ok I see y’all with the Jedi ocs who have forbidden relationships. I see the people shipping Jedi with other characters (*cough cough* anakin x padme, codywan, aayla x bly *cough cough*) (no shade bc I ship too). I see the Jedi!reader x clone trooper fics.

But i raise you

acearo Jedi who has no interest in relationships at all

sure this Jedi still bonds with their master like a parent/child relationship; what Jedi doesn’t?

this Jedi becomes close friends with other Jedi and sees their clone squad as siblings

this Jedi might even make friends outside of the GAR and Jedi order. maybe some civilian friends

but this Jedi just. never had an inkling of attraction for everyone. They just wanna protect the galaxy and have some laughs.

maybe this Jedi is completely oblivious to any romantic or sexual relationships/attraction/tension going on around them. Maybe this Jedi just doesn’t care. Either way, i think this has a lot of comedy potential (and maybe angst potential)

instead of a Jedi with a forbidden relationship, how about this?

Yoda: the Jedi way, attachment is not. In your future, marriage and family you will not find. Always first, the good of the galaxy comes.

aroace Jedi: okie dokie :)

Yoda: … no questions you have?

aroace Jedi: nope that sounds like a plan to me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I would like to meditate in my room alone by myself before dinner.

Yoda: easiest Jedi, this is

just *aroace jedi* :D

Whenever I see aro/ace discourses and whether they belong in LGBTQ+ spaces, my initial thought is always the same:

Who are you to decide?

What none tells you about being on aromantic and/or asexual spectrum is how isolating it is. You feel lonely. And it's constant. Lonliness because of identity isn't always overwhelming, but it's present somewhere deep down. You feel lonely not because of lack of sexual/romantic attraction but because of society and amatonormativity.

When I was in elementary school, all my friends had crushes. I never understood that because even if I liked someone, it was always in platonic way. They insisted I couldn't possibly not like anyone and I felt forced to fake a crush. In middle school people started dating each other and I comforted myself with "I'm too young for that, time will come". By the high school I already knew something was "wrong" with me, I wasn't like the others. People began having sex not because they were expected to do that but because they actually wanted to. That was such shock to me, I thought media was exaggerating with passion and attraction but apparently all those things happen irl too. Hence I realized I was "the weird one". I forced myself to have same experiences but it felt more like obligation to me than something I trully wanted. I felt dirty after being touched, it repulsed me. I felt like something is broken within me for not enjoying sex. I could never fall in love. People called me coldhearted, they thought something was wrong with me. Few therapist tried to "fix" me, even set me up on dates. I internalized all of that and began seeing myself as "not normal".

Now that I'm older and know there's nothing wrong with me or being aroace, I still can't shake years and years of "I'm not normal" I experienced. It still haunts me. I hear someone talking about their sexual experiences and part of me still feels "not normal" when seeing how "normal" people live. I feel lonely. Parents insist I must find a partner one day. They don't believe i don't experience romantic attraction towards other people. Outside of aspec communities online, I don't experience any support. When I step outside, I still feel like something is wrong with me. Intentionally or not, society still makes me feel like an outsider. It's because of amatonormativity that roots too deep.

There's nothing wrong with people being romantic or sexual, far from that - but vast majority of cishet folks out there expect me to act same as them. Mere thought of someone looking at me as sexual being makes me cringe. I never felt romantic attraction towards anyone. I don't want to be in a relationship - I'm different from the "rest". It's lonely. Felling of isolation became association to me as part of identity. I don't even form closer platonic bonds because inevitable question of my romantic/sex life would inevitably come. For the longest time I felt like I needed to censor that part of myself. I assimilate with surroundings and hope noone finds out my "little secret".

If we as society educated kids more about LGBTQ+ stuff, then maybe this chronic feeling of isolation in aspec communities would diminish in few generations. However what I can say is that from very early age I experienced romantic/sexual attraction very different from what is considered "standard" - and that is why I relate to LGBT experiences innumerous times more than I will to "standard' heterosexual heteroromantic ones.

