GS: Comparing Gray-Ace & Gray-Aro

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These are some notes on how respondents expressly referred to differences or similarities between gray-asexuality and grayromanticism.

By far the most common comparison was to describe gray-asexuality and grayromanticism as each other’s sexual/romantic equivalent. Sometimes this could be gleaned from very similar wording, but sometimes respondents would expressly say “same as last section” or (for grayromantic) “same answer as for gray-asexual.”

However, there were also some respondents who contrasted these identities against each other. Excerpted below are some of relevant remarks taken from the free-write boxes, with asterisks to mark a break between different respondents:

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

I think they probably face less prejudice than grey aces because ‘crushes’ are generally more understood than someone entirely lacking romantic attraction and thus might get less hassle from the allo side. *

I feel like anything I say about asexuality is doubly true for aromanticism. If people don’t think gray asexuality is a thing, they will extra not believe in gray romanticism. *

Grayromanticism is a word analogous to gray-asexuality, a name for the lacuna between aromanticism and alloromanticism. However, while its scope is the same, it’s narrower in usage due to the popularity of many other terms that people may use in place of greyro, or emphasize over grayro *

This is even squishier than gray-asexuality imo *

sex is an act with a start and end. romance is not. i’m not convinced of how one can be between aro and allo since romantic attraction (when one is in a romantic relationship) is a full time thing. by contrast infrequent desire for sex (or however you wish to define grey asexuality) concerns something that occurs in well defined events *

Grayromantics may experience the same types of prejudice as aromantics. They may also experience prejudice from exclusionists that they do not belong in the aromantic community because they experience some/weak romantic attraction. This may be more common than graysexual exclusion because romance/romantic attraction is not as clearly defined as sexual attraction *

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. *

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 think the aromantic community strains much harder to find “exceptions” than the asexual community does. “Sure, we don’t *always* experience romantic attraction, but we can still want romantic relationships, or QPRs, or enjoy shipping, or –” I think that framework lends itself more easily to understanding grayromanticism, where the asexual community feels more black and white (either you experience sexual attraction or you don’t; either you’d never ever touch sex or of course we still fuck if our partners want it). Which isn’t to say the aromantic community is less discriminatory.

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