So, its Aromantic Awareness Week

[lionheart]

twitter.com/i/status/1363843446616719363

I've read around (a little) but I'm still not sure why this constitutes an identity to be championed by Stonewall etc.

Anyone shed any light on this and on the language (spectrum; allies) ...?

@OvaHere

Anyways, for a straight people website you sure seem to have a beyond manic interest in Queer folk. Isn't it sad that the majority of your posts on the feminism pages is about how trans people are scum? Don't you think you have more pressing issues to argue about? Or does it just feel really nice to be in an echo chamber?

Just wondering out loud how this post gets to stand when women here are deleted for the slightest hint of negative generalisations that are deemed to be uncivil or 'not in the spirit'?

HQ told me it's because it's been strongly challenged as a false accusation.

I don't know if that means they agree it's a false accusation though.

For the record, I've never seen a poster characterise trans people a scum. Apart from anything else, many people here have trans family members and trans friends and several mumsnetters are trans themselves.

I don’t get this at all.

I could legitimately say that for 90% of the last 14 years I’ve been asexual (thanks GnRHAs, aka puberty blockers, for that delightful side effect).

Why in the hell would I want to declare this publicly? It’s not my identity, it does not define me and it’s nobody’s business other than mine and my DHs. Why do so many people feel the need to define themselves this way?

This is not an orientation. It does not cause oppression - I’ve never been oppressed for being asexual, because nobody in my real life knows about it. And even if they did, they’d probably either feel sorry for me or my DH or both. I can’t imagine much worse than my employer knowing I have no sex drive so it won’t be leading to discrimination there.

Perhaps I should write about it in my email signature so everyone I email knows about it...

Oh it's the same small-minded lack of imagination, tbh. Same reason there are people at work who think I'm trans because have short hair and wear clothes from the 'mens' section, and their bigotry is such that they can't conceive of a woman being like that. The fact that I am also oriented towards women is somehow a marker that I would be on board with all this rubbish, and that the struggle for rights over the past few decades was all about getting everyone to recognize a spiffy new flag, rather than to make sure same sex partners could be next of kin when their loved one is dying and not be shut out, for example. No, it's all about underlining how those boring old people just don't understand how very interesting you are, of course.

Anyways, for a straight people website

This is a parenting website, with some non parenting-specific forums useful to everyone, not a "straight people website".

It is predominantly a female centred website, which i think is a good thing, is that ok with you? But saying a parenting website is a straight person's website rather implies that you don't think LGB people have families, which is a bit of an old fashioned attitude, don't you think?

How come @ShulamithFirestone has got deleted?

I can't even remember what she said, so it can't have been that exceptionable.

Thing is, no one wants to be labelled as ‘privileged’ today do they, it’s like the mark of Satan. So it’s not wonder really people are trying to find a label to mark them as more ‘oppressed’ than the next person, because the more ‘oppressed’ you are the louder you can shout on Twitter. It’s bizarre.

Yes, exactly.

The reason why aromanticism is being celebrated by the LGBT+ community is because the LGBT+ community, before aknowledging aces and aros, decided that aces and aros should be part of it. People with the experience of what you call 'real opression' said "hey, those guys deserve to be here too".

Did they? Was there an all-community referendum?

What the actual fuck? What am I reading? This makes me so fucking angry. We need aromantics on a feminism board to tell us that forced marriage is bad? Do we fuck.

They are clearly oppressed as females, not as "aromantics". It's not "better" and less oppressive to be forcibly married off to someone just because you might enjoy sex or would have a romantic connection with someone else.

@TammySwansonTwo

I don’t get this at all.

I could legitimately say that for 90% of the last 14 years I’ve been asexual (thanks GnRHAs, aka puberty blockers, for that delightful side effect).

Why in the hell would I want to declare this publicly? It’s not my identity, it does not define me and it’s nobody’s business other than mine and my DHs. Why do so many people feel the need to define themselves this way?

This is not an orientation. It does not cause oppression - I’ve never been oppressed for being asexual, because nobody in my real life knows about it. And even if they did, they’d probably either feel sorry for me or my DH or both. I can’t imagine much worse than my employer knowing I have no sex drive so it won’t be leading to discrimination there.

Perhaps I should write about it in my email signature so everyone I email knows about it...

Hi Tammy, nice to see you.

And i know you're being grimly humorous, but I suspect 'asexual, due to puberty blockers', as an email sign off wouldn't be approved by SomeonesChild.

Too real.

Anyone concerned about 'real oppression' will hopefully spend some time on the pinned threads (MN campaign and guest post).

@lionheart

I am genuinely baffled about why this is an identity as such?

Blame Tumblr and the like. All of those (non) identities started in places like that. It was a growth from other identities, and expanded as a) each person needed to feel more special, and b) each person felt that the available 50 categories couldn’t adequately describe them so another had to be made up.

I remember first noticing when teens didn’t just chose one identity, they had a whole string of them eg aromantic non-binary trans gay demigirl, rather than simply ‘gay’ or ‘queer’. I thought it was daft then and I think the same now.

And try as I might, I can’t see that word as anything other than “Aromatic’.

I don't think the post should be deleted, as it's quite enlightening for lurkers.

Apropos of nothing at all, I've been down an internet rabbithole over the last 20 minutes that ended up with me reading this.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/43S4fylSmwjwpr0L8Kr30d7/coming-out-four-personal-stories

Extract from Enoch's story, about coming out as gay.