So stranger on the internet, who are you to swept all my complicated feelings and experiences regarding sexuality under rug because they can't fit in your narrow definition of how romantic and sexual attraction should be.

I finally accepted being aroace almost a year ago. I accepted being ace a lot easier than being aro at first. I had been questioning for a few years prior but it took me a while before I moved past the amatonormativity guilt.

Two things that frustrate me about being arospec is I get asked sometimes by friends, family, or strangers, “Isn’t that normal?” Whenever I try to explain to them how my attraction works and what being aro means to me. No, it is clearly not normal considering a vast majority would look at me like I have three heads, and finding someone to love is a hassle because they expect me to cross my own boundaries for their own comfort all the time. Everyone has their needs, but those are not mine. I’d be fine with compromising if people would also put in a shared effort to compromise with my needs. I’ve tried to date allo people (in fact, all of my past relationships were with allos) and most of them ended simply because needs couldn’t be compromised. I have no ill feelings towards allo people, but 98% of them can never compromise with me when it comes to relationship needs and desires and that gets annoying.

Another thing is, because I’m arospec, I use micro-labels to describe myself. People make such a big deal out of it as if I’m asking them to remember them all. I don’t expect someone to remember all the labels I use (I’m myrromantic, so I experience 2+ arospec labels at once), since I primarily use them for my own comfort so I can understand myself. Plus it’s nice to know enough people experienced romantic attraction and desires the same as me for a label to be coined.

In general, I hate when people think I’m incapable of loving or being loved, or I’m too complicated. When in fact I’m full of love, I just love differently. To any other aros or arospec people who feel the same as me or similar, just know you’re not incapable or complicated at all and we can be full of love (whatever way love is defined for you) just as much as others. You deserve to be treated with love and respect, and be happy too. <3

This is very well said, Anon. You're 100% right. Sorry you've been having a hard time.

My rant on why asexuals (and specifically Heteroromantic aces since they are most often excluded) are valid in the LGBTQIA+ community because I see this and it annoys me (by an aroace). Expect more rants of this nature.

I would like to disagree with the asexual, heteroromantic people are not LGBTQIA+. Oppression comes in all different kinds, and sex is something that is pretty well shoved down people's throats all the time in society. I can verify that coming out as ace or expressing that you don't experience sexual attraction (if you haven't used the term ace yet) is a big deal. You get the "you just haven't met the right person yet", "someday you'll want sex", "that's not possible", "you're lying", "what are you a plant?", and the one that personally bothers me the most "I can change that".

Asexual people also face oppression in health care settings with doctors who don't understand being ace who think that a person has a hormone imbalance (there is a medical condition that is separate from being ace that doctors tend to assume ace people have because they cannot comprehend that someone just doesn't want sex [and not all ace people won't want or won't have sex, but some are just not interested or repulsed by this act]). Look up this information for more reference. This post is long enough already.

There is also the issue of Corrective R*pe which is something that many LGBTQ+ identities face but that is also faced by Ace people. (Refer to comment: "I can change that") I don't really want to get into that but it happens and you can find information online if you need it for reference. (as a sex-repulsed asexual, I can tell you that the idea of me having sex in any capacity gives me a sick feeling in my stomach and an intense desire to vacate that conversation and any related thoughts.

People are also broken up with solely because they are ace and when they come out to their partner the partner is unable to accept this.

How many ace characters do you see represented in media? Maybe you can name a handful who aren't villains, robots, or aliens. Consider further, how many canonically aro characters can you name? (let me tell you, the number of aroace characters that are canonically both of those identities is very low.

So yes... Aces experience oppression differently, but let us not say that they do not face ostracization, the feeling of being broken and wrong and different, or that they are not oppressed at all. Thank you, have a nice day. I apologize for this rant. This is just stuff I think people should be aware of because it is real stuff that actually happens, and being told that we aren't queer enough to be a part of the LGBTQ+ community (which I do believe partly stems from the hypersexualization of the queer community by non-LGBTQ people. And by that, I mean the way that anything LGBTQIA+ related is seen as "inherently inappropriate" in society)

Additional notes:

An incomplete list of amatonormative things in society:

- the games "fuck, marry, kill" and "kiss, marry, kill"

- the belief that you need a partner to be happy.

