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A Carnival of Aros


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Hi all! Just wanted to say here since it's new and I haven't seen anything about it yet that there's a new blogging carnival called Carnival of Aro's starting this month and they're looking for submissions as well as people who can host topics in the coming months.

 

This month's carnival is being hosted by TAAAP and the topic is "The Relationship Between the Aro and Ace Communities". You can find information about the carnival itself here, and you can submit posts for this months carnival here.

 

I'm not the person running the carnival, so I don't know how helpful I can be in answering questions, but I thought y'all should know that this is happening! 

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I love the idea in principle, but to give my honest "Thoughts on the start of the Carnival of Aros", it might have been more helpful not to kick the carnival off with a list of prompts that almost all require familiarity with the ace community. I feel I have nothing to contribute to this theme. 

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12 hours ago, eatingcroutons said:

I love the idea in principle, but to give my honest "Thoughts on the start of the Carnival of Aros", it might have been more helpful not to kick the carnival off with a list of prompts that almost all require familiarity with the ace community. I feel I have nothing to contribute to this theme. 

I agree completely.
I wish for more autonomy for aromanticism. Even though yes, I can see why they want both communities to support and understand each other.
It still has different repercussions to be aro, but not ace. And even here I have read posts of several aroaces saying being aro is more "important" to them because it's still more on display than their sexuality.

 

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 @eatingcroutons @NotHeartless This is a totally understandable complaint and honestly, I do have some questions about the choice of topic considering that it's February so both valentines day and aro awareness week are coming up and both of those events would make for good discussion topics.

 

That said, this month is, in fact, a joint carnival with the carnival of aces, so I don't know how else they would have included both communities. You could argue that having it be a joint carnival to start off with is generally unhelpful, but the reason the aro carnival even got suggested in the first place is that TAAAP is trying to rebrand itself as an organization for ace's and aro's, not just ace people so they wanted to host the topic of "The Relationship Between the Aro and Ace Communities". This prompted  Sennkestra to suggest creating a new aro specific carnival and having TAAAP host both carnivals at the same time for that topic. So like, while I agree that it would be better to start the carnival off with more detachment from the ace community I'm not sure that the carnival would have even gotten started without such an ace linked prompt.

 

But! The carnival doesn't have to stay connected to the ace community. The continuation of the carnival depends on aro community members volunteering to host the carnival each month and hosts get to pick the topic, so if you have ideas about more aro specific prompts and you have Tumblr, Word Press, or another blog format that you could host the carnival on then you can implement that and make the carnival closer to what you would like to see. Here's a link that discusses how to go about hosting. They're looking for people to host March, April, May and June right now, so there's plenty of opportunities available.     

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7 hours ago, bananaslug said:

...the reason the aro carnival even got suggested in the first place is that TAAAP is trying to rebrand itself as an organization for ace's and aro's, not just ace people so they wanted to host the topic of "The Relationship Between the Aro and Ace Communities". This prompted  Sennkestra to suggest creating a new aro specific carnival and having TAAAP host both carnivals at the same time for that topic.

 

Yeah... I'm gonna reiterate that launching an "aro specific carnival" with a theme that is all about the relationship between aromanticism and asexuality, and requires familiarity with the ace community to meaningfully comment on almost all the prompts, is not the greatest way to make aros feel like this carnival is specific to us.

 

7 hours ago, bananaslug said:

They're looking for people to host March, April, May and June right now, so there's plenty of opportunities available.     

 

They're looking for people to host every month after the first one? So their idea of "creating a new aro specific carnival" is to promote one theme that puts asexuality on centre stage alongside aromanticism, and then hope aros come forward to organise themes and logistics for all future months?

 

I'm sure this was all done in good faith with the best intentions... but the optics aren't great, metaphorically or literally:

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@eatingcroutons My dude I'm just giving you the reasoning behind why this months theme is so connected to aceness. I'm not saying you have to like or agree with it, but that's the reasoning. I think it's also worth noting that these prompts were created by TAAAP, not the carnival of aro's itself. IMO the people who actually started the carnival did a pretty good job of reaching out to aro folks with different backgrounds and having them look over the carnival of aro's website and announcements to make sure it was something the aro community as a whole would enjoy, but they aren't in charge of topic or prompts, the host is, and I don't know to what extent TAAAP involved aro people in their prompt and topic creation. So while I agree that the prompts could be more aro inclusive I think that issue has more to do with this months host than the carnival itself.

