(=^・^=)

This month's carnival is hosted by Bring on the Pigeons, and the theme is Words and Conceptualizations. 

• When you say you’re ace, what do you mean? What experiences are you describing?
• How did you decide which the specific words/labels to use? What do they do for you?
• Are there labels that you “count” as by strict definition that you don’t actually identify with? Why don’t you use those words? What don’t they do for you?

I've identified as some version of aroace for nearly 8 years now, and for much of that time I was switching between various microlabels and position on the aro- and ace- spectrums*. Most of my label hopping was not really due to a change in experience. It was due to me simply connecting to a lot of the microlabels that are out there, and finding various uses for a lot of them. Instead of going through the probably dozen aspec labels I have used, I will center this piece over the ones that I use the most today, and have used the most for the past few years. 

As a heads up, I discuss romantic and sexual attraction (or lack thereof) alongside each other, as my experience with these attractions are very similar, and I consider myself to have one romosexual orientation rather than separate romantic and sexual orientations. 

February's Carnival of Aros is being hosted by Allos, and the theme is Relationship Anarchy. 

• If there’s a part of the manifesto (here) that speaks to you or that you want to discuss at-depth, feel free to do so.

"Love and respect instead of entitlement

Deciding to not base a relationship on a foundation of entitlement is about respecting others’ independence and self-determination. Your feelings for a person or your history together does not make you entitled to command and control a partner to comply with what is considered normal to do in a relationship. Explore how you can engage without stepping over boundaries and personal beliefs. Rather than looking for compromises in every situation, let loved ones choose paths that keep their integrity intact, without letting this mean a crisis for the relationship. Staying away from entitlement and demands is the only way to be sure that you are in a relationship that is truly mutual. Love is not more “real” when people compromise for each other because it’s part of what’s expected.”

This part of the manifesto really sticks out to me and is why I’ve felt myself shifting towards relationship anarchy. I first read this manifesto maybe 3 or 4 months ago and the idea of a relationship not being about ownership feels so natural yet so foreign at the same time. As far as I can remember, normative romo/sexual relationships have been about owning another person. Owning their space, owning their time, owning their emotional labor...the expectation that all relationships should include suffering because it is difficult to own the entirety of another person. Many people use phrasing such as sharing, or compromising, but it has always seemed thinly veiled to me. 

November's Carnival of Aros is being hosted by luvtheheaven, and the prompt is Commitment. 

• Does commitment to a person evoke a sense of safety/security/comfort for you, or perhaps does it evoke a sense of being stifled/stuck/trapped? Are there other ways commitment feels that are quite different, like confusing/nonsensical?
• Does a lack of commitment (of any kind) in your life, hypothetically or practically in the present, feel like “freedom”? Or what does it feel like?

A large part of my aromanticism has been my long-running repulsion to committed and intimate relationships. I used to have nightmares where I was married to someone, and subsequently would have to change my name and flee the country. This fear is not entirely self-created, rather, it is the result of growing up in a society and family unit that has pushed marriage and romance as necessary and natural. My teenage self truly thought that, if I was not extra careful, I would accidentally end up trapped in marriage and obligated to engage in romantic and social intimacy. That's what it seemed like was occurring to many others - from my friends who had partners that they hated, to the adults that proudly hated their spouses, to the prevalence of media and social formations geared towards dating and forming long-term relationships. Identifying as aroace as a teenager meant that I did not want that kind of future, yet I still understood that it would likely happen regardless of my input. It took a few years for me to process that people actually chose to enter relationships and were often quite happy about it. It took even longer for me to understand that I could engage in relationships on my own terms, and that I'm more than capable of preventing marriage from happening to me.

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.)