mesotablar | Entries tagged with carnival of aros: 2021

This is my entry for Carnival of Aros December about 'Attitudes Towards Romance', using the prompt: What things are romance-coded to you?

The Mine Field

Baby talk gets on my nerves and makes me nauseous. Thankfully, when a couple do it it is generally seen as an extreme public display of affection and is socially frowned upon where I live. It makes me ill when people do it to animals and kids, yet society is less offended by that.

I am more sickened by it.

For me baby talk is romance-coded.

It is one of the few things that is unequivocally romance-coded for me. Many other actions and activities I see as neutral vessels, only becoming romance-coded if there are romantic intentions behind it.

Friends can hold hands and kiss and go out together for candlelit dinners and take walks on the beach at sunset and buy a house together and sleep together. Intimacy is not romance-coded,

but I know for some people it is.

I have been on the sharp end of a reprimand when three of us were rolling around and laughing in the grass of a public park. Our censor didn’t even have the excuse of thinking us a wlw polyamoury partnership doing PDA, they knew us, we had thought them a friend, they would have been welcome to join our rolling joy. But no, out intimacy was threatening. Not -understandable. Must be stopped.

I feel this is where the aspec community conflict over ‘romance’ content is. One group sharing experience while another doesn’t understand or is threatened. The side they take may switch with each new issue or activity.

If its true love is a battlefield, then the romance-coding of actions is the personal minefield we planted and expect others to respect. We try, oh, our intentions are good, but the mines are hidden! If they are there at all…

I say I am romance neutral because most of the time it doesn’t bother me, because simply I just don’t see it.

I say I am romance neutral because most of the time it doesn’t bother me, and the things that I am repulsed by I can count on one hand and easily recite the location of my mines.

Baby talk
Feeding each other
Lip-to-lip kissing without prior mutual verbal consent*

*Ah, another way we aromantic are let down. Stolen kisses between ‘friends’ or ‘potential love interests’ that do not contain an element of sexual contact are an assault dismissed as trivial.

Current Music: The Marble Eye by Anna von Hausswolff

This is my entry for Carnival of Aros November about limerence, using the prompt: If you identify as aro or arospec, do you think you are non-limerent? Does limerence factor into why you identify this way?

The Differences Between Us

This month’s topic is incredibly interesting. I discovered a label that very easily applies to me and my experiences, so here I am to introduce myself as a non-limerent.

I have not ever experienced limerence.

I remember a conversation just after I started identifying as aromantic, my friends and I were talking about the feeling of being in love. We were talking about limerence without knowing the term. The emotional highs. The profound romantic infatuation. The involuntary obsession.

There were four of us, all 26 years old and no one admitted to having ever felt it, yet I was the only one that identified as aromantic.

I wondered what the real differences between us was. Limerence, that Hollywood ideal of love on the big screen seemed to have little to do with being alloromantic or being aromantic.

But they admitted to having crushes.

What is a crush but a form of limerence? The obsession, the emotional highs, the desire to collect all the merchandise….but they didn’t see such a crush as love, not real (limerence) true love anyway. Could a crush just be unrequited limerence?

Trying to straighten their logic, the difference between limerence and crushes, the difference between alloromatic and aromantic, is a monumental task. A task I have not succeeded in because I am mostly oblivious to it. They are frequencies I just can’t pick up.

The only answer I managed to come up with was that I felt comfortable in aromantic spaces and identifying as aromantic, while they desperately rejected the possibility as they strived in their social lives to partner up.

…personally though, I would say that is amatonormativity raising it’s ugly head again.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Losing Game by Vaults

This is my entry for Carnival of Aros September about language, using the prompt: How do you feel about how the aro community at large handles discussions on terminology?

I Stopped To Rest

Terminology and semantics were/are a regular topic of discussion in aromantic spaces. It is a good topic, mostly. There are only so many ‘What am I?’ newbie posts you can stomach before they blur into one and you struggle to find polite phrasing to garnish a reply of ‘You gotta work it out for yourself. Forum guidelines mean I can’t label you anyway.’ …so we stop bothering to reply. If you look you will see, it is rare for one of those newbie topics to get five replies or more.

I enjoyed the terminology and semantics discussions, mostly. What else is there to talk about that is constructive? That is an abstract non-personal way for community building? Actually hearing different people’s views and others questioning them. It was like the words were being twisted and pulled like taffy, being made better and more robust, or passing into obscurity as their faults were laid bare. No need to drag out personal experiences of lust or abuse. I enjoyed those discussions, until I didn’t.