 

1 hour ago, eatingcroutons said:

They're looking for people to host every month after the first one? So their idea of "creating a new aro specific carnival" is to promote one theme that puts asexuality on centre stage alongside aromanticism, and then hope aros come forward to organise themes and logistics for all future months?

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Yeah, the carnival only launched 5 days ago, people haven't had a lot of opportunities to sign up for it yet, but the carnival of aces has been running on this same model since 2011 so it's not like this can't work. Also, Sennkestra, the person tasked with running and archiving the carnival long term, is aro, it's not like a bunch of alloace people made the carnival and are trying to hand it off at the end of the month. I have seen a lot of excitement about this carnival from folks on other platforms, so I don't think people are just going to abandon it come March. 

 

If you're unhappy with the carnival you have no obligation to participate in it, but personally, I'm not willing to write it off after only one month. It's not perfect, but no project is while it's still in its infancy, and I think the carnival will definitely improve as time goes by.

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6 hours ago, bananaslug said:

IMO the people who actually started the carnival did a pretty good job of reaching out to aro folks with different backgrounds and having them look over the carnival of aro's website and announcements to make sure it was something the aro community as a whole would enjoy, but they aren't in charge of topic or prompts, the host is

Okay so... genuine question, because it's entirely possible I'm missing something here. If the people who started the carnival aren't going to come up with any prompts, or take responsibility for any hosting, and thus far have nothing in place to maintain it after the first month - what is it they're actually offering?

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On 2/4/2019 at 11:54 PM, eatingcroutons said:

I love the idea in principle, but to give my honest "Thoughts on the start of the Carnival of Aros", it might have been more helpful not to kick the carnival off with a list of prompts that almost all require familiarity with the ace community. I feel I have nothing to contribute to this theme. 

The issue I have with TAAAP is that they are an asexual organisation. With links to other ace organisations and some, good, ace resources.
For some reason they have decided to rebrand as "ace and aro". Without substantially changing their content or resources.

Something which is often overlooked here is that allo aces, aro allos and aro aces are impacted differently by amantonormativity.

 

22 hours ago, NotHeartless said:

I wish for more autonomy for aromanticism. Even though yes, I can see why they want both communities to support and understand each other.

Also less conflation between asexuality and aromanticism.
 

22 hours ago, NotHeartless said:

It still has different repercussions to be aro, but not ace. And even here I have read posts of several aroaces saying being aro is more "important" to them because it's still more on display than their sexuality.

Romantic relationships are often quite "public", in many ways.
I think a specifically aro issue is desiring, seeking, having non-romantic relationships. Which can result in arophobia. Even when platonic.

 

7 hours ago, bananaslug said:

IMO the people who actually started the carnival did a pretty good job of reaching out to aro folks with different backgrounds and having them look over the carnival of aro's website and announcements to make sure it was something the aro community as a whole would enjoy,

Given that I was unaware of this until this thread I'd ask how and when this "reaching out" happened.



 

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@eatingcroutons The folks who run the carnival itself run the carnival of aro's website, archive the posts from each new month of the carnival, and will occasionally reach out to potential hosts, so while they're not writing prompts themselves they do do things. I know the hands-off approach may seem unconventional, but this is how most blogging carnivals are run , and once again, the carnival has been live for barely 6 days now, so a lot of aro community members who might want to host are still trying to work out what months would actually work for them. I know that personally, I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row to see if I could host the May carnival, and I suspect that some other folks are in a similar place. Just because the upcoming carnival schedule isn't filled in now doesn't mean it won't get filled as the month goes on. 

 

@Mark While the carnival runners didn't do an open call (those rarely work anyway) they did reach out to a lot of aro bloggers, including myself, to help edit and co-author their website content, and to help promote the carnival. While the bloggers they first reached out to were admittedly mostly aroace, I and a number of other folks working on it suggested that they reach out to more alloaro bloggers and aro bloggers who don't use SAM, and they contacted all of the people we recommended pretty promptly to help involve them. Of course, not everyone contacted replied or wanted to get involved, but their reaching out did result in a more well-rounded group of aros working on the project, and I found that they were very responsive to our concerns about who was and wasn't being involved in the carnivals creation. 

