GS: Communities

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One of the reasons for creating the Communities section of the survey was to allow for comparison against perceptions of gray identities. Because of the free-write boxes, though, respondents were able to provide further commentary. Some of this commentary has been reproduced below, with asterisks to denote a break between different respondents. I have devoted a separate section to commentary on Anti-Ace/Aro Blogging.

Note this commentary covers a lot of negative experiences from various different perspectives, some of them at odds with each other.

I have found that aromantic communities tend to be pretty hostile to me, so I don’t tend to affiliate myself with them […] Greyromantics may consider themselves part of the aromantic spectrum, or they may consider themselves separate due to many aromantic communities’ hostility toward grey-, demi-, and wtfromantics. […] Greyromantics deserve a space in aro communities, but as aro communities exist now, they are better off going elsewhere (which is what many of us have done) […] Aro hostility toward folks who experience romantic attraction or who wind up in romantic relationships has often meant that I am better off going to queer communities for support, since navigating homophobia from the outside world and then anti-romantic sentiment from aro communities (or the idea that I’m “selling out” on friendships if I’m dating) is honestly way more than I feel like dealing with. *

I am also aromantic because the community is fucking wonderful. Like it is so welcoming and reassuring. It is a great place to be. *

My interactions with the ace community in person have been largely positive. The online ace and aro communities I’ve been in are places with a lot of anger, resentment, and gatekeeping. They don’t feel welcoming or mature. They feel mostly like they are constantly trying to prove something to each other. *

My negative experiences with the ace community are related to being aro *

The ace community that made this flag is so different from the ace communities I know in person that I really don’t feel a connection to it. It feels exclusionary and combative, constantly reinforcing how oppressed its members are, how they are surrounded by bigots and sex-crazed allos who “aren’t okay.” There’s no need to say “acephobia is everywhere and more prevalent than homophobia.” We aren’t competing in an oppression olympics. It’s just really hard to exist in a(n online) space that says romance is a fake societal compulsion and sexual attraction is disgusting, and know that I’ve experienced both the lack thereof and a strange and wonderful desire for it. Once again, it feels like black-and-white thinking. So, no, I can’t identify with the flag. It just feels like it’s flown by people who aren’t willing to make room for the nuance of real life. *

It’s more a maturity gap and life circumstances gap. Young aces are generally not ‘my people’. It is very difficult as an older aroace to find your people. *

I used to spend a lot of time seeking out ace and aro community material online, but over time I began seeing the same discussions happen again and again and I gradually lost interest. *

also around that time i came out as lesbian too and faced quite a lot of lesbopbobia inside the communities I’d been in for a while, so i sort of just left. *

Ace communities on wordpress and pillowfort: awesome. Ace communities on twitter: excruciating. Aro communities on tumblr and twitter: mostly annoying. I’m not sure if there are significant aro communities on PF but I’ve liked the aro discussions so far. *

Whil greyro people should have a place in the aro community, I honestly consider myself separate from the aro community as a greyro-spec person. This is because I feel like with have different goals, relationships to society, etc…. There is a lot of nuance that gets lost in the aro community proper. *

Im personally not comfortable interacting with alloaro content due to sexual attraction being repulsive to me *

I have had extremely negative experiences in almost every a-spec space I’ve been in […] In every “shared a-spec space” and aromantic-specific space I’ve been in online, I’ve been repeatedly harassed and shamed for my kinkiness, sexual attraction, and opinions on whether or not it’s acceptable to create dark fiction. I suspect it’s partially because the groups I’ve been exposed to skew younger, but I’ve been “burned” too many times to even bother with most similar groups anymore. I’ve found community with other aromantic/aromantic-spectrum (and to a lesser extent asexual/asexual-spectrum) people when I’ve met them outside of orientation-related spaces. *

I have repeatedly experienced abuse and accusations of being sex negative on AVEN and Discord for speaking about my own personal negative sexual experiences and trauma. I find most ace communities to be highly triggering because of the constant pressure of “you can just have sex anyway even if you don’t want it.” In many communities, it isn’t possible to post about personally not wanting sex without someone saying “but asexuals do want sex; you’re being sex negative.” I’ve also been harassed by two allosexual members of AVEN.*

