Questions for religious aros:

Does your aromantic identity impact how you conceptualize agape/ holy and divine love?

Has the idea of divine love driven you away from certain spiritual practices?

Do you find the idea of divine love comforting when considering what it means to be loved/experience love as an aro person?

How does being a loveless aro impact your understanding of divine love?

How does being a lovequeer aro impact your understanding of divine love?

The Aromantic Community and Social Services

[ This is a submission for the August 2020 Carnival of Aros for the prompt on experiences that you would be interested in seeing further explored in future aro research]

One of the questions my academic advisor asked me this summer while I was signing up for my social welfare major was which communities I was most interested in working with. My immediate response was the queer community. I already put a lot of time into queer community endeavors, it only made sense to keep my focus there.

But the more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder how relevant my current queer community activism is to social welfare. Most of my energy goes into creating aromantic community resources specifically . Does the aromantic community really have a large need for social welfare services? And if so, what are the services that the aromantic community most needs?

I have read a lot of Bella Depaulo’s work on singlism, and it seems to me that, if the majority of aromantics choose not to partner, which appears to be the case based purely on my own observation, then the majority of aro’s would experience the barriers to accessing things like housing or healthcare caused by singlism. If that’s true, then presumably many aro’s will need the help of social welfare services at some point in their lives to help navigate these challenges. 

However this is all based on assumption, and unfortunately, we don’t really have any hard data on how many aros partner or how many aros have experienced anti-single prejudice. When reading through aromantic community discussions it doesn’t appear that social services are a large concern for many people, but will that continue to be the case? Most of the other aromantics I encounter online or in person are high-school or college aged. As community members begin to age will social services become more relevant to the aromantic community as a whole? 

These aren’t questions that can easily be answered without more research into aromantic experience, which is why I think an increase in aromantic research is so important. I am looking forward to having data from the Aro Census because I think it will at least help us understand more basic demographic questions about the aro community. Once that data is available I think it will be a lot easier for people, including myself, to start on more specific research about the aromantic community. 

Happy July everyone! We had a wonderful pride month, which you can read a recap of here, but now it’s time for the summer fun to really begin! Check out AUREA’s July news feed updates to catch up on new groups, terminology, and discussions within the aro community.  

The Aro Guide to Creating In-Person Community

Alright y’all, so only a month and a half after this post and I finally have some information to give you about one of the aro activism topics I suggested.

In-person groups are something that every community needs before it can do more on the ground activism, and creating in-person spaces is something I actually have some experience with so that’s where I’d like to start. This information is intended to be general, so you can apply it to creating a larger communal aro space, or to creating a smaller space for an aro subcommunity. Please also note that this is certainly not the *only* way to create an in-person space, every organization does things differently. This is just supposed to give basic and overarching information about how an in-person can be run, using the knowledge I’ve gained from working with several long-lasting LGBTQIA+ and religious groups.

Creating in-person community doesn’t have to take a lot of resources, but it can be hard to maintain. With this in mind, I would like to split this post into 4 parts: Creating a community, maintaining community, general advice, and the benefits of putting in the work. Let’s get started!

 Creating a community:

In order to create in-person community you need five things:

1. Space - You will always need a place to meet but take a deep breath, this isn’t the challenge you think it is. Many people get stuck on this, thinking that they’ll need to spend a lot of money to rent a space, but public parks, coffee shops, and free library meeting rooms (which, just fyi usually need to be reserved ahead of time) are all perfectly fine places to start a group.

2. Leadership- If you start a new group then you and anyone else you may have started it with, will probably become that groups leadership by default. If you’re the one setting up all the meetings then that makes you the person in charge whether you like it or not and this steers a lot of people away from starting new organizations. And I get that, most of us grow up with very intimidating ideas of what a ‘leader’ looks like and as a result, feel that’s leadership is too much responsibility to take on. But if we want in-person aro groups someones gotta do it, so as someone who has been running my church youth group for 3 years now, I’m here to tell you that my job is 90% herding cats and 10% arts and crafts. That’s it. As long as you know how to make lists, use craft scissors, and keep a schedule you’re perfectly qualified to be the person in charge, don’t let the idea of leadership intimidate you out of trying to start an in-person aro group.

3. Time - Especially when you’re first starting out creating a new group can take a lot of time and energy. So make a schedule, take as long as you need to, and if possible, split the work with other people. Putting everything together as quickly and with as little effort as possible is not the way to build an effective community, so go slow if need be, there’s no shame in that.

