caught in a bad aromance

Happy Aro week of visibility! 💚

(and an ace knight because these two often go hand in hand 💜)

Being black and Aromantic is an experience. When I came out through social media my family felt the need to drill me with questions about my past romantic relationships and why now all a sudden, I’d chosen to go by Aro. I remember talks of bandwagons, even though I can count the number of aro-spec black people I’ve met on one hand with like three fingers. In church when my oldest sister led the prayer, she alluded to how younger kids had so many demons they had to fight, and I instantly knew what she meant. Subsequently, my being Aro had become a thing to pray off and use as a talking point in Sunday school rather than being discussed on a deeper and serious level with just myself. But when we did speak about it the conversations felt like an interrogation. It always felt like black culture couldn’t align much with Aromanticism, especially cause growing up I was taught that marriage was the end goal and that’s what I should want but I don’t think marriage was in my plans. I would dream of having dogs and living alone in a big house instead of having a romantic partner. For me being Aro and black is an interesting intersection because romance is very much portrayed in black narratives in both good and bad ways, but it’s never talked about in the capacity to which I experience alloromanticism. Alloromanticism is never ‘the decline of romantic attraction’ or ‘the strong romantic attraction to people only when I know them just as well as I know myself’. With my demiromantic identity people don’t understand the difference it has from regular attraction . My attraction is fluid so in the case of when I feel more Demi I’m glued to one person and one person only for a really long time. Attraction like that is what I wish was shown on TV and not just packaged as someone who's got an obsession and needs to get over someone. They could be Demiromantic. A thing I love about being Aro-spec is how comfortable it feels. Like I don’t feel this overwhelming need to perform. If my partner knows I’m on the Aro-spec they know it’s best not to try to force romantic gestures or even be offended by my lack of attraction at times. ... How come black women just can’t experience attraction a bit differently from how everyone says we should. So many black and brown men and women probably have to repress the way they feel and run the risk of being the bad guy because no one would understand or want to navigate the ways in which they experience Aromanticism. They bottle it up and when things go wrong probably find it easier to just blame themselves for not being enough or their partner when really, they just have to look into themselves and their orientation. I think black women could feel more assertive in themselves if they realized that they can be Aromantic and not pushed into this box where they have to play a role they don’t want to play. Black women deserve to explore romantic orientations as well as sexual ones and have a deep dive into how they feel. And that should be respected. To black Aromantic people I say keep pushing the odds, keep daring to form a new mold for black kids to come because we’re drowned in content and media that tells us we’re overly sexualized and romanticized and that can change with us. Our families and friends may not understand, the world may not even understand, but as long as you get who you are that’s honestly all that matters. As a collective we can help each other learn and grow, we can push each other in our advocacy and know it’s not a competition. All our efforts should be us trying to get Aromanticism to be taken as seriously as any other orientation.

You from Real Life are Aspec

Demisexual Angel - final version. Flat colors, transparent background, linework under the cut.

Read the FAQ and follow the campaign: Pride Angels.

The 2022 design was meant to be a pair with the Demiromantic angel, being a sword and a shield.

And it was meant to rhyme with the Asexual angel, having shared design elements of smoke and eyes. For these elements I was also inspired by a character from a podcast my friends like (the Magnus Archives), that has lots of cool fanart with smoke and eyes. I haven't personally listened to much of the podcast but I do enjoy the fanart for it.

For the redesign I initially wanted to keep the sword concept. I was thinking of one of my favorite video games, World of Warcraft and specifically the sword Frostmourne from that series.

From there I thought of a lion-angel shield for Demiromantic to go with it, continuing to take inspiration from Warcraft. But I felt like the shield was a little lamer than the sword. People tend to like swords over shields, so I didn't want to disadvantage Demiromantic by making it the lesser of the two options.

Still wanting Demisexual and Demiromantic to be a pair, I tried going in a completely different direction, thinking of another classic fantasy weapon pairing: poison and dagger. For these I was also inspired by a video game: specifically Baldur's Gate 3 where there is a rogue character who gives me demisexual/demiromantic vibes.

But upon further reflection of these designs, I decided they were unremarkable compared to the others in the series. I also got some feedback that they were too simple compared to the others. So, I decided to go back to my sword idea since I still liked it, and it stands out more. And I made Demiromantic into a lich-angel to pair with it.

