How to allocate the 52
I can’t stop. The hilarity is too.
Yes please please please tell me I’m valid.
But just wanting to exist doesn’t need a week. Presumably we all want to exist, except the suicidal among us. Or if it does need a week, it should be I Want To Exist Week.
What’s in a name?
Aros by any other name would smell as sweet.
This one made my head spin around twice. I remember back in the day when people would get pilloried for telling a gay person who came all bedecked in buttons and flags “I really don’t care about your sexuality,” as if that were suddenly a bad thing. Now there’s people who don’t have anything going on in that department, and we simply must care about that. Otherwise, we’re oppressing them.
It’s not a presence of sexuality to which we’re now being required to kowtow, it’s an absence of sexuality. They desperately need the rest of us to know they exist, and that this absence of sexuality is the most important thing about them. We’re supposed to see an absence now, and if we don’t, we’re oppressors.
And what, exactly, is this oppression? Has anybody ever been fired for not having any romantic relationships? Been demoted? Refused admission to something? Of all the idiotic things to make up. How many other things could someone be mistreated for before they get all the way down the line to “being aromantic?” Past being aromatic, that’s for sure.
Papito — yes, how dare we not see that they’re not romantic! And if they ever should fall in love with someone, then we’d better not be guilty of not seeing that they’re not romantic. Unless they break up, at which point we’d have been right about that all along. Or wrong, more likely.
What I’m waiting for is “middle-aged guy who likes 17th-century northern European keyboard music” week. I’m feeling pretty damned erased right now, I’ll tell you! Invalidated, almost!
Is there an alactocerealus week? Because we people who don’t like milk in our cereal exist!
And just like me, they don’t need to be told that they exist, or are valid (??), in order to exist. They, like everyone else, exist whether anybody knows about them or not. No, what they are after is attention over and above what is normally accorded to random strangers we don’t interact with. For some reason, you want to be fawned over because… you don’t like romanticism?
Okaaaayyy.
In any case it’s really Infrastructure Week…
I lost track, do aros include those of us who want romance but just can’t seem to find it for whatever reason? And seriously if this is such a thing why do you pick the week after the most loathsome “holiday” ever inflicted on humanity? Why not use this “community” to point out how fucking NON-INCLUSIVE Valentine’s day is for us not-by-choice “aromantics”. Sheesh. Am I valid now?
I’ve long suspected that Sackbut is aromantic, but is Renaissance and Baroque positive.
It’s all explained here
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416575995?ie=UTF8&tag=rojblake-20&camp=1789&linkCode=xm2&creativeASIN=1416575995
As a Masterbater, it can be very alienating to me how you use language. For example, “hands on experience,” “manual labor,” “handy man” can be particularly unhelpful. Please just say “direct experience,” “work,” and “fixer upper.”
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that nobody in the history of forever has told aros that they just want to be oppressed: centre of attention, maybe, but not oppressed. I’ll double down, too, and say that nobody has claimed that aros don’t exist (or don’t want to exist; elle purple heart two envelopes is unclear on what ‘telling them they don’t’ refers to).
Why can’t these people be honest, stop inventing criticism of themselves and just tweet what they really mean: LOOK AT ME ME GIVE MEMEMEME ALL THE ATTENTION?
Maybe it’s about the fact that next week brings Women’s History Month?
What? elle purple heart two envelopes has changed his/her/their name to elle purple heart grey heart black heart. Aromantic name-fluid?
What a Maroon, please can we team up for breakfast? Because I cannot stand cereal in my milk.
P.S. At least one of my grandchildren cannot abide milk on cereal too, so you aren’t alone.
So, is the endgame to all of this going to be trying to make incels into a protected class?
I suspect they do “want to be oppressed “ in that they’re focusing on mildly annoying things like suggestions about people they might want to date or movies with wildly romantic story lines and mentally turning them into That Which Harms Me. They think they want it to stop so they can just live their life, whereas developing a little resilience or — egads— a sense of humor would probably do wonders.
It probably wouldn’t hurt to stop labeling themselves, either. Otherwise, changing your mind or trying something new turns into a full-blown existential crisis.
I understand and can relate to people being frustrated at the way many people, and certainly cultural products like film and television, treat people who don’t show much interest in dating.
It’s the insistence on a fancy label, and an awareness week, and a special pride flag, and generally trying to pattern yourself after the gay and lesbian movements that irks me.
Well quite. The assumption that absolutely everyone wants to pair off for life, preferably immediately after leaving the parental unit, is silly and tiresome, but it’s hardly a whole entire politics, let alone an Oppressed Group with A Week of its very own.
Re #7
Ha! Quite true! That got a loud chuckle.
Yeah, I hate wildly romantic movies, too, and I’m not aromantic. I just don’t go to those movies. There are plenty of movies about dysfunctional families where the couple hates each other that could make the aromantic feel better about being aromantic…just go to those.
