My Aroallo Journey
Written by Grey (guest writer)
Word count: 1564
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
I am Grey, a 23 year old aromantic multisexual active in the aromantic community. Being aroallo is an important part of my identity. I am also genderqueer and trans. I’m an artist and enjoy weaving art into many aspects of my life, including aromanticism. I work in many mediums, including visual art, both traditional and digital, crafts, and writing. Other things that are important to me are witchcraft and Satanism. I am also into goth culture, mostly cybergoth, and Star Wars, Dungeons and Dragons, and various other nerdy interests.
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I’ll start at the beginning of my aromantic awakening, nearly a decade ago. Back then aromanticism was unheard of, and impossible to find information about - unless you knew where to look. Even then it was treated as a subset of asexuality. Finding aro-centered resources used to be extremely difficult, but finding aroallo resources used to be nearly impossible. Both are still overlooked today.
I discovered myself during a time when there were no dedicated aroallo resources, communities, or blogs. There was barely a general aromantic community. Almost everything seemed to center asexuality, and if you wanted a community hub, AVEN was your best bet. AVEN, which back then did not even mention the word “aromantic” in their FAQs and information pages. It was heavily slanted towards uplifting alloaces while aroaces were left to the side.
Due to a lack of information, plus being young and questioning, I didn’t know it was possible to be aro without being ace. In the very beginning I knew about asexuality but not aromanticism, and didn’t know that sexual and romantic attraction did not have to be the same. The vast majority of information I found was about alloaces, everything else excluded. I thought the lack of information on other identities meant they simply didn’t exist, or at least were so vague that I couldn’t imagine them as real options for myself.
Alloace was the closest thing I had found. I knew I was drawn towards the “lack of attraction” of asexuality, but it didn’t quite fit and felt contradictory. It took too much digging to discover rich narratives of aromanticism, even ace-centered ones. Then I began to identify as aroace, which felt closer. That lasted a few years, and in that time representation of aroaces got better. Representation of aroallos, however, still did not exist. Eventually the cognitive dissonance of identifying as ace caught up to me, and I finally embraced my allosexuality. I did so alone, with no aroallo community in existence, and amongst hostility from both within and outside of the aspec community.
Things are much better now. I have been happy in my orientation for years. The aroallo community is beginning to blossom, and people are finally starting to listen. While I still hold bad memories from the dehumanization and loneliness of having the existence and voices of people like me pushed to the side, I finally see a better path ahead. I have lots of hope for the current aro and aroallo communities. I want to help create for others what I needed in the past but didn’t have.
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Being aroallo influences my life in many ways. It has led me to an entirely different way of conceptualizing and navigating life and relationships. I’ve had to reevaluate my entire future once it became clear that I didn’t have to follow the path I was expected to take. I was expected to travel the relationship escalator to straight marriage and start a family, and make this the most important thing in my life. My upbringing was very heteronormative, amatonormative, and mononormative. Realizing I was aro launched me out of the illusion that I would be able to meet those restrictive expectations, and that realization was incredibly freeing. I experienced a 180º shift in my worldview, as all the social norms I had been taught were unchangeable fell away. At that point in life I needed that push, as I was raised with very restrictive thinking and discouraged from exploring, and had to grow out of that.
Being aromantic and allosexual is a unique experience. It’s not fully comparable to either alloromantic allosexual or aroace identities, and comes with its own experiences, joys, and struggles. When my orientation is so unknown and underrepresented, there is no ready-made path, and I love being able to make my own way and map out new territory.
Some of this territory is less new. For example, I am a relationship anarchist, which already exists as an established model. There are others of many orientations who maneuver relationships without a socially imposed hierarchy and amatonormative rulebook. However, aroallos bring a new perspective to relationship anarchy and many other things. I really enjoy conversations about relationships that turn to deconstructing norms, and the “what” and “why” of the ways we interact with each other.