Now, I don't think these are as strongly a matching pair as my 2022 designs, so as of the time of writing this post (April 2024) I'm not sure if Demiromantic will stay as a lich-angel. I guess we shall see in a future redesign post!

Read powerful quotes from members of the #aromantic community! Don’t miss recommendation 7 of 8 about ways to present clinical and research questions. #ASAW2025 A collaboration with ThePRIDEStudy.

Read more at pridenet.org/reports

[Image Description:

Image 1: A square graphic that reads “Recommendation 7: Consider asking clinical and research questions in a way that separates sexual orientation and romantic orientation and allows for multiple selections as well as the opportunity for individuals to provide a write-in response.” The text is in a box bordered in green. The text is in a box bordered in green. Next the text is clip art of a multiple choice questionnaire with two responses ticked. To the right of the questionnaire is a pen. At the top of the graphic are the words “Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, #ASAW2025”. At the bottom of the graphic is a text box with the PRIDEnet and AUREA logos. The logos are connected by the words “In collaboration with”. Next to this is another text box that reads “Based on responses from aromantic participants” with a green arrow pointing to the right.

Image 2: A square graphic featuring a quote from a community listening session participant. It reads “I think the first thing you want to ask with data collection is [...] why are you asking? You have to know what you're going to do with this data. Like, don't just collect data just because you feel like it needs to be on a form because forms should have that. I think I know why you're asking and what you're going to do with it. And, so, I think the best forms that I have seen have a category for sexual orientation and a category for romantic orientation, and all of those options are two different poles parallel.”   At the top of the graphic are the words “Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, #ASAW2025”. At the bottom of the graphic is a text box with the PRIDEnet and AUREA logos. The logos are connected by the words “In collaboration with”. Next to this is another text box that reads “Stanford University School of Medicine and PRIDEnet. Community Listening Sessions with Aromantic People: Summary and Recommendation Report. 2024 January.

Image 3: A square graphic featuring a quote from a community listening session participant. It reads “... having a romantic attraction section and a sexual attraction section, and then having the ability to select multiple as a multigender person... would be so helpful because all of my attractions are so related to what my gender is at any given moment” Next to the quote is a clip art of social media posts with the multigender flag. At the top of the graphic are the words “Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, #ASAW2025”. At the bottom of the graphic is a text box with the PRIDEnet and AUREA logos. The logos are connected by the words “In collaboration with”. Next to this is another text box that reads “Stanford University School of Medicine and PRIDEnet. Community Listening Sessions with Aromantic People: Summary and Recommendation Report. 2024 January.

Image 4: A square graphic featuring a quote from a community listening session participant. It reads “They have so many different options for your sexual orientation, but there's none for your romantic orientation. So if they literally just had a fill in the blank that's optional so if people don't know what that means, they don't have to fill it out, but people who are aromantic, we can actually put something in there and they can actually get data from that you know? I feel like it's not hard.” To the right of the quote is a clipart of a black pen writing a scribbled line from left to right. Under the quote is a black text box that reads: “Read more recommendations from aromantic participants at: PRIDEnet.org/reports.” At the top of the graphic are the words “Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, #ASAW2025”. At the bottom of the graphic is a text box with the PRIDEnet and AUREA logos. The logos are connected by the words “In collaboration with”. Next to this is another text box that reads “Stanford University School of Medicine and PRIDEnet. Community Listening Sessions with Aromantic People: Summary and Recommendation Report. 2024 January.

Sometimes aromanticism is about experiencing romance differently than alloromantic people do.

In fact, it waters down the actual meanings of said words and oppression. You are, again, at best making aspec people look obnoxious and like they don't have real problems if this is the most "dire" thing to complain about, at worst just spouting off homophobia in a rainbow-colored wrapper.

You know what's actually amatonormativity and arophobia? Society explicitly being organized in such a way that aspec people would be better off legally, financially, and even socially if they were in romantic relationships. That people who prefer not to be in relationships (or "worse," those who might only be interested in sexual relationships, i.e. aroallos) clearly have something wrong with them mentally or emotionally that should make them be avoided and warned about like some kind of predator.

And a healthy dash of cishetero-patriarchial misogyny on top with the implication that aspec women in particular need to "settle down" and be a Good Wife™️ to some cishet man, that their orientation is something that can and should be fixed.