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sennkestra

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Everything posted by sennkestra

  1. For anyone in the SF Bay area, we're having an informal park hangout to both celebrate the first day of ASAW, and to connect local aces and aros with any potential visitors for the Creating Change conference. This is a fully public event, so if you're in the area feel free to drop by! https://www.meetup.com/acesofsf/events/291551529/
  2. @Tylore sorry, this might be much too late for you, but in fact AUREA is a very new group and has never actually had forums, they've only had a front-facing page which you can find here. THe Aurea history article you mention can be found here, but doesn't talk much about early aro forums. Instead, if you want to learn about some early aro forums (like aroplane or NCAV), you may want to check out this other thread here. The original forums are down but you could look for them on archive.org's wayback machine.
  3. The call for submissions for the August 2020 Carnival of Aros is up! Due to the delayed posting this month, shorter or more informal posts are especially welcomed! View the full Call for Submissions here: https://carnivalofaros.wordpress.com/2020/08/18/august-2020-call-for-submissions-open-questions-for-aromantic-research/
  4. While this is just a personal finding and may or may not apply to either of you, after having experienced both living alone, living with housemates who I was good friends with, and living with housemates who I was kind of distant from.....and after having both close 'feelingsy' friends as well as less emotionally intimate friends....i've found that as i've had more types of experiences i've been better able to start sifting out what parts of each relationship I liked or didn't like? For me, the conclusion I've come to is that what I want most is not necessarily emotional intimacy: I'm perfectly happy with more casual shared interest friendships, and just not into the 'sharing complex internal feelings' thing, which I already process perfectly well by blogging to random people on the internet. Rather, what I would want out of a "partner" is the act of having someone to repeatedly "come home to" who, and who I could regularly share life updates with (I found a shiny rock! It's my birthday! or I had a stressful day at work today, i wanna vent and complain). I also just like having someone else around in the house - to have little sounds of life around me, and to keep me from becoming a complete antisocial hermit. At one point, when i was living alone after my roommate has just left for grad school and I was still looking for a more permanent job, I realized that I had gone almost 4-5 days without speaking out loud to anyone at all - I don't want to let that be a pattern i fall into! (Also, not going to lie, splitting rent in a larger house is a very enticing financial incentive) Realizing this has helped me realize that "roommates, but a little more intentional and a little more medium term rather than short term" is a better model for the kind of relationships I want than "dating except not romantic and not sexual and all you do is live together and maybe share some financial assets", which has in turn made it easier for me to factor it into my life planning and to describe to others. (Whether it's called a QPR or something else also is of less importance to me - physically having that companionship is of more interest to me that public recognition of a 'relationship') I've also discovered that while longer term / more intential QPR-style commitment might be nice when i'm feeling more ready to 'settle down', even at 28 I'm still feeling a bit 'young and restless.' So shorter term casual housemate relationships with friends - which I've already been able to form successfully - are perfect for me right now, and the problem of how to create more serious long form versions of such relationships is a problem for future me.
  5. A friend just let me know that Alice Oseman (apparently quite an up-and-coming YA author?) is writing a new book, "Loveless", that sure looks to be a very explicit aromantic asexual coming of age and coming out story: The novel won't actually be released until next month, but I'd expect some reviews to potentially start trickling in before then. Has anyone here happened to have read any of Oseman's other works?
  6. Sorry, was there a typo here? I'm not clear on how an asexual person who was questioning their aromanticism is at all close to an allosexual aromantic... I was actually looking into that article based on the title but as far as I can tell the only aromantic people in that participant pool were asexual - although I admittedly only skimmed it. Did I miss something there?
  7. If @Magni is ok with it, would it be possible to sticky the pride 2020 thread or pin it to the top of the subforum until the end of the month? (If the forum software allows that, anyway). I think this is a useful thread that a lot of people will be interested in this month.