He says he was eventually outed by the social networking site MySpace, which his strictly religious parents had banned him from using. In his last week of high school, his parents had discovered his account and comments from friends who he had come out to.

Enoch says: “They confronted me at 5.30 in the morning and said ‘what’s this’ and at that point, there’s no way I can lie my way out.”

His parents gave him “all the general rhetoric you hear from religious individuals about it.”

And from then on his entire summer involved going to different seminars and camps to try and "convert him back to being straight".

The camps were a form of "conversion therapy" which refers to any form of treatment or psychotherapy which aims to change a person's sexual orientation or to suppress a person's gender identity.

He says he didn’t even try and argue against it.

“My fear was I was going to get kicked out and be put on the street… I went into survival mode and did everything I could do to convince them that I could fix myself.”

Enoch continued to live a double-lifestyle of pretending to be straight for some people and being his 'authentic self' for others, but at age 22 he says he was "tired of all the lies".

He was in a loving relationship so he decided to change his relationship status on Facebook and tag his then boyfriend.

"Immediately within 10-15 minutes my mum called me and said ‘What are you doing? You need to take that down.’”

And try as I might, I can’t see that word as anything other than “Aromatic’.

Yeah... will no-one think of pi-pi interactions!

I think the worst thing you can be labelled as nowadays is being a white 'cishet' person, so hey, let's find some excuse, no matter how tenuous, to identify as 'queer'.
From what I understand, this does not go down well on gay forums. It's seen as the equivalent of those 'bisexual' women who drunkenly snogged their best female mate in a nightclub in 1992 to attract male attention and haven't been anywhere near a woman in any sexual sense since then.
I do actually understand it can be difficult when you're young to be single, I went through that myself when I was a teenager. Being left out on valentines day, staying in when your mates went out on dates, the awkward questions, etc etc. Ironically though, it's actually way more socially acceptable in our mainstream society to not have a partner nowadays.

See, I genuinely think the hyper-labelling thing could be an interesting discussion. Star555 last night was pleasant and funny, and I understand the impulse to explore who you are and why you feel as you do, and make connections with others. That's perfectly reasonable. We managed to have a polite conversation touching on what is behind a lot of this.

It's when it becomes a cudgel, wrapped in a ton of bigoted assumptions about why someone would question it, like a baseball bat painted rainbow colours and ready to clout everyone into submission as with the second poster's tone. Then it's revealed to be something much less anodyne.

Just looked up one of the websites
In addition, aromanticism also includes a whole range of related identities, often referred to as the “aromantic spectrum”, which include people who may not identify as strictly aromantic, but who find that the label is still a close fit and that they have a lot in common with the community. Some groups within the aromantic spectrum may also adopt new terms like grayromantic, demiromantic, lithromantic, quoiromantic, etc.

Seems it's impossible to identify yourself as an absence.

Lithromanticis a term to describe a person who experiences romantic love but does not want their feelings to be reciprocated Thelithromanticflag has red, orange, yellow, white and black stripes. It is the most common symbol used by those who identify with this label.
What they all seem to have in common is an obsession with flags.

See, I genuinely think the hyper-labelling thing could be an interesting discussion.

Yes, I agree. It's a fascinating social phenomenon.

All those flags are massively discriminatory against people with colour blindness.

@Meredithgrey1

The abuse doesn't come from being seen in a platonic relationship, to be clear. It comes from family, friends, colleagues, etc constantly asking you why you won't marry, saying that marriage completes a woman, that all humans fall in love and to not do so is proof that something is seriously wrong with you.

Abuse? That’s not abuse, it’s just fucking rude. It’s also not abuse when the same thing is said to people without children (children complete you, you don’t know love until you’ve had a child, why don’t you have children yet etc etc).
Rude and insensitive is not the same as abuse and oppression.
To be clear. I absolutely think those things shouldn’t be said to people, I just don’t think abuse is the word to be used here.

Exactly this.

It's totally fine to make words to identify with, to start movements, etc, great stuff, whatever rocks your boat. You seem like a lovely person, Star, and it's a pleasant change to hear from someone who is happy to discuss without hurling insults (I see one of those turned up later in the night, sadly).

But when you call low-level rudeness 'abuse', you are diminishing, sidelining and insulting anyone who has actually experienced abuse.

Please. Maintain a sense of proportion.

I agree, Bunting.

For example, I don't have any of my Mumsnet Bile™ for demisexuality, because in the context of a hypersexual society that has come up with ever more labels to condemn women for being sexually available enough, that looks to me like women trying to assert sexual boundaries in the only way possible.

Often, so does asexuality. I do have empathy for young women today trying to work within the social framework they've been given.

Funny how I thought the world would get better for women, back in the 90s. Back then, I was getting called frigid by teenage boys trying to goad me into proving my sexuality by shagging them.

@BlackForestCake

I love green curry too! Are we curromantic? Is there a flag?

I would marry green curry. Hate flags, though, sorry. One or both of us will need to form a schism.

Nope I’ve read it all, and the links, and I still don’t get it.

Is it people who have friends and family, might or might not have sex, but don’t have any desire to be in love and have to wash someone else’s socks while they live in your house?

Is that right? In which case I think I might be one... I’m suddenly feeling all oppressed.

Aye, Pothole, girls were 'frigid' up until they had sex, then 'slags'.

If it was in the 80's would it be Anewromantic?