Unintentional humor at Everyday Feminism, chapter 47 thousand-something.

It’s a long long long long piece by a person explaining that person is unlike everyone else and very very interesting.

Once upon a time, the term asexual served the purpose of covering anyone and everyone who didn’t feel so inclined to marry, to romance, to fuck. Homosexual, heterosexual, and asexual were the only labels worth mentioning, and covered all necessary categories.

Or so we thought.

And then along came my fabulous and ridiculously queer self, balancing on that liminal edge beyond which more precise, more nebulous, and more complicated labels lay – and I’m not the only one.

Not the only one, and yet so special and magical all the same.

And then, I finally found the term through which all of my other identities fully crystallized: aromantic.

See, people had been calling me cold, weird, distant, and pretty much every synonym for “unloving” that could possibly exist. This made little sense to me. I felt so much, so incredibly deeply. I simply didn’t express it like others did. I didn’t define my relationships by hierarchy or escalation but by the ways we grew alongside one another, the ways our minds and emotions entwined yet never merged.

Needless to say, my noetisexual self dove deep into the murky waters of the asexual community to uncover the treasures hidden along the silted bottom. The aromantic experience and identity lay there waiting, through a tunnel leading into new waters, new territory – connected and yet distinct.

Isn’t the writing just byoooootiful?

No, it isn’t.

Person goes on that way for what looks like about 20 thousand words. I skimmed because there’s nothing interesting about it. It’s funny though the way it’s written as if all this is based on something, as opposed to being just spun out of person’s whimsy.

While there is some overlap between the ace and aro communities, they’re actually separate and distinct. For instance, even though I happen to be both an ace and aro, I find I have more in common with other aros than with other aces.

I found that there are other aces who still want to marry, still value romance over friendship, and still buy into harmful amatonormative ideals. Aros, though, tend to eschew the rituals of courtship, the escalation of romantic relationships, and are a bit more anarchic when it comes to the formation and intensity of each relationship.

Isn’t that fascinating?

No, it’s not. (Mind you, there are interesting things to say about the marriage turn and mainstreaming, but these things aren’t among them.)

Author’s blurb tells us author contains multitudes:

Michón Neal has so many identities they won’t fit here. Ze writes a mix of scifi, fantasy, erotica, and autobiography called cuil fiction about unique people in unique circumstances, with characters running the gamut of non-monogamous and LGBTQIA+ spectrums. That’s right: queer and poly fiction! Ze is currently working on the Cuil Effect project, a ridiculously long tale about healing, absurdity, and all the different ways people interact. You can find more details, sneak peaks, links, and absurdity on hir blog, Shadow in the Mirror. Ze also invented the only class on Intersectional Non-Monogamy and is the co-editor for Postmodern Woman.

That gamut is a very limited gamut.