Looking for Asexual Agenda Contributors

The Asexual Agenda is looking for people to maintain the linkspam.  Additionally, we are looking for people to write articles.

The Asexual Agenda is a blog written by ace-spectrum people, for ace-spectrum people, seeking to go beyond the basics. One of the most important features of the blog is the semi-weekly linkspam, which helps our readers connect to the larger conversation.  The Asexual Agenda hosts articles on many topics, including personal experiences, relationships, language, intersectionality, activism, media, and more.

What it involves:

Carnival of Aros & Carnival of Aces: The Relationship Between the Aro and Ace Communities

In February, the Carnival and Aros and Carnival of Aces held a joint event, on the theme of “The Relationship Between the Aro and Ace Communities”.  TAAAP has posted the roundup.  You don’t want to miss this one!

From this point forward, the Carnival of Aros will continue independently.  Aromanticism on Dreamwidth is hosting the next one, on the theme of “It’s great to be aro!”  Get your submissions in before the end of the month.

The next Carnival of Aces is being hosted by Controlled Abandon.  The theme is “Symbols of Identity”.  Get your submissions in before the end of the month!

The Carnival of Aros and Carnival of Aces are both looking for volunteers!  For the Carnival of Aros, please see their website, and for the Carnival of Aces, please see the  masterpost.

Linkspam: March 1, 2019

Every Friday, we will share links to news, blogs, and anything else we find interesting.  We can’t catch everything, so you are invited to self-promote in the comments!

Ace Blogging

Iris wrote about relationship hierarchies and queer friendships.

Arosnowflake writes about why we should be careful not to simply replace assumptions of romantic love with assumptions of platonic love.

polyallsorts wrote about using ace colors.

TAAAP and Siggy share more about the backstory behind the carnival of Aros

 

Calls for Participants/Submissions

This month’s Carnival of Aces is now taking submissions for the theme of “Symbols of Identity”.

The new Carnival of Aros is also branching off into it’s own carnival with this month’s new theme “It’s great to be Aro“.

 

 

Aro-ish: Permanent Questioning & the Aromantic Community

This post was written for the Carnival of Aces & Aros. The Carnival of Aros is a new sister project that will be separate from the long-running Carnival of Aces, but just to kick off its first round, The Ace and Aro Advocacy Project and The Asexual Agenda are hosting it jointly on the topic of “The Relationship Between the Aro and Ace Communities.” For further details, check out this introductory post. This post is cross-posted to Prismatic Entanglements.

Content note: This post has some discussion of trauma in relation to romantic orientation.

Linkspam: February 22, 2019

Every Friday, we will share links to news, blogs, and anything else we find interesting.  We can’t catch everything, so you are invited to self-promote in the comments!

Ace Blogging

This is several months old, but Yasmin talked about their bad experience with the BBC3 asexuality documentary (video).  There was also a text article on lappthebrand, but it was taken down and we only have quotes from it.

Lee discussed the issues and identities of people who don’t use the split attraction model.

Danyi wrote about how Valentine’s Day can be stressful for aces.

Posts from the January Carnival of Aces, on “Asexuality is a Blessing” are now available.

Nicky at Queering Closeness writes about the difficulty of finding the right labels for non-normative relationships

Dating while Ace reflects on their past year of blogging and dating.

Ace Community Activity

The Asexual released Vol. 2, Issue 4, on the theme of Thinking Attraction.

News & Outreach

Sky News made a short documentary about asexuality, and there’s an associated writeup.

It’s Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week (ASAW)!

Calls for Participants/Submissions

Aroworlds and Aromantic Official have both issued prompt posts for ASAW.

 

Question of the Week: February 19th, 2019.

What’s the most cliched thing anyone has said to you about your asexuality?

 

Someone actually asked me if I’d had my hormones checked the other day. They said some insightful things like being curious how someone who identified as ace might responded if they did get an increased libido due to hormone replacement therapy but still, jeeeeeez

 

Being grayromantic and not talking about it

This was written for this month’s blogging carnival on the theme of “The relationship between the aro and ace communities“.  Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week is also next week.

Some time last year, I mentioned offhand to my then-fiance that I was gray-romantic. He expressed surprise. So that’s embarrassing. Did I not mention that part?

I’m not sure when I started using the word “gray-romantic”, but I always thought of my sexual and romantic orientations as matched, so it’s been an obvious corollary of gray-asexuality for almost a decade. There’s the split attraction model, which allows people to separate out sexual and romantic attractions and orientations, but there are also a lot of people who can’t really distinguish between the two–like me.  I identify as gray-asexual because I don’t experience sexual attraction in normative patterns, and I’m not sure if it even “counts” as sexual attraction. And my romantic attraction is in an identical situation, by virtue of being identical as far as I can determine.

So why didn’t I talk about it? The rise of aromantic communities (and my experience helping to launch the Carnival of Aros) gives me cause to reflect back on this with chagrin. Maybe I should have talked about my romantic orientation more?