Re the aros and wanting to be oppressed: it’s boring to be normal. Everybody has to be special in some way. It’s why that idiotic trans umbrella is so huge.
These discussions frequently bring to mind a video interview with some young person with a “different” identity. The interviewer asked, I think, about the guest’s “intersections” or something like that, and the guest had a laundry list of six or eight silly characteristics. The interviewer said “Nice!” What? The interviewer was impressed because this person has personality characteristics that can be described with fashionable labels? “Well, Steve, I have a speech impediment, and I’m narcissistic, and I have trouble forming attachments due to childhood trauma.” “Nice!”
WaM and Tigger, Wheaties are better with a nice Pinot Noir, and Corn Flakes, a dry Reisling for sure. Milk is for babies. :)
twiliter,
Goo goo gah gah.
Sackbut – sounds like a Monty Python skit, or 3 or 4 of them.
Vocational guidance counsellor for example:
Counsellor: Well I now have the results here of the interviews and the aptitude tests that you took last week, and from them we’ve built up a pretty clear picture of the sort of person that you are. And I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that the ideal job for you is chartered accountancy.
Anchovy: But I am a chartered accountant.
Counsellor: Jolly good. Well back to the office with you then.
Anchovy: No! No! No! You don’t understand. I’ve been a chartered accountant for the last twenty years. I want a new job. Something exciting that will let me live.
Counsellor: Well chartered accountancy is rather exciting isn’t it?
Anchovy: Exciting? No it’s not. It’s dull. Dull. Dull. My God it’s dull, it’s so desperately dull and tedious and stuffy and boring and des-per-ate-ly DULL.
Counsellor: Well, er, yes Mr Anchovy, but you see your report here says that you are an extremely dull person. You see, our experts describe you as an appallingly dull fellow, unimaginative, timid, lacking in initiative, spineless, easily dominated, no sense of humour, tedious company and irrepressibly drab and awful. And whereas in most professions these would be considerable drawbacks, in chartered accountancy they are a positive boon.
https://montypython.net/scripts/vocation.php
OB@17,
Yes, and making a big deal about it does little to convince people that you are actually a perfectly healthy, well-adjusted individual. Every now and then (often at wedding receptions — I don’t know whether it’s the fact that it’s a wedding, or just the combination of alcohol and “strangers who presume that their status as friend of a friend is license to ask personal questions”), I get buttonholed by someone who wants to ask a lot of questions about why I’m not married or living with someone. I keep my answers as short, direct, and boring and affectless as possible, and either the conversation moves on or I find an excuse to drift away. I can’t imagine how it would be productive to snap at someone and lecture them about how they’re oppressing me as a special minority. And I say this as someone who is a believer in delivering a conversational brushback pitch at times.
It reminds me a little of the Men Going Their Own Way. Dudes, if you think that modern women are awful and marriage is a trap to ruin men’s lives, and blah blah blah — just fucking “go your own way” already and shut up about it. Blathering on about how you didn’t want those grapes anyway just convinces everyone that you’re angry and bitter that you can’t get a girlfriend rather than some principled abstainer.
Re the aros and wanting to be oppressed: it’s boring to be normal. Everybody has to be special in some way. It’s why that idiotic trans umbrella is so huge.
In other words, when people say that these narcissists are “wanting to be oppressed”, that’s actually a bit of shorthand. What the narcissists want is to have the perceived social capital of someone who can point at oppression in their lives and say “Look at this oppression I’ve overcome!” … only without having to have ever dealt with any of that pesky soul-crushing oppression.
There’s been a ton of that in the atheist community before all this gender woo/identity stuff became all the rage, which is probably why there was so much crossover between certain parts of the atheist community and the gender woos.
Twiliter, tigger, why don’t we get together and call ourselves an institute?
The brain is a strange thing. I read this a dozen times before my confusion was abated when I finally realized the word wasn’t aromatic…
Asparagus can make one aromatic, or am I just taking the piss? :P
Er… I might be the one confused here, but to my understanding asexual and aromantic aren’t synonymous; asexual is a sexual orientation (not sexually attracted to either sex… vs. heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual), aromantic just refers to someone who doesn’t want romantic relationships or “romantic love”.
Aromantic women (if bisexual or homosexual or heterosexual) get called “sluts”; if asexual they’re “cold bitches”. So there’s that. Neither slur is uniquely applied to aromantic women, of course, but I’d wager they attract a disproportionate share if one were to measure such things (has anyone?).