I used to feel more strongly affiliated with the aro community and have used greyro in the past, but after my experience of (part of) aro tumblr, I’m wary of identification with aros, including allo-aros [allosexual aromantics]. I did not ‘always know’ that I was aro, and quite frankly, I understand my sense of romantic orientation as having been allosexual and then losing the ability to make sense of that. I more strongly identify with quoiromanticism and have to make due with caucusing with aros and the aro community than feeling a current, strong identification with aros. (Does that mean that general aro spaces actually take quoiros into account? Eh, it’s a toss up on that one.) But there’s not really other spaces, right now. [Coyote’s Note: square brackets original. I did not add those.] *

I used to be involved in the ace and aro communities on Tumblr but I left those a couple years ago and doing so has been good for my mental health. *

I am not aro, but I consider the ace and aro communities to be cousins, and so I am always happy when I see the aro flag/community bc they are my cousins. *

IRL spaces are inaccessible to me for a number of reasons, and I prefer to mind my own business on websites which have a site culture more prone to adversarial engagement and/or lack of nuance. I keep an eye out from a distance on some sites like Tumblr (medium distance) and Twitter (far, far distance) without actually being *involved* in the communities there, per se. *

I feel like I don’t have much to add, am MUCH older than the average person in those spaces, and am generally asocial to begin with. *

I find the aro community to be more helpful for my daily experience than the ace community, I think because I spend more time thinking about how I interact with people emotionally than how I interact with people physically. I don’t have a lot of angst over not experiencing sexual attraction; it took me a short amount of time to accept asexuality as part of my identity. Whereas I am still chewing over what it means to be aro, and thus the community is an important part of me learning about myself. *

I have had very positive experiences in ace communities but also experienced exclusionary behaviour when IDing as questioning or as grey-ace – as in being explicitly told I am allosexual during my first weeks of questioning because I could not categorically say I have not experienced sexual attraction or because I did not feel totally sex-repulsed, and on other occasions being told that acknowledging feeling alienated in this way on my personal blog is exclusionary to sex-repulsed aces. There is a hardcore demographic of the community who seem to view anyone who is not a gold star, sex repulsed, 100% asexual virgin as an allo impostor and oppressor. *

Honestly I actively avoid asexual communities because I’m so sick of the anti-sex bullshit that is everywhere. Anytime sex comes up it’s always ‘allosexuals’ this ‘allosexuals’ that and it’s harmful. There’s asexuals who want to have sex, there’s allosexuals who don’t. It’s not a good binary and it hurts people. […] and it can be similar in aromantic communities. You aro-spec and like romance? Screw you. And then there’s this weird extra thing in aro communities they seem to half assume you’re by default also a sex-hating ace so it’s like. No I guess I don’t want to hang out in either community this is shit and hurts. […] Fuck community. Thanks for the terms to explain my experiences but I don’t want anything to do with your bias group ya know? *

Ace spaces are no longer safe. They are full of people with kinks and alternative sexual lifestyles *

I enjoy ace spaces but feel isolated as I am usually older and there are seldom if any other male homoromantics *

The issue I have being in the gray space is everytime I’m on AVEN, I feel I don’t belong and end up feeling worse about myself, but I have no other place to look. I don’t feel like I got in anywhere. Not in ace spaces and not in allo spaces. *

its been more difficult to find aro community *

Alienation: As stated in the frequency bit, I feel alienated in a society that glorifies love as much as ours. Community: The alloromantic ‘community’ caused this glorification, and the aromantic community is my savior from it. *

AVEN is the only place I feel free to discuss being asexual and/or a-romantic and not be judged. *

Because the aro comminty more often focuses on being completely aromantic and the specific lack of romantic attraction, I find it harder to relate since I do desire romance and identify more with being demiromantic *

The ace community is generally cool, but i’ve found that allo aces, especially nee to the community, can take some aro-phobic stances to justify their “normalness” after figuring out they’re ace (this is mostly about my country’s biggest ace fb group). Educating them about amatonornativity and the aro umbrella helps, but it takes time and effort and is annoying sometimes. I had no such experiences within the aro community, geberally it’s just some rare misunderstandings from new members. *

Mixed experience mostly due to exclusion towards grey-ace/aro people and those who are questioning *

Ive only had positive experiences on tumblr, but on discord the ace server i was in was a bit too protective with its list of triggers like i get that for a smaller server with you and ur friends its good to keep tabs, but if u have a server of hundreds of people and everyone upon arrival lists their triggers and im not allowed to keep my own profile picture (a picture of my pet??? And u cant even see it clearly unless u click) then i feel like its moved away from the topic a bit *

I was an active AVEN participant for years, starting back in 2002, I think. My interactions with other members gradually took on an unpleasant tone however, and I’ve since found community elsewhere. That said, I really do think that they provide essential and helpful knowledge and services to the ace community and those wanting to learn about it. *

