CW: fandom shipping and my VERY unpopular aromantic and asexual opinion

I'm aroace. I've been identified as one since I was 13. Before that, I forced myself to fall in love with people, made "crushes," and was never seriously accepted by adults who only told me that I "will find someone special one day." I know what amatonormativity is, who aphobes are (my family is absolutely conservative when it comes to LGBTQ+), and so on.

I hope I won't be hated for this opinion, but here it is: I see no problem in fans shipping aroace characters. Fanfics are just fan FICTION, so it's not real. It's not canon or something. It's just fiction. I'm not talking about the cases where the person is aphobic but about fans who want to ship characters. It doesn't erase us, aspecs.

Before you ask something like, "Will you ever ship a gay character with a woman / a lesbian with a man?" I'll give a short answer: yes, I will. It's just my fantasy. It doesn't erase the representation in canon.

People ship straight men with each other and have no problems with that, but when it comes to LGBTQ+-heros, everybody is literally ready to m*rder any ficwriter who "dared" to write a OOC fanfic where the canon aroace isn't aroace.

Again, I'll repeat: I don't make any excuses for aphobes, who genuinely believe we mustn't live. I'm trying to protect fanfiction writers who get too much hate.

That's my opinion. Sorry for offending you if I did.

Submitted 25/04/24

I have an IRL friend who's Aromantic, and I'm Aro/Ace. We hang out a lot, and I'd say he's pretty cool. The thing is, whenever we're just chatting, these random people will come up to us, and either ask if we're dating, say they're trying to "Steal his girl" (I am Nonbinary and am out to most people), or just plain ask if we're fucking, which is weird to ask anybody in the first place. We always tell them to leave us alone, but they basically come bug us every time they see us. His strategy is to just act like they've never existed, which is fair, but I sort of feel like I should tell someone (Even if it would most likely elicit a bad response based on the area I'm in)...

Submitted 23/04/24

Sometimes I wish I served no sexual purpose

Submitted 23/04/24

i agree with the aro and ace arent the same posts, but for some reason i keep getting them on my dash and it kinda hurts after a while. I'm a pretty sensitive person and seeing aro and ace are different 50 times over is starting to hurt. also saw some aroace ppl are whiny and annoying and it just makes me feel bad. I know i'm being dramatic but idk. I want more aroallo and alloace characters, but i also want aroace characters. I feel like i'm part of the people shoving aro people out of the group. This isnt blaming anyone and i think that they still should make these posts, but i can't talk about this with really anyone irl.

Submitted 23/04/24

As an aroace person, sometimes I get tired of engaging with fandoms because of shipping culture. All of the ship wars, all of the random sexual content people just put up with no warnings, all of the assumptions about you as a person if you don't ship this or don't think that character is hot, people insisting that you're "missing out" if you're not in 18+ groups and refusing to let you just exist...sometimes I don't know if I'm being too sensitive or if people really just don't care about aro/ace perspectives. I'm not telling anyone else what to do, I'm minding my own business, but I still get people pestering me the second they realize I'm not engaging with their favorite ships or their adult content. I just feel like it's not that hard to let people be.

Submitted 22/04/24

TW: Internalized aphobia, spicy adult mention, domestic violence, vent

I realized I was aroace when I split up from my husband to attempt dating another guy. This guy was essentially impotent and when I realized that I was wildly happy without sex for months I knew I was ace. I knew I was aro when my boyfriend got toxic and borderline abusive (he threatened to kill my mother after we broke up or he said he had wanted to) and instead of grieving him I just cut him out.

I just wish my entire life of trying to conversion therapy myself into not being aroace including this one incredibly ill fated relationship hadn't happened. Now I have to move four states to get away from him because I got him a job at my work. Yeah, my life has bounced back, and yes, the husband and I are now in a functional QPR instead of our previous attempt at a romantic marriage, but come ON. I have to give up my job because I decided seeing and getting intrigued by red flags was the same as sexual and romantic excitement???? I'm taking a pay cut. I'm moving four states. I built an entire life out here.

I'm just so frustrated. I wanted to make my career out here and instead I'm getting chased out of town by a man who wanted to murder my mother.

