Amatonormativity - Tumblr Posts
i don't really know how to say this but i think we (the aro community) need to have a discussion about like, how not every romantic relationship or feeling is automatically amatonormative, and that it's not The Concept Of Romance that's the problem but the societal prioritization of romance over every other relationship, but uhhh i don't know how to say it without writing a whole essay so if someone who's better at words than me wants to weigh in
Love at first sight doesn’t exist, that’s just attraction that allos lie about to make it seem more ✨special✨
Aro culture is not believing in love at first sight and then being hit with reality that some people actually do fall in love at first sight
being on the aro spectrum would be a lot easier if being single wasn't made to feel like a literal death sentence
anyway so i feel like the western obsession with romantic love is symptomatic of the absence of community we experience in our socially isolating society,
so you know how a lot of queer people grow up in a homophobic and purity obsessed environment? i feel like i almost had the opposite. i grew up in a relatively sex positive household with decent enough sex ed at school. abstinence was never pushed on me. i didn't grow up feeling like there was anything wrong with queerness... unless that queerness was aromanticism and asexuality. yes, i was lucky to grow up in an open minded household, but that doesn't mean i had a perfect childhood. no matter if you grew up in a conservative environment or an open minded one, if you're an aspec kid, you gonna get fucked up.
if you grew up conservative, it might seem like a virtue at first. you're one of the "good" kids because you're not interesting in dating, you're perfectly happy to "wait" because you don't understand what the rush is. until you become an adult and suddenly you're hounded with questions. why don't you have a boyfriend/girlfriend? who are you going to marry? when are you going to marry? when you get married you'll be able to have lots of sex, as a reward for waiting. what do you mean you don't actually want sex? that's unnatural. you need to reproduce. now it's no longer a good thing to be disinterested. there is something wrong with you.
if you grew up in an open minded environment, it's very isolating. from my experience at least, you're hyperaware that everyone else is experiencing these feelings that you don't, and everyone is saying how normal it is, all teenagers have these feelings. you're not interested in boys? it's okay to like girls. look how progressive we are. why do you still look lost? who do you have a crush on? when are you going to start dating? why can't you be a normal teenager? you'll understand when you're older. sex is a normal and expected part of being an adult. why do you look uncomfortable? when are you going to lose your virginity? virginity is shameful. it means you're ugly. what a loser.
so yeah. i guess i'm lucky to grow up in the household i did. i'm trans and so grateful my family is supportive. but they don't know about my aroaceness. it's the part of my identity that makes me feel the least safe. i feel like i have the opposite problem of an allo person who grew up conservative. i'm an aspec person who grew up in an environment where sex was seen as normal and healthy to the point that not being interested was seen as abnormal and unhealthy. no matter what, aspec kids are shamed. the best case scenario would be a gay kid growing up in the latter situation. there is no best case scenario for aspec kids. and there won't be until aromanticism and asexuality are given widespread awareness and acceptance.
Submitted May 13, 2023
You know, I was really thinking about the "love/sex is what makes us humans" and, to be honest...
What about our capacity to create ideas? Feel emotions? Our ability to communicate with such complex sounds, such as languages? Our individualities and personalities?
Looking from this point, it feels like allo/amatonormativity conditioned society to think the only goal for us is go give birth and nothing else, specially under capitalism, since the land lords need people to exploit.
It's sad, ngl.
Shout out to all of y’all who are happily or unhappily single for this upcoming Valentine’s Day! Society is gonna try to tell you that it’s wrong, or something to be sad about, but this is your reminder that you don’t need another person to love you to be loved/worthy of love! Special shout out to all of you aro and/or ace spec folks! Just because you don’t/don’t want to have someone to spend the day with doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it! Chocolate is going to be cheap in the following days! Do something nice for yourself.
A pretty good video essay on amatonormatovity I just finished watching you should also watch it especially because it’s Aro Week and aromanticism is discussed in the video
❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🖤
Shipping is fun and all but I swear every single time someone makes a comment, whether as a joke or in a legitimate analysis, about there being "no other explanation" for a pair's interactions, I lose just a bit more of my sanity
Like, no, you guys don't get it. Romance is not about the Amount of devotion, it's about the COLOR. the FLAVOR of it all. a character can be just as devoted to their platonic friend as they are to their romantic partner, and they don't love either of them more, just differently.