Not that any of that is clear from the quoted posts, nor does it have anything to do with denying anyone’s existence, nor would I expect it to affect aromantic men to anywhere near the same extent… so now I’m even more confused than I’d initially considered *shrug*
‘changing your mind or trying something new turns into a full-blown existential crisis’–yes, exactly. A friend’s son has ‘come out’ as asexual. He’s 16 and already invested in an ‘identity’ that could potentially affect the direction of his life. What happens if in a couple of years he meets someone he’s attracted to? (Maybe not that likely to happen if you live your entire life online, but who knows.) Does he have to ‘come out’ again as ‘sexual’? Or contact everyone he’s declared his identity to to make sure they’re aware he no longer ascribes to it? Someone might perceive this change of ‘identity’ as so much effort, or so personally threatening, that they never actually permit themselves to experience sexual attraction (or sexual attraction to someone who that isn’t consistent with whatever identity they’ve announced to the world)–or, as some ‘lesbian’ women I’ve met who love, have sex with and/or marry men, feel deep shame about their inconsistent ‘identity’ for years, if not a lifetime.
FWIW the three weirdest people I’ve ever met (and not necessarily in a good way) have been accountants.
Walter: “Veronika, der Spargel wächst!”
Veronika: “Stop oppressing me, I’m aromantic!”
There’s a “spectrum” of not being interested in romantic relationships? Is that like being “a little bit” pregnant? Seems to me, you either are, or you’re not. And if you’re not interested, why FFS would anyone want a group about … nothingness?
But doesn’t it sound like great fun to sit around with a bunch of folks talking about how uninterested we are in each other?
EVERYONE READING THIS!! YOU ARE ALL VALID!
(small voice from the back) “i’m not.”
The whole reification of “identity” is disturbing, turning “how I feel” into “who I am”. To add another example, I recall an activist friend who advocated against, among other things, “fat phobia”, and was faced with a bit of identity crisis when she was losing weight for health reasons. People are treating current thoughts and current situations into innate immutable characteristics of great importance.
Re “group about nothingness” and “talking about how uninterested they are in each other”:
Something about that strikes me as similar to the confusion about atheist groups as seen by religious people. “What do you do, talk about something that doesn’t exist?”
I suppose that there might be a point to having a group that doesn’t insert romance and flirting and dating possibilities into most conversations. But I think even people who don’t consider themselves “aromantic” might want such an environment much of the time.
That struck me too, I wondered whether md intended it.
Nah, we talked about how great we were for not believing in one specific thing that doesn’t exist!
Different.
“I don’t care. But you MUST care that I don’t care!”
A random thought on gender identity: when speaking of one’s offspring the usual convention is to refer to them as son or daughter. What would the correct term be if the offspring identifies as non-binary or multi-gender or anything other than male or female? “Have you met Divine-Fleur, my, erm, AMAB offspring” perhaps?
It’s the old one-liner made real: I’ve got three kids, one of each.
I used to know a woman who used to say she had six siblings, one of each: brother, sister, half brother, half sister, stepbrother, stepsister.
I might be the one confused here, but to my understanding asexual and aromantic aren’t synonymous; asexual is a sexual orientation (not sexually attracted to either sex… vs. heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual), aromantic just refers to someone who doesn’t want romantic relationships or “romantic love”.
I think asexual sounds similar to an orientation (attracted to neither males nor females), but then I see twitter bios with things like “asexual lesbian” in them which goes against that so, like you, I’m confused again. Either that, or it’s the people with the twitter bios who are confused.
As for aromantics, is it more “I don’t want to have romantic relationships” or “I am unable to have romantic relationships and that inability causes me stress”? The second might benefit from a support group, but I can’t see trying to form a civil rights movement around it.
And then turning everything anybody else says into a slap against you. You’re gay, so someone’s wedding picture is taken as a statement that marriages should be “one man one woman” (yes, I’ve actually seen this). You’re aromantic and/or asexual, so anyone talking about romance and relationship, or any movie about romance and relationship, is seen as a personal affront. You’re TiM, so anyone using the word “woman” is seen as an affront unless they are talking about you.
It must be exhausting to be them. They are making it exhausting to be me.
Another Random Commenter, in this context the ‘a’ in asexual/aromantic is meant as ‘non’, the same as with atypical and asymmetric, for example. However, this actually compounds the confusion since one would fairly assume that asexual means having no sexual desires, but then the term asexual lesbian makes no sense because a lesbian is a woman who is sexually attracted to other women, and an asexual by definition is not sexually attracted to anybody.
Maybe an asexual lesbian doesn’t have sexual desires but knows that if she did then they would be for other women, or is a lesbian who has lost the desire for a sexual relationship but either has or wants a non-sexual, same-sex relationship.
Then again, maybe the definition itself is fluid along with everything else these days, existing on an infinite spectrum of definitions and so means whatever the individual wants it to mean at any given time. After all, it’s just a word, and words are mere social constructs with only temporary definitions which anybody is free to alter to suit their needs (at least according to some uberwolk folx!).