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aromanticismI know this submission is a couple of days late. I hadn't planned to post it at all, actually, but a friend who had seen my draft said she thought it was something that should be out in the world, so here goes.
What little I do know about the ace community is only what I've seen talked about in aro communities. More often than not, what I've seen is frustration with the way many attempts to include aromanticism under the aspec umbrella seem to pay it little more than lip service. Aromanticism is an add-on, an also-ran, with little recognition of aro experiences as unique and different from ace ones - at least, that's what I'd heard second-hand from other aros who vent about such things in aro spaces.
I'm a firm believer in being the positive change I want to see in the world, so when I heard an ace blogging initiative had spawned an aro-centric offshoot I was excited to contribute. Scanning the list of past ace blogging carnivals threw up some really interesting-sounding topics, and I wondered what had been chosen for the inaugural Carnival of Aros, to really kick it off as a distinct event.
If you caught my switch to past tense you can probably guess where I'm going with this.
Here's the thing: I'm not ace, and I have absolutely zero experience of ace communities. I looked at the theme for the first ever Carnival of Aros and was like... oh. Never mind then. That's clearly not for me.
This isn't to say that I'd expect to have something to say about every aspect of aromantic experiences, or for my experiences to be relevant to every theme that might come up. But I feel like I'm beginning to understand where some of that aro frustration with the ace community comes from. There's something to be said for the tone-deafness of choosing, as the first ever theme of a carnival that aims to support aromanticism as distinct and separate from asexuality, a theme that puts asexuality right up alongside it on centre stage. A theme that requires knowledge of and familiarity with the ace community to answer almost all of its prompts. A theme that explicitly focusses on ways in which aromanticism is "inextricably linked" to asexuality.
I hadn't planned to submit a contribution, because I didn't want to respond with negativity to what is clearly intended to be a bridge-building exercise. But I've seen more than one conversation in aro spaces where people have been struggling to think of things they can contribute to this theme. We want this initiative to succeed! We want to write positive things! But for at least some of us, choosing this theme in this context aggravates a bit of a sore spot.
So here's my constructive advice:
Many aros are already primed to expect to be treated as secondary to aces in aspec spaces. To counter that, an aro-centric initiative has to build trust before it can build bridges. To establish credibility as a space that will prioritise and lionise aro needs and issues in their own right, not just in the context of asexuality.
If you're building a space, a resource, an event, an initiative, that's intended to cater to aros as well as aces, it might be worth getting someone who's not ace to give it a once-over for unconscious bias before you send it out into the world.
If you're aroace, you're awesome and you're one of us, but please remember that many of us don't share your connection to the ace community. Stuff that may seem even-handed to you may hit our sensitivity to being treated like a subsidiary identity.
If you're ace but not aro, you're awesome too, but please remember that many of us came to aromanticism entirely independently of asexuality. We aren't part of the ace community or familiar with its history, and may not be thrilled about people assuming we are.
And all that said, I will be following the themes for future months with great interest, and hope to contribute something more positive next time.
---
Edited to add: We are now hosting the second Carnival of Aros here at Aromanticism! Check out the Call for Submissions here!
What little I do know about the ace community is only what I've seen talked about in aro communities. More often than not, what I've seen is frustration with the way many attempts to include aromanticism under the aspec umbrella seem to pay it little more than lip service. Aromanticism is an add-on, an also-ran, with little recognition of aro experiences as unique and different from ace ones - at least, that's what I'd heard second-hand from other aros who vent about such things in aro spaces.
I'm a firm believer in being the positive change I want to see in the world, so when I heard an ace blogging initiative had spawned an aro-centric offshoot I was excited to contribute. Scanning the list of past ace blogging carnivals threw up some really interesting-sounding topics, and I wondered what had been chosen for the inaugural Carnival of Aros, to really kick it off as a distinct event.
If you caught my switch to past tense you can probably guess where I'm going with this.
Here's the thing: I'm not ace, and I have absolutely zero experience of ace communities. I looked at the theme for the first ever Carnival of Aros and was like... oh. Never mind then. That's clearly not for me.
This isn't to say that I'd expect to have something to say about every aspect of aromantic experiences, or for my experiences to be relevant to every theme that might come up. But I feel like I'm beginning to understand where some of that aro frustration with the ace community comes from. There's something to be said for the tone-deafness of choosing, as the first ever theme of a carnival that aims to support aromanticism as distinct and separate from asexuality, a theme that puts asexuality right up alongside it on centre stage. A theme that requires knowledge of and familiarity with the ace community to answer almost all of its prompts. A theme that explicitly focusses on ways in which aromanticism is "inextricably linked" to asexuality.
