Problems in the Promotion of Romantic Orientation

While romantic orientation isn’t inherently bad, there have been some recurring problems with how people promote the idea, as demonstrated in the article picked this month for Ace Journal Club. So in the hopes of showing people how to spot these issues, this post pulls some quotes from that article and explains their implications, illustrating the tensions between introducing/endorsing romantic orientation as a conceptual tool (favored by those who use it) vs. leaving space for those of us who find it personally unhelpful.

Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image: Stoplight Silhouette, NYC by Bruce Thomson, licensed under CC BY 2.0.

A Case of Romantic Binarism in Scholarship

This month, the Ace Journal Club read an article in Archives of Sexual Behavior called “Sexuality, Sexual Behavior, and Relationships of Asexual Individuals: Differences Between Aromantic and Romantic Orientation” (2022). There are a lot of things to take issue with about this piece, and you can read the AJC summary for an overview, but in this post, I’m just going to focus on the binary treatment of romance.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image created in Inkscape.]

Dear Bi Lesbian Defenders: Stop Throwing Me Under the Bus

If you’re out there arguing against identity policing, that’s great. While you’re at it, try making room for people like me, too.

This post explains how defenders have been lured into an essentialist framework, what the problem is, and how to fix it.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image: Tire Track in Concrete by Darren Hester (GrungeTextures), licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.]

Romantic Orientation Cannot Be “Appropriated”

If you have been involved with identity blogging for a while, you may have encountered the claim that romantic orientation is being “appropriated” or “stolen” from the asexual community. These claims are never accompanied by supporting evidence and have no basis in reality.

That’s all that should need to be said, really, since the burden of proof ought to lie with the people flinging accusations. But for anyone curious, here’s a bit of further background:

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image by Aaron Burden on Unsplash, used according to their license.]

A Case for a Convergence-Divergence Spectrum

Introducing “convergence” and “divergence” might seem like introducing unnecessary jargon into an already jargon-heavy ecosystem, but whatever you want to call it, a concept like this is necessary in order to address a certain lexical gap. This is a subject that people are already talking about — and without a dedicated term for it, they’re being hobbled by terminology that wasn’t designed for the purpose.

In this post, I explain into the nature of the problem, where it might’ve came from, and a possible solution. Written for the January 2022 Carnival of Aces.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort.]

It’s a Buffet, Not a Binary (Infographic)

An infographic based on the post Don’t Make Me Choose, where I talk about different parts of my identity & experience being pitted against each other in a false binary. Much thanks to all my PF mutuals who helped with feedback and revisions.

These images are free to repost and distribute. If you do so, I would prefer if you would also link back to this post, which includes a transcript below the cut.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort, and reposted to Twitter.]

Don’t Make Me Choose

Now that I’ve talked about what happened at the event, I want to work through a few things I would have liked to have said in the TAAAP Pride Chat that was supposed to make space for “people who object to there being a binary.”

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image by Matteo Magro, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.]

A Quoiromantic Perspective on Compulsory Romantic Orientation

Romantic orientation: some people identify with one, some people don’t — but the problem comes in when everyone is expected to have one. This post spells out my (quoiromantic) perspective on compulsory romantic orientation by sketching out a few different ways this expectation can manifest in certain contexts. Note this post is largely just rehashing things already familiar to my regular readers; for everyone else, the goal of this post is to serve as an introductory primer on the topic.

[Preview image by Nccmrm97, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.]

The Call (to Abandon Card Suit Sorting) is Coming from Inside the House

This month we’ve got yet another case of somebody over on Tumblr trying to revive card suit sorting, plus even more people claiming it was only abandoned because of the anti-ace brigade. I’ve put this post together just to explain that, in actuality, this narrative is false. The call to get rid of that junk isn’t some hostile outsider perspective. The call is coming from inside the house.

In this post, you will find what I mean by “card suit sorting,” how it’s not quite fair to fellow aces, and how this connects back to larger problems of absolutist thinking within the ace community.

[Crossposted to Pillowfort. Preview image by Poker Photos.]

Relationships to Orientation Language Norms

This post is just a summary of some ideas introduced in a previous post, now with a diagram and more in-depth use of examples. Because I have qualms about the reclamation of the term “split attraction model” to categorize people as SAM vs. non-SAM, I’ve put together some alternative scales to introduce more nuance. This post is simply an explanation of those scales (and can be considered a culmination of the conversations held here, here, here, and here).