On Being Gray-Panromantic

TW: mentions of pregnancy and genitalia, mentions of queer in-community prejudice, discussion of amatonormativity, cissexism, and heterosexism

Something awesome about realizing you're queer is that, depending on your situation, you learn about things about queer culture that most cishet people would never even consider. You learn new words, like demisexual, genderqueer, and queerplatonic. You learn that there are many different ways to be queer, and the differences between gender and sex, polyamory and threesomes, gender presentation and gender identity, sexual orientation and romantic orientation, sexual orientation and sexual behavior.

You can, in queer spaces, announce that you're not entirely sure what your gender is or that you have two moms or that you're voluntarily having your testes removed or that you sometimes feel like there's a phantom penis between your legs or that you don't have any gender at all, and no one will bat an eye. Talk of pregnant men isn't relegated to speculative fiction; colors, clothing and toys have no gender; no one assumes you're straight when you mention your significant other; polyamory isn't just for Mormons; ranting about which bathroom to use is a thing; and "What are your pronouns?" is a legitimate, important, and (somewhat) normalized question. It's great. (I mean, the queer community is still really fucked-up and allosexist and monosexist and cissexist and kinkphobic and misogynistic and racist in a lot of cases. Still, there are some things that only other queer people understand.)

Of course, everyone's different, but this has been my experience and that of some other queer people I've talked to. I never knew I was genderfluid until I became involved with queer culture because of my bisexuality. I barely knew of gender diversity beyond cis men and cis women, so how was I supposed to understand that there are literally thousands of awesome and beautiful ways to experience gender?

But that's not the topic of this post. The topic of this post is that, since I'm queer, I have mostly queer friends, and I'm pretty active in the community, I have a better understanding of queer culture in relation to romantic and sexual orientation than most. I understand, where most cishet people wouldn't, that sexual orientation and romantic orientation are two different things.

I mean, I'm still not some Guru of Rainbow Wisdom (as awesome as that would be...). Until a gray-romantic friend of mine explained her romantic orientation to me, I had no understanding of what the term gray-romantic meant. I hadn't realized that my general indifference to and bafflement concerning romance (Yes, this includes cis men. I don't want a husband or wife or wubby or kids. I want a platonic life partner who I have sex with without it being weird, a cat because CATS, an apartment in Royal Oak, and some friends' kids that I can occasionally spoil. I can be happy for and even ship alloromantic couples, but I rarely want romance or experience romantic attraction myself and it's sometimes weird or uncomfortable for me to see alloromantic couples being cutesy right in front of me in real life) and lack of initial romantic attraction meant I wasn't biromantic, as I'd originally thought upon realizing I was queer. For people like me, who fall in the gray-area between romantic and aromantic, things aren't so simple.

What being aromantic doesn't mean:

• That I'm unfeeling
• That I can't love (love is more than just romance)
• That any sexual relationship I have, with anyone of any gender or sex, is based on only lust (thus far, I haven't had any sexual relationships with anyone)
• That it's just a Tumblr thing
• That I will never experience romantic love (aromantic identity is a spectrum. Not all aromantics experience being aromantic the same way. However, I have ever really gotten a crush - which, to me, means that I have seriously thought being in a not-totally-platonic relationship with them would be really nice - on two people. The first time, I lost interest pretty quickly and the second time, the person had been someone I'd known and been friends with for awhile. Neither of them have been guys. One person had been nonbinary and the other was a cis girl.)

What being aromantic (gray-panromantic specifically) does mean (this applies to me only because aromantic experiences are very diverse and all aromantics are different):

• That, approximately 90% of the time, I feel no interest in romance
• That I can develop romantic interest in someone whom I've already formed a strong platonic bond with (i.e. if I've been close friends with them for awhile and I feel safe and comfortable around them)
• That I occasionally feel slight romantic attraction, but this doesn't happen often
• That I could have a queerplatonic, quasiplatonic, or romantic relationship and be happy
• That I need to feel completely safe, happy, and comfortable with someone before I can develop romantic attraction to them
• That, when I do develop romantic attraction and/or interest in someone, gender (or lack thereof) doesn't really affect my feelings toward that person.
• That, when I do develop romantic attraction and/or interest, it can be toward someone of any gender (or lack thereof). This, and the bullet immediately above, is why I also label my romantic identity as pan.

And that's pretty much it. Hey, I've used this blog to come out as bisexual, pagan (well, omnist, but I do tend to lean toward paganism on many issues), and genderfluid. Why not as aromantic?