Tag: format: list post

How to Ally: Discussing Allo-Aros in the Aro Community

Handdrawn illustration of a yellow pasture against a background of hills and sporadic trees. Scene is overlaid with the dark green/light green/white/yellow/gold stripes of the allo-aro pride flag. The text Aro Worlds Discussion Post sits across the image in a black, antique handdrawn type, separated by two ornate Victorian-style black dividers.
~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

It’s a common allo-aro experience to see well-meaning allies defending us by the use of discussion points that reinforce the erasure and othering they’re meant to counteract. Allies signal-boosting allo-aro works by arguing that they’re also useful for aro-ace understandings of aromanticism, for example, looks like a positive action at first glimpse but continues to contextualise allo-aros in terms of our relationship to asexuality.

How should folks discuss us, then? How should folks discuss the reality that allo-aros are not always regarded as a fundamental part of our shared community or fully supported within it? What words do we use if allo-aros are going to get upset when we’re just trying to be helpful?

So please find a list of discussion points, goals and shapes of activism that are more likely to make us feel that we do have allies willing to acknowledge our experiences and feelings.

Continue reading “How to Ally: Discussing Allo-Aros in the Aro Community” →

Allo-Aro Manifesto

Handdrawn illustration of a yellow pasture against a background of hills and sporadic trees. Scene is overlaid with the dark green/light green/white/yellow/gold stripes of the allo-aro pride flag. The text Aro Worlds Discussion Post sits across the image in a black, antique handdrawn type, separated by two ornate Victorian-style black dividers.
~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

It’s easy to get caught up, in writing about allo-aro experiences with regards the a-spec and aromantic communities, in the same reactionary series of responses: don’t do this, stop doing this, this is why this is erasure, this is why this is sexualisation, this is why this is exclusion.

These conversations are necessary and needed to provoke change.

They’re also exhausting, an expression of frustration and anger that is less about my beliefs and philosophies as an allo-aro and more about challenging or correcting behaviours that harm or erase. They’re exhausting because they’re communications to, for and about the people that hurt me; they’re exhausting because even my feelings, in the end, are about asexuality. They’re beneficial to my allo-aro community in the sense that one allo-aro’s anger and frustration validates others, but they’re not communications that build understanding of what allo-aro is. Asexuality is so centred that even our activism focuses more on what asexuals do and less on what allo-aros are.

This manifesto is about, in part, the allo-aro relationship to the a-spec, aromantic, asexual and allosexual LGBTQIA+ communities. This post also outlines who I am as an allo-aro and what philosophies of identity and behaviour I bring to my dealings with other a-specs and allosexuals. It’s a blueprint, waiting for corrections and adjustments and scribbles in the margins, but it is a picture of something that will one day be.

In this post, I’m speaking to and for an audience often forgotten in allo-aro activism: my allo-aro kin.

Continue reading “Allo-Aro Manifesto” →

Poetry Collection: Aro and Loveless

Handdrawn illustration of a green meadow foreground with green and yellow pine trees growing against a mint-hued sky. Scene is overlaid with the grey gradient/green/light green/green/grey gradient stripes of the loveless aromantic pride flag. The text Aro Worlds Poetry sits across the image in a black, antique handdrawn type, separated by two ornate Victorian-style black dividers.
~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

In my current queue and drafts for Tumblr, it feels like the majority of fiction and poetry is centred on promoting, celebrating and valuing the non-romantic ways aros still love. As much as I respect and support the need for other aros to tell their stories about love, I have to admit to feeling alienated. I’m struggling to find an equal number of depictions of aro identity and self-expression that don’t focus on an aro’s love.

So here’s a collection of reblogged aro poetry more welcoming for loveless aros and aros with complicated relationships to love. These pieces still reference love and discuss love, romance and amatonormativity. They’re not, however, focused on presenting or showcasing the author or narrator’s platonic or familial love. In other words, an aro narrator’s need to love or have their love seen and valued by others is not what these poems are about.

Continue reading “Poetry Collection: Aro and Loveless” →

Allosexual Aromantic Erasure: A Guide

Handdrawn illustration of a yellow pasture against a background of hills and sporadic trees. Scene is overlaid with the dark green/light green/white/yellow/gold stripes of the allo-aro pride flag. The text Aro Worlds Discussion Post sits across the image in a black, antique handdrawn type, separated by two ornate Victorian-style black dividers.
~ K. A. ~ Leave a comment

I’ve seen the beginnings of a trend that conflates aro-ace experiences of aromantic erasure in a-spec spaces with allo-aro experiences of allosexual-and-aromantic erasure.

I am troubled when this notion of we’re all aros together and we all experience aromantic erasure is used to silence allo-aros from talking about our specific experiences. This line of thought seems reasonable because there’s been no real discussion on what allosexual-and-aromantic erasure in a-spec spaces looks like. When you don’t know what allosexual-aromantic erasure is, it’s not so unreasonable to think it similar to aromantic erasure.

When allo-aros experience aromantic erasure in general a-spec spaces, we are simultaneously experiencing allosexual erasure alongside it. (This is because we cannot exist in a-spec spaces by virtue of our allosexuality alone, and aromanticism is not a centred a-spec identity.) This makes our experiences of erasure in a-spec spaces different from those of aro-aces, and we need this difference recognised.

It’s also worth noting that these points are interconnected and similar: a lot of these instances of erasure can’t happen without the concurrent existence of others. I’m listing these to create this sense of exposure and clarification, because even allo-aros don’t know the breadth of our own erasure.

I’ll also say that erasure doesn’t have to be intentional to be erasure. A lot of this doesn’t happen from malice; some of it happens from good intentions and a lot of it happens from the history of aromantic communities and culture evolving from asexual ones. It’s still erasure.

So please find a list of over fifty instances I consider allo-aro erasure, along with a few parenthetical explanations.

(People unfamiliar with terminology used in this post should first read this guide on using a-spec community terms.)

Allosexual Aromantic Erasure in A-Spec and Aromantic Spaces Is:

Continue reading “Allosexual Aromantic Erasure: A Guide” →