But because the majority of people still have it stuck in their minds that romance exists on the highest tier of love, I'm stuck seeing endless takes that boil down to "these two care about each other too much for it to NOT be romantic" as if that's the core determining factor to how literally any of this works
In conclusion: stop telling me that I don't understand the story if I don't interpret the leads as romantic, I am TIRED
aro culture is sending your best friend a valentine's gift to spite the amatonormativity
.
It's only two weeks folks we'll make it!
me listening to the radio as a kid: why are all the songs about love?
my mom: well, everybody can relate to them
me, now aroace:
Based on a true conversation oof
there need to be more conversations about romance's place in society and the way society brainwashes us into thinking we're nothing without romance
that trope where a character doesnt want romance until they find ~the one~ but reverse it. give me a character that centers their life around finding a partner until they realize that amatonormativity is bullshit
i am firmly convinced that din djarin is aro-spec and asexual.
(quick disclaimer: i speak for myself. not all aros and aces share my experiences with aromanticism and asexuality.)
one thing that's always struck me about din is how much he values platonic relationships. cara and kuill aren't any less important to him than omera. that's not necessarily an a-spec thing, but it's rare for straight characters on tv. it's even rarer for the focus of the show to be a platonic, father-son relationship rather than a romantic one. aro-coding? definitely.
i've also noticed that a lot of allos, especially straight allos, seem to sort people of their target genders into boxes of "potential s/o" and "not a potential s/o". even if they're happily single, there's still this idea that "i just want to be friends, but i'm fine if it evolves into something more". like, the idea of a romantic/sexual relationship is always in the back of their mind, they’re just choosing not to pursue it.
(second disclaimer: i'm not allo. all i know about allo-ness is what i've observed from the outside.)
din doesn't do that. it's like the "romantic" and "sexual" relationship boxes don't even exist for him most of the time. his only boxes are "enemy", "ally", and "friend/potential babysitter". he's never even considered that cara could be anything other than a friend. i can't describe it quite right, but this mentality towards relationship categories was one of the things that convinced me i was aroace and not just an allo who "hasn't met the right person yet".
and then there's din's relationship with omera. it didn't seem sexual to me, for one thing. second, i'm romance-repulsed, and this is the only romantic tension i've ever seen that i wasn't squicked out by and actually even liked. i just kept thinking, "if i were in a relationship, this is what it would be like." they both felt like they could be happy together, but also like their lives would still be fulfilling if they were single. no theatrics, no cheesiness, just two people who knew they could love each other if only they had the chance. but they didn't. so they moved on.
i don't know exactly what it was. it just gave me a-spec vibes.
all interpretations of din are valid. personally, i think he's asexual and some variant of aromantic - maybe grayro, maybe demi, maybe oriented aro. not sure.
even if he turns out to be a regular ol' hetero, i'm super happy with how this show is combatting amatonormativity. literally the only character in the show with an s/o is frog lady. none of the single characters are portrayed as broken or defective or missing someone. i love that i can watch this show and feel safe from aphobia. thank you, jon favreau and dave filoni.
I’m always gonna be pissed that amatonormatvity as a term and a model for understanding society was literally mocked into disuse by exclusionists because of its association with aromantic folks.
Amatonormativity, honestly, has approximately fuck-all to do with aros. We did not even coin it, we’re simply the only people who actually take it seriously cause we’re among the ones who are most hurt by it. And it PISSES me the fuck off that it is not a widespread model used in greater queer discussions.
it’s actually so baffling me to me that when loveless aros express not wanting their identities to be defined by love ppl will literally whip out the most specific n strange tangents on ‘love’ that you’ve ever heard under like EVERY one of these posts. theres always at least one person going ‘ok but have u ever seen a bee pollinate a flower. have u ever smiled at an old lady on the street. do u not relish the smell of fresh horse shit in the countryside’ like. sorry but appreciating the general world around me isn’t what i’d personally call love and frankly i don’t think it’s what most alloros would either!!! it’s interesting how y’all r suddenly so insistent on expanding the definition of love when and ONLY aros question and/or reject it 🤨
I wanna start making allos angry by saying things like “oh no, they’re just romantic partners, not friends” and “people who are just romantic partners wouldn’t do that, they are clearly something more”. Maybe if we reversed it on them they’d see how fucking dumb it is to put relationships on a hierarchy, acting like one type of relationship is superior to all others.