We continue our series of Aspec Voices for Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week. Once again, we are focusing on the struggles and issues of specific parts of the aro community – people who are often overlooked by mainstream alloromantic people talking about orientations and even hidden within aro communities.
Aromantic people who have disabilities or neurodivergences are often overlooked or ignored, so we wanted to highlight some of their voices. Thank you to all who volunteered their time and shared their experiences.
Introductions
Alex – I run the a-romantic–aromantic tumblr blog, and the associated discord/ virtual community events. For my identity: I mostly just identify with the label “aro” now, or “romo aro”, but I guess technically I’m somewhere in the nebulous cupio-quoi-crux allo aro area. And, I’m disabled; Autistic, Fibromyalgia, Ehlers Danlos, and Dysautonomia (maybe POTS) to be exact.
Amalthæ – Demi aro, Neurodivergent with disabilities
My name is Ally Ravago and I’m aromantic asexual. I’m single and I’m a Filipino. I was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, or SLE or lupus for short, in 2019 and I am recognized as a person with disability.
Eryn Goetz – gray-romantic with arthritis, also aphantastic
Few – aromantic, with Tourette’s
Ghost – I am allosexual, aromantic and romance averse. I am autistic, have spd, and chronic fatigue syndrome.
Jules – I am quoi aromantic and aego greysexual. I am mainly disabled by severe anxiety, psychosis and migraines.
Liam (xe/they/soft) – I’m aromantic demisexual, I have ADHD, fibromyalgic and patellar syndromes
Magpie – I’m a sex favorable neurodivergent (disabled?) demi and/or grey romo aro.
My name is Mars (he/him) and I am autistic, aromantic, and asexual.
Mars Naomi, It/Its, Aroflux, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, ADHD, and PTSD
Pallas – Aromantic. I also feel connected to the asexual spectrum, but I haven’t found a label under that umbrella that I’m comfortable with. I have Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Hyper-mobile type, which is a connective tissue disorder
Rebecca Ashley – I identify as an aroace lesbian and my disabilities are clinical depression and clinical generalized anxiety.
RC – Suffered from autoimmune disease from my early teens, was officially diagnosed with Systemic Lupus at 17, had kidney failure at 31. Been on disability for 15 years.
Ryan, they/them, aromantic (but possibly quioromantic?), bipolar
S. – Autistic and arthritic with mental illness. I identify as aroqueer, but specifically Demiromantic and alloaro
Theo – demiromantic, greyromantic, epileptic, with anxiety
V – I’m aromantic asexual. I’m autistic and have chronic pain (likely fibro) that means I use a cane.
Interview Questions
How does your disability or neurodivergence intersect with your orientation?
Alex: My aro identity actually directly reflects my neurodivergence; I have a hard time being able to differentiate big feelings, what they are and what they mean. So it’s really hard to understand if I’m feeling romantic attraction or not.
Amalthæ: Chances are, my neurodivergence has a lot of impact on the way I experience attraction. Maybe it makes me unable to form romantic love. Maybe it makes me more able to discriminate between the different kinds of love a human can feel so that I am more able to be aware of what is NOT romantic love.
On top of it, some of my disabilities are believed to turn people aro/ace. Which, does not mean that I am any less aro/ace. If it was a simple cause-effect relationship, every person with my disabilities would be aro/ace. Not the case though.
AR: Being aromantic and chronically ill makes me feel doubly invisible.
Ghost: I think my being autistic definitely affects my being aromantic. As an autistic person I don’t grasp a lot of social constructs like gender or social norms and I believe I would put romance in that category.
Jules: It means I am single, sex, romance and affection averse, and sexually and romantically inactive because of complex trauma and my disabilities.
Liam: I think it makes it difficult to identify some feelings clearly, so differentiating between platonic and romantic is hard. It’s one of the reasons why I identify as aromantic.
Magpie: It’s difficult to say whether or not my neurodivergence affects the way I perceive my orientation, but I can’t entirely discount the possibility either. It’s always been fuzzy and it’s really hard for me to know something like that. How it intersects with my allosexuality is that I’m autistic and have a special interest in sex, so learning about things like BDSM and related topics is a really fun pastime for me.
