wary but listening

[sciatrix]

so I'm commenting on the aromantic community again.

It's not...

I have such complicated feelings about it! It feels like the people who are continuing the conversations I had ten years ago are also erasing me and the context of those conversations, and I admit I get so bitter at the way that I only ever seem to hear from aromantic community and spaces when they're expressing derision at people who associate them with asexual communities, like there was some kind of cadre of aromantic allosexuals who came up with the whole thing.

And then the older I get and the less I'm convinced romantic orientation is a useful metric for talking about the way that people navigate the world of attachment, because I think the thing people are often talking about is more about limerence and less about the way you find people to grow together with and make families, but limerence is only really relevant when you're starting something new and not so much when you're moving together along a path.

And I worry about the endless hyperfocus on beginnings and not on journeys. Because I think that's what connection with people is, and at the end of the day, I think that the best things that aromantic community discussion has to bring to the table is to really emphasize the concept of chosen journeys that we take with other people.

Comments

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I feel like one of the consequences of stretching the "born this way" argument way beyond what it actually explains (*) is that the splitters have won out over the lumpers in a big way. I get a lot of pushback on the understanding that queer identities are both contextual and intersectional; and people can have multiple identities.

And then there are those of us who jumped into the qualitative paradigm in this area with both feet and feel those words would be better used like pigments to paint autobiographical watercolors. I'll use whatever words fit the epic poem of my life.

(*) Disclaimer: Pointing out that some aspects of sexuality are socially constructed in no way suggests that sexual orientation is mutable. That my partners smell really good is likely immutable. My discomfort with some heterosexual rituals is socially constructed.

[sciatrix]

(Good disclaimer.) Yeah, I think you're right about that; people try to explain the differences in the way other people describe themselves or identify in the context of reducible differences in biophysical phenotype, and that gets.... complicated?

For example, for me, gender falls along that pathway: I think I could reasonably identify as either nonbinary or the way I do, which is gender-non-conforming-butch, and the reason I have chosen to identify the way I do is contextual in and of itself: I am most comfortable identifying my gender tradition under a broader umbrella of female under which it has historically been... associated, often, even while it slides out of that tradition and is overlooked and ignored. Someone else might decide they are more comfortable underscoring the disconnect between butch and female, or thinking of female as a more specific gender tradition than I do. (I think of it as a looser collection of a whole bunch of often-unnamed gender traditions influenced by class and culture, with a hegemonic understanding of "female" controlled by dominant races, classes, and cultures. But that hegemonic understanding doesn't encompass all the traditions that sit unacknowledged in that country, you feel me?)

But all that shit aside, I can envision equally well a scenario in which I would prefer to identify as nonbinary, pick up a more focused and discrete understanding of what "female" means that doesn't include my own experiences and identified-tradition of gender, and feel most comfortable requesting alternate pronouns that would underscore that disconnect. (As it is, I squirm when my disconnect isn't acknowledged and squirm when people don't acknowledge my connection in equal measures.)

Fuck, it's complicated. I don't choose to be comfortable or not be comfortable, I don't choose what lets me experience comfort and what makes me itch and my skin crawl, but the framework I use to cue people into the type of experiences that are most relevant to mine changes based on my cultural context. It's communication all the way down.

[sylvaine]

This makes me think of the way bisexual and pansexual works, where it means essentially the same thing, but choosing one or the other still means something to people because it's about what you're associating yourself with along with that term.

[sciatrix]

Yes! That is exactly how I feel about it--and with the cheerful admission that people will totally identify as pansexual, bisexual, pan/bi interchangeably, omnisexual, "fuck your labels," "heteroflexible," Kinsey ___.... depending on what they want to communicate at any given time.

[sylvaine]

Yes! And with the caveat that for research purposes, depending on what exactly it is you're researching, you might lump all of those together, but that doesn't mean that you're erasing anyone's identity, it's just, you need quantifiable data if you want to do quantitative data analysis...

(I realise this is barely relevant, I just saw a thing the other day on twitter again that made me groan and roll my eyes)

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I'm a bit of a crank on the bi/pan/queer mess and have a longer post queued up but...

Few of us have the luxury of being entirely self-made and self-actualized persons. I'm a survivor of explicitly anti-bisexual violence. I can't escape from the cultural reality that straight culture hates bisexual people and bisexuality in distinct ways by preferring a different label.

[sylvaine]

Yeah. I can also see why that connection might lead one to reject that label, but your argument makes so much sense to me.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Yes, I agree.