aroworlds:

wixley-kryptonese:

ameliaace:

quick note: autistic ace/aro people aren’t problematic or perpetuating stereotypes because they are real people living their lives and not fictional characters written by somebody drawing upon stereotypes. They are also not in the wrong for wanting to see themselves represented in media. 

also: our ace/aro identities aren’t rooted in our autism and therefore there is nothing wrong with wanting both our identities seen at the same time.

I want my autism and aromanticism acknowledged, supported and celebrated at the same time; this should be a given. But I am aro to large degree because I am autistic, and I need this relationship acknowledged more than it is.

I find it difficult–impossible, actually–to run this blog and talk about my aromanticism without referencing my autism. My aromanticism is caught up in my dislike of touch, in finding rules about what is and isn’t romantic to be absurd and nonsensical, my inability to perform or experience emotions and behaviours that are deemed romantic by allistic society, my difficulty in emotional connections with other people. Autism and aromanticism are linked enough for me that I’ve been feeling the need for the aro-spec equivalent of autigender, because I am aro, and I am autistic, and often they can and should be discussed separately, but just as often they are so entwined it makes better sense to state that my aro-spec identity is autism-flavoured aromanticism.

I am hyper-conscious of the fact that I am risking alienating allistic aros when I bring autism into aro spaces like this one, and having a specific autistic-aro identity, one that slots underneath the aro umbrella as another way of being aro, would make me feel more comfortable as an autistic aro in aro spaces. It’d let me be autiaro (or maybe autiromantic?) in the same way other aro-specs are demi or quoi or greyro or arovague; it’d give me space to talk about the specific feels and experiences I do have.

(Side note: conventional terms like “arovague” and “nebularomantic” don’t centre the autism aspect of aromanticism flavoured by neurodivergency enough for me. I’m glad both words exist, but they’re not quite for me.)

Are all autistic aros going to feel that way? No, and that’s awesome. Just like, despite the fact that I am genderless, I feel no need for the newly-coined word “arogender” because I don’t feel my lack of gender and my aromanticism to be linked this way, but that doesn’t negate the feelings of those who want or need it (and should be able to discuss this relationship as an aro-spec experience in aro-spec spaces). We all have a wonderful diversity of identities that fit together in a variety of shared, unique and individualistic ways, and a healthy community supports and celebrates this.

Blanket statements about what we are not, even in response to stereotypes that harm us, do nothing to foster the diverse community we’re trying to build.

We need a better social construct for responding to stereotypes or assumptions that harm us that isn’t a blanket denial of said stereotype ever being relevant. The problem is that the stereotype is treated as universal by outsiders who use this–a stereotype comprised of qualities they consider harmful for other reasons, often relating to another experience of marginalisation–to dismiss, diminish and deny aros as human individuals and as a community.

We need a way of saying something like this:

Treating all aro-specs, or people/characters coded as aro-spec, as fitting any given stereotype is erasing and damaging, because it denies aro-specs agency and validity in being, like any other community, a wide, wonderful, diverse collection of people. On this basis alone, we object to its use. We acknowledge, however, that the stereotype may and can apply to individual aro-specs. We will also acknowledge that there is nothing inherently harmful in being an aro-spec person who fits said stereotype, because they harm us most often by taking qualities associated with other experiences of marginalisation and applying them to aro-specs, or people/characters coded as aro-spec, as an indication of our assumed inhumanity. We will not diminish or erase otherwise-marginalised people–especially otherwise-marginalised aro-specs–who are also hurt by this stereotype in our fight against the pain of stereotypes used by others to hurt us.

Because our current conversations in rejecting damaging stereotypes with blanket “we aren’t this” statements, speaking as someone who fits several negatively-regarded stereotypes about being aro and autistic and aro, do nothing but make a world where I still don’t get to exist.