Mars: I feel like the two are deeply intertwined; as an autistic person, I already live my life a step outside of the standard social norms, and that extends to the way that I perceive relationships. The idea that love is a strict binary, either platonic or romantic, is a framework that is constructed and maintained socially, and like many social constructs it often doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t see where those lines are drawn, and I don’t find them useful in categorizing my own experiences. The love that I feel as an autistic, aromantic person can’t be described with such a limited framework, and it often feels like it transcends it to be something else altogether.
MN: Well, since I have bipolar disorder I experience deep dips of depression sometimes and this causes me to have a hard time distinguishing my aromanticism and depression at first. But now I understand it a lot better.
Pallas: I feel as though others mostly force the intersection of the two. While I’m proud of both of these aspects of myself, and I don’t ever try to hide either, they’re just two parts of my identity. They impact my life in huge ways, but they don’t make me who I am. I see more of other people attempting to connect the two, and it always catches me off guard because most days, (despite my pride), these pieces of who I am only cross my mind three times a day at the maximum!
RA: I am aromantic and I live with clinical depression and anxiety. There are a lot of misconceptions about what it means to both be aromantic and to live with mental illnesses, and people often make inaccurate assumptions as a result, such as that my orientation is the cause of my mental illnesses or vice versa. It also makes accessing health services more challenging for the same reason–I have to be careful about who I choose to come out to so that I can ensure my ability to access proper mental health care because many health care providers are still uninformed about aromanticism and what it truly means to be aromantic.
RC: There’s a lot of misinformation, assumptions and bias around people with disabilities and romantic relationships in general. For me, it was assumed that I didn’t want a relationship because I had a disability, and sadly, I probably dealt with a lot less pushback around not seeking a romantic partner precisely because of my disability.
Ryan: I am bipolar. I didn’t get a diagnosis until my 30s, so I was untreated and unmedicated for my entire 20s. During that time, I would often get obsessed over a person as a symptom of a manic episode. I would mistake this for romantic feelings. Now that I am medicated, that no longer happens.
Theo: My anxiety makes my romance repulsion worse and makes navigating relationships more difficult, but my physical disability has no intersection with my aromanticism.
V: I feel people automatically assume that I’m aroace specifically because of my disabilities, especially my autism. People assume there’s something wrong with me mentally and attribute my autism to “explain” why I don’t feel attraction. People also assume that it’s a side effect of meds I’m on and when I tell them I’m not on any meds, they’re confused. But I think to some extent they’re relieved I’m aroace, because for a lot of abled people who don’t realise they’re ableist, it’s uncomfortable to imagine an autistic cane user being romantic and kissing people or having sex. I know this is aro specific but the ace part is very relevant to that question
How is your experience in aro communities impacted by your disability or neurodivergence or your experience with other people with disabilities or neurodivergences impacted by your orientation?
Alex: There’s simultaneously a lot of dehumanization and solidarity. A lot of aros share my nuerodivergencies/disabilities, but also there’s a lot of “I’m still human because-” thrown around, that throws the other community under the bus.
Amalthæ: I discovered that a lot of other aro people have the same types of neurodivergences as me and it feels like a big family I love it!
AR: I haven’t seen much representation of chronically ill aros or aros with other disabilities. It’d be nice to see not only representation, but to hear our stories.
EG: I think that we as a community have a fair understanding of neurodivergences and perhaps also some areas of mental health. We’re pretty good at being inclusive and not gatekeeping.
Ghost: I feel a lot like I am a bit of a stereotype, “the loveless and uninterested in people autist”. I mean I am a bit of an autism stereotype in many ways. People in the autism community will be advocating for like how autistic people are not all aroace people who are uninterested in romance and sex which I fully agree with but it feels very much like aromantic and asexual autists don’t or shouldn’t exist because “it plays into a stereotype”.
Jules: In aro communities, I’ve felt deeply disconnected and alone because platonic relationships are featured many times. I can’t want, keep or make them. It has made me feel like besides failing at love, I also fail at an essential thing that would make me human.
Liam: I have a hard time differentiating romantic, platonic etc feelings, which is one of the reasons I decided to identify as aromantic.
