October Carnival of Aros

[cinnamon_possum]

 I Am Completely Aro, and I Don't Prioritize my Aro Identity

This month's Carnival of Aros is being hosted by jay-aro on Tumblr, and the prompt is Prioritization. 

• how important is aromanticism to you?
• do you have a different orientation you prioritize over your aromanticism? what about gender identity? 
• if you’re on the aromantic spectrum, how does that impact your identity? do you ever use the label “aromantic”, or just your arospec label?

Aromanticism has been important to me since I started to identify with it because it is a large aspect of my life. The way that I connect with and understand people is inherently influenced by my lack of romantic attraction and my romance repulsion. My asexuality is also incredibly important to me, for similar reasons. My aroace identity could be considered non-SAM, in that I do not use the words "aro" and "ace" to describe separate attraction experiences, as they are both entangled in each other. Like other aroaces, I am sometimes made to feel like I should pick a side, and more strongly identify with one community rather than the other. This does happen on occasion, and I experience short periods of time in which I much more strongly identify with one part rather than the other. This is not reflective of my personal experience with my own identity, but rather of my experience in communal spaces, and how communal mindsets treat my identity. Aro, ace, and aspec community spaces have had continual issues with identity policing, gatekeeping, and outright hatefulness, and this results in me wildly undulating between spaces as I try to find one that is at least bearable. Whichever identity I prioritize in any given week is whichever one I feel safest in claiming and participating in at that time. I am using this Carnival as a chance to analyse some of the rhetoric in aro community spaces that inevitably drive me out of that space, even if I eventually feel interested in returning. I think that I will always be interested in returning, as these are communities that include people with similar experiences to my own, but I am tired of constantly being driven away in the first place. 

(Note, posts I link to are to provide examples or deeper explanations of what I'm talking about. I do not wish to argue with any of the people that I link to and I do not condone unproductive online arguing. I provide content warnings when I link to something upsetting.)

Aromantic Versus Aro-Spectrum

One way that I feel my aro identity is policed in aro spaces is a common understanding that "aromantic" and "aro-spec" are separate things. I have seen it implied that I am an "aro-spec ace" rather than an aroace. A lot of this rhetoric popped up around the time of the oriented aroace debacle, in which the coiner of the term tried to define what aroace meant in a way that was different from how many people in the community used it. I see this rhetoric echoed with "aro-spec" discussions, in which people who identify as gray-, demi-, quoi-, or other microlabels are assumed to have a vastly different experience that people who only identify as aromantic. Some people mean this in a neutral sense, while others have taken it to negative and exclusionary conclusions. 

I am afraid that I cannot articulate this well because arguments around this are never articulated well. I have seen linguistic juxtapositions between those who are "completely aro" (tw arophobia/gatekeeping) versus those who are "aro-spec", with "aro-spec" commonly being defined as aros who experience romantic attraction. This doesn't even apply to some of the aro-spectrum identities that are being discussed. Cupioromantics experience no romantic attraction, but desire romantic relationships/interactions. Plenty of quoi- and gray-romantics identify as such because the concept of romantic attraction either does not make sense or does not apply to them, thus they do not definitively feel any romantic attraction. I'm sure there are other clear examples that I'm missing, but to imply that to be "completely aro" is both to not experience any romantic attraction and to not identify as another microlabel is fallacious. In the face of this, there is the implication that aromantic identity must be a monolith, that someone who identifies as cupio- or gray- cannot possibly understand the aro experience, because it is something separate, stand-alone, and completely different. (Edit 12/01/2020: Coyote has articulated this much better than I have, right here.)

Another way to understand this issue is to understand the history of anti-grayness in both the aro and ace communities. "Anti-gray" is used very broadly here, because the issue is really centered around anyone who does not fit a certain gold-star ideal of aromantic (or asexual) identity. While the sentiment is named with regards to the group most heavily affected and targeted by name, those who identify as gray-a or with a-spectrum identities, all of those who suffer due to the prevalence of this sentiment do not necessarily identify as such. Anti-grayness stems from essentialism and binarism that place aromantic/asexual and alloromantic/allosexual as complete opposites that cannot overlap. These identities are imagined as specific, black-and-white, and self-evident. The existence of grayromantics, gray-aces, romance favorable aros, sex favorable aces, demiromantics, demisexuals, etc etc, all upset this binary. 

When aro-spec rhetoric is used negatively or divisively, there is an implication that an aro who experiences any attraction is more acceptable or better off than an aro who experiences no attraction. Going back to the oriented aroace debacle, there was a perception that people who are ace-spec or aro-spec (in their definition of "on the spectrum but not asexual or aromantic specifically") have a community privilege over those who are (the coiner's version of) oriented aroace. They went as far as drawing a line that quoi- people could use the term, but not gray- and demi- people. Anti-grayness and the separation of spectrum identities from "just" aro/ace are the same. Those with certain identities are accused of being allo's*, of being oppressors in disguise trying to take up space in the community, and they are constantly reminded that they are not wanted and are not trusted. 