4. An online presence - Every modern organization needs an online presence. This can mean anything from making a Facebook group to creating a whole new website, but whatever you do, you will need a centralized online space where people can consistently find information about your events. If you’re not someone with a lot of web design skills then I recommend using Facebook, or, if you have the money for it, Meetup (Note: Meetup does tend to bring more people to an event than Facebook does, but I know many people have tight budgets, so like don’t worry too much if you can’t afford it. I know a lot of groups that do all their event organizing on Facebook and still have great attendance).

5. An Activity- Especially when a community is new, activities are often needed to get people talking to each other. Facilitated group discussions are, IMO, the easiest way to do this, but anything that gets people to talk with each other can work.  

Once you have all this the final step is to promote your group. And I mean actually promote it, don’t just make one post about it on your favorite social media site. Leave flyers in coffee shops, post about it on relevant Facebook groups, contact local queer groups and see if they’ll promote it, post about it on neighborhood blogs and bulletin boards. Don’t half-ass this part, aro’s are few and far between and you will need to be loud about your group's existence if you want people to find you.    

Maintaining Community:

Creating a community is one thing, but maintaining it is another and this is, arguably, the more challenging part of the process. Lots of new organizations never make it past their first few months of existence, but that’s not what we want for the aro community. So here’s are the things that,  in my opinion, are most necessary to keep a group going.

1. Persistence - There is a very good chance that the first few meet up’s you arrange will have low or no attendance. New groups are like that, and I know it’s discouraging, but don’t give up. Keep promoting and keep showing up, and then be prepared for no one else to be there. This may sound like an exercise in futility, but I promise it’s not. This summer my church youth group tried to set up a program for teen and young adult Pagans. It took four months for anyone outside of our youth groups to actually show up, but we kept meeting despite that, and now, eight months in, we have relatively high attendance. So bring a book, bring some other work that needs to get done, and if no one shows up do that instead. If you’re doing a good job of promoting your events someone will show up eventually.  

2. Have Help- Burn out is real, and trying to run everything yourself is the fastest way to fail, so figure out who can help you run things. Ideally, of course, the people helping you will be other aro’s, but many of us don’t have any irl aro friends so figure out your other options. You’re out to your sister and she’s really good at social media promotion? See if she'll help you get the word out about events. Your friend just really fricking loves graphic design? See if they’ll help you with posters, web design, informational pages, or other similar design needs. As your community grows other aros may be able to take over these tasks, but you will need help from the getgo, so make sure you have at least one or two people to share the work with.   

3. Have Community Guidelines- Humans! Are! Messy! And everyone has different ideas about what behaviors are and aren’t acceptable. A good way to prevent these differences from creating issues is to have a set of community guidelines. Put them up on your facebook/website/other social media so people can see them, or better yet, go over them at the beginning of each meeting, this will make sure that everyone knows your group's code of conduct. I suggest involving other community members in the creation of these guidelines so that everyone is happy with them.

4. Consistency- This isn’t necessary, but it is helpful. If you can make sure your group meets at the same time or in the same place every meeting it can help people fit your group into their schedule. That said, this isn’t always something that can be managed, so don’t be hard on yourself if it isn't possible. Consistency is an ideal, not a requirement.

5. Stay out of Drama- Drama can break up even the most stable communities, so while it’s sometimes unavoidable you should try to stay away from it (especially if you’re leadership). Play well with other queer organizations, and if possible, try to have community members that can act as mediators within the group. I’ve seen more communities then I can count break up because a few people couldn’t get along, don’t let the same thing happen to yours.

General Advice:

Make something you would want to go to

When first starting a group, make it something that you would be excited to participate in. What you want is likely to be what others want too, and if you’re doing something that you already love it will be a lot more bearable if other people don’t show up the first few times.

Look at other groups

If you’re still anxious about starting a group, take some time and go to some other small meet up groups first. See what they do, and if you’re comfortable, talk to the organizers about how they run things. It’s easier to get started when you can see that other people have done the same thing.

Money, money, money

Use free spaces, websites, and other materials as much as possible. Once an organization starts needing money just to exist funding will become the top priority no matter what other issues are going on. If you just love finances maybe this will work for you, but I think most of us get stressed out when money becomes an issue. Sometimes these things are unavoidable, but if you can organize your community without spending too much it will let you focus on other things.