The main distinction I have found between the Tumblr ace and aro communities is that in the ace community, romantic attraction is rarely talked about. But in the aro community, sexual attraction is talked about alongside romantic attraction. I feel that the aro community encompasses the sort of community I want to be part of a little more than the ace community. *

Sometimes my sexual boundaries are framed as only being acceptable IF I am ace (with both ace and non-ace people doing this framing), and I find this highly offensive. *

I have found that aro people are more likely to have a really interesting and unique perspective on sexuality, romance and queerness and are less likely to be into weird discourse online. This is just personal experience and bias because my best friend is aro. *

Ace community talks a lot about sex and I got dat sexual trauma boi so I kinda can’t deal with that and as such I feel alienated from the ace community and from identifying as ace. *

I dislike that the aro flag has a stripe for aces and the ace flag doesn’t have a stripe for aros. It feels like just another thing aces steal from aros *

Nobody hates aces more than other aces in my experience. Many of the ace communities I’ve found are so sex positive and post so much sex related content it is wildly uncomfortable. Many aro communities I’ve found so the same thing with romance. Either say it’s the worst, or sing it’s praises to the point I feel like I’m in the wrong space. I have yet to find a neutral zone where sex and romance are excluded, as that’s what I want as an aro/ace person. *

my mixed experiences both come from after joining the aro community. aces were not great for me as an alloaro/not ace aro, and aros sucked a lot as a romo aro/romance favorable aro. i still adore both and while i don’t participate in ace communities anymore i really loved learning about their community initiatives and am reentering a space that focuses on them (online) *

Basically the only reason it’s not positive across the board is Reddit and a couple of isolated incidents tbh. I really need to stop using that site. *

….what aro communities? I’d love to know if they exist *

I occasionally comment on some aro and ace subreddits and am in one aroace discord server. It’s often a positive experience, but I am a few years older than the bulk of active participants and that can be annoying. Sometimes the way aspecs talk about allos can really rub me the wrong way as well. But I like reading about other people’s experiences. *

I’m not sure. Like, I definitely don’t want to be a gatekeeper or exclusionist or anything but it feels like the ace and aro spectrums have been expanded so much that basically anyone who isn’t horny 24/7 and attracted to every single person they see ends up referring to themselves as graysexual or demisexual. Which makes it so that ace communities online no longer feel like a safe and welcoming space to me – I can’t do things like, say, vent about how uncomfortable I am with the concept of sex, because all the comments end up being people shouting about how I’m shaming people who have sex, or how lots of ace people have and enjoy sex, or how I’m perpetuating purity culture. *

One thing I will note is that I have a very vivid memory of a post in an aromantic subreddit. Someone had asked about how you tell the difference between romantic and platonic attraction. And someone else replied, saying that they were grayromantic, so they didn’t experience attraction often, but when they did, it was wonderful and “so much stronger” than platonic attraction, and they just wanted to be with that one person all the time, and it’s something you’ll never quite understand if you don’t feel it yourself. And I was so angry. What a HORRIBLE thing to say in an aromantic community. You’d think it would be the one place in the world safe from amatonormativity. I just kinda feel like, I don’t understand why the prevailing argument is that asexuality is a spectrum, rather than allosexuality being a spectrum. The only reason I mark myself as “unsure” in these questions is that I know that I’m not the voice of authority over this and I don’t WANT to be a gatekeeper, but, like, there’s a point where labels lose all meaning if they’re used so liberally. *

I didn’t know ace or aro or aroace even existed until I was already an adult and miserable because I thought I was missing something everyone else had. I am always glad to see others finding this community and I am upset seeing people gatekeep from within this community. Please understand how important this community is and how much it can heal when someone finds where they fit and where others are like them. I would also like to thank the bi community of tumblr for helping me find the ace community when I thought that 0+0 must equal bi. Funny story is apparently that’s a common path. Love you guys! <3 *

i feel in the aro community there is a stronger push against romance than in the ace community against sex, which i’ve seen alienate gray-aros, romance favorable aros, cupio aros, and others who aren’t completely averse or disinterested in romance. i definitely feel more alienated from the aro community than the ace community, and i wish anti-amatonormativity sentiments werent so anti-romance at the same time. i’m not siding with our oppressors just because i have a boyfriend! *

I love arocalypse, it’s nice to be able to talk about it with people who understand *

some places (like AVEN) I have run into non-binary phobia, and therefore feel unwelcome *