Mars: I’m definitely more comfortable being open about my aromanticism with other autistic people than neurotypicals. Obviously there are no universal experiences among either demographic, but autistic people tend to be well acquainted with the feeling of being different. We are deeply aware that there is more to the human experience than the societal rules imposed on us, and as such I feel like we’re less likely to impose those same rules on each other. Whenever I come out to a neurotypical person, I’m always bracing for the moment when they’ll dismiss my experiences just because they don’t fit into their preexisting idea of how society works. With autistic people however, I feel much more confident that I will be met with patience and understanding.
Pallas: When interacting with other aros, I always have this underlying fear that I’ll be invalidated, or accused of only being aro because of my disability. Even though as I stated above, in my life, my disability and my identity don’t intersect. Then, I have my own insecurities that voice that same thing: What if I’m only this way because of my disorder? Which of course isn’t true.
RA: Because many of the aro communities, both before and during the pandemic, centre around online spaces, I find it hard to be as engaged in these communities as I would like to be. Keeping up with messages online and engaging regularly on Discord servers or social media can be really draining, and it takes a toll on both my energy levels and my mental health. So despite my best intentions, I often find myself having to step back from aromantic communities because I just don’t have the capacity to engage meaningfully in spaces where these communities tend to exist.
RC: It’s never really come up and when it has come up, the conversation has usually revolved more around people with neurodivergences. That doesn’t bother me or affect my participation in aro communities since I’m also involved in communities that center around people with lupus. I kinda see the two as separate.
Theo: I think the types of people open to identifying with aromanticism are very often the people open to identifying as disabled or neurodivergent, so it isn’t much of an outlier in the community that I’ve found. There are studies showing queer people more broadly are disproportionately disabled, likely for this same reason. I haven’t met any aromantic people outside of the internet (to my knowledge), so being aromantic is certainly something that I don’t have in common with any disabled people I know, but it’s something I don’t have in common with anyone I know at all. All the disabled people I know who I’ve come out to as aromantic have been great about it.
V: I think other disabled people tend to accept my orientation a lot easier than abled people do, because as a group disabled people tend to be queerer, if that makes sense. But I do think the autistic community has a habit of pushing back against headcanons / canon characters where they’re disabled and aro, Especially autistic and aro, for fear of it “infantilising” autistics. This is actually upsetting for me because I deserve representation too, and when you think the aro label being applied to someone infantilises them, it means you’re infantilising aros to some extent.
The aro community doesn’t talk about disability too much but I’ve noticed a lot of disabled people are IN the aro community
How could aro communities better support you?
Alex: Please start adding image descriptions, as well as making sure you pay attention to how you are qualifying human, qualifying aro. Think about how you talk about personality disorders. Lots of aros are impacted by their disability and neurodivergence.
Amalthæ: They already do!
AR: I think aro communities can support me better by letting our voices be heard.
Jules: I’d deeply appreciate it if platonic relationships/attraction were treated as independent from human worth, along with romantic relationships/attraction.
Mars: Honestly I think that all of the aromantic people I personally know are also neurodivergent, and as such I’ve never felt like my autism was a barrier between me and other aromantic people. Maybe it’s different in other corners of the community, but the circles I run in have always been very open and understanding of all the nuances that can come from being both aromantic and neurodivergent.
Pallas: Aside from being there and making sure to include ALL aros? I have no f**king clue
RA: Aro communities could better support people like me by presenting more opportunities for face-to-face interactions and community building by hosting them via video chat or in person (when it is safe to do so). I would really like the opportunity to meet more people who have similar identities and experiences, but I find it hard to do so in a meaningful way with the current resources and platforms available.
RC: I’m a bit older than most of the people I’ve met in the aro community, so I’ve already built my support networks and don’t really need anything more from my interactions with the aro community, so I don’t think I’m the best person to answer that question.
Theo: There’s nothing I’ve seen that would benefit me specifically but in general aro communities could do a better job including alt text for images. I’m not sure how in-person aro communities could improve since I’ve never been to one.
V: I think there’s not really much I need from the aro community in terms of being disabled but I think they should check their perception of disabled people sometimes and be aware of the specific treatment we get.
What do you wish aro people knew about you or other aros with disabilities or neurodivergences?
Alex: Any space should be accessible- online or off. Everything’s a spectrum, the level of impact that disability has on an aro’s identity itself or on their access to communities varies. We should support all aros to be able to participate.