I needed a break from all sorts of things. I stopped to rest. But things move quickly on the internet. I have been out of the loop for quite a while. I wonder how things have progressed…

I no longer have the starter’s passion for reinvestigating everything aromantic. But if I come back to the community is my knowledge still valid? Is my vocabulary still suitable? Are my words still understandable? Or have terms and meanings shifted so much that I speak a dead language?

Being left behind by your own community because of a shift in language is something being experiences by many older members of longer established groups. Talking and discussing has become a minefield. As far as I know there is no comprehensive map of this minefield. Some people have done etymologies of specific terms. Complex tangled linkspams showing how a term was coined and developed. They are greatly informative but these rely on the links remaining active and accessible.

It would be great if we had a flexible dictionary. A centralised place where all language specific to us was compiled and the various meanings listed, etymology too (with references!). I have been resting, so who knows, this might already exist. If all languages were welcomed and represented there would be a much richer basis of thought for our community to draw on.

…But mostly I want people to be kind. We must realise that we have an exceptionally fluid vocabulary. Some people may be using an old meaning when they talk. They may have been resting.

Current Music: No Rest by Dry The River

This is my entry for the 2021 March Carnival of Aros: call out found here

To be or not to be...an International Aro Space

Kaurna miyurna, Kaurna yarta, ngadlu tampinthi.

-Acknowledgement of country

I have been trying to unpack my feelings about race. I have been spending lots of time reading articles about race, discrimination, privilege and implicit bias. I haven’t had to look too far to find articles on those topics, but I have had to look hard for articles that weren’t American*.

Many Americans don’t declare their US-ness in their articles, but they only write to American audiences, about American experiences. Many non-US writers make clear, either in their text, signature or choice of platform, where they are from. I have made very clear that I am Australian just so people don’t expect me to be American.

There is a sense on some websites the majority of people I interact with are not of my culture, yet they share a common culture between them. I declare myself Australian to discover where the other people are from, and 80% of the time they are American. The default of assuming English speaking people on the internet are American, male and young is breaking down but many US writers still seem to assume that their only readers are going to be people who understand, or are familiar with the intricacies of US culture or history. To the point where I believe I was reading articles wrong, the point wasn’t getting across.

When I first found the online Arocalypse.com community in 2017 I declared my Aussie-ness and the reaction I got, ‘Oh no not another Australian’. I was thrilled to stumble onto a pile of Australians in such a small online community. Do you know how many Australians it took to elicit that comment? How many Australians I was thrilled to find online?

There were 4 of us.

It also became clear fairly quickly that there were some people in the community where English was not their first language. There was talk of needing help translating definitions for other information pages to be able to get the word out about aromanticism. There were call outs asking for people speaking specific languages (though I’m not sure how many were found as they became private discussions). Topics organizing meet ups was on a global scale, a country here, a country there. We are a small population scattered around the globe, and it felt that way, it felt international.

Fast forward to 2021, there are more groups and more resources. There is a blog carnival creating content, there are monthly talks and discussions, there are activist groups getting awareness….but it seems the US content is starting to drown out that sense of internationalism. I haven’t seen an entry for the blog carnival in another language, the talks and discussions are timed towards people living on the conterminous United States. I know there are many varied people out there, but much of the content I find now has that familiar sense of being by Americans, for Americans, about Americans, though I can’t tell for certain because they lack national or cultural disclaimers.

Maybe I should take this as a hopeful sign? Those people asking for translations 4 years ago have not needed to return to an English speaking site because they have created a vibrant community of their own in their own language, but….

What of the people making discoveries now? people from countries where the framework is not yet established? Will they see these resources as International or American? Will discriminated against Americans feel better if there is more of an International feel to the aromantic spaces? Or will these sites and resources be so overwhelmed by American thoughts that any content in English language is attributed to a US viewpoint?

I don’t have answers to those questions, but I know I have not been part of the solution. I am a non-American voice, and I have been mostly silent over the past year. I am trying to get back into writing, into thinking, into loving my aromanticness.

讲一个生活故事

écrire sur vous-même

*Whenever I use the term American I am going to be referring to United States of America and its people. Sorry to the entire Continent.

Current Mood: tired

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The Mine Field
The Differences Between Us
I Stopped To Rest
To be or not to be...an International Aro Space

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I thought it was a good idea at the time...

Personal Journal with Many Aromantic Thoughts

Entries tagged with carnival of aros: 2021

The Mine Field

The Differences Between Us

I Stopped To Rest

To be or not to be...an International Aro Space