do you ever see a person and you are overcome with incredible fondness? and you just think "oh." but not in a romantic or sexual way you are just filled with warmth and it makes you happy, it just does. and you think "i'm so happy you exist. i'm happy you are somewhere out there in the world, doing your thing". it's love but also not entirely

like people are lovely and i feel it in my entire chest like a burning candle that smells like roses and a sunny day

My Aroace Project is Finished!

Hi everyone!

This is my aroace project. It talks about aroace and its rep in the media and how it should happen more often.

I am very proud of it this is for a class so the formatting might not make sense, but I changed a bunch of names for my own anonymity.

Not everyone's comments were used, I only used a few in the actual essay but everyone else's were taken into consideration and assisted with upholding the thought processes.

There is an anecdote and a dear reader letter, as well as a small booklet I have made to go along with the project.

Please let me know your thoughts!!

Hugs! <3

Info On My Identity:

Romantic - Pan Greyromantic and/or Cupioromantic, Romance Favorable

Greyromantic because while I can't really say for sure if I've ever experienced romantic attraction before, I have experienced crushes, or rather squishes, before. They could have been purely aesthetic or platonic attraction, I think my brain is like holding out hope that I might actually be able to experience romantic attraction. As amatonormative as it sounds. It's mostly because I'm going to attempt to seek out a romantic relationship someday once I've finally "got my life together" whatever that means, and I would feel super guilty for the person I date if there's zero romantic attraction there on my part...

Cupioromantic perfectly describes me, as I want to participate in romantic relationships and get married someday, despite experiencing little to no romantic attraction. The reason I haven't used this label until now is because I read that some people in the aromantic community don't like it as an identity label due to it technically describing a behavior that you can control (whether you get into romantic relationships or not) rather than a feeling that you can't control (whether you experience romantic attraction or not), and it's seen by some in the community as reinforcing amatonormativity. I didn't want to upset people if using cupioromantic was wrong. But it's not. Cupioromantic is a valid identity, if anyone needed to hear that. I will be using cupioromantic from here on out, along with the other labels I use.

Up until now, I've been using romance favorable to describe that sentiment. That still applies, I am a romantic, despite being aromantic. The aromantic only applies to the type of attraction I experience, and has nothing to do with my desires.

I also use pan to describe me on top of all that because the few times I've had squishes, I've had them on both men and women. It felt more like the "genderblind" version of pan attraction as it was more about thinking they were adorable and liking their personality without gender coming to the equation at all. Going by this logic, I feel like this could also apply to nonbinary, trans and cis people of all gender identities. It doesn't matter to my brain whatsoever.

Sexual - Asexual, Sex Averse/Sex Favorable (depends on the day)

I identify as asexual. Although whether I'm sex-averse or sex-favorable depends on how I'm feeling each day. Ever since I opened myself up to reading explicit fanfics my brain has become more open to the idea of at least giving sex a try. It still sounds a bit icky sensory wise, but I think that if I tried it with someone who I trusted to respect my boundaries, I would be comfortable with giving it a go. Obviously I won't try it if I'm not 100% comfortable. Although I do want to have kids one day, and this is the "cheapest" way to do it. I'm not affording adoption, sperm bank or test tube baby on a preschool teacher salary lol.

Gender - Genderfluid and depending on the day I identify as either woman or gendervoid. Sometimes I feel like both describe me at the same time.

I was assigned female at birth, and I still very much identify with being a girl. I love presenting in a feminine way, I love traditionally feminine things, feel most comfortable using she/her/hers pronouns and feel confident in my body. But I've always felt a slight detachment between myself and other women. Whenever issues affecting women come up, my brain would always think like "Oh that's not good, I'm sorry that's happening to them" as though it doesn't affect me, despite the fact that I'm a woman. I have almost a dissociation between women and me even though I belong to that group.

I really thought about gender identity to see if I identify with any of the other gender identities out there, and every time I've always come back from it with "Definitely still cisgender woman, but with a hint of nonbinary". I didn't identify with the nonbinary part of me because I didn't want to lie about my identity if I'm actually a cis girl. But then, when a transphobic classmate jokingly asked me what my pronouns were, I came to the realization that I don't really care. I will always be most comfortable with she/her, but they/them and he/him and even neopronouns don't feel wrong on me. They feel neutral. I wouldn't feel uncomfortable being referred to by any of them. After a bit more research, I found the agender identity and it certainly described me, but it didn't really feel quite right either. Then I found gendervoid and it felt perfect. Gendervoid and agender basically mean the same thing, not identifying with any gender identity and feeling like you don't have a gender. But gendervoid specifically describes feeling like there's a void where your gender identity should be. That describes the dissociation from any gender identity that I experience a lot of the time. But I still identify as a girl as well.

Genderfluid still doesn't feel quite right, but it does describe me feeling both identities together.

