An interesting thing is how allos (those both allosexual & alloromantic) dont have any problem understanding that romantic attraction and sexual attraction don’t have to be linked/occur simultaneously until someone is ace and/or aro and then suddenly it’s a big deal

I cannot begin to name the number of conversations about sexual attraction where an allo will tell me “I like them but I don’t wanna have sex with them” or “well yeah I’d bone that” with it being made clear there’s no romantic attraction there. Like it’s understood.

But then you say you’re ace and people think you’re also aro (they’re not interchangeable) or that you just haven’t met the right person or that you’re a sociopath (an actual thing that was said about aromantics not too long ago) and it’s frustrating

So much of popular culture is based around sex and romance but they’re often separated- sex is thought of often as being separated from wanting romance/love/romantic attraction, unless you’re a woman and then of course you’d conflate the two (not always true)

This idea that men can easily separate themselves emotionally from sex and view the act objectively where women can’t is also often used to reinforce harmful stereotypes for all genders as well and helps no one

The long and short of this is that if you can conceive of sex being separate from romantic attraction, it shouldn’t be unthinkable to invert that, and it shouldn’t be unthinkable or demonized that there are people who want neither because they don’t have the attraction

Aces & aros & aroaces have emotions, are not robots, and are not asking for any kind of acceptance that popular culture doesn’t already grant or even expect of parts of dating & hookup culture -

we’re just asking for acceptance of it for reasons that might not sound like what you’re used to and asking you to learn about those reasons