Aromantic activism Poll

[bananaslug]

Most communities, when thinking about how to focus their activism, pick one or two achievable goals to work towards at a time, for example, the gay community in the U.S until very recently focused on marriage equality, and the black lives matter movement focuses on ending police brutality. This kind of focus helps activists make incremental progress towards larger goals that would otherwise be very hard to work towards. With this in mind, I've been thinking a lot about what the aro communities current goals are/ should be. What do you think is the most important thing for aro activism to work towards right now?

 

 

[Mark]

4 hours ago, bananaslug said:

Most communities, when thinking about how to focus their activism, pick one or two achievable goals to work towards at a time, for example, the gay community in the U.S until very recently focused on marriage equality, and the black lives matter movement focuses on ending police brutality. This kind of focus helps activists make incremental progress towards larger goals that would otherwise be very hard to work towards.

There are critiques of "marriage equality" such as "Has the Gay Movement Failed?" by Martin Duberman.
It would also be very hard to argue that were positive towards (even inclusive of) aros.

[letusdeleteouraccounts]

If the ace and aro communities get more recognition from the LGBTQ+ community, they can broadcast who we are a whole lot more easily to the rest of the world and then there’s our visibility. Everyone knows LGBT because of how wide spread their influence has become so we need to be part of that movement in order to broadcast our much much smaller population. It really helps that schools are starting to teach LGBTQ+  but they’re only recognizing the LGBT because they don’t know who the Q+ is

[Apathetic Echidna]

I was really conflicted about what to pick. I did end up picking Media because once it is out there and a topic of conversation lots of things can come from that, buuuut I also really want the laws to change where I live because there are huge gaps in the wording that leaves me no legal standing against discrimination (though the laws are all sorts of messed up anyway as there are still homophobic laws on the books, and there are heaps of ways of slipping around the laws anyway as discrimination is very hard to legally prove to the extent that proof is required) 

[Jot-Aro Kujo]

It was hard to pick, but I went for "visibility in media" because I think there are probably a lot of aros out there who don't know they're aro, and media representation is a really important thing for showing people we exist. Had I ever even heard the term "aromantic" when I was younger, outside of being a specific type of asexuality, I would most likely have identified as aro at a much younger age and saved myself a lot of pain and suffering.

I definitely think the other items on the list are important things that I want to work to (particularly irl aro stuff), but I think before we can do that at all, we need to gain more visibility and more strength in numbers. It'd be hard to make an aro group if out of the 20 aros in your town, only two of them actually know what aromanticism is, yknow what I mean? I feel like the first step is just, hey everyone, we exist! And then we can go forward from there.

Basically what I'm saying is step 1: Find and kill the writers of Riverdale, step two ???, step 3 profit

[Autumn]

I ultimately went with changing policies, because I think that is something we can push for even while building aro awareness through trying to get media rep and more aro in person groups (which I would put as a close second and third priority), since while such policies especially hurt aros, there are also many single allo people who are hurt by them too, so we could go after them from a number of angles.  Most other movements seem to focus around a specific set of policy change or changes (and combating the policies would in turn be combating amatonormativity, which could be an educational side of the movement too). That said I do agree media rep and in person groups are equally important for the community for spreading awareness and reaching out to many aros who might still be feeling isolated or confused, as well as making organized protest more doable.

[bananaslug]

It looks like visibility and policy change are the two most popular options so far! I think the two could definitely go hand in hand. Political demands often make a group more visible and visibility frequently makes people more responsive to political demands, so I think working on both might be helpful.  

[nonmerci]

I chose media too. I think the main problem of aromanticism is that people don't even know that we exist. And having to explain difference between aromanticism and asexuality everytime you come out is exhausting.

Policy is important too, and it also benefit ro single people (never understood why married people have advantages). But I think anybody would listen if they're not aware of our existence.

The same way, I think we would gain recognition in the LGBTQA+ community if we gain recognition in general.

 

@Jot-Aro Kujo I'm with you with Riverdale. And I add to the liste the fans who refuse to recognize he's asexual and aro in the comics because "disinterest in girls was just the way to représente gay so he is gay ok?"

 

[Holmbo]

Great poll question! I thought a while about what to pick and it was interesting to read others reasoning.

 

I ended up picking visibility in media because, as other commentors have said, there are so many people who doesn't know aro even exists. The LGBT+ community can be one path to find out about it. But many people (aro allos in particular) might not even consider that they're not "straight".

 

I also think that more aro characters in media would be beneficial for society as a whole. We are so focused on romance as the ultimate type of relationship and because of this people neglect their friends and become lonely and isolated. Or stay in unhealthy relationships because they feel it's so tied to their sense of self worth.

[eatingcroutons]

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[Magni]

I voted for building in-person communities because I think it's kinda a pre-requisite for being able to accomplish many of the others?  Currently, we are mainly congregated in online spaces with people all over the world; some goals, such as changing policies that currently favor couples, are based more locally so would not be particularly feasible to pursue currently.  I also thing it is important to form coalitions with larger queer organizations in general because it helps give us visibility and access to spaces and tools which otherwise would not be available to us.  Visibility is important in general, but that extends beyond just media.  Lastly, I think it is important to create informational resources that can more easily be spread to increase awareness and visibility.