Submitted 22/04/24

My askbox is currently empty but as soon as I get an ask I will continue posting!

Thx for all the love and support this blog has had so far it really means a lot to me 💜💚

You can be ace without being aro and aro without being ace. Ace and aro are two separate identities, that can appear together or apart.

wHAT HAVE YOU DONE?? ??????

Original Post Here

If you are interested, I also wrote a FanFic :)

This might be incoherent, but it's thoughts I have to get off my chest.

When I was a little kid I remember having terrible tangles in my hair that my aunt had to brush out for the event we were going to, and screamed at her the whole time. Well she finally got fed up with it and shouted "Tough, it hurts to be beautiful!" And I screamed right back at her "Then I don't want to be beautiful!" My mum took me away from her after that.

I've had a terribly visceral reaction to being called pretty or beautiful or any type of attractive quality my whole life since. They thought I was just a tomboy but really it made no sense to me. People always think they're giving a compliment but I can't think of anything more awful to be. I always think back to that moment and wonder "and for what?" I guess it's a desire I'll never understand.

Now I always wonder if other aspecs ever had similar experiences, if they go out of their way to avoid any clothing that's uncomfortable or care routines that aren't purely health related because why when the only purpose is the be attractive and it hurts. The more I grew up the more it became apparent that beauty hurts is true and I can't imagine the mindset that would make someone want to hurt for something so worthless and impossible, since I've never seen a real person who is beautiful either. I guess other people think they are, but I just can't comprehend the idea that being attractive is a big enough pro to outweigh all the cons, especially when being attractive itself is a con in itsellf as well as impossible to me.

I guess I'm so deep into the other end I can't understand other people. I've never wanted to be them or felt internalized aphobia because of it, though, it just seems like a terrible existence I'm glad I don't experience. Maybe it's not the aroace, maybe it's the autism, or maybe it's both combined...

Submitted 19/04/24

being aroace for me is just listening to love songs and thinking about my friends because i have not spoken to them in THREE DAYS and i Miss Them

Submitted 16/04/24

Sometimes being aroace is mildly terrifying? Or just crushes I guess. Like I'm friends with this one guy and I am like 80% sure he likes me and it scares me because I am incredibly socially awkward and wouldn't know what to say if he asked me out or like tried to flirt

But then I also could be overthinking everything

Submitted 14/04/24

I, in general, have always felt the need to get a boyfriend or girlfriend. Not because I romantically like people, or are even interested in dating, but because of all the romance media I've seen. When people all around me started having ACTUAL feeling for each other, it kind of felt like I was living in some cheesy high school romance movie. I couldn't believe that people really felt like that about other people in real life. Bet, even though I had never cared/understood romance, I tried to make myself have it. I tried to confess 'crushes' to my friends, to flirt, to get into a relationship, et cetera. All I could do was pretend to gush about this random stranger I didn't exactly hate (It must've sounded very robotic in hindsight), and hope that nobody notices that I wasn't sounding all that into it. And where I live, there's little/no acceptance of queers, so even now I have to act my butt off in the case of someone asking about who I like.

Submitted 14/02/24

sometimes as a trans and ace person i just want my genitals. removed. make me smooth. or maybe put a gun down there idk

Submitted 13/04/24

CW: ROMANCE

I have a super confusing relation with romance, as an aromantic. I'm kind of romance-averse and romance-repulsed at the same time? Like I hate thinking about myself in romantic relations, but I also feel uncomfortable around real life couples. For some reason, however, when I consume media, I am unfazed by romance being implied and even enjoy reading books based on romance. I have no idea if there's a term for this, but I felt like sharing, either way. Thank you for listening to my rant. <2

Submitted 11/02/24

Sometimes i feel like a bad representation of aroace-ness

Because our community has tried so hard to not be seen as loveless, people avoidant, robots with no empathy or social skills

But then i enter the ring with the steel chair as anaffectionate, low empathy, and loveless. I don't feel any sort of affection or empathy towards the people around me and do not want to enter any sort of relationship: platonic, queerplatonic, or otherwise

Submitted 10/02/24