 The Benefits of Putting in the Work:

Running an organization, especially as a volunteer, can often feel like a thankless job, but try and remember how much good it does. Community building can help you understand others better, it allows people to create necessary social networks, and most importantly, people with in-person communities can organize larger political action. Not everyone has the time or energy to start an aromatic group in their area, and that’s perfectly understandable, as we’ve seen it can be a lot of work. But if you can start a group, and you want to start a group, then your organization can do a lot of good

Here are some more resources on organizing communities, clubs, and meetups, that, while not aro specific, might still give you some ideas. Hopefully some of them will be helpful for y’all!

(x) (x) (x)

Alright so the survey on aro community needs from this post got 30 responses, and with it all being long form I don’t expect to get many more.

So what I’m going to do is give summaries of common themes and answers above the cut for people who don’t want to read through a bunch of text, and then I’m going to put individual answers under the cut for folks who are interested. Please note that these are all anonymous survey answers, and they do not necessarily reflect my opinions. I encourage people to have/start discussions around the topics brought up here so that we can work towards having a mutually fulfilling and cohesive community. 

Summary: 

 What are the community needs of alloaros?

More recognition and visibility both within and outside of the aspec community, aro specific spaces where no one will assume that they’re ace and where they don’t have to be bombarded by ace content, safe spaces to talk about their experiences with sexual attraction, and a wider community acknowledgment that ace and aro don’t mean the same thing. 

What are the community needs of aroaces?

Separate aroace spaces, space and language that allows them to express the interconnectedness of their aro and ace identities, a recognition of the diversity of aroace experiences including the experiences of oriented aroaces and aro leaning aroaces, spaces devoid of both sex and romance, and less infighting between the aro and ace communities. 

What are the community needs of non-SAM aros?

New language that doesn’t enforce the use of SAM as a norm and that doesn’t enforce a SAM/ non-SAM binary, more recognition of aromantic as one whole identity, more inclusion of their identity within aro spaces, and having the ability to label themselves as aro without being asked what their other identity is . 

What are the community needs of greyro/ aro-spec folks?

Specific spaces where they can talk about aromantic attraction, more recognition and visibility both within and outside of the aspec community, more greyro/aro-spec specific resources and content, and a larger platform within the aspec community to discuss their experiences.  

What are the shared needs of these different subgroups within the aro and arospec community?

Increased visibility, spaces free from amatonormativity, safe and unbiased shared spaces for all members of the aro/aro-spec community, separation and distinction from alloaces, more in-person spaces, and a building of understanding and acceptance between the different community subgroups.  

How do we meet all of these needs within an online space?

Better and more formalized tagging systems, creating more forums, chats, tags, etc, that are specific to different aro and arospec subgroups, creating more variety in online aro spaces generally, giving equal online spaces and platforms to all aro subgroups, and having open and polite community discussion about our needs within online aro spaces. 

How do we meet all of these needs within an in-person space?

Use inclusive language, allow for smaller sub-communities within larger aro and aspec groups, provide resources for small, lesser known identities both within groups and at pride, push for more aro inclusion in wider queer spaces and create safe and respectful discussion spaces where everyone can voice their needs  

How do we reconcile conflicting needs?

Civil and open discussions, try to find solutions instead of just arguing, and create separate spaces for subgroups when needed while continuing to maintain larger general spaces for discuison and community building. 

I think a big issue right now is that we’re treating two different and equally legitimate criticisms of the aspec community like they’re two opposing sides of an argument when I really don’t think they are.

The first issue is of course that many alloaros, non-SAM aro’s, and quite frankly, even a lot of aroace’s dislike that aromanticism is seen as a subset of asexuality instead of being viewed as it’s own identity. This is a valid and real criticism that should be taken seriously.

The second issue is that a lot of aroace’s and greyro’s feel like the aspec communities heavy focus on distinguishing between romantic and sexual attraction forces them to split their identities and communities in a way that doesn’t reflect their actual experiences, and this makes it difficult for them to figure out what part of the community they belong in.  This is also a valid and real criticism that should be taken seriously.

The conflict here comes from the fact that further distinguishing the ace community and the aro community upsets what little balance and community space aroaces and greyros have been able to find. But honestly, I don’t think this needs to be an argument. What I’m getting from all this is that nobody in the aro community was actually having all of their needs met with the way things were/ are set up and that’s not an issue that can be addressed by squabbling with each other.

I think the best way to deal with this is simply to recognize that there’s a lot of hurt on every side of the equation and that we need to try to work together in a constructive way despite that. So here are some the questions I think we need to answer in order to have a healthy community:

- What are the community needs of alloaros?

-What are the community needs of aroaces?

