What data from the Aro Census interests you?
Written by the AUREA team Word count: 500
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
As you may or may not have heard, the Aro Census 2020 is now live! This information we gathered gives us an impression of the online aromantic community. We received 9758 responses from individuals on the aromantic spectrum and, both individually and together, they had some enlightening things to say.
We want to know what you’d like to know more about. There are countless articles and interviews and investigations that we could produce from this information. What information should we pursue?
In the introduction to the executive summary we have these results:
a significant number of respondents were from the United States, the UK, Europe, Canada, and Australia
most respondents were young and under 30 years old
and most respondents were white
There’s no way that this is what the whole aromantic community should look like. So we could ask why the Census produced results like this. We could ask what needs to be done to reach people over the age of 30. Or why Western and white-dominant countries make up the majority of respondents.
In the first question asking: ‘which of the following aro- or a-spec labels do you identify with?’ around a third of the respondents indicated that they use asexual as a broad umbrella term to include their aromanticism. Why is this? What does this individual choice mean in terms of language and conversation on a community scale?
In the question asking: ‘do you use a separate label for any kind(s) of attraction other than sexual or romantic?’ the response was that 76% of people don’t. There’s a certain expectation in aro space that other kinds of attraction be known - since these words rarely come with definitions - and yet the majority aren’t using these labels. Why is this?
When it comes to aro communities there is much to ask. We’re running a submission piece currently asking: who do you mean when you say “the aromantic community”? How do demographics affect these answers?
When asked ‘are you already involved in or want to be involved in building resources and support for the aro community?’ 51% of people said they want to be involved. What is it that stops aro from getting involved?
Most respondents to the Census were specifically between the ages of 18 and 21. Is this due to the online nature of aromantic spaces? Assuming that’s correct and we want to engage more people in offline spaces: who will start these groups? How can we move towards IRL communities when a majority of aros are in an extremely transitional period of their lives?
These are just a few examples of what we could explore. The Census asks about gender, sex, race, financial situation, relationships, attitudes and beliefs about romance, and discrimination. It asks all of that and more. Leave a comment below or shoot us an email at contact@aromanticism.org and tell us what articles you want us to write.