Amalthæ: No gatekeeping please. (Though I haven’t encountered gatekeeping in aro communities)
AR: My chronic illness does not make me any less aro and that my chronic illness did not cause my aromanticism.
Ghost: My being autistic fully intersects with my aromantic identity but that does not make my aromanticism less real or valid.
Jules: I’d like them to know to respect us and our identities. Some of us are proud of being disabled and neurodivergent aros. It helps us reclaim the sense of humanity and dignity that has been taken from us.
Magpie: Whether or not we would be aromantic/aro-spec without either of these things is irrelevant. Just like ace people who’ve felt that they lost their allosexuality due to trauma, some aros might not be aros without neurodivergences, and that’s perfectly okay.
Mars: As I said in my last answer, I am lucky enough to have never had any problems with the larger aromantic community on account of being autistic. Hopefully that will continue to hold true in the future!
Pallas: That one doesn’t impact the other as much as you’d think
RC: I guess that it’s okay if your aromanticism stems from your disability or neurodivergence. I think people tend to get caught up with how strictly they fit a label or not and trying to prove that they’re allowed to use certain labels.
Theo: Disability can make aromanticism a lot more complicated to navigate.
V: I wish other aros knew that while it’s not always the case, it’s okay to feel like your disability or neurodivergency contributed to you being aromantic.
What do you wish allo people knew about you or other aros with disabilities or neurodivergences?
Alex: Pay attention. Make sure that you aren’t making assumptions on disability affecting someone’s aromanticism. Being aro does not mean that someone has something “wrong” with them. Being disabled doesn’t mean that someone “can’t understand” romance. Saying that is dehumanizing.
Amalthæ: It does not mean that I am “less aromantic” because of it. A sparrow is not “less feathery” because its feather grow on it because it is a sparrow. Even if there were a cause-effect relationship, it does not mean that being aro is in itself a disability or a symptom, and it does not mean that I can or need or want to be “cured” from it. It is not proof that I am disabled, either. It’s just a question of random chances. I rolled the dice, got a neurodivergence at birth, which caused me to flip a coin to see if I would be aro too – where a neurotypical person would have rolled another dice for being aro, with less chances of being aro themself. I’m not less human. I’m not “unable to love”. I am just more aware of the many different other ways of loving people that exist outside of romantic love. I traded romantic pink for the rest of the rainbow, if you want. It’s not better nor worse. It’s just different.
AR: I wish allosexuals knew that they should not jump to the conclusion that aros with disabilities or neurodivergencies are aromantic because of our disabilities or neurodivergencies. And even if it is, it doesn’t invalidate us.
Magpie: Neurodivergent/Disabled people can be aro, but they’re not aro by default. Our disabilities, neurodivergencies, or aromanticism shouldn’t be used against us as an excuse to treat us like children or take away our autonomy, and it doesn’t make us ignorant about romance or sex.
Mars: That neither my aromanticism nor my autism are flaws in need of changing and that they certainly don’t make my life any less fulfilling. I may not experience love in the same way that you do, and I don’t need to. My love does not have to look like yours to be legitimate.
Few: We are still human, although different to you in terms of attraction and our disabilities, we are still human and deserve dignity and respect, and not be overridden/ignored.
Pallas: See above
RA: I wish there was more knowledge and conversation, in general, surrounding aromanticism and mental health, pertaining to both as separate experiences as well as how those experiences intersect. Aromanticism and mental health are both topics around which there tends to be a lot of stigma and misinformation, and while I don’t mind acting as an advocate, it would make my experience, and the experiences of others who identify similarly, a lot easier to not be the ones solely baring the burden of educating others.
RC: I couldn’t begin to list all the things I want to scream at people about how to better treat people with disabilities and/or neurodivergences in general, I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
S: Some of us do feel our aro identities are connected to our disabilities and neurodivergence, for others this is not the case. Many of us feel little or no connection and it shouldn’t be assumed one way or the other. All experiences in this area are unique and should be respected.
Theo: My anxiety is not the reason I am demiromantic.
V: I wish allos knew that me being disabled and aromantic doesn’t mean that “curing” my disability would “cure” my aromanticness. It’s not an unwanted side effect and I am happy with my identity. Please stop seeing me as less than human.