they’re going through is because of their queerness, and disregard that and themselves even if it is.
also pressures queer kids to come out for the sake of suffering and feeling ‘valid’ even if they aren’t safe or ready to.
There’s this thing that happens with minority groups. We come together because of the discrimination but we stay together for the culture. But people seem to forget that – LGBTQIA+ people aren’t just together because we suffer, we’re together because we have something to celebrate in the uniqueness we share. There’s something fundamentally wrong about working towards a better world with less discrimination and then gatekeeping newer members of the community because we don’t feel they’re suffered enough. THAT WAS THE GOAL.
Every queer person you feel hasn’t suffered enough to qualify as queer is proof of a better world. A better world is what we said we wanted, but it’s not going to be what we get if we let our identities be defined by suffering.
Worth noting that when a group too strongly roots their identity in the idea of persecution you eventually get stuff like American Christians being convinced they are a persecuted minority
This also paints an incredibly bleak future where we will never not be suffering. Idk about you, but that’s not the future I’m trying to achieve.
god im reading a text about romance fiction (especially targeted at young adults) for class and one sentence in it literally made my brain explode because ive been thinking about this kind of stuff too, how “Many people wouldn’t fall in love if they’ve never heard about it before.” and like…imagine there was no ideal/overaccentuated image of love and romance painted in postmodern mass media….how would we love? would it be purer? more authentic? what would we do differently? would we fall in love at all if we werent constantly being fed an ideal concept of love as the norm in mass media? like what is a natural process of human feelings and what is just a projection of how we want to love and want to be loved based on what we’ve seen on tv and read in books etc? in this essay i will
w … wh … where’s the rest of the essay, op?
if it worked like this, queers wouldn’t fall in love, because we grew up being told it was only a filthy lust that could never compare with the clean true love of A Man And A Woman having a church wedding. we love anyway, and we married even when the state didn’t recognize it as marriage.
i’m not pointing this out to scold you. you had an interesting hypothesis, but it turns out there actually was a control group, so the experiment’s been done.
despite likely having no gender in particular and also probabpy having the sexual orientation equivalent of “not applicable” i find myself desperately wanting to talk about gender and sexuality all the time
Fact: bisexuals make up a majority of the LGBT population.
Fact: the majority of bisexuals are closeted.
Theory: If all bisexual people came out, straight people would no longer be the majority.
Do we really make up a majority? Cause the way we’re erased i had no idea. Like really. I thought we were in minority…
The Human Rights Commission of San Francisco released a groundbreaking report on Bisexual Invisibility in 2010 which revealed that, even though only 28% of bisexuals are out (compared to 71% of lesbians and 77% of gay men.) bisexuals out-number gays and lesbians combined, Many studies have followed which verify this data.
Bisexual Invisibility more like Bisexual Invincibility
reblogging for the last comment
I’ve had a lot of bi people tell me “I thought bisexuality was almost nonexistent?” when I brought this up.
Bisexuals make up the majority of the LGBTQ+ community and a huge percentage if not the majority of people in general.
It’s easy to feel like you’re alone if you’re bi or questioning. The most powerful thing we can tell bi youth is ‘you are not alone’. It’s what saved my life as a kid.
All my bi siblings are more than welcome here!!! I love yall!
just moving along like everyone else 