Ace spaces aren’t always welcoming to aros, and sometimes, they’re aggressively/overbearingly alloromantic/romance-positive. I understand both communities need their own spaces; it’s just an awkward barrier to navigate sometimes, being aroace. *

I follow people on tumblr who are aro and talk about it in depth but I don’t actively involve myself in the community. Online communities are toxic and my irl communities are non existent. *

honestly the ace community’s accepting and welcoming culture (culture?) drew me in as well and kind of reassured me that i do belong here *

I’m not actively avoiding aroace communities, but haven’t actively tried to be in one for a while. […] i find aro groups hard bc a lot of them seem to want to shine a spotlight on loveless aros at the moment, which is NOT a bad thing at all and is incredibly important but it feels like now’s not the right time to participate as someone who is in a questioning area and doesn’t ID as loveless at all. Very complicated! *

I follow some blogs that post about asexuality and aromanticism on Tumblr, but if they post a lot about sexrepulsed asexuality, or loveless aromanticism I feel very alienated from the community. I like learning about those experiences, it’s very important for them to have a voice and a space, but I’m easily overwhelmed so I prefer to limit the number of blogs I follow. *

The mixed on aro is that some people get upset at me having a partner who is interested in me romantically while i am interested in them in other non romantic ways *

Aphobia has made it very difficult to engage with ace and aro communities in a meaningful way. *

I’ve had some bad experiences in allorom ace spaces, specifically because of aro erasure and lack of space for aro people, and I’m wary of new ace communities because of it *

A lot of the spaces I’ve seen seem to revolve around / focus on sex repulsed aces and/or romance repulsed aros and as someone who is not repulsed but still identifies as ace and is questioning the aro part, it can be a bit alienating and feel like I’m not enough. *

Aro communities seem harder to find, and when I come across them, they seem concerned only with not being mistaken for aces. *

I have kind of mixed feelings on the asexual community (not the spectrum), mainly because of the “Ace Culture” (Denmark, cake, garlic bread, etc.), which I find a bit annoying and just generally not funny. *

I sometimes feel alienated from ace communities as someone who is sex favorable and tends to interact with majority sex neutral to sex repulsed ace communities *

Aro community is marked as negative due to feeling like I have to disavow being ace to participate, to constantly apologize for it. Brings up bad feelings from ace discourse/flame wars/whatever *

The communities in question developed well after I’d come into myself and decided on asexual as a term for myself. They might have been more useful if I was trying to figure out my identity now. It was nice to find the term ” greysexual” as a community term after I surprised myself by developing some attraction to someone, but my identity was formed in absence of attraction and in the alienation from allo social assumptions, so I still pretty much just consider myself ace. *

I try to keep myself away from any form of organized community because yikes, bad old experience of gatekeeping and judgement. *

I only tried to participate in an aromantic community once. I always wished that allosexuals could participate more in asexual communites so we could get a better feel for what they are or aren’t experiencing. I thought that maybe as an alloromanic, I could do the same by answering questions for aromantic people on reddit. Though I didn’t get any personal negativity directed at me, there were a lot of general memes and discussions about how allromantics were simply making stuff up when they talked about romantic attraction. It turned me off from wanting to explain my experiences. *

I don’t participate in ace communities because it’s about sexual attraction. Being sex-repulsed, it’s not really a place I’d want to hang out in. I feel more connected to my aromanticism than my asexuality. I personally don’t find much community in ace spaces, but other folks may. *

i feel more welcomed in aroallo communities, as someone who is aroallo myself *

Reading material from ace communities helped me so so so much in understanding my own greyromanticism and also some quirks in my allosexuality. It’s also really helped crystalize for me what I find important in my relationships. *

I know the importance of having such communities. I discovered myself ace through these communities. But no, I don’t keep up with LGBTQ+ communities anymore, bc it often feels like people online don’t match reality. I know it’s important to have labels to feel like we belong, but in the urge to labelize everything we end up creating so many new labels that it’s hard to keep up with. And then people online get mad because you don’t know or understand such terms, but your regular coworker barely understands basic LGBTQ+ terms. The disparity is very strange indeed *

I only go in aroace-specific spaces because everyone is incredibly annoying online and, in my experience at least, don’t actually discuss the genuine issues we face. It’s a lot of complaining about fandom stuff—which, given that we’re on the fandom sites is fair, is not relevant to my life and are minor annoyances compared to issues with housing, how medical professionals treat us, and genuine prejudice otherwise. *

