This old post from The Thinking Aro (formerly The Thinking Asexual) is something I mainly agree with so I’m going to reblog it. Generally please remember to read everything this person writes with a grain of salt – read critically and acknowledge that sometimes they are wrong. In fact sometimes VERY wrong. They are elitist in many of their writings and make a lot of generalizations about all romantic-sexual people, and they don’t allow any comments on their posts these days and haven’t for quite a while. That all being said, sometimes they’re the only person to have written on some… really interesting topics, especially concerning aromanticism. It certainly frustrates ME that a few of these words are assumed to have a romantic or sexual meaning in contexts where it’s intuitive to me to use them in non-sexual, non-romantic ways.
The following words are examples of sexualized language that pisses me off, and I want to bring them to your attention because I feel the way most people use these words is harmful to everybody’s freedom in relationships and particularly to asexuals and aromantics.
1. The word “love” to specifically, exclusively imply romantic/sexual love:
Usage: “I love him/her.” ; “Do you love him/her?” ; “I’m looking for love.” ; “I want you to love me.” ; “I don’t feel loved.” ; “All you need is love.”
Translation: “I romantically love him/her.” ; “Are you romantically in love with him/her?” ; “I’m looking for romantic love.” ; “I want you to love me romantically.” ; “I don’t feel romantically loved.” ; “All you need is romantic love.”
What This Usage Communicates and Why It Sucks: Either you don’t love anybody other than your romantic-sexual partners, or you don’t consider nonsexual/nonromantic…
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From Fandom to Family 
Thanks for reblogging this! I unfollowed the original blog a while back for the reasons you cited, but yeah, sometimes they hit on important stuff! And being more precise in my language around these things, specifically to avoid making ace and aro* experiences invisible, is something I’ve been trying to work on myself, so the reminder is helpful 🙂
*autocorrect literally just changed aro to android? Wtf?
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Thanks for the reminder. I liked the post way back when, actually, and I have become more precise in my use of words since then, I believe.
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