ASAW Recap 2021
Written by the AUREA team
With every year that passes, so does another Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week. With every ASAW that passes, it grows larger and larger, and so too does aromantic visibility and awareness. Good thing too, seeing as that’s the entire point of the week! There were a plethora of articles, events, challenges/prompts and various other ways to participate in this ASAW, and here at AUREA we’re attempting to list them all!
![[Image caption: An aromantic pride flag are a Pride parade. Image from arospecweek.org]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5cb6e4d565019f0c5aa6cf20/1614914797094-3YX23CY677OXSQ2VV5Y9/flag.jpg)
[Image caption: An aromantic pride flag are a Pride parade. Image from arospecweek.org]
Events
Unfortunately, with the pandemic still happening there were few, if any in person meetups or events this year. However, that just means that there were many more online things happening!
TAAAP celebrated ASAW with some double trouble! They started with a special pride chat in honor of ASAW, with prompts inspired by AroWriMo. Then later in the month they held their regular session, focusing on resisting amatonormativity, in honor of Valentine’s Day. If you’d like to participate in future chats, be sure to head on over and find out how you can register!
The Ace and Aro Alliance of Central Ohio held a panel for ASAW, featuring a variety of intersectional perspectives from across the aromantic community. The goal was to facilitate a better understanding of the aro community and umbrella, and discuss some of the challenges that aro folks encounter in various settings, such as healthcare, education and socially.
UCLA’s LGBTQ Campus Resource Centre Outreach Team did an instagram live chat, discussing aromantic spectrum identities and sharing some information slides.
Over at AUREA we did a fundraiser livestream, with the benefits split between the Arocalypse Forums and AUREA. We chatted with members of the community for a couple hours, before finishing it off with an aro themed game of Quiplash! Head on over to our youtube channel to check out all the fun.
Aspec* German, a small community discord for aromantics, spent the week hosting daily voice chats on a variety of topics. We’re sure that the fun didn’t end with ASAW, so if you’re looking for a community space for all flavours of aspec, including for aces, aros, people in the respective spectra and of course everyone who is questioning, head on over to their website to join!
Twitter saw some new hashtag challenges and prompts this year! Starting us off was the hashtag #AroCreatives by Ro. Click the artwork below to see more from these select artists and follow the hashtag for more. There’s some beautiful work just waiting to be seen.
AroWeek brought back their twitter challenge, releasing daily prompts. They also shared some information about different arospec identities, and translated them into different languages as well!
AroWriMo, our favourite aro based writing challenge, celebrated February by boosting writing of all forms and posting prompts to encourage writing. Their prompts and themes can be found here.
AroSpec Fanworks Week is a new ASAW celebration, and celebrates arospec characters in fanworks of all kinds! They released a theme for each day of the week, and shared as many of the entries as they could find. Head on over to check out the results!
Carnival of Aros was in full swing during February, focusing on the topic of Relationship Anarchy. The original call included a short primer on relationship anarchy, a form of ethical non-monogamy, and a number of prompts and ideas to start off the topic. The full roundup can be found on MenacingAro’s blog.
Media
ASAW this year also saw some cool new media added to our growing collection.
Over on Instagram, Yasmin Benoit released a short video on how to be a better aromantic ally!
A new podcast, ‘The Invisible Spectrum’, made its debut! This podcast is all about putting the A in LGBTQIA+, and their first interview with ace and aro activist Marshall Blount does just that.
Queerious Minds is a facebook project aimed at telling the diverse stories of LGBTQIA+, Sistergirl and Brotherboy people. For ASAW they made and released an informational video with AUREA’s very own secretary, Alex, answering questions from the public about aromanticism. This video was intended to serve as a kind of ‘101 Introduction’ video to aromanticism, so please check it out and share!
The same star of Queerious Mind’s video also made a surprise appearance on a Melbourne Radio show! In response to the City Council of Yarra, in Melbourne, flying the aromantic flag for ASAW, Alex was invited to speak with Neil Mitchell to explain just what aromanticism is, and why it needs an awareness week. You can find a podcast of the show here, with the topic of aromanticism mentioned around 1:40, and Alex’s appearance at 1:42. There’s only about 2 callers after their interview, so no need to stick around to the end of the podcast unless you’re really interested in how Covid affected a girl’s high school rowing event.
If you’re an avid aromantic reader, Katherine Highland should be a name on your lips! Self publishing their own books, Katherine Highlands is an autistic aroace who writes about aspec experiences. Their latest novel explores the aroace identity of the main character in detail, and all royalties from the books go to support an organisation for autitisic adults in the Scottish Highlands.
AUREA recently had the pleasure of listening to a work of John Callaghan, who has written an aromantic song named ‘Truly, Madly, Just Me.’ If you ever have need of an aroace music producer, or you just want to more of their work out, John Callaghan can be found on Twitter (@johncallaghan), Facebook, YouTube, and their own website.
Articles
Moving on from aromantic media to aromantics IN media, there was a large influx of aromantic articles this year! We’ve linked them all below, so be sure to check them out if you’re interested.
Queerious Minds released articles throughout ASAW, talking to Tate Lin, Constance, and Arlo. You can find these articles on Queerious Mind’s facebook, or on the AUREA newsfeed.
“Are you ready for Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week?” by LGBTQNation
“Labels Change, but Feelings Persist” by PSU Vanguard
“How asexual and aromantic people observe a day dedicated to love” by CBC Canada
“Cartoon: Rolling into Aromantic Awareness Week” by Scot Scoop News
“Compulsory No More: Heterosexuality, Sexuality, and Coupling” by Bella DePaulo
“Growing Up Aromantic in a Romantic World” by Branden Le (Hosted on Rainbow Roo)
“Strange Love” by Kay (Hosted on Rainbow Roo)
“Where’s My Hallmark Ending?” by Blythe Hokkanen (Hosted on Rainbow Roo)
“Setting the Compass of My Heart” by Neill Kovrig (Hosted on Rainbow Roo)
“A Hopeless Romantic? No Thanks, I’m an Accomplished Aromantic!” by Sam (Hosted on Rainbow Roo)
“All Love is Worthy” by Oliver Cutcliffe (Hosted on Rainbow Roo)
“Straight as an Aro” by Shelia Kerr (Hosted on Rainbow Roo)
“Sex, Relationships & Love? How Are You Aro?” by Raymond Lee (Hosted on Rainbow Roo)
“For the love of everything, I’m aromantic” by Courtney Le (Daily Californian)
“"I'm not cold-hearted." What life is like when you're asexual and aromantic.” by Gemma Bath (MamaMia)
“‘I felt there was something wrong with me’: What it’s like to be aromantic but not asexual” by Gillian Fisher (Metro)
Social Media
ASAW was also seen floating around on social media! Thanks to these groups & pages that gave ASAW a shoutout.
Queerious Minds created and posted several infographs to explain what exactly aromanticism is, and what the colours on the aro flag mean.
Hugh Lanes shared some aromantic resources and websites.
Proclamations
This year a number of US states released statements officially recognising ASAW! Click on the proclamations below to read the announcements from the excited aros who made this happen. View five of the six official documents below and the sixth can be found here.
And that’s ASAW 2021! This year significantly more happened than in 2020. We can’t wait to see what Pride this year and ASAW 2022 brings! If there’s something you’d like to see added to this comment below or email us at contact@aromanticism.org.