 

I think your analysis of what's going on with TAAAP is pretty spot on, although admittedly I live on the other side of the country from them so I'm not as aware of their stuff as I could be. They're very good at being an ace advocacy group, but if you want your community to be inclusive of other groups then that inclusion needs to be built into the foundation of your organization, it can't just be tagged on at the end. I've had the same issue with a lot of other supposedly aro inclusive ace groups here on the west coast so I think this is, unfortunately, a fairly prevalent issue.  

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4 hours ago, bananaslug said:

I think your analysis of what's going on with TAAAP is pretty spot on, although admittedly I live on the other side of the country from them so I'm not as aware of their stuff as I could be. They're very good at being an ace advocacy group, but if you want your community to be inclusive of other groups then that inclusion needs to be built into the foundation of your organization, it can't just be tagged on at the end. I've had the same issue with a lot of other supposedly aro inclusive ace groups here on the west coast so I think this is, unfortunately, a fairly prevalent issue.  

If this is an issue for aro ace people, such as yourself, it's likely to be even more of an issue for aro allos, such as myself.
 

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@Mark I agree! And maybe they weren't the best choice for opening the carnival, but the carnival itself is entirely volunteer based so not every host that volunteers will be ideal. Hopefully as the carnival continues people from other parts of the aro community, including alloaro bloggers, will end up hosting  and writing more inclusive prompts 

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16 hours ago, bananaslug said:

@eatingcroutons The folks who run the carnival itself run the carnival of aro's website, archive the posts from each new month of the carnival, and will occasionally reach out to potential hosts, so while they're not writing prompts themselves they do do things.

So they're asking the aro community to:

 

(a) Create content for a rebranded clone of the current Carnival of Aces theme/prompts, run by a primarily ace-focussed organisation
(b) Come up with our own ideas for all future prompts, and host participation and create content for all future themes

 

And in return they'll put links to our work on Wordpress, and maybe occasionally ask the aro community to come up with more themes?

 

It sounds to me like their idea of "creating a carnival" actually means asking us to participate in an ace-led event, and then expecting us to create our own aro carnivals in the future. I'm not against the idea of blogging carnivals in this format, but I am a little a lot put out by presenting a theme that equally centres the ace community as "aro-specific", and making a lot of noise about this "aro-specific" carnival when they haven't actually organised anything aro-specific yet - in fact they're expecting the aro community to do that for them.

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10 hours ago, eatingcroutons said:

(a) Create content for a rebranded clone of the current Carnival of Aces theme/prompts, run by a primarily ace-focussed organisation

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- Once again, the carnival itself is not run by TAAAP. It's run by an aroace person who, yes, has a lot of ace community connections, but is trying to create more visibility and resources for the aro community, and is making this carnival as part of that.

 

- February's festival is a joint carnival with a carnival of aces, so while I agree that TAAAP could have included more prompts relevant to aro's who are outside of the ace community, any joint carnival is going to include some prompts related to the ace community. 

 

- As expressed, TAAAP is maybe not an ideal organization to start off the carnival, but they're the ones who volunteered to host, and like most volunteer-run projects, whoever's willing to do it is who gets to do it. 

 

10 hours ago, eatingcroutons said:

(b) Come up with our own ideas for all future prompts, and host participation and create content for all future themes

 

 

Yes, that's how community-run projects work. Notably, Sennkestra is fully aware that if aro community members don't want to continue hosting and supporting the carnival then the carnival won't happen because that's also how community-run projects work.

 

10 hours ago, eatingcroutons said:

And in return they'll put links to our work on Wordpress, and maybe occasionally ask the aro community to come up with more themes?

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Yes, because once again, the carnival website and archive are being maintained by one person, with a little bit of help from the carnival of ace's manager, and occasional input from other aro community members who look over posts for them, and the carnival manager is doing all of this on their own time. When people volunteer to do things for the community we need to be respectful of their boundaries when they say they can't do more. Sennkestra is trying to create and maintain a focal point for carnival information, but if people want the carnival to be successful other people need to step up and host, they can't do everything themselves.

