mesotablar | Aromanticism: My Sword and Shield (Reply)

Hello all! This is my entry for March 2019 Carnival of Aros aromanticism.dreamwidth.org/3317.html. I like to feel that I filled two prompts with this: Reasons I love my identity and A time I was glad I was aro (If you can call the last year and 8 months 'a time').
I'm still getting used to this site so forgive me for not giving links for any of the terms.

Warning: I do mention stalking, sexual harassment and romantic harassment, but I don't go into any details.

Aromanticism: My Sword and Shield

I guess I can still claim to be a new aromantic. After years of floating around the edges of LGBT+ spaces and never finding myself fitting anywhere until I found enlightenment less than 2 years ago. Once I found the term Aromantic I voraciously read other people’s experiences, definitions and discussion while the grey fog in my life rolled back and angels sang.

In the beginning…

I would say I had a fairly normal childhood for a middle-class white girl whose family straddled the country and the city. I was given dolls, including a Bride Barbie, but I was horse crazy. I read stories of adventure, courage and friendship where regularly characters paired up towards the end. I got bruised playing sport, sunburnt at the beach, got stung by bees and learned how to climb trees.

Then one day when I was 12 I was asked out. To me it was totally unexpected. I froze in fear and pain, it felt like the boy had just punched me in the ribs. I said no and ran off. If he had in fact punched me I knew what I should do, but this? I had no clue. And so the grey fog of confusion started to roll in.

High School made it worse. I learned some romantic coded activities gave me psychological pain (being asked out being the worst) and some lovey dovey public displays of affection made me physically ill, not to mention my complete befuddlement at sexual relationships having to be ‘legitimised’ by saying they had decided to go out, and were thus boyfriend & girlfriend for those 4 hours at that party.

There was no romantic censorship at school. Romantic entanglements were expected and encouraged. Yes, we even had a red rose delivery service on Valentine’s Day. So I would find myself regularly bombarded yet helpless. I tried opting out, as much as possible anyway. I became friends with the academic overachievers, the still-mostly-in-the-closet gays and the kids from strict households. They were my buffer most days and I will always be thankful for all those conversations that never devolved into relationship gossip. Ultimately though the grey fog was thicker than ever and it still felt like a punch in the ribs I could never stop.

The Middle

University wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. There were so many more people, so many more things to do, and so many more things to talk about. If relationship chatter crept into the conversation I found I could easily divert it by mentioning marriage laws (someone was always eager to show how supportive they were of popular LGBT+ issues).

This is probably a terrible statistic to be happy about but I was sexually harassed much more than I was romantically harassed, and it was such a relief! Sexual harassment was instantly disapproved of and my friends would be supportive. The few times the harassment got physical there were many support services and ways of making complaints to hold the perpetrators accountable.

Romantic harassment was a different matter. If I complained about someone asking me out my friends would end up interrogating me or dropping the conversation into confused silence. I felt alone in my problems. Even when a group of us had an honest conversation about creepy behaviour and we discovered more than half of us had had experiences with stalkers of different intensities I still felt alone because all romantic overtures felt like threats to me (we all did feel pretty helpless though because there is much less support or protection from stalkers unless they make direct threats).

Light at the end…

I do believe the pen is mightier than the sword, and discovering aromanticism gave me the vocabulary I needed to finally explain or defend myself. The concepts I had not been able to define, the ideas I had not been able to articulate burst onto my screen with glorious new words: Aromantic, Amatonormativity, Singlism, Queerplatonic, Romantic Attraction, Romance Repulsion. Best of all I found the community. I was no longer alone.

Discovering amatonormativity was a revelation, it seems ever present in our romance obsessed society, but now I can identify it, fight it and reject it. Now I don’t feel fear in the face of romance, though it still hurts when it takes me by surprise. When friends question my actions I can enlighten them because I know myself better and I feel the support of all the other aros out there whose experiences I had read. I hope that bringing these words and ideas to my friends allows them to think of a different future for themselves, one where they might be happier, regardless of their romantic or sexual orientation.

I have the stability of knowledge. I have the clarity of understanding myself. I have the vocabulary to communicate. I have the support of knowing I am not alone.

I am happy. I am aromantic.

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