Many people have questions about how I navigate significant relationships. Each connection I have with someone is unique, and everything is different degrees of friendship. I mostly do away with the lines between “friend” and “partner”, as nothing is exclusive to either for me, including sex. I use “partner” to indicate a significance that “friend” unfortunately does not have for most people. “Friend” can have just as much significance, but society is not ready for that idea yet. That partners do not automatically take priority over friends, and that friendships can be sexual are ideas that baffled some people in my life, to the point where they could not be in my life because our views of relationships were so different. Non-romantic sexual relationships that are not casual, sexual friendships, non-amatonormative friendships, and queerplatonic relationships are concepts not found in many people’s worldview at all. My ideal relationships existing in what for many is unknown territory can be incredibly challenging to navigate around.
I do not see my aromanticism as a “lack”. That may be technically true, but on the level of life experience it is another matter altogether. People assume I have an empty hole where romance should be - rather, there is no slot to fit something into to begin with. My life is already full, and I don't have to "replace" romance with anything in order to be whole. Aroallos in particular are assumed to “replace” the lack of romance with extra sexuality, but this leads to hypersexualization and ends up with people deeming my orientation sexually inappropriate.
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Being aroallo in the aro community, aspec community, and overall LGBTQ+ community is both a reward and a struggle. In the aro and wider aspec communities, asexuality is usually centered over allosexuality. This comes largely from the aro community first finding its roots in the ace community, but that history does not excuse aroallo exclusion and negativity in the present. Aroallos belong in the community just like all other aros. Aroallos also have the right to have our own spaces to talk about aroallo-specific issues. This is just like how bi and pan subcommunities or trans only groups are meeting a specific need and not dividing the wider community by existing.
Aroallos deal with lots of negative attitudes within and outside the community based on stereotypes of aroallos being deceitful, predatory, and abusive for wanting sex without romance, or being angry and taking up too much space. Sexuality without the purity buffer of romance is seen as crass and inappropriate. In general, aroallos are treated poorly for disrupting the norms of romance and sexuality. This is especially prominent in two very different places: conservative spaces where the only time sexuality is acceptable is when it is paired with a straight, monogamous, married romance; and in the LGBTQ+ community, where some LGBTQ+ people downplay the sexual side of many of our identities in favor of playing up the more acceptable romantic side when fighting for equality. This has led to an odd situation where many consider romantic LGBTQ+ love to be fine, but LGBTQ+ sexuality is still seen as predatory and disgusting. While this hurts the whole community, aroallos are hit by this especially hard. We are seen as the “unacceptable” by both the wider LGBTQ+ community and straight society.
While every community has its flaws, the accepting parts of the aro community are overall a supportive space full of ideas and creativity, and I am proud to be a part of it. Some portions of the broader LGBTQ+ community are also great. Things are getting better, people are listening to aros and aroallos more, but we are not there yet. I am eager for the wider LGBTQ+ community to become more accepting of aros, and see all that we have in common and how we can help each other. We deal with many similar things: compulsory heterosexuality, distance from "normative" orientations, sometimes distance from "normative" gender and gender roles. We are all disadvantaged under heteronormativity.
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The aro community has inspired me to advocate for myself and others. I have done some aro blogging, including for the Carnival of Aros. I have also worked with TAAAP; I jumped at the opportunity to help the organization better include aroallos. I have also made lots of aro art and I help run a LGBTQ+ friendly Discord server centering aro artists. Creativity as activism is where I have found my niche, as I am passionate about art and its ability to bring joy and bring people together.
A voidpunk representation of Grey they created using the aro flag colors
My aro themed art has spanned many mediums: digital art, traditional painting, patch making, and aro-focused witchcraft, all of which I plan to do more of in the future on a site I have made specifically for this purpose. Art and advocacy has become a religious experience for me, through the Luciferian drive to educate, enlighten, and strive for equality. I believe what we put out into culture can shape the world in positive ways. I feel this is where my aromantic journey has led me, from questioning and confusion many years ago to a solid identity and community involvement that I can be proud of.