This commonplace rhetoric of some aro's are not aromantic, they belong to the spectrum, they are something different, can and is commonly used neutrally. I know good people who support grayromantic, demiromantic, and other identities that frequently say "aro and aro-spec", or use "completely aro" to designate that they are talking about non-aro-spectrum identity. Even at its most neutral, however, there is the implication that there is some kind of boundary that people with aro-spectrum identities cannot cross. It feels as if, as a grayro person myself, I can only ever be partially aro. It feels that other aromantics are telling me that they know my experience and that my experience is not aro enough. This is, very simply, not someone else's call to make. I know that I'm completely aromantic and that aromanticism impacts so much of my life. It is uncomfortable and upsetting to be in community spaces in which I am told, actually, I do not know the complete aro experience, that I am missing something, that I have some kind of privilege that prevents me from understanding the true aromantic experience. 

As vaguely referenced above, this is also a significant issue in the ace community. This compilation post by Coyote regarding anti-grayness around 2013/2014 is centered almost entirely on ace community arguements (the aro community was not as well established at this point.)

Ace Antagonism

I'm remembering a while ago where there was a new upset on Tumblr, as some aros became upset with some aces who would tag certain posts with "aro", "aroace", or "aspec", when the post only referenced an asexual experience. This was a true issue, as evidenced here, but sometimes devolved to something else. There was a lot of discussion over what should be included in the "aro" versus "ace" tags. As was argued at the time, the line between aro experiences and ace experiences can shift based on individual interpretations, especially when the individual is aroace. My aroace identity could be considered non-SAM, in that I do not use aro or ace to describe separate attraction experiences. They are each greatly entangled in the other, and I cannot tear them apart for the sake of a shoddy website's tagging system. 

Its situations like this that have lead me to a certain weariness related to fear of being aro "enough" or ace "enough" in certain spaces. The ace community has, in many spaces, skewed itself towards aroace rather than alloace membership, and so I do not have this fear as often when I am in ace community spaces. I can talk about not liking romantic plot lines and not be snapped at for forcing an aro experience into an ace space. I don't feel the same kind of freedom in aro spaces. With the context of the ace community's historical issue of not representing aromanticism as a separate, whole identity and its inability to represent alloaros at all, a fair amount of aro's hold a distrust towards aces, and sadly this sometimes develops into fullblown ace antagonism. I have heard from other aroaces that there is a sense of needing to "pick a side" or apologize for their ace-ness. As the ace community doesn't demand this with regards to our aro identities, we stay over there. I'm sure this also worsens the issue in the aro community, as it then appears that most aroaces happily choose to prioritize their ace identity, and this may increase distrust. It is not that I do not want to participate in aro community, it is rather that I have felt time and time again that I cannot express my own aromanticism in that community, as it is considered too ace. I rather be in a space that does not police how I experience my own identity. 

This also confounds the issue of how aro-spec identities are isolated and imagined. As a gray-aroace, I feel that in some aro spaces I am both too ace and not aro enough. I have nothing to fall back on to reaffirm my position in those spaces. I have to apologize for my ace identity and defend my grayro identity. The focus is on how I am different rather than the similarities that I am actually there to discuss and share. It's also not simply a matter of that this identity is different, but that it is implied to have privilege over other identities in the space. Aroace identity is definitely more visible than other aspec identities, but to imply that it has more power or privilege is to imply that its actually accepted and respected by the majority of people outside of the community, particularly to the extent that it is considered normal, healthy, and default. Maybe I'm simply in the wrong state, or maybe aspecs actually do not have any privilege outside of being represented and visible in a few online spaces. Receiving cyberbullying of a different nature than other identities is not actually privilege. 

Conclusion

I write this to be critical of our communities and address some prevalent things that I have seen, and I do not write this simply to bash the aro community or inspire guilt in people who frequent those spaces. Both the aro and aces communities, in various spaces that they congregate in, have long-running issues with gatekeeping, exclusionism, and outright hatefulness, and the goalposts for being acceptable (or unassailable) are constantly moving. I believe this is mostly an issue of the communities being as virtual as they are, as a lot of community hubs are poorly moderated, open to scrutiny from people who are not aspec and not allies, and on media platforms that have cultures centered around call-outs, purity culture, and dogpiling. I have also definitely seen positive community spaces (discord, reddit, pillowfort, waterfall, some Tumblr niches, my local offline group). This tragically does not change how some of the easiest spaces to find for discussing these identities are some of the worst off when it comes to decency of the people involved. 

To redirect to the prompt, the issues mentioned here make it difficult to prioritize my aro identity. I frequently find it easier to prioritize my ace identity, but that community has many (similar) issues as well. It also bears repeating that I rather prioritize neither - I am aroace before I am individually aro or ace. It is the divisiveness present in the communities and the specific disrespect aimed at my gray-a identity that causes me to feel like I must pick a side, or like a certain side is not an option at any given point in time. I am still completely aro, completely ace, completely aroace at all times, regardless of what my community interaction looks like that month. I've prioritized my own mental and emotional health over being an active community member. I've prioritized a select few spaces instead of redefining myself or settling with never having my identity treated as whole or serious. 

Further Reading

*I hate using the word "accuse" here, because it implies that being allo is a bad thing. It is not. Amatonormativity and sexnormativity are harmful - alloromantics and allosexuals are not (inherently). 

Someone tried to introduce spadillic as a term to refer to aroaces. 

Also found this as some other ways of referring to aroace (-spec?) identities. 

This post by Laura that offers good insights into grayro experiences.

A very big thread on acephobia in aro communities, aimed at aro's.