  8. For anyone interested in more aro pride events, TAAAP is hosting a series of joint aro and ace pride chats! You can find the full list (and more details) here: https://taaap.org/pride-chats/ Saturday June 6th - Ace and Aro Pride Sunday June 7th - Representation in the Media Saturday June 13th - Aro and Ace Identities Sunday June 14th - Sex and Relationships (of all kinds!) Saturday June 20th - Intersections with Other Identities Sunday June 21st - Gender Saturday June 27th - Issues Aces and Aros Face Sunday June 28th - Activism and Community Building -- Also, while not strictly pride related, if people are looking for aro things to do this month, the Carnival of Aros is looking for submissions on the theme of "Most Precious"!
  9. FWIW, that is not even remotely how it read to me, especially since it mentioned absolutely nothing about who does or doesn't have problems. Instead it felt more like a question of, at what point are two groups different enough to have different spaces? What makes aplatonic (which was suggested as an addition to future use of "a-spec") different from agender (which was suggested to not be included, despite being included by some others previously)? I can see potential reasons, but I'm curious what those advocating for those specific position would say from their perspectives. I think it's important to not read everything in terms of tumblr-style exclusionist-inclusionist debates, where it's assumed that talking about whether or not a group makes sense to "include" in a specific conversation is inevitably tied to "whether they have problems" or "whether they deserve resources". Groups can have legitimate issues but still have different enough needs that that it doesn't always make sense to pair them together (see previous conversation about ace/aro and atheist crossover discussions) (Consider, for example, how many people - both ace and aro - rightfully objected to the idea of just shoehorning allosexual aromantic people into "ace communities" that made no changes to their name or structure, and chose to instead create seperate spaces with different names and formats - either specific aro communities or "ace and aro" communities that spelled out clearly that they should include both groups. I think the question is, would trying to add "aplatonic" as an additional tentpole to existing ace/aro/(agender) focused "a-spec" blogs or discussions - rather than creating new opportunities for alliances - lead to similar issues?)
  10. Quick question - is this open to people who would be open to providing feedback or comments but don't have original work to share, or is it more for creators to give feedback to each other rather than from more general audiences?
  11. Hey everyone - just wanted to update for anyone interested that the pride chats have been announced and scheduled! You can find the full list here: https://taaap.org/pride-chats/ Saturday June 6th - Ace and Aro Pride Sunday June 7th - Representation in the Media Saturday June 13th - Aro and Ace Identities Sunday June 14th - Sex and Relationships (of all kinds!) Saturday June 20th - Intersections with Other Identities Sunday June 21st - Gender Saturday June 27th - Issues Aces and Aros Face Sunday June 28th - Activism and Community Building In addition, aros who are looking for ways to celebrate Pride month should also check out Aggressively A-Spec Week (an aro fanworks challenge running June 21-27) and AUREA's own Aromantics Create Pride feedback-exchange event for aro content creators. Has anyone else seen anything else announced recently?
  12. To clarify, since after reading this I think I might have interpreted the question differently - I don't think anyone is arguing that "aplatonic" people as a whole should be fully excluded from any hypothetical* conversations about "a-spec spaces" I think the question (as I understood it at least) was instead about what is a "sufficient condition" to be considered part of a theoretical* "a-spec" community. For example, many bi aces and bi aros are part of "a-spec" (as defined as ace or aro) populations, but I wouldn't include "bi" as part of the definition of a-spec because of that. Similarly, when people in this thread suggest that maybe "agender" doesn't need to be part of any theoretical "a-spec" definition, they aren't saying we need to kick agender ace/aro people out, they are just saying that being agender alone may not be a sufficient reason to be part of the kind of "a-spec" community that they have in mind. Thus, since ace and aro agender and/or aplatonic folks would already be included under most definitions of a-spec communities, I think @Coyote's question to @Magni is why non-asexual and non-aromantic aplatonic people would make more sense to ally with in a single coalition rather than non-asexual or non-aromantic agender people. - *I might slow down after this reply, because I'm not sure this conversation is actually helpful unless anyone here is actually looking to build or create some kind of "a-spec" resource where nailing down who should be included in the space is a more urgent necessity. I think I've already made it clear that I'm just not a fan of anyone using any variation of the "a-spec" label in general, whether it includes aplatonic people or not; and in general I'm much more interested in descriptive approaches of "hmm, how are people currently using the term" than prescriptive modes of "what is the correct way to use that term in the future", and I think the first question has mostly already been answered. I think it's also worth questioning what the point of nailing down a definition of "a-spec" would involve - would it involve finding everyone who is using "a-spec" in other ways and trying to convince them to use it differently? Would it involve creating new "a-spec" support spaces or resource lists? Would it be worth trying to convince people who use "a-spec" for just ace and aro people to include/not include agender or aplatonic people? Would that even have a chance of being successful? Or would it be worth starting a new venue for that form of alliance under another term to avoid confusion or fighting with people who prefer another definition?
