Pour la beauté du geste

I usually mostly share writing during #AggressivelyArospectacular, but this year I’ve been busy crafting new things to sell at various art markets I’ll take part in in December. This was a good opportunity to get to a project I’ve had for a while: making some patches out of jeans that have become too frayed to repair and wear.

I made those patches by cutting out a section of fabric from my jeans, making a border by going over several time with a zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine, and then adding embroidery, words painted with old nail polish or beads.

The “Lavender Witch” patch was made for a good friend of mine. Lavender Witch is the name of her feminist grunge band, and you can listen to their music on Bandcamp. The border effect was totally unintended and caused by poor quality thread.

The “Do It Together” and “Grow Hope” patches were made with a solarpunk ethos in mind. Solarpunk is an artistic genre and social movement that aims to bring about an ecological and socially-just society. This movement focuses on positive imaginings of the future and on acting as communities instead of individuals. Hence the message of these two patches!

I would also like to make some arospec and relationship anarchism-related patches at some point...

Do you have suggestions of other messages I should include?

“Le spectre aromantique pour les nul·les » (Arospec 101 – French edition!)

In honor of #AggressivelyArospectacular, I spent last month motivating myself to finally translate my zine “Arospec 101” into French.

I wrote “Arospec 101” a few years ago during a 24 Hours Zine Thing. The goal of this zine was to serve as an introduction to the topic of aromanticism, and as a documentation of discussions happening around arospec-ness at the time.

The original, English version can still be downloaded for free here (and should then be printed on A4 paper, cut and folded). You can also reach out to me if you would like to buy or trade a paper copy.

In 2022, it was translated into Spanish by Esther (@waru-chan8). This version can be found here.

Last month, in 2024, I realized that there are still very few sources available in French about aromanticism. The few sources that do exist tend to focus on aro-ace discourses and leave behind the allosexual aromantic experiences (including mine.) Also, I’ve seen discourse emerging in France from people who are asexual and aromantic but who are totally detached (and mostly unaware) of the aromantic culture that has developed in English online.

Therefore, I wanted to share my experience and the things I learned in these same English-speaking online communities, for a French-speaking audience.

This whole project was also a reaction to an arophobic comment from a colleague of mine in an LGBTQIA+ organization, as well as to the general invisibilization of arospec issues even in an organization claiming to include the “A”. Considering I’m quitting that job next month (for unrelated reasons), I hope that leaving behind this zine will help my team remember that this “A” does not only stand for Asexuality…

I also took the opportunity of this translation work to update the contents of the zine a little bit. (For example, I added a section where I recount my experience of dating as an arospec person.) Should I make an updated version of the English version as well? Let me know if you think it’s necessary!

You can download the French version of this zine for free here.

Bisous 😘

Arospec headcanon: Daniela Velasquez from Sense8

I headcanon Dani as aromantic and allosexual. I have also always felt like the show failed to properly explore her character and how she forms relationships. So here is a very short exploration of that headcanon:

Dani clearly sees romantic attachment as leverage, something she can use. Of course, this fits well with her career in show-business, but she seems surprisingly happy to forego any romantic attachment once she settles into her friendship with Lito and Hernando. In the same way, she seems to be using her sexuality to navigate her relationships: she cheats on Joaquin as a way to try and escape their relationship, then immediately tries to have sex with Lito in order to cement their relationship and gain protection. There's some self-destructiveness in her behavior, but I also feel like this shows someone who feels in control of her sexuality, whereas she has a much harder time using the codes of romance to her advantage, even if she tries to.

I've always been sad that the development of her relationship with Lito and Hernando was never explicitally explored. I guess relationship negotiation doesn't make for good television? Still, there are some definite hints that they have a non-traditional friendship, which could be interpreted as a queerplatonic relationship. There's some ambiguity in the series about Dani's photos of Lito and Hernando, but I've always felt as though the two men weren't actually surprised at the existence of the photos, and only afraid of the risk of them being leaked. This makes me feel as though Dani's part in their sexuality (the way she watches and masturbates as they have sex), is something that's been acknowledged and accepted by the two men. They certainly make space for her in their domestic lives when they all move in together, in a way that goes way beyond just protecting Dani and all of their reputations.

I want to read Dani as allo-aro. I want to see her as someone who's been enduring what people have called “love” because she thought that was necessary to get what she wants (sex, safety, affection,...) I want to grieve for the way she's been traumatized by an abusive relationship, in which someone could call violence and obsession love and no one would correct him. I understand how, for someone like her, Lito and Hernando's relationship could be a safe heaven. Lito is someone who does not feel attracted to her, but who still acts caringly towards her and can offer her the protection she needs. More than that, Lito and Hernando's relationship is an example of truly caring love, one that can help her heal from her trauma but which – very importantly – doesn't need her to put her boundaries on the line to do so. She doesn't need to fall in love to learn that love can be kind. She doesn't need to fall in love ever, because she no longer needs a romantic relationship in order to not be alone. I think this reading is much kinder to the character, instead of the way the show brushes off her connection to Lito and Hernando as “gay fetishism” in the first season (while simultaneously also asserting that Hernando genuinely cares for her as a friend.)

In the end, headcanoning Dani as aro is important to me because she's not alone. Her relationship with Lito and Hernando goes against the narrative that it's normal for romantic love to isolate you (inside your closed off couple bubble), which leads to the idea that it's normal for arospec people to be left behind, to always be treated as second best. Instead, we see Hernando break off his relationship with Lito based on how the latter treats Dani. And I want every arospec people to get what Dani gets: relationships that are mutually supportive and which are open to intimacy even if they aren't romantic.