- platonic relationships seen as less valuable than romantic ones, read: "*just* friends"

Also just as a sidebar in case any non-aces don't know, but asexual people (myself included) sometimes experience body dysphoria about parts of their body that might be viewed in a sexual way. For me, my breasts were something that I spent a vast majority of my childhood covering up. I wore baggy clothes so that people wouldn't notice them, googling ways to make them go away, and wishing they weren't there, I rejected any clothes that might make me look "hot" because that description made me hella uncomfortable.

Add on if you’re ace or if you’re aro a lot of this also applies there since aros too face exclusion…

An Essay On Alloaro's

Before I begin this stupidly long post, I want to add a disclaimer. This post is going to talk specifically about alloaro issues in the community, and only those issues. Everyone one in the aspec community faces issues that deserve to be talked about. That being said, there is a trend in the community to focus on issues skewing more towards asexuals and aroaces. So this post is for those who are rarely talked about. Alloaro's.

With that out of the way, lets begin. The aspec community encompasses two seperate communities of identity. The Acespec Community, asexuals and their spectrum. The Arospec Community, aromantics and their spectrum. However their is this common practice of using aspec in reference to only the Acespec community which is problematic in a few ways. This discourse has been coming up again recently with people claiming that aromantics are included under asexual using aspec to refer to asexuals. This is aromantic erasure, but it also has a heavy impact on a smaller community within the Arospec Community. One thats often forgotten about and the topic of this post.

The discourse around aromantics being under the asexual identity is extremely alloarophobic. It erases us as an identity as it implies that to be aromantic you have to be asexual or be irreversibly linked to asexuality. Its gotten to the point where "Not all aro's are ace" isn't enough to drown out the arguments, which in all honesty it never was enough. Discourse has turned into antagonism against a small community that barely ever gets its voice heard.

If you've made it this far, wonderful. Now, I'm going to break down issues we face inside and outside the aspec community and hopefully how to fix them.

Lack Of Informative Alloaro Centered Content

Its seen all the time. Aspec and LGBT positivity and informational posts simply forgetting the existence of aromantic identities or even worse, when alloaro representation ends at "Not all aro's are ace". To be clear, we have terminology that can be used beyond a single sentence of representation. Terminology that can helo those who may be questioning their orientation and are unable to even find posts about being allosexual and aromantic. How can we fix this? Simple. Acknowledge our terminology. Instead of saying a single line about us, mention us as who we are. Allosexual Aromantics.

Our Representation Being Flooded Over

I want you to imagine for a second you are in the shoes of a questioning alloaro. You've struggled with your aromanticism and don't know if thats even who are, or if you're just a "late bloomer". So, you turn to the aromantic community to try and learn about others experiences. Thats when a knot forms in your throat. As far as you can tell, almost all of the most shared, acknowledged, and featured content around the community is either blatantly asexual or aroace. You know for a fact you aren't asexual, and now you've found yourself reinforcing the idea that you can't be aromantic because of that. Just imagine that for a second. This is something tons of alloaro's have gone through before discovering that such a line of thinking is false.

How many times have you seen posts talking about how the aromantic tags get flooded with purely asexual content? Or that other aromantic identities are forgotten over the vast majority of the community favoring aroaces? This is a massive issue, and it just reinforces the idea that aromanticism and asexuality are connected or are requirements for eachother. Alloaro content and posts get burried under a slew of aroace and asexual content. Content that sometimes doesn't even get tagged as aroace, but just aromantic, making it nearly impossible to filter out for alloaros who want the allosexual part of their identity acknowledged. A passage from @aroworlds "Allosexual Aromantic Erasure: A Guide" says it best.

"Aro-aces deserve the right to see aro-ace content in aromantic spaces, but we need to address this imbalance in terms of what content dominates and how it impacts allo-aro participation in our shared community. Only then can we renegotiate a relationship that doesn’t tend to allo-aro erasure."

