I appreciate this compassionate but balanced write-up.

Thanks a lot! I tried my darndest to be evenhanded on this one, and so even delayed commenting to think long and hard on it. I know that people here and elsewhere have very good reasons to be exasperated and indignant by how the "Hey look at me and my oppression" crowd has so casually exploited these rather specifically made labels with little regard for those it was originally meant to identity, with the express purpose of insinuating themselves into vital communities created to safeguard and nurture the lives of homosexuals.

But somewhere in the dust and smoke caused by their selfish actions, random people(like some actual aces) with no intent on doing the same can get caught up in the backlash simply by sharing the same label.

Your understanding that genuine asexuality inherently includes lack of romantic attraction/interest is also consistent with my understanding based on my observations on how it has operated in the real world from the people I have known for decades who have shown zero evidence of ever being attracted to anyone and also zero interest in dating.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about romantic affection and they proposed that it's just a particular manifestation of sexual attraction. It is simply another way of showing affection that doesn't include having sex. But it's still all sexual. And at it's core, sexuality(including romance) is physical.

Disingenuous TRAs love to espouse on how a detached personality can be attracted to another detached personality floating in a metaphysical ether of ideas or something silly like that. No- people are attracted to people. That means the whole person, including their sex characteristics. And when too many aspects of them change, so too can one's attraction to them(for better or worse). That's just how it is.

Even when people converse with another exclusively through something intangible like internet text we still at least vaguely imagine a person on the other end. A living, breathing human.

But anyway, I'm veering off topic. I just wanted to review my reasoning for why having a separate aromatic label is completely redundant for aces. I mean, it's no coincidence that aroace is such a common label combination(because the two are one and the same). Also, how bad faith actors are appropriating these kind of labels along with saying things like 'only personalities matter!'(theirs suck tho) as a tool to break down other people's boundaries. It's nice to hear from your own experiences and observations, that the above idea mostly conforms to reality.