Asexual and Aromantic Positivity

Happy ASAW 2024, here's something about community !

happy asaw 2025 everyone

I am both.

#one weird counterintuitive aspect of being asexual #is that im more open to kinky or weird shit #im not HAVING kinky or weird sex it's all theoretical

Hey @rosierugosa I hope it’s okay that I stole your tags because YES.

Because sexual desire is so weird and alien to me, personally, I find myself more accepting of weird and alien sex: I’m definitely not a monsterfucker in that I don’t wanna fuck the monster, but I fully accept and respect all monsterfucking because hey, sex in general -- straight, gay, or otherwise! -- is already so weird to me. Wanting to fuck Chad McDude down the street is just as strange to me as wanting to fuck the mothman. So my attitude is...go for it, I guess! Here’s a water bottle.

I wish it wasn’t a hot take that a story in which two characters of any gender prioritize their purely platonic relationship over any other romantic or sexual interests they might have is a textually queer story

A lot of people really don’t understand amatonormativity as another dimension of “there is a right way to love people” that we have to dismantle.

Amatonormativity 101: Amatonormativity, a term coined by Elizabeth Brake, is the very prevalent idea that there is one relationship type that is above all others. This relationship is an exclusive/monogamous, committed, romantic and sexual relationship.

According to amatonormativity, this specific kind of relationship:

This goes hand in hand with heteronormativity, which says that this ideal relationship also has to be straight. But if you remove that part, all the normative forces of amatonormativity still exist. And they suck for just about everyone! Amatonormativity says aromantic and asexual people will never experience the “highest” form of love. It says single people are inherently less happy than people in a romantic relationship and should always be actively looking for one. It says sex without romance or romance without sex are both lacking a fundamental part of an ideal relationship. It says polyamorous people are failing to choose the one person they can be fully devoted to. It says that your monogamous, committed, romantic/sexual partner is the most important person in your life—more important than your family, your best friend you’ve known all your life, etc.

I hope we can all agree that is something queer people, and also people in general, would benefit from dismantling!

Now let me talk about an example of what I was referring to in the original post.

If you’re not familiar, Elementary is a TV series based on the Sherlock Holmes stories. It’s a modern day adaptation featuring Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective for the NYPD, and Joan (rather than John) Watson, his sober companion and eventually detective partner.

Sherlock has many casual sexual relationships with women throughout the series, while Joan has a string of romantic relationships with men. Neither of them is textually queer (although Sherlock feels very aromantic-coded, if unintentionally, and I personally think an aro reading of both characters has merit).

However, the two of them share a relationship that defies amatonormativity. Sherlock and Joan share almost every part of their lives together—first because Joan is monitoring Sherlock to help maintain his sobriety, but soon because they have actively chosen to remain in each other’s lives. They eventually become partners as detectives but are also functionally life partners, living together, sharing their resources, taking care of each other emotionally and physically. At multiple turning points in the story, they express their love for each other. Throughout this progression, their relationship never becomes romantic or sexual. While Sherlock continues to have casual sex and Joan continues to go on dates, it’s clear that Sherlock and Joan remain each other’s most important person.

This relationship defies amatonormativity, and in my opinion that makes it queer. Queer as in breaking boundaries, defying norms, challenging the idea that there is any right or wrong way to love someone.

Now it’s time for my real hot take. There is a reason I used Elementary as an example, instead of the many other pieces of fiction that have a very similar dynamic between two characters of the same gender.

Those stories—stories that center a platonic relationship between two characters of the same gender, a relationship that remains platonic but is deep, devoted, and prioritized over other relationships in the character’s lives—are textually queer. They are not textually gay (although yes, many of them are subtextually gay). But that does not stop them from being queer stories.

If you want to read into whatever subtext might be there and interpret that relationship as a gay romantic/sexual relationship, that's great. But I wish more people shared my opinion that this is not making a previously normative story into a queer one. Usually, it’s trading heteronormativity for amatonormativity, creating a relationship that defies different norms.

I’m not saying that one or the other interpretation is more valuable (in general—which one is most meaningful to you is a personal preference). I think they’re both queer interpretations of the story. However, given how often stories like the ones I’m describing get accused of “queerbaiting” or simply “not being canonically queer,” I’m pretty sure my opinion on this is not widely shared.

In conclusion: Queerness is a much broader set of concepts than just gay romance. We should consider amatonormativity another dimension of oppression that queerness is in opposition to. Ship or don’t ship whatever is more fun or meaningful to you but please don’t assign moral righteousness to one kind of queerness while erasing another. Also, please be nice to aro and ace people, we already have enough to deal with. I wish none of this was a hot take. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

When it comes to asexual allyship a lot of people wanna have their cake and eat it too (pun unintended). People like a lil 'aces are valid' moment but don't actually unpack compulsory sexuality. People see sexless queer representation and always clock puritanism before they ever clock asexuality. No one's actually reading the ace theory and texts coming out. Everyone keeps doing surprised Pikachu faces whenever a conservative or TERF says they're against asexuality despite the fact ace activists have been saying since day conservatives are not anti sex but anti sexual autonomy. 'Aces are queer' until we actually are. Even ace support posts keep ending with some expectation or condition that asexuality is #valid as long as asexuals still perform a small quota of sex/sexual activity. I'm so over 'Aces still have sex!' 'Aces are hot' Aces are sexy' 'Aces aren't virgin vanilla prude sexless puritans!' disguised as support.

