What's Going On: December 2020
This is the last WGO of the year! Here’s what we can forward to.
Are you online?
The prompts for AroWriMo 2021 have been posted! This event runs throughout February, with one prompt a week. The prompts can be found here! Submissions are obviously not open yet, but you can find more information about the event and when it opens over on the AroWriMo tumblr.
The Aro Writing Awards celebrate the works the aro community loves and provides a space for the aro community to share, read, and discuss the works they love. You can nominate any free online work that involves words and is relevant to the aro community here until January 1st, 2020. Judges will pick a short-list for each category in January. To vote on or suggest categories, take this survey. The community will vote during February and the winner will be announced during Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week. Judges are preferred to have a background in content creation, writing, sensitivity reading, reviews, or be avid readers. Priority will go to judges whose intersectionality or aro experience is least represented in the pool of judges.
Contact AroWritingAwards@gmail.com to volunteer to judge, volunteer to help manage the event, or share concerns.
Positively Positive Education Productions is holding a fundraiser to help support their work! Founded by a HIV+, black, aromantic, asexual, queer and transgender activist, Positively Positive provides a multitude of education workships and resources. They are also a songwriter, hip hop artist, and spoken word lyricist, among other talents. By donating to the Positively Positive fundraiser, you’ll be helping to lift up and amplify marginalised voices. Head over to their fundraiser page for more information!
The Trevor Project’s 2020 Survey is live! They’re asking LGBTQIA+ people between the ages of 13 and 24 that live in the United States to please participate and share their experiences. The Trevor Project provides some important resources to the LGBTQIA+ community, so the more aromantics that take their survey, the better visibility and resources they can provide. If you have a spare moment, please head on over and fill it out!
Aggressively Arospectacular 2020 has finished, so now is a perfect time to head to their tumblr to have a look at all the cool things posted for Agressively Arospectacular this year. There’s a ton of art, stories, and even music to check out, so plenty of arospec content to consume to your heart's content. If you missed out on participating, no fear, because you can submit content all year round by tagging it with #AgressivelyArospec.
The November Carnival of Aros roundup has unfortunately yet to be posted, nor has the December call for submission, but keep an eye out on their wordpress, as that should be posted any day now! If you’re interested in hosting for the Carnival, they have a link at the top of the page you can use to register your interest!
For Canadian aromantics, Minister Bardish Chagger has launched the LGBTQ2 survey. This survey is to help the Government of Canada better understand the daily realities and experiences of LGBTQ2 people in Canada in areas such as employment, healthcare, housing, homelessness and safety. They’re asking that anyone in Canada aged 16 or older who self identities as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, queer and/or Two-Spirit complete the survey. This includes people who identify as part of the LGBTQ2 community but use different terms or concepts to refer to their orientation and/or gender identity and expression, aka aromantics. Just like the Trevor Project’s survey, the more aromantic people who take it, the more visibility aromantics may gain in Canada, so head on over if you have the time.
Out and about?
Our very own Copy Editor, Alex, is working on a brand new collaboration and is asking for the help of an aros based in Brisbane, Australia. They are working with Queerious Minds on an aromantic project to raise awareness of and educate about aromanticism. The project will be an interview video filmed in person by Queerious Minds, and shared by both QM and AUREA during ASAW next year. If you’d like to participate, please email us via our contact email, contact@aromanticism.org, or Queerious Minds via queeriousminds@gmail.com. We’d love to be able to showcase the diverse range of aros living in Brisbane!
If you don’t live in Brisbane and want to participate, don’t worry, because soon we’ll be releasing the interview questions online for anyone worldwide to answer. These answers will then be featured in the video, so remember to subscribe to our newsletter and watch our news feed so you don’t miss it when it goes live!
Aros in the Media
Bones of Green and Hearts of Gold is a collection of aromantic (and not asexual) stories by none other than K. A. Cook. The blurb for each story can be found here and every single one can be read free online. One of them has a dragon in it, what more could you want?
Common Bonds is an anthology of short stories and poetry about aromantic characters. This upcoming hit centres on platonic bonds and does so from a wide range of angles - see the table of contents here. Common Bonds will be published in April of next year (2021).
“I'm Aromantic, This is What It's Like” by Keiran Hanks
When I was growing up in Oregon, dating and romance just seemed like something that other people did.
This article is written by AUREA’s very own Volunteer Coordinator. It’s a great read, with lots of things many aros can relate to.
Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. If you hit CTRL-f and search ‘aromantic’ you’ll find an aro woman discussing the prospect of raising a child alone.
Canadian university students share their thoughts on romance in 2020 by Stacy Lee Kong
Turns out COVID-19 isn’t as much of a hindrance to university dating as insecurities, school and time are
What’s interesting about this piece is that while it isn’t generally aimed at or about aromantics, it does include someone discussing aromanticism because it is relevant to them. This casual inclusion is something we hope to see in the future.
Aromantics Address
In response to the global crisis and the difficult task of finding aros in the local area, a group of aromantics are planning an online meet up. These people have only their identity and their use of the Arocalypse forum in common - could this be a way that aros connect in the future?
What does your aro identity mean to you? A volunteer human rights coordinator has begun a How to be an Ally series for their non-profit and they’re looking for community feedback on their a-spec presentation. Find the form here.
Bella DePaulo - a long time advocate for single people - has written an article entitled: Valuing Friends: An Indirect Route to Singles Rights? While not aromantic herself, DePaulo is always discussing things also found in aromantic circles.