  13. To clarify, I guess I'm just personally wary of arguments that trend towards "allo people won't relate to this anyway, so we don't have to think about how their inclusion or exclusion will affect community dynamics" or "allo people who identify with this term are suspicious" because I remember a time and place where these same types of arguments were frequently deployed by ace community members against the concept of aromantic allosexual people, including in response to anti-ace aggression. Because while is is true that aplatonic is a concept that has mostly been picked by aces and aros so far, and is not widespread among others, I also remember a time when aromanticism was only popularized among the asexual community. But it turns out that when you start building out a new identity as capable of standing alone, and not dependent on the groups where it first became popular - it turns out that sometimes people from other communities and groups start finding it useful as well. So, if someone were creating an ace & aro & aplatonic "a-spec" group, for example, thinking about how non-ace and non-aro aplatonic people would eventually fit in - and what steps the community would need to take to accommodate them - and whether this is done through converting existing spaces or by creating new ones - are things that should be considered. After all, wouldn't the point of adding "aplatonic" to a specific group or page's defintion of "a-spec" be to better include people who don't identify with either of the other ace and aro terms in the definition (i.e. mostly non-asexual/non-aromantic or "allo allo" people)? Talking about potential non-asexual/non-aromantic aplatonic people seems like the logical next extension of the idea of aplatonic being a core part of the definition of a-spec, not just a random non-sequitor. (Although, I also realize this is also somewhat of a moot question unless there start being more explicit "aspec" resources or spaces for people to be actively included or excluded from, or unless "aplatonic" specifically starts gaining ground among wider spaces)
  14. For reference, I think it might be helpful to clarify that both @Coyote and I have been involved in separate conversations elsewhere about whether "love" is a useful or helpful term for describing personal relationship ideals, both among people who do find "love" to be a helpful and positive descriptor, and also among people who don't find "love" to be a helpful or accurate description, and who are uncomfortable with calls to embrace and uphold "love" as a universal positive in non-romantic ways - rather than questioning whether anyone should ever uphold "love" as a universal positive. Whether "loving friends" should be accepted as a universal positive ideal, or whether it should be pushed back on (some people don't "love" their friends, and that's just fine!) was specifically one of the parts of that. So I don't think that part was meant to be flippant at all, but rather that it was being influenced by other recent conversations . (although I agree that the "directly addressing" part in response was unnecessarily hostile) With regards to exclusionists though, I just want to gently push back on "exclusionists will make fun of us" alone as a reason to avoid certain phrasing - because I do know people who would describe themselves as not feeling "love" for their friends in very similar terms, and I don't want to throw them under the bus just to avoid stupid exclusionist opinions by saying "we're not like those weirdos". (ace and aro communities already have problems with silencing straight-identified aces and aros and basically throwing them under the bus to more easily win flame war arguments, instead of pursuing more nuanced takes - I don't want to see that happen to other groups)
  15. (Hopefully not derailing too much, but the two main panels were both for unconventional online conferences, so you can actually find recordings here from 2015 and 2018) Do you have suggestions? Aha, yeah, see, that's always the harder part. I personally prefer names like "Aces & Aros" or "Ace/Aro/Agender" (or even better, "and/or"!) to just saying "a-spec" since it makes it very clearly spelled out who is included. Although, tbh, if people really want to keep using the a-spec wordplay in group names, adding an explicit tagline or spelling it out would be much appreciated, especially in community names and descriptions. (So like, less "ABC College A-Specs" more "ABC College A-Specs: A community group for ace and/or aro identified students - and then include that tagline everywhere - in event page headers, in group titles, in rules posts, in emails, etc.) As far as for casual conversation about things like "there are trends in a-spec communities..." I would prefer phrasing like "there are trends in ace and aro communities" or "there are trends in ace, aro, and agender communities) (emphasis on the s at the end of communities) because these are almost always talking about trends that occur in disparate spaces that are almost always either ace or aro focused, rather than some unique third category of "aspec" spaces. (And, for the many instances where really the thing mostly only happens in just ace or just aro communities....just say that)
