I’ve noticed that a lot of queer people say tumblr is not a great place for queer people with less visible identities. But the aromantic community here is the only thriving queer community I’ve ever found that accepted me unconditionally. I’ve been thinking about this, and I want to talk about it some, as an aro that is a good bit older than most the tumblr community.
Connecting with people with similar queer identities to me as a teen in the 90s was a nearly impossible task. Nobody at the queer youth group at my high school had ever heard of someone like me. The internet was still in its infancy when I was a teen. Social media didn’t exist and online queer communities were very tiny. There was no place for me to go to find people like me. The labels “nonbinary” and “aromantic” didn’t even exist yet, much less all the terminology and models that are used in these communities today. The lack of peers, role models, or even language to describe my experience had a profoundly damaging effect on me, which you can read more about in an earlier post. I never met anyone going through the same things I am, or someone older who already had been through it, until I was already in my 30s. And even now, the LGBT centers where I live are pretty bad about recognizing the needs of the more marginalized queer demographics. So internet communities, especially tumblr and chat rooms, are where I get almost all of my support.
I internalized the fact that I was the only person like me, which you can read more about in my last post. It made sense at the time to extrapolate that if I had never met anyone like me well into adulthood, then I must be the only one. This kind of brutal, crushing isolation is hard to describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. I spent most of my 20s in deep denial about all this, to the point that I convinced myself that some of my own feelings and experiences were not real. I was basically gaslighting myself when it came to being queer, when my partners weren’t already invalidating me. I’ve been out for a few years now as nonbinary and aromantic, and I’m still struggling to uncover all the toxic thought and behavior patterns I built earlier in my life.
Probably the most confusing part of living a closeted life was dating. I’m relatively romance-positive. I enjoy things like kissing and cuddling and being very sweet and affectionate. I experience sexual attraction. The hardest part of all this for me was that I saw little to no difference between my feelings for my closest friends and my feelings for my partners. I love my friends the same way I love my partners, so why not speak sweetly to them and act affectionately? Why not kiss or have sex if we both consent? I was always stumbling over boundaries and social expectations in this regard that I could not see, and accidentally offending or alienating people I cared about. While I understood that friendships and romantic relationships were very different, and I could even describe many of those differences in detail, I could not see any distinction in my own feelings and inner experiences. This disconnect between my inner and outer experiences was jarring and bewildering. I also did not understand repulsion at all. When I felt repulsed, I blamed my partner. Surely, I thought, they must have done something wrong if I feel so hurt or disgusted. This assumption is one of the greatest mistakes I have ever made.
I did not have the emotional or linguistic tools to process and communicate the experience of repulsion, so I did not learn a healthy way to deal with it until very recently. I still panic or lash out when I feel repulsed because I’m still trying to unlearn my previous behaviors. This problem can be extended to nearly everything about being queer for me. While I did develop good general interpersonal communication skills at an early age, I still could not communicate about my own queer experiences for a long time, partly because I didn’t have words to describe them, and partly because I didn’t believe they were real in the first place. The struggle is tremendous. Because I had so many experiences of being invalidated by multiple partners, I have a hard time trusting that someone new won’t do the same thing.
The progress I’ve made in the past year, thanks to the support and validation I get from the tumblr aromantic community, is difficult to overstate. Finding the aromantic community here has literally been a life-changing experience for me. I’m processing through decades of accumulated pain and repression at a rate I didn’t think was possible. I know I still have unforeseen hard times ahead, but honestly I had lost hope that I could even get to the point where I am now.
So to you youngins, I want to be the supportive and validating adult for you that I never had. Hopefully you won’t need to go through the traumatic decade of isolation and repression as an adult that I did. Seeing you have the hope that I didn’t at your age gives me hope now.
To those of you closer to my age, there’s a place for us in this community. I know that feeling alone for so long makes it hard to think beyond the solitary lives we’ve been forced into, that we’re used to feeling disconnected and unwelcome. But this community is growing, and we have a chance to escape into wide open acceptance, to connect, to belong, to heal. We can be a part of that for each other.
[Image Description: Two images set to the background of a flag with three stripes; the upper and lower stripes are both light red, the middle stripe is a darker red. The first image is of the five striped Aromantic Pride flag. The stripes are all of equal size and in descending order are dark green, light green, white, grey and black and they go down horizontally. The second image has the Autism Speaks logo crossed out with a ‘no’ sign. Another image at the bottom reads “TERFs, exclusionists, transmeds, and queerphobes, DO NOT INTERACT! You’re out of touch and we hate you almost as much as Autism Speaks”. End Description.]