How can we fix it? Simple.

If your content doesnt substantially mention aromantics (more then just a sentence tacked on at the end), do not tag it aromantic. And for gods sake, NEVER tag purely asexual content as alloaro.

If your content is aroace, tag it aroace or include asexual in your tags. This allows alloaro's who want to see more representation of their allosexual identity to blacklist the term asexual in their feed. It also helps differentiate the content from being seen as aromantic and nothing else.

A Refusal To Acknowledge Or Talk About Alloaro Experiences

I've said it before and I will say it again. The alloaro experience is fundamentally different then that of aroaces, asexuals, and other identities in the Aspec community. ALL EXPERIENCES IN THE ASPEC COMMUNITY are different and simply assuming that since you've mentioned aroaces or aromantics means that you covered everything is erasure. The way we experience our aromanticism is changed due to our allosexual identities. In the aspec community, it's almost more accepted to be aroace then it is to be alloaro. In spaces for aspec discussion alloaro's often have to filter out their allosexual experiences in fear of offending or making someone who isn't allosexual uncomfortable. Rarely do you ever see a space for alloaro discussion and as a result our struggles often go unheard or even ignored by the community.

Lets take a moment to mention what we face, so that we can at least get the acknowledgement we deserve.

The coding of sexual attraction and sexual acts being inherently romantic

The vilification of sexual acts without reciprocal romantic attraction

The assumption that FWB is societal representation of alloaro's

The unspoken community caution around talking about sexual attraction or sexual experiences in the aspec community, even when tagged as aromantic or given proper warning to asexual members

Being labeled as predatory by society and even within LGBT spaces and communities

A lack of even the slightest education on how to go about sexual encounters without romantic intent in a healthy manner

The flooding of sex negative content in the aromantic tag (along with simply asexual content as a whole)

And much more I could mention but the list would drag on forever. How can we fix this? Simple.

Create more spaces for alloaro discussions and boost content that shares our struggles. Never assume you've covered our experiences because you've mentioned aroaces. Never assume you've covered our experiences because you've mentioned aromantics without specifically talking about alloaro's. Help change the atmosphere of the aspec community to make it more acceptable to talk about sexual experiences in aromantic spaces because they are not the same as asexual spaces.

Closing Statement

There is alot more I could talk about in this essay but its gotten to a length in which I doubt anyone would actually read further so I'm going to wrap things up. All aspec issues and experiences deserve to be discussed, bo matter what identity it centers around. However, that means they deserve to be discussed equally. Whether intentioned or not, refusing to acknowledge the differences in alloaro experiences is erasure, and it harms us as community. We need to elevate the voices of those who go talked over or unheard in our community. We need to stop the harmful ideas that come about when a community for all aspec identities is dominated by the views, opinions, and experiences of one side. The Aspec community is for Asexuals and Aromantics. Two separate identities with their own struggles, experiences, needs, and lives. If we can acknowledge that, and stop lumping ourselves together as if the other side doesn't exist, we can come together as a community.

Everyone deserves a voice, so lets give them one. One we're willing to hear out.

Fandom Community, Effort/Reward, and why I don’t like the phrase “Don’t Like Don’t Read”

