What is the aromantic community?
Written by the AUREA team Word count: 1500 words
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
If you were to describe aromantics as a community, what would you say?
There are countless ways to do so and it is difficult for AUREA to answer that question without it turning into a discussion. Being an organisation means recognising who you’re working for and how. When talking to our audience we tend to label them - you - as ‘the aromantic community’ and over the course of our two years we’ve received intermittent negative feedback about this. Certain aromantics feel that ‘the aromantic community’ is a disingenuous and factually inaccurate descriptor. It’s time for that discussion!
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
We recently put out one of our usual submission forms that asked: ‘Who is the aromantic community to you?’ Under a subheading we continued with the following questions: “When you say ‘the aromantic community’ who or what or where are you talking about? A specific platform, a certain group, or every single aromantic person? Do you use the phrase to mean different things at different times?”
You’ll notice the title of this piece is ‘What is the aromantic community?’ and that’s because this has been an eye opening process. Our results found that of the 80 respondents, 58 people answered with a variation of someone who ‘is aro’, ‘identifies as aro’ or ‘all/every aromantic’. Which is to say, the general census of this small survey is that every single aromantic person is a part of the aromantic community.
Of those 80 responses, however, four people said ‘the aromantic community’ is aromantics who actively participate or are involved in the community.
Which begs the question: is community an active or passive experience? Do you need to be present to be a part of a community? Must you contribute to receive in return? What does that look like online and internationally? And are aromantics a part of a community at all?
DEFINING COMMUNITY
FeverBee, a community building resource, states that there are five kinds of communities and they act depending on their purpose.
Interest - communities of people who share the same interest or passion
Action - communities of people trying to bring about change.
Place - communities of people brought together by geographic boundaries
Practice - communities of people in the same profession or undertake the same activities
Circumstance - communities of people brought together by external events/situations
The aromantic community can be categorised as a community of interest and, in certain ways, a community of action. Those differing purposes - and the desire for many to be a community of place - make community purpose difficult to define.
The Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective found in recent years they had a similar dilemma. They write that their members defined the word ‘community’ in many different ways such as identity based; via a certain set of arbitrary values, practices and/or relationships; and simply by location. More than that, they found many of their people didn’t know what community meant or believed they had never experienced community. They write:
‘We found that people romanticized community; or though they felt connected to a community at large, they only had significant and trustworthy relationships with very few actual people who may or may not be part of that community. For example, someone might feel connected to “the queer community,” but when asked who from that “queer community” they felt they could trust to show up for them in times of crisis, vulnerability or violence, they could only name 2 or 3 people.’
OUR Readers
Despite the majority of responses saying all aromantics are a part of the aromantic community, there was still a range of responses. A couple of people made sure to include questioning folks, one person included allies. Another few considered people who didn’t know the word aromantic, but would potentially identify as aromantic if they did know of the label, were a part of the community.
There were a few responses that made no explicit mention of aromanticism. The question we asked was ‘who is the aromantic community to you?’ and most people answered with identity labels, perhaps in a show of acceptance. We could have easily asked “who is welcome here with you?” and the major response would be “every aromantic, anyone on the aromantic-spectrum.” Considering that possible interpretation, the responses below answer a completely different question. They appear to define ‘community’.
“A family of people who exclusively understand what I feel in this foreign world”
- Ritika
“I see it as a bunch of people that makes me feel validated and not alone. Although they are far [from] me, knowing that they exist it's a relief.”
- Lidia
“A group of people with similar identities who come together to commiserate and gain a sense of shared camaraderie”
- Anon
“Any person who has similar feelings, similar experience and wants similar things.”
- Anon
The question we asked was a difficult one. We wanted to ask a broad question to allow for a broad range of responses. The question could be understood any number of ways and the follow up questions we asked could have guided people toward a specific kind of response. A handful of people mentioned specific identities as their community like alloaros or romance-flavourable aros. Some people mentioned online platforms as their community, such as tumblr or Arocalypse.
While the numbers aren’t absolute - as some responses said ‘all aros’ and then another qualifier followed or some didn’t necessarily answer the question at all - only around 1 in 4 people responded specifically to ‘who is the aromantic community to you?’ Only a few people responded in a way that read as truly personal.
“For me, the aromantic community are the people I go to when I need to feel some pride or comfort about being aromantic. Usually these are the people on the aromantic subreddits, or fellow aroaces that I follow on Twitter. These are the people that have helped me figure out what it means to be aromantic, and have helped me to accept myself through stories from others and memes that made me feel like I belonged.”
- Anon
“For me my aromantic community is far different from what most people would consider aromantic when they first hear it. I’m a romance and sex favorable aroace and I’ve always felt alienated in real life and online aromantic communities. I do not really interact with a lot of aromatic communities other than a few which are focused on romance favorable aros. While I obviously support all aro’s for me when I talk personally about the aromantic community I’m talking about other romance favorable aros like me who feel both alienated in irl and online.”
- Anon
“I never say ‘the aromantic community’ anymore. I don't believe there is one. Specifically, I don't believe there is ONE. When talking about aromantic spaces, networks, relationships, etc., I say ‘aromantic communities.’ Not all aro people know each other; certainly not all aro people hang out in the same spaces, online or in person. The Arocalypse community isn't the same as the tumblr aro community, isn't the same as twitter aro communities, isn't the same as the Pillowfort aro community. Different groups have different histories, different expectations, different tactics and hopes and hurts, because they're different people, with different relationships. None are ‘the aro community’; there are multiple aro communities, and that's important to me.”
- Kate venatrixlunaris
AUREA’S COMMUNITY
It’s difficult to know how people at large and individuals feel about the aromantic community when we simply asked who is a part of the community to some people who happened to fill out a form of ours. There is no right or wrong way to answer our question, it’s unlikely yours and AUREA’s community definition will match. A community of interest is described as having a ‘focus upon depth of passion for the interest’ and ‘bonding and status-jockeying discussions’, while a community of action is about ‘updates on progress’ and ‘facilitation of group commitment and sharing of best practices to achieve goals’. Our purposes differ, even as we are here for one another.
As an aro-spec organisation our purpose is definitively activism. Any community AUREA seeks to build or participate in is likely going to be a community of action. We aim to represent and advocate for aromantics as an international collective and we might not always be able to represent all the subgroups. Words like ‘community’ or ‘collective’ for AUREA may end up meaning aro-spec groups and spaces that make up the majority or the ‘mainstream’. And this isn't an AUREA-specific limitation, but a limitation of any organization. That doesn’t mean representation of aromantics of all kinds isn’t a goal of ours, just that it’s a challenging one.
This discussion will continue internally for us and hopefully externally for you as well. Who is your aromantic community? What do you want from/for your community? Within the same submission form we asked this question and we encourage you to read the first part of that response in My Aromantic Community. As you read, consider whether these wants sound like that of a community of interest or one of action. What is the aromantic community after?