Call for Submissions - May Carnival of Aros

Written by the AUREA book project team

Word count: 495 words
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

The AUREA book project team is hosting Carnival of Aros for May. This is a monthly blogging event that highlights aromantic and arospec experiences by soliciting posts on a theme. This month’s theme is mental health. AUREA plans to include a chapter on mental health in its forthcoming book and is interested in including quotations and personal narratives from individuals who feel that mental health and neurodivergence have played an important role in shaping their aromantic identity and would like to use this platform to find those willing to contribute their story to the book.

 According to the 2020 Aro Census, 52.43% of respondents experienced mental illness and 36.5% of the respondents were neurodivergent. However, the majority of respondents have felt some form of discrimination for their arospec identity. However, nearly half of the respondents experienced comments that their identity needed to be fixed or cured, and nearly all respondents experienced other forms of discrimination. About 80% of respondents felt the discrimination impacted their mental health to some degree. This demonstrates the pervasiveness of the stigma and stereotype that people who identify as being aromantic are suffering from a social anxiety disorder or personality problem. 

Do you have experiences that you would like to share and have published in AUREA’s book? If you submit a post, the authors will contact you for permission to quote you in the book and send you information about how it will be quoted. This may include direct quotes of sentences, multiple paragraphs, or summarizing a statement. 

Here are some prompts to get you started:

  • How have your experiences with mental health or neurodivergence shaped your arospec identity?

  • How have your experiences with discrimination or stigmas related to your arospec identity impacted your mental health?

  • How has your arospec identity shaped your views of mental health?

  • Do you identify with any of the following microlabels or any similar labels? How has this influenced your identity or life?

    • Nebularomantic - A person who has difficulty or the inability to tell romantic attraction apart from platonic due to their neurodivergency.

    • Neuroromantic - A person whose romantic orientation is affected by their neurodivergency in some way. 

    • Adfecturomantic - A person whose romantic attraction is affected by their neurodivergency.

    • Arovagues - A person whose status as an aromantic is unclear or affected by mood.

    • Caedromantic/Caedoromantic - A person who used to experience romantic attraction, but no longer does due to past trauma.

    • Acoromantic - A person whose negative experiences with romance have alienated them from their alloromanticism.

    • Requisromantics - A person who has limited or no romantic attraction, interest, or activity due to some form of emotional exhaustion. 

  • Have you spoken with a therapist about your arospec identity? Do you have any tips for others who are interested in speaking with a therapist?

  • Do you have any tips for finding a community that is supportive of your mental health?

Submissions will be accepted until May 31st at 11:50 PM CDT. The round up will be published by June 5th. Please email submissions to aroaceauthor@gmail.com.  

Carnival of Aros submissions are typically posted to the submitter's own blogs. Please email the submission as a link to your blog. Here's an example of previous submissions: https://roboticanary.wordpress.com/2022/04/02/carnival-of-aros-march-2022-roundup/

Papo Aromantic