  16. --- Anyway, as far as formal research, the main works that I know of that look in more detail at aromanticism only does so in the context of asexuality: Ace and Aro: Understanding Differences in Romantic Attractions Among Persons Identifying as Asexual (doesn't differentiate between romantic and aromantic non-asexuals in any of their analysis, but at least they explicitly point this out as a potential weakness of their research?) Patterns of Asexuality in China: Sexual Activity, Sexual and Romantic Attraction, and Sexual Desire (has a few small items that compare aromantic to other romantic identities within asexual communities, but no examination of aromanticism outside ace communities) There are also some more narrative/qualitative interview which feature asexual aromantic people discussing aromanticism and amatonormativity which I could try to dig up if people would be interested, but it's all heavily within the context of asexual-specific experiences. (The ace community survey has talked a bit about aromanticism in both aces and non-aces as well, but it's still limited as a survey that mostly recruits in ace communities, and while it does have a little more credibility in research communities than other community surveys, it's still not as widely accepted as more traditional formally published papers)
  17. @aspecofstardust if you're interested in ace research content as well, I have a list of ace research resources that can be useful for finding ace content (including the giant asexual research bibliography, although unfortunately it's not 100% up to date and I can't fix that until my alma mater reopens their campus from coronavirus quarantines). https://nextstepcake.wordpress.com/resources/asexual-research/ Unfortunately, there's not a lot of aromantic-focused research - probably the closest I can get is like, a couple of papers that compare aromantic to non-aromantic asexual participants (can't think of any formal papers off the top of my head that collected info on non-asexual aromantic participants; I think right now there's mostly only informal community based research).
  18. I'm sort of approaching this sideways from the rest of the thread, but I guess...I tend to see conversations about who is part of a "community" in the abstract a bit useless, because like, what does being in or out of a community even mean? I personally find it a bit more grounded to talk about how things play out in terms of things like spaces and resources - for example, things like the a-spec pillowfort group that coyote mentioned, which in theory includes agender people, but in practice is not really used by any agender people, whether it's because they find it uncomfortable or because they just find it unrelatable. Like, what's the point of quibbling about which specific a-terms are "included" unless there are actual spaces using the name to make practical attempts to actually include (or not include) these various sub-groups? Like, I think everyone in this board is mostly familiar with the tension that arises in any group that tries to provide support for just aces and aros, in terms of balancing conflicting needs and disproportionate resources and such. And many groups have decided to just stick to being just ace or just aro groups, because they know that allows them to better focus on their constituents or because they know they aren't prepared enough to meet the needs of both populations at once. I could easily imagine this being a similar problem with trying to extend services to agender or aplatonic people - just adding them to a name is just as much of a useless bandaid as an ace group changing their name to "aces and aros" without any underlying structural or topic changes. So I don't think it should be that controversial for some "a-spec" groups who picked up that name as part of an attempt to service ace and aro people specifically might want to continue to focus on that mandate and not feel able to extend those services to other groups outside their original scope and areas of expertise. (Although, going back to my personal opinions, I do think that's also a reason to consider more specific community naming choices instead of the confusingly unclear "a-spec"). --- Also, to provide a suggestion from completely another angle - as an example of finding commonality in "a-" identities and shared experiences of "absence" as a defining trait, there's been some interesting work with asexual and atheist communities, like panels with ace atheists about the shared experiences of asexuality (and sometimes aromanticism) and atheism and being defined by a "lack" of something more mainstream, whether it's interest in sex or interest in god(s). Yet, at the same time as we recognize that overlap, I think we also recognize that the needs of atheists and the needs of asexual people were often best met in separate community spaces most of the time.