Anyway that is everything that you need to know about my identity for now. If anything about this changes, I will probably make another post explaining it :)

I know we talk about sex repulsion a lot in the ace community. But I can't be the only one who's romance repulsed. Don't get me wrong, some days I enjoy a good love story, but some days the thought of it makes my stomach turn. It's mostly fine, mostly it doesn't bother me, but does anyone else get just a little bit frustrated by the fact that romantic love is EVERYWHERE? But it's not just that, it's the accopanying assumption that any other kind of love is less than. Movies are so rarely made about siblings or best friends or weird undefinable emotional blobs.

It seems more socially acceptable to be repulsed by sex than romance, because while society treats sex as shameful (until ace people say they don't want it and then it's part of being human), romance is an obsession we're very open about. And it's even weirder in queer communities, because we are a part of "love is love" and we support our alloromantic queer friends to the ends of the earth and back. But also? I don't really want to see all the kissing and sappy romcom stuff. I'm glad you're having fun, please leave me out of it.

An interesting aspect of romance-repulsion for me specifically is that queer romance is less gross than straight romance. Not sure why, but I suspect it's to do with the general "fuck societal expectations" attitude. Queer people will have relationships in whatever way we damn well please and no one is going to stop us. That includes more mainstream queer identities of course, but it also includes aros and aces- QPRS, relationships without sex,relationships without romantic love, relationships with varying degrees of the above. (Also we need to include polyamorous people because this totally applies to them too, even if many people don't consider them a part of the queer community. This aroace supports polyamorous people and their right to belong in queer spaces if they want to.)

I spend a lot of time in both ace and aro spaces, and this isn't something I really hear about much, so I thought I'd bring it up. Fellow aros and arospecs, feel free to share your experiences if you feel comfortable doing so. Everybody else, feel free to like and reblog, but don't be a jerk.

"aphobia doesn't exist"

bitch literally not that long ago an aroace youtuber animator was insulted by almost half of its community for being it

The response to "ace people are just virgins who can't get laid!" Shouldn't be "ace people can still have sex!" but instead " being a virgin isn't a bad thing."

The response to "aro people are just heartless freaks!" Shouldn't be "aro people can still feel love!" And instead be "not feeling love or other emotions doesn't make you a bad person."

Instead of pushing the idea that aspec people can be "normal like allos" we should instead be trying to normalize aspec experiences. Yes aspec people can be normal because aspec identities are normal. Some aros fall in love. some aces have sex. but they should not be the only valid aspec experiences. We should not use these experiences to make the aspec identity more palatable to amatonormativity and allos.

based on the stories you’ve all been sending, this seemed appropriate lol

don't get me wrong, i love all the positivity around being aro, like "be proud of being aro!! love who you are!!", but we never talk about how hard it is to reach that spot. so here's to the aros who are still trying to understand themselves, who aren't proud of who they are yet, who are still coming to terms with their new identity.

I've seen a lot of stuff going down on tumblr and I just wanted to let you all know that all aromantic, asexual, and aroace people are valid members of the LBGTQIA+ community. It doesn't matter if they are cishet or not.

Token Straight Friend™️ strikes again

Truly experiencing the opposite of a gay panic, the aro/ace dread, when I think somebody has a crush on me

i love you non sexual physical intimacy i love you touching someone because you want to feel the warmth of their body and the texture of their skin i love you tracing body lines soft and sharp i love you shoulder to shoulder hand on your knee reassuringly i love you hands under their shirt on a cold day i love you head leaning against someone’s chest i love you nude cuddling i love you tracing sharp back muscles i love you tracing fat rolls i love you touching someone’s whole body to commit the little details to memory in case you were to ever loose them i love you touch as a love language

"You shouldn't teach teens aro and ace identities! What is they start identifying as ace instead of gay!"

Ah yes, how terrible indeed would it be for a teenagers to experiment with their identity

We all know that who we decide we are at 13 is who we end up being for our entire lives, regardless if it is authentic to our present selves

Aroace "discourse" is fucking weird because if you can understand how an agender person (someone with no gender) is trans and queer, surely you can understand how an aromantic or asexual person is queer.

I wish some aces would stop excluding other aces with complex sexual experiences. like I get why but you have to realize that being ace does not mean they don't enjoy sexual experiences and it's weird when you complain about allo people and boil it down to "people who have sexual experiences" and also shame people for their sex life and kinks as if your own community doesnt INCLUDE those people. because there are other aces out there who still masturbate, who feel sexually attracted to their own body, who barely experiences sexual attraction but still enjoys sex, who like consuming sexual media, who like sfw kink. being ace is so so much more complex than just "disliking sex". and also aromantic exclusionism in the same genre of posts is something i see a lot. especially aro allos. I hate hate hate seeing a community that SHOULD be inclusive boil down sexuality and exclude people.