Jaiden Animations Comes Out As Aromantic And Asexual, Leading To Conversations About The 'Aroace' Identity Online
Famous storytime YouTuber Jaiden Animations announced she was aromantic and asexual, or "aroace," in a video posted Sunday that quickly shot up YouTube's trending videos list.
In the video, Jaiden reveals that she experiences no romantic attraction towards anyone, nor does she feel sexual attraction towards anyone. She explains how she never felt crushes towards anyone as a child and felt like she had to develop crushes to feel up-to-speed with her peers. Even with people she felt drawn towards, she never felt like she wanted to cuddle or kiss them. She doesn't disclose too much information about her personal life, but she does explain that discovering her identity helped her feel more confident and less out of place in a romantically driven society.
Reactions to the video were largely positive, particularly from people who shared the aroace identity with Jaiden.
While most on social media expressed support, there was also a contingency of people who doubted the term aroace. "You're not aromantic and asexual you have some unchecked trauma and mental issues preventing you from forming connections with other people on a meaningful level," wrote one Twitter user in response to Jaiden's video. Another person in the video's comment section attracted Reddit's attention by using the video to say they felt the human population would rapidly decrease in 20 to 30 years due to the volume of people coming out as not heterosexual.
Jaiden's coming out makes her one of the most visible people in the aroace community and has generated a significant amount of discussion online. Jaiden's fans on Reddit have taken to highlighting YouTube comments from people who feel betrayed because they had a parasocial crush on the YouTuber or declared the video would cause them to unsubscribe.
At least one commenter seemed a little confused, but they had the spirit. A Reddit post in /r/youngpeopleyoutube noticed that "Ace" is the name of a character in One Piece, and that, since Jaiden came out as Ace, they would come out as Luffy or Zoro.
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Chewybunny
In a society where everything has to be sexualized or viewed from the angle of sexual activity, I am not surprised that asexual people become the biggest pariahs.
megax454
I understand that an Internet personality, even if their reach is small, has to be subject to some scrutiny as they are "famous people," which makes them accountable for what they show on Camera. Still, I feel too much overthinking; this is not like a Disney channel actor found on the sidewalk because of an overdose. There are too many implications to something that is nothing more than a Ciber-BabySitter/Cartoon/Big Sister Telling kids Bed Time Stories and Life Experiences.
The only thing that I may look down on is that you can say this is just adding to the persona but does not reflect on the actual individual or group like companies placing themselves labels, but they can care less about the real issues but is something so small so insignificant that the people that worries me is the people that care.
IfYaDVote-ReplyToWhy
You know, I feel that Jaiden's experience hold relevancy to the ambiguously defined "Don't Say Gay" bill. For her growing up, she was unsure of her identity and felt like something was wrong about her until her adulthood. The opportunity to learn more about sexual orientation was just limited, then muddled with what was available in certain media representations. It's fortunate that she grew up now positively accepting her identity, but there are a lot of asexuals and other non-cis people I've met who shared similar experiences of feeling "broken" because they were just unaware that you don't have to align with a specific idea of romance and sexuality.
Nedhitis
Honestly, I respect her struggle. She tried to approach the issue in the most scientific way possible for years only to awkwardly realize all that much time later: "…oh, you guys actually FEEL these things? Uh, whoops".
Raul Satisacro
You know, from all the spectres of the rainbow, you would think that the aromantic and asexual were the least attacked people from there. On my OWN IGNORANCE, I would think they're technically not gay, so most homophobic people wouldn't target them. But of course, this is the internet, and people argue about anything, including the color of a dress.
Look, if Jaiden doesn't feel attracted to any other person, whether they're a man or a woman, or both or none, it's none of my business. I wish Jaiden all the love that she deserves and respect her on her decision.
qx1511
It's literally this:
I honestly don't get our tribalistic nature sometimes…
Set
I'm asexual, and there seem to be a couple angles to it.
There's the old-fashioned religious style of opposition – some people take the "go forth and multiply" thing quite seriously, and believe that a total lack of sexual attraction is unnatural. Some believe it's always a result of trauma, and needs to be "fixed".
The other is people thinking it's a made-up sexuality. I can only partially blame them for this – there's been a big effort by some to make asexuality a "spectrum", and lump in nonsense like demisexual which is really just people wanting a special label. And since actual asexuality is pretty rare, the attention-seekers are what people encounter more often.
KoimanZX
There is also the angle of others finding asexuals self-righteous. I hope I don't seem like I'm accusing you of anything, but it seems like many equate asexuality to a sort of moral élitism. If anything, I would say that those "demisexuals" are the vain ones.
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Weimario
1) Aroace seems like a pretty clunky word, AceAro seems like it would roll off the tongue better ("ace arrow" as apposed to "arrow ace"). At least it's an honest abbreviation, unlike latinx.
2) All the people who did porn of Jaiden's avatar must be thinking "well, fuck" now.
Weimario
Here I am criticizing linguistics and I didn't even spell "opposed" right. The fact this site still doesn't have an edit button is a meme in itself.
Salnax
Fanfic writers don't care about the sexuality of the characters they write stories about, so I doubt actual sexual orientation will stop fan artists.
WarLordM
Tracer has been getting railed for like five years after people learned she was gay
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