I feel like in ace and aro communities there’s a lot of “sex is dumb and boring” or “romance is dumb and boring” and like making fun of people who enjoy sex or romance which is fine because I get that you can’t say that anywhere else but it gets a little annoying lol *

It’s difficult to find offline ace/aro communities, and it’s difficult for me to build meaningful relationships online. A lot of the online community seems to be younger than me so I don’t relate to a lot of the content. *

I picked “none of these” rather than “I prefer not to talk about my experiences in this way” for sexual attraction because I’m mostly bothered by how centered sexual attraction is in ace discourse. I suspect I wouldn’t have experienced such hatred and frustration with the concept if lacking it hadn’t been considered the core of the ace experience. This was especially rendered worse since some desirists (people who believe asexuality is best described as an absence of desire for partnered sex) would equate sexual attraction with sexual desire because the attraction-based definition of asexuality was so inevitable that some would rather redefine terms to make it mean their own definition than reflect on how awful putting the attraction-based definition on a pedestal is. *

My experience with the ace community is overall mixed, but I feel the great positives make up for all the negative stuff. My small experience with the aro community is positive, and any of the negative stuff is at best ignorant and at worst annoying and bothersome: it’s never straight up upsetting like with the ace community. Maybe if I spent more time with the aro community, I would feel differently? The only sensitive subject is friendship I suppose, and I know at least some aros are good at handling without making you feel guilty for not caring about friends the “right” way. The aro community made me feel like the “bad aro person” was someone who cared more about being ace than aro, and it barely was an issue considering that I used to ID as just aro, and when I didn’t, I wasn’t exposing myself to any sort of aro community. I wasn’t losing anything of importance like I was with the ace community, which I feel can be at times more geared toward outside acceptance than the aro community. Some parts of the ace community made me feel like a “wrong ace person” because my experience felt too ambiguous and yet not enough. But unlike the aro community that just criticized how I did relationships, I felt like some parts of the ace community were criticizing my presence and own beliefs (that “ace” was a label that anyone could use) that allowed me to be ace at all, meaning that even during the times when I stopped to or didn’t consider myself ace, I was still affected by these statements, ironically in part because I liked spending time in the ace community and didn’t want to be an intruder or someone dangerous to the ones I was around. But many people in the ace community are nice, highly relatable and/or make good memes and that redeems everything. *

I used to participate in and seek out aro discussions much more frequently – however, at a certain point I began to find them frustrating, unproductive, and not engaging in the kind of analysis I wanted to see. And given that I’ve drifted from an aromantic identity in the past few years, I don’t find them as useful or relevant to me anymore, unless their analysis is similar to the kind of relationship deconstruction you see in poly contexts.*

I think there can be a lot of pressure to define both sexual and romantic orientations in the ace community. I’m in my late twenties and have only been in one relationship, and never sought out romance before that. I imagine that’s pretty similar to a lot of aro people’s experience, but again that feeling of having to find a correct label for myself was stressful. I would rather not worry about it. *

In asexual spaces I’ve surprisingly found a lack of boundaries related to sexual stuff, with people asking explicit questions and then claiming it’s not invasive because they’re not interested in sex, just curious about it. I do not think this is the norm, just what I experienced. This was also mainly from teenagers/college age adults so that could definitely have something to do with it. *

All of my interaction with these communities comes passively through tumblr. Obviously I’ve got a limited sample size, but the aro community always came off a little bit more harsh to me, stricter about who is and isn’t allowed to participate. *

I haven’t personally seen much content about grey-aros in aro spaces, or at least not as much as I see grey-ace content in ace spaces. *

i used to be a more active participant in ace communities, however recently i have started identifying as aro and i find myself enjoying aro communities and their discussions/breakdown of romance and relationships much more interesting to me personally. *

I am not very actively seeking out other aces. I follow some on Pillowfort and I follow the groups there but… I found most of what I encountered was too hung up on semantics or intellectually verbose and I have no use for that in my life. I am usually interested in thoughts and experiences rooted in common sense and everyday life than in academic analysis of various phenomena. So my experience is neutral and I am more interested in interesting people who are by chance also ace (it does brighten my mood and makes me feel kinship if I find out they are) more than seeking out aces as primary. *

Romantic orientation is useful to me because I am caedromantic and used to have a romantic orientation, so I am keenly aware of the disconnect between me and my peers and I also know my experience is VASTLY different from the majority of the aro community, where I am welcome but also can’t help but feel like an intruder because of how I USED to feel *