Before I start this post, I want to make something clear. I am not calling for censorship within fandom communities, nor am I going to in anyway condone activities like sending people death threats over fandom ships. That is incredibly shitty behaviour. I am also not going to assume that the people who disagree with me on these issues would they themselves condone the death threats which I have recieved over the years for disliking certain characters, ships, or fandom trends. This is a converstation which, due to fandom history, is often characterised by a defensiveness that quickly gives rise to assuming the worst about people who disagree with you, and I don’t think that’s going to be helpful. I also want to make it clear exactly where I am coming from with regards to my own history with fandom. I’ve been involved for over a decade, I was around when strikethrough happened (although I wasn’t really affected, given that my main fandoms were not primarily based on Livejournal), and I have been a moderator on a number of small fandom based forums in my time, mainly around shounen anime. Nothing particularly big, but I think it’s important to mention this because a lot of what I am saying in this post is less related to the content that fandoms create, and more to do with fandom community building and how it handles differences in needs between members of the community. It is these differences in needs that the phrase “Don’t Like Don’t Read” is often used to try and fufil, but in practice I think there are unintended consequences to it that need to be addressed. One of the things that I think it surprisingly important when discussing fandom dynamics is that what we consider a fandom to be is very different to the group of people that may consider themselves to be a fan of the work. The default state of a fan isn’t looking up theories online, reading or writing fanfiction, or assembling a vast knowledge about the series, but rather its watching the show, going “that was pretty cool, I look forward to the next episode”. Fandom, as used here, is an unstable energy state; like a ball being dropped, if there’s not something supporting it, it will fall. That support may be a love of the series, the lowe of a particular character, the enjoyment of a series despite a character (an important thing to note here is that fandom will include people who fundamentally dislike aspects of the media they enjoy, and in fact it can be these negative feelings that provide the motivation for them to remain in fandom). Fandom requires time and energy to be put into it, and it needs a reason for that time and energy to be spent. I’d like to detour slightly by bringing up a particular experience I have had, both as a member of fandom and as a moderator. I’m aroace. Fandom is highly and weirdly amatonormative and sex-normative. These two things interact weirdly. I say fandom is weirdly amatonormative because it isn’t in the same way that mainstream fiction is, at least not with regards to dealing with asexuality and aromanticism. Most fiction doesn’t engage with these at all; the assumption is that everyone wants to get shacked up in a (heterosexual) relationship. Fandom is aware that these things exist, but has historically handled them in weird ways, the two most obvious I like to call the Sherlock and Pidge models respectively, after two more recent chronic examples of them. The Sherlock model is where the character is presented as asexual, but it is treated solely as an obstacle to the true end of the story, a sexually active romantic relationship. The Pidge model is where the character is presented as aro/ace, but this is instead used to explain their near absence from the story; the author is only really interested in the couples they are shipping, so the aroace character is essentially Sir Not Appearing In This Fanfic. While one fic with these attributes is ignorable, this kind of representation has often been the only kind the fandom has to offer, and yeah, a lot of asexuals and aromantics I know have said that they are put off of fandom by these, and by the overall intense focus on shipping that a lot of fandom has. That’s a conversation that is worth having, and many of them tried, but found that it was shut down by the use of the phrase “Don’t Like, Don’t Read”. It wasn’t just being used to refer to individual fics, but comments about the overall fandom community. Some people tried to change it via the mechanism that is vaulted as the best way to change fandom; write fanfics, but these were just ignored because...well, most people weren’t interested. Add to that the few who got extremely hostile towards anyone who didn’t like their ship or shipping in general (again, I’ve had death threats myself), and people decided that they weren’t going to bother. It took too much time and energy, and was in competition with the rest of their lives. They left fandom and returned to simply being a fan. But there’s another mechanism I noticed. See, as people left, some remained. Some, like me, were just stubborn, but some of them were the ones who were really invested in it, who had a real internal energy about it. Not all of these people harassed or sent death threats by any means, but there was certainly a higher percentage of them in this group than in those who left. The rise of “anti” culture did not come as a surprise at all for me, because I had seen the seeds of it from the prespective of someone who was involved in stopping that kind of behaviour on our forums.

Fandom needs spaces to be able to be negative about the stories we are fans of. They need spaces to be negative about ships, and not have this treated as the thing to hide away, anymore than its healthy to try to make the shippers hide away. Fandom needs to be able to critique itself, and not have problems be simply waved away with “Don’t like, don’t read”. And fandoms have, quite honestly, been really bad about handling this. Some of it is understandable defensiveness about censorship. Some of it is defensiveness over media/characters/ships that the fans are invested in (I know of people who have recently left fandoms because of the response that they recieved for saying they disliked a fan favourite character, and were accused of being a toxic anti for a post that was fairly simple about it being their opinion and explaining why they disliked him), but this is a thing we need to work out.