-What are the community needs of non-SAM aros? 

- What are the community needs of greyro/ aro-spec folks?

-What are the shared needs of these different subgroups within the aro and arospec community? 

- How do we meet all of these needs within an online space?

-How do we meet all of these needs within an in-person space?

- How do we reconcile conflicting needs?

Feel free to give your answers to one or all of these questions. Hopefully, we can have a polite and constructive discussion around this.

I’ve seen a number of posts going around implying that any aspec organization that provides more ace resources than aro ones is participating in aro eraser and aro-antagonism, and while I see where that idea comes from I think it’s really a huge oversimplification of what’s going on. Because the thing is, especially when it comes to smaller organizations, this disparity is not always the intention or fault of the people running things. 

I’m aroace (although I primarily identify as aro), I’ve been participating in the aspec community for 4 years now, and I run two different aspec blogs. In the time I’ve been doing this I’ve answered hundreds of asks from acespecs and arospecs alike, and I’ve created a variety of different resource lists for different identities. Through all of this, the one thing that has consistently been true is that it’s much harder to find aro resources then it is to find ace ones.

 Because asexuality? It has all sorts of Cosmopolitan and Huff-po articles educating people on it. It has a bunch of queer and LGBT+ organizations that recognize it as an identity and set aside resources for it. It has books and websites. In fact, half the resources I tend to point ace people towards aren't even from ace specific groups, they're from larger queer groups.

 Aromanticism, on the other hand, has none of that. Most of the resources I have on aromanticism are from other aromantics and a lot of them are simply tumblr posts. This stuff is hard to find and I've had to gather most of it over several years in online arospec spaces.

 So while compared to most other identities ace resources are barely a blip on the radar, compared to aro and arospec resources they’re practically a monolith.

If you want an example of just how much easier it is to find ace resources then take this post. It’s a resource page I made for Asexual Awareness Week. It took me maybe an hour to make including the graphic and there were so many resources to chose from that I actually left a lot out just so it wouldn’t get cumbersome.  Now compare that to the resource page I made for aromantic awareness week. I spent almost all of my free time for two weeks looking for aro resources for this post, and it still has less information on it then the ace on does. 

Now is this resource disparity ultimately a product of aro-antagonism and erasure in the ace community? Of course, it is. If aro’s were really viewed as equally important members of the aspec community the way alloace’s claim, then all of the ace folks who advocated for queer groups to set aside resources for asexuality would have asked that resources be set aside for aro’s as well. All those alloaces who got interviewed by various newspapers about “what it’s like to be asexual” or whatever would have used aro inclusive language and brought up the existence of aro and aroace folks. And if we’re being honest, significantly more in person ace groups would be for aro’s too. A lot of this is a product of the ace communities aro-antagonism, there’s no denying that.

But what it isn’t, is a reflection of how individual aspec resource groups feel about aro people. 

Most organizations that actually label themselves as “aspec” are run by a small group of volunteers, and because of that, these groups tend to gather their resources from pre-existing websites. So when an aspec website is only posting other peoples articles and resources they can’t reasonably be expected to post the same amount of content for ace’s and aro’s. The only way they could possibly do that is by purposefully not posting important ace resources and that really isn’t a reasonable solution. 

So some alternative ways to figure out if an aspec group is really aro friendly are as follows:

I’m gonna date this as being posted on 11/9/2018 cus it’s exactly the sort of thing that will age badly when arospec folks start to get more representation and resources, but for now, I think this argument stands. 

Don’t assume an aspec organization is erasing aro’s just because they have less aro content. It’s usually more complex than that.

Holy shit. Holy fuck. I got my little sister the book "sex is a funny word" because she's at that age where she's reading a lot of puberty books and I'd heard that this one was lgbtq+ friendly, but I was checking it over for accuracy and I gotta say, even with the totally gender neutral language they were using to talk about body parts and the really respectful way they talk about gender and their portrayals of same sex couples I was so fucking sure that I would have to mention that not everyone gets crushes or feels attraction separately. Because these books never talk about that. But here it is. The one thing I was so absolutely sure wouldn't be included.

I honest to god dropped the book when I saw this I was so shocked. And I'm so fucking happy right now. I can't exspress how much I wish this was mentioned in the books I read when I was a kid. It would have saved me so much confusion, and I'm so happy that kids today are gonna read this and know that it's okay and normal to not get curses. I'm so so fucking happy you have no idea.

the aro flag and the elements (minus spirit cus ya know, that’s hard to portray in an image)