As an aro, I often preach that we need to be working together, (as the aspec community and as a society in general,) to dismantle the norms that say every person wants/needs a partner, that everyone needs to get married, and that those things are requirements for happiness. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, especially because these norms harm many different groups of people, not only aspecs.
What I’m really tired of, is allos automatically assuming that because I preach these things, that I hate marriage, romance and love, that I have a vendetta towards people who engage in those things, and that I want to make alloromantic people feel guilty for being alloromantic.
It’s another classic case of “it’s not about you, it’s about the systemic norms we all live with and experience in day-to-day life.”
I hold no hate or dislike towards anyone who is in a romantic relationship, married, or engaging in other romantic activities with a partner or partners. Really. I have two parents and many family members and friends that are happily married and in love.
That being said, I don’t want to engage in romance and I am not alloromantic, so these norms impact me in a profound way that’s sometimes hard to describe. I want to dismantle the norms because it will make my life and many other’s lives a lot easier. This does not mean, however, that I support the absolute collapse of the components of these norms.
If some people’s thoughts didn’t always jump straight to “this person’s views and opinions are attacking me and my lifestyle,” when engaging in conversations about amatonormativity and the norms that come with it, then they would recognize that most aromantic people actually support romance-favourability.
Know the difference between dismantling the systemic romantic normsandabolishing the entire system of romantic components and ideas whichencompass said norms.
The former is an effective way to make many groups of people feel more comfortable and less alienated, and the latter is just as ineffective and discriminatory as pushing for romantic norms to be continued they are now. As aros, most of us just want to feel like we belong in a society that constantly reminds us that we don’t. It is not our goal to make allos feel guilty, or to radically change society’s ideals to fit an inherently romance-negative narrative.
We just want to dismantle amatonormativity in society, by changing the mindset and narrative to a way of thinking that does not discriminate between alloromantic and aromantic people. That’s all.
Not being able to reciprocate others romantic feelings towards you is not your fault and also not your responsibility
Labels are fluid and definitely can change, but it’s okay if they don’t, too.
You get to choose what information you share with others about your identity. This includes labels and personal feelings. Especially regarding those invasive question people sometimes ask. You are under no obligation to answer them.
You do not need romance in life to be successful or happy. Happiness and success come in so many different forms other than romance and romantic relationships.
You are valid, heard, seen, and important. You contribute to the huge amount of diversity in this community. Most importantly, you’re not alone.
For me, being aromantic is a relief more than anything else. I never knew why I always felt uncomfortable when people, who hardly knew me more than a little reciprocated banter (which was ALWAYS mistakenly thought of as flirting… not my intention,) would want to date me. I felt pressured in high school to find someone and was frustrated that I couldn’t because I was “picky” about my dating standards. Everyone else seemed to have no problem doing it, so why did I? I always told myself it was because I was so focused on school and extracurriculars and never thought any different. When I first started identifying with the term aromantic though, it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. Now, I don’t have to make excuses, worry about finding someone, or participate in romance if I don’t want to. It’s a relief, comfort, explanation and sense of acceptance all in one.
I cannot express enough how important it is to connect with people who can relate to your experiences. As a young aromantic person, struggling to figure out my identity without representation or anyone who really “got” it was difficult. Heck, even now I’m not sure whether I’m completely comfortable in my identity.
The online aromantic community is incredible. The incredible amount of support I feel every day from people who don’t even know me is so uplifting. Just knowing that there’s someone (MANY) out there in this big world who feels like I do makes it so much easier to cope, especially in times where the self-doubt and judgment really start to get real. That’s it I just want to say that I love (no romo, of course) and support you all!
No matter what anyone says, you are an essential part of the aromantic and aspec communities.
You are not a bad person because today’s societal standards demonize sex without romance. There is NOTHING WRONG with experiencing sexual attraction but not romantic. It is real and your experiences deserve to be recognized.
So much activism that I see in the aspec community revolves around aroaces and occasionally, alloaces. This is a reminder to include alloaros in aspec acitivism!! THEY ARE SO VALID, and they deserve to feel seen!!!