  19. The new call for submissions for the May 2020 Carnival of Aros is now up (better late than never!) - the theme for this month is "DIY". Click here for the full call for submissions. In addition, the Carnival is also looking for new hosts for the upcoming months! Hosting the carnival is a great way to make connections if you are new to blogging, or to encourage other writers to talk about topics you don't see as much of as you would like.
  20. I wanted to offer a bit of a moderation suggestion - now that we have more active moderators who have also posted a lot as regular users, it would be nice to have some way to distinguish "official" mod posts vs. posts where mods just happen to be sharing their personal opinions like regular users. While it wasn't as much of a problem before when the main mods weren't very active, I think the distinction will become more useful now, especially if the moderation team continues to grow. As an example, AVEN used to do this by having any "official" posts in bold colored text to match their user role. So text formatted like this is an official mod statement or warning. Text formatted like this is a personal post or opinion, not an official mod statement. etc. Even something like having "This is an official mod message: please ...." prefix might be enough - I think it can just help to have a standard that users know in advance so they can react appropriately.
  21. Just saw this in my feed and thought I'd pass it on - there's going to be a livestream on May 2nd featuring a number of ace and/or aro podcasters, video bloggers, activists, etc. that's soliciting donations to support the UN COVID-19 relief fund. Here's AUREA's tumblr post about the event, as well as the Sounds Fake But Okay page with links to the livestream and donation pages.
  22. Oh, yeah, using A for ally totally predates any use of asexual, and (at the time at least) was by far more prevalent - "A for Asexual" was a new concept that largely popped up because there was that other A already in the "LGBTQIA" acronym to play off of. (Here's one example of how that happened). But a lot of people in these tumblr conversations who didn't have much experience in non-ace LGBT organizations and politics weren't always very aware of that history and based most of their arguments off of assumptions/guesses/other misleading tumblr posts they never realized they needed to fact check. Interestingly, this is one argument topic that seems to have faded away a bit in recent years (perhaps as there got to be too many groups being recognized to just keep adding letters, as "queer" terminology became more mainstream, or as the LGBT community in general gained more of their own power and became more critical about centering "allies"). But I bet it does make the whole a- association thing a little confusing for people now.
