okay okay so Jaiden Animations came out as aroace. I’m aroace so I. I’m literally so emotional about this.
I don’t think I could ever even BEGIN to articulate the immense meaning this has to me because it means a LOT for a MULTITUDE of reasons. Let’s just. Lemme put it in a list.
1. Jaiden Animations was one of the STAPLES of middle school for me. My friend and I watched a ton of her videos and would talk about them at school. Basically all of 7th and 8th grade, Jaiden consumed my YouTube feed. I sort of fell out of it as high school began and then around a year after that, quarantine happened and. Well. I hadn’t watched her videos consistently for a long time. But her content always meant a lot to me and I’d watch the occasional video to stay updated. She just means a lot to me as a content creator.
2. I never see aromantic rep ANYWHERE. And asexuality is just beginning to get someee mainstream rep, which is awesome to see, but it’s still incredibly scarce. So seeing someone who I looked up to as a young teenager have a similar experience to me was just. Wow. I cant even describe the elation I’m feeling.
3. This one is a bit more specific to me, but it perhaps means the most. The huge SIMILARITIES between my aromantic/asexual experience and Jaiden’s. Everyone has different experiences so obv there were differences between mine and hers but still, there was so much in common. I’ve often felt doubt about my sexuality (thinking I was faking it or had mislabeled), especially the aromantic part. So seeing someone describe EXACTLY what I felt for so long was so validating.
For example. When she mentioned feeling like she was falling behind in “normal development”, when she mentioned how she subconsciously compensated for it, when se mentioned how she subconsciously also viewed relationships from a very objective standpoint, when she mentioned that it seemed like some thing you were just Supposed To Do in life and didn’t question it much, when she mentioned the isolation of not being able bond with others over attraction, when she mentioned how she never actually felt real attraction but if someone wanted to date she could “go along with it”, when she mentioned how she was baffled that ppl found celebs attractive… it was all so reflective of me.
I just know that video means a lot to tons of other people too and I’m so glad I got to see it. Representation is important and I hope we get more aro/ace rep in the future :)