 

It seems like you're still confused about who's actually running the carnival, so I suggest that you read the carnivals introduction letter. People put a lot of work into writing it, so hopfull it will clear some things up for you.

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1 hour ago, bananaslug said:

It seems like you're still confused about who's actually running the carnival, so I suggest that you read the carnivals introduction letter. People put a lot of work into writing it, so hopfull it will clear some things up for you.

If only they'd put as much effort into planning actual aro-specific content! 

 

I have read the letter, and all the website content. I've also volunteered with a friend to host the March carnival on a new aro space we've been working on for weeks. I'm working with an aro Discord server on a proposal to host another month. I want to see this initiative succeed. Hell, I've got a 1200-word draft to contribute this month, which I wrote after scrapping my original 650-word draft, which I stayed up until 3am writing. 

 

But I'm still deeply aggravated by the fact that the organisers apparently had no idea how it would appear to those of us who are *not* ace to kick off a supposed aro-specific event with a theme that implicitly requires understanding of the ace community. I'm deeply aggravated that they're saying they've established this big and exciting thing for us when really, all they've done is told us to go and do all the work ourselves. 

 

 

 

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@eatingcroutons  I'm sorry that you find this so aggravating. I personally don't really view this as them "Saying they've made something for us and then telling us to go do all the work ourselves", but I can understand why you see it that way and I sympathize with your frustration. I agree that they could have put more thought into optics, and I'm sorry that that lack of forethought is upsetting for you. Hopefully, the carnival will be more inclusive in the future.  

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I do understand why they chose the topic and also why some people are peeved. Personally with that topic I feel I have nothing to contribute and won't be all that interested in the content anyway. However I see that this first month might be good engaging a bunch of aces who are already aware of the carnival and so can spread the news the best. I just hope this event can snowball and the other topics are more inclusive and specifically aro-centric, then it will definitely be worth re-advertising the carnival. 

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15 hours ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

Personally with that topic I feel I have nothing to contribute and won't be all that interested in the content anyway.

I feel that the sort of things I have to say would not be positive. Especially about TAAAP and aces & aros.

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12 hours ago, Mark said:

I feel that the sort of things I have to say would not be positive. Especially about TAAAP and aces & aros.

 

I don't think it has to be positive as long as it's constructive/civil. The whole point about talking about the relationship between the communities isn't just complimenting them, but giving feedback on what ways they maybe should and shouldn't change. They are separate communities and honestly I think being able to openly contrast them and point out current issues would do more for both tackling the general conflation between the two identities as well as simply how another community with quite a lot of overlapping members can be a better support.

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13 hours ago, Mark said:

I feel that the sort of things I have to say would not be positive. Especially about TAAAP and aces & aros.

Yeah, that's what the majority of aros I've talked to about this have said. Not about TAAAP specifically, but about this theme as a whole. Some feel they have nothing to contribute like @Apathetic Echidna, but most are annoyed about the theme as yet another example of treating aros as subsidiary to aces and don't WANT to contribute because they'd only have negative things to say. 

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@eatingcroutons idk, I also sent them an email about a week ago and haven't heard back, although in the past I've had issues with the person running things sometimes taking a while to reply to emails so I'm not super shocked by it. I understand that you're trying to host March though, so time is of the essence. I know Siggy, the person who runs carnival of aces has some contact with them and in my experience they email back pretty quickly, so you might try contacting them instead. Sorry I can't be of more help

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18 hours ago, bananaslug said:

@eatingcroutons idk, I also sent them an email about a week ago and haven't heard back, although in the past I've had issues with the person running things sometimes taking a while to reply to emails so I'm not super shocked by it. I understand that you're trying to host March though, so time is of the essence. I know Siggy, the person who runs carnival of aces has some contact with them and in my experience they email back pretty quickly, so you might try contacting them instead. Sorry I can't be of more help

Thank you for helping out here.
Though it is a pity that the people involved with this are not contributing to this thread themselves.

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