  23. From what I hazily remember (haven't gotten around to checking archives yet), the grouping of asexual, aromantic, and also agender came about because of "Does/Should the A in LGBTQIA stand for Ally, or for Asexual [or Aromantic, or Agender]" debates in the early 2010s, especially on tumblr, so it's partially an association of identities centered around "absence of" type identities....but mostly about how they all happen to start with the letter "a" (hence, "a-spec" as a popular joint term for all 3 later, since it also focuses on that shared-first-letter connection). It started as a trend of users on tumblr complaining about the use of A for ally instead of A for Asexual, followed by other users chiming in that "hey, aromantic folks are another A that gets left out", followed by more people eventually also adding "oh hey, agender people too". That was somewhat scattered, until... ...It all came to a head when that trio was particularly popularized/cemented by the ~2015-2016 #giveitback hashtag campaigns that centered around twitter and tumblr users calling out orgs like GLAAD and also later American Apparel that featured campaigns with A for Ally rather than asexual (or aromantic or agender). The hashtag campaign was spearheaded by fuckyeahasexual, a very popular/influential blog on tumblr/twitter, who coined the hashtag and specifically mentioned all 3 a identities (asexual, aromantic, and agender) in their original post (something I think they had already been doing in earlier ace-community-internal discussions about the whole acronym thing). It got a lot of play both inside the ace community on tumblr and (perhaps more notably) outside of it as well, even getting mentions from wider LGBT online news and forums, so it was a lot of people's first exposure to that particular pairing (triad-ing?) of identities. That campaign eventually led to this statement from GLAAD that I think also involved some feedback from AVEN, and also mentions the full a trio. (I have my own feelings about that whole campaign, but that's another issue for another thread). This occurred slightly before or around the same time as popularization of "aspec" terminology, although the two weren't initially directly linked; I don't remember exactly when this a-identity-trio concept got merged with the term "aspec" specifically but I think it was sometime shortly after this - if anyone is bored it could probably be found by digging through tumblr aspec tag pages (these links might help find the right times to start at). My guess is that some of the prominent early adopters of "aspec" were also involved in these other campaigns and merged the concepts (whether unconsciously, or as part of a conscious effort to not "leave out" agender people as part of their sense of the joint "a-" community), and then other users just repeated it on from there until it was seen as a semi-widely accepted truth. I think it also ties back into the annoying ambiguity of "a-spec" for unfamiliar audiences - just as some users assume that it's just short for asexual when first hearing it, others assume that it must be for all a-identities, especially because of it's emphasis on that shared a- prefix). - Either way, at this point, there's enough users that treat it that way that that cat's out of the bag and I don't feel comfortable using it for efforts that don't include agender people or content...and since most of my work doesn't, I just don't use it all (on top of other complaints about it's ambiguity or the way it is used to conflate things that maybe shouldn't always be conflated).
  24. FWIW, aces are not strangers to having serious conversations about how to avoid homophobia and sex-shaming, because these are issues that have been endemic in our communities for years (as they are for many communities) and that many of us are constantly having to remember to push back on. For any specific instances of homophobia, I would just call it out as problematic the way you would content from any other aro group, whether it's ace aros, straight aros, cis aros, etc. The only thing to avoid, I guess, is implying that if an aro ace accidentally (or even delibertely) says something homophobic or sex-shaming, it's because they are ace, rather than because they just need to do some more work to unlearn problematic assumptions just as all of us do to some extent. On a more general level, it means acknowledging that aro communities have homophobia and sex-shaming problems of our own as well that we need to work on, and that they weren't just brought here by aro aces - they are something that's endemic to the overall culture that we're all embedded in and that all of us have inherited. (In general, I think the aro community definitely has a lot of areas where we could use a lot of work on that - and it's not just the ace folks or the straight folks here who are saying potentially problematic things).
  25. My suggestion is this: when you get frustrated by the fact that you can only find mentions of aromanticism in research articles that are also about asexuality, instead of thinking, ugh, they're all tying asexuality and aromanticism together again (many research articles these days actually make a point to acknowledge them as seperate!), or making comments like "it is hard for aro to emerge as its own community when everything is tying it to asexuality" which implicitly blame aro aces specifically or aces more generally for aromantic obscurity, ask yourself this instead: "Why is it that, outside of aromantic authors themselves, the only researchers and writers who give a damn about aromanticism enough to acknowledge it are asexuals and the people interested in studying them? Why aren't researchers and writers on allosexual subjects also stepping up?" Because frankly, when it comes to your comment about not finding allo aro specific research papers, asexual research shouldn't be held responsible for generating content on allo aros - allo aros aren't asexual, and that's the whole point! The ability of the tiny niche of ace researchers and activists to influence more mainstream allosexual establishments is limited at best, and we can't blame them for this.
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