Like no. Sorry. Until you accept that some asexual people's no is permanent, that some asexual's singleness is permanent, that some asexual's childless-ness is permanent, that some asexuals are the 'no' in little to no sexual attraction and i'd say most importantly, that queer sexlessness isn't a biological, social or moral failing, I don't believe you'll ever genuinely support asexuality. (In reverse, I also feel similar about aromanticism and romance).

Like a lot of u haven't gone beyond 'the a isn't for ally' and it shows. I don't want people to support asexuals just because we're soooo hot or because we write the best smut apparently or because we could have hypothetical sex or because we could do hypothetical kink or because our minds are soooo dirty actually or because we'd do romance reallllyyyy well or because we can still have kids or because asexuals hand out water bottles at the orgy or some shit. I want people to support asexuality because no sexuality is deviant and it's basic human decency.

Thissss. I'm so tired of "aces can only be accepted into queer spaces if they contribute something or prove themselves as worthy". Like.... huh?

Mayybeee... some ace people don't have sex? Or aren't comfortable with NSFW topics? Or are on the repulsed end of the spectrum? Or don't like romance in the slightest? It's so exhausting to hear phrases like "ace people can still have sex", "aro people can still date", "not all ace people are prudes or celibate" etc. etc. as if those things are meant to be looked down on and seen as inferior. It's giving a lot of that irritating misogynistic trope in movies where the only female character has to be some world class scientist, the most skilled superspy, an A list actor, a top model, her charisma on level 100 just so she could be accepted into a group of mediocre loser men.

Catering to allo people is poison for the community. ALL aces are valid, not just the ones who conform to what allo people view as "ideal" or "acceptable"

Hell yes

While separating relationships into strictly sexual, platonic, or romantic or some combination of those is fine for understanding the aromantic and asexual spectrum at a basic level, we must eventually understand that some relationships will never fit into these categories and often queer relationships are more complex than that, and our definition of queer relationships must include abstract relationships.

[ID: At the top, text reads “Finding out you’re ace like”. Below is a two panel meme. In the first panel, a person asks “Okay, was anybody going to tell me that the average age adults report first experiencing sexual attraction is 10,”. In the second panel, they finish their question, saying “or was I just supposed to read that in a scientific paper myself?”. End ID]

(Source)

#from the bottom of my heart: that sounds fake but I don’t know enough about sexual attraction to disagree (via @throwaninkpot)

queer is a gender, sexuality, romantic orientation, political alignment, and mission statement, babey

queer is literally a slur that means weird and strange

and I most certainly am weird and strange, what else you got?

hi. i made some images.

feel free to take them and use for whatever you may need them for. no credit required

can you please make one for Ireland

yeah okay

Accidentally sent 'happy prude month!!🎊🥰🥰' to my asexual friend and now im gonna dunk my head in cement to become unrecognizable

CAN YOU BELIEVE WE ARE EXISTING RIGHT NOW THIS IS THE BEST LETS TROT BUCKAROOS

honestly my advice for people questioning if they're aro is kind of the same as my advice for people questioning if they're trans which is do less worrying about whether or not you inherently fall into this arbitrary category and do more considering what you want in and from your life. like ultimately deconstructing societal ideals of what relationships (or gender) should be like and figuring out what you want them to look like in your life is what matters and whether or not you experience romantic attraction is kind of immaterial

#yeah exactly #there isn't like a secret aromantic switch hidden inside you that's flipped on or off #it's a just a word people apply to a wide range of experiences and wants and it's up to you whether it fits you or not #(ditto to literally every other gender and sexuality label) #I ID as aro because 90% of the time I have no interest in dating anyone even though I sometimes have crushes #lots of people ID as aro for the exact opposite reason #you can do whatever you want there's no queer identity bureau of queer identity cops (tags via @ontologicalsynaesthesia)

This exactly. I ended up feeling SO much better about myself and so much less stressed when I stopped interrogating every feeling, stopped going "is this attraction? Is this a crush? what kind of attraction is this? is this Real Attraction Or Not" and let myself live and define myself by what I wanted, what made me feel happy and right. Figuring out what kinds of relationships I wanted and what I didn't want.

Happy ASAW 2024, here's something about community !

hey guys do the allos know that they can have qprs too? like do they know that being alloromantic doesn't mean they can't choose to be in a qpr anyway? because qprs aren't "romance-lite" for aros, they're an entirely separate kind of relationship that anyone can have. you can do this with fictional characters too. you can put characters that aren't aroace or are even canonically dating in qprs with each other just because you think that would be a cool way to play with their dynamic. it's actually very cool and you totally should.

ACES!!! Look at this Scientific American article!!! It makes me genuinely so happy to read. We’re making it!!!!

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/asexuality-is-finally-breaking-free-from-medical-stigma/