My “mixed” response to my experiences with aro communities is due to my general experience of aro communities being very culturally WASP-saturated. I think that white American Christian individualism is a lot of the reason that I struggle to relate to other aros, who tend to talk about their experiences as highly individualistic rather than collective. This is not true of all aros, and there are certainly aros of color who are incredibly important, but in terms of my general experience, I feel a cultural divide that I can’t breach on my own. […] I also have missed out on a lot more of the nuanced, considerate, and intersectional ace and aro discussions because my primary exposure to both communities has been through Tumblr. I find that discussions on Tumblr– on any subject– are often flattened and outright rude. I am grateful and relieved to find blogging communities outside of Tumblr where more mature conversations are being had, so I’m still exploring that, and I don’t want to make other generalizations right now when my experiences may just be Tumblr-specific. *

I spent around five years involved in these spaces, initially just lurking. As I got older I realised they were deeply prescriptive, aggressive to outsiders, and their proposed models of attraction didn’t really describe my own (trauma-affected) experiences. Eventually I took masculinising HRT, got in touch with my sexuality, and ended up in a sexual and romantic relationship. As a result I chose to affiliate with different queer spaces. I really hope asexual and aromantic spaces have improved. *

As a gray-Ace, I want a part in the Ace community; however, sex-repulsed Aces don’t seem to be very welcoming. In online communities it feels like one can only discuss school. I didn’t realize the main active population of online communities consists of people with autism, people who are bi-romantic and poly, and people studying for their doctorates. I don’t identify with those groups and have trouble understanding how I can engage effectively. *

Ace community was horrendous on AVEN with the advent of the grey subforum, oh my god, but has otherwise been largely positive on WordPress and Pillowfort and with mutuals on Tumblr (but not with the greater Tumblr ecosystem). Aro community is… complicated because of quoi and coinage stuff and the efforts to Distance From Ace Community in a way that is super jarring as both someone from the zucchini days and someone who doesn’t much truck with romantic orientation or lack thereof as an axis separate from overall greyness and, uh, romantisexual-relational interpersonal Feelings. *

The asexual community has a worrying tendency to exclude and/or speak over aromantic folks. *

In my experience, the Aro community doesn’t treat Grey Aros as badly as the Ace community treats Grey aces. Grey aromanticism and aro-spec identities seem to be better received in the Aro community compared to their counterparts in the Ace community. […] I used to be a lot more invested in Aro community but after a slew of negative experiences, it’s become less important to me.*

i feel like grayromanticism is less talked about in ace/aro communities than graysexuality *

The aromantic community seems to understand gray aro better than the asexual community understands gray ace, and gray romanticism is more easily accepted. *

Where I am uncertain about whether I should use the aro flag is because in some online spaces, I have been made to feel like being asexual as well makes me an “invader” who is going to “take space away” from the other aros. […] I think because I have zero interest in sex, I have sometimes been made to feel like “one of the bad ones” in terms of asexual experience, since a lot of what I have seen has been about aces being able to watch porn or read/watch sex scenes. There are times when I fear that not having any interest will contribute to stereotypes and give people ideas that I want to suppress their orientations or expressions. Previously, I had also mentioned sometimes being made to feel like an invader in aromantic spaces online due to banners like, “Asexuals DNI” and so forth. *

The times I have lurked in aro spaces I’ve felt like I didn’t belong because they sometimes come off as being aggressively anti romance and I love romance. *

I’ll read things (only read, I won’t watch anything or listen to podcasts) that I come across, provided I’m in the right mood for it, but I don’t seek it out actively because I’ve found the aro community mostly too toxic and alienating to bother with. So I only want to read things that have already been curated for me by friends. That still exposes me to an awful lot of negative stuff though. I might occasionally post a comment or something, but not very often. It just doesn’t provide enough value for me compared to the level of annoyance, tension/conflict, anxiety, etc. The ace community has enough aro perspectives in it already that I really don’t feel any need to seek out a dedicated aro community. *

Some of the recurring themes here include

• experiences with identity policing
• absolutism/lack of room for the gray areas
• expansion/too much room for the gray areas
• encounters with asexual elitism/anti-sex attitudes
• encounters with aromantic elitism/anti-romance attitudes
• refuge from judgement
• difficulty avoiding sex-related discussion
• difficulty finding aro communities
• anti-aro attitudes in ace communities
• anti-ace attitudes in aro communities
• disconnect between different age groups
• repetitive or uninteresting topics of discussion

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