I hadn't planned to submit a contribution, because I didn't want to respond with negativity to what is clearly intended to be a bridge-building exercise. But I've seen more than one conversation in aro spaces where people have been struggling to think of things they can contribute to this theme. We want this initiative to succeed! We want to write positive things! But for at least some of us, choosing this theme in this context aggravates a bit of a sore spot.
So here's my constructive advice:
Many aros are already primed to expect to be treated as secondary to aces in aspec spaces. To counter that, an aro-centric initiative has to build trust before it can build bridges. To establish credibility as a space that will prioritise and lionise aro needs and issues in their own right, not just in the context of asexuality.
If you're building a space, a resource, an event, an initiative, that's intended to cater to aros as well as aces, it might be worth getting someone who's not ace to give it a once-over for unconscious bias before you send it out into the world.
If you're aroace, you're awesome and you're one of us, but please remember that many of us don't share your connection to the ace community. Stuff that may seem even-handed to you may hit our sensitivity to being treated like a subsidiary identity.
If you're ace but not aro, you're awesome too, but please remember that many of us came to aromanticism entirely independently of asexuality. We aren't part of the ace community or familiar with its history, and may not be thrilled about people assuming we are.
And all that said, I will be following the themes for future months with great interest, and hope to contribute something more positive next time.
---
Edited to add: We are now hosting the second Carnival of Aros here at Aromanticism! Check out the Call for Submissions here!
Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 12:52 (UTC)I'm not sure if you saw our response to aro-soulmate-project's same concern on Tumblr. I just wanted to reiterate that the idea for the topic and the idea to start the carnival spawned separately. It just seemed like if we were planning on opening up the conversation to aros regardless of ace identity, and there was this idea floating around to start a Carnival of Aros, it made sense to do them at the same time. I suppose we could have better framed that that is what happened, or we could have waited until after doing the topic to start the carnival, but it was very important to us to do the topic; that was the only reason we got involved in the first place. We did have people who weren’t ace read it over first, and got that comment before releasing everything, but because that topic was the whole point for us, we couldn’t just change it. It wasn’t ideal, but it got the ball rolling. And honestly, if we had waited until afterwards to start the carnival, I worry that many aros who did participate wouldn’t have. It was a tricky situation.
In what we wrote to aro-soulmate-project, we said that it was important to us that aces (including those who are aro but satisfied with ace communities) listen to aros. While that remains true, I have come to realize that it is also extremely important to me that aros listen to aces, particularly those of us who are aro and who didn’t migrate over to the aro community due to having a bad experience in the ace one.
(Edit: I focus on history for the next couple of paragraphs, I re-read your post just now and don't know where I quite got that from, but I think it is still relevant.)You mentioned not knowing much about the history of the ace community, and I realized that the fact that a lot of aros don’t know that is actually a sore point for me. For better or worse, the history of the aro community lies in the ace community’s history. Particularly in terms of terminology, this lack of understanding of where the words came from has led to some bad habits in their usage, and because of the permeable nature of terminology in the ace and aro communities, these bad habits have seeped into ace community usage as well.
(I’m specifically talking about using “romance-positive” instead of “romance-favorable,” and arospec to mean “up to but not including aromantic” instead of “up to and including aromantic,” how it originally was intended. I’m not going to go into why these two things are problems here, but they are.)
It’s also resulted in people making ahistorical claims on where words come from. Particularly when it comes to the word queerplatonic. That word was coined when there was no real separation between ace community and aro community. And it wasn’t even coined by someone clearly in the aromantic camp. It was coined by someone who found the aromantic vs. romantic dichotomy that existed in the ace community at the time to be unhelpful (the same person who coined greyromantic, actually). This doesn't necessarily take away from the word now being more of an aro community term, but we shouldn't be saying things that aren't true to get there.
Just like we see the issues that pop up when the LGBTQ+ community is unaware of their history, problems will come up with us if we don’t recognize our history.
Lastly, as a clarification of something I mentioned earlier… You also mentioned that from your perspective, a lot of aroaces feel unwelcome in the ace community. I think there are many more aroaces, however, who don’t feel unwelcome in ace spaces. But I think many of those people felt satisfied with the community they got from being in ace communities, and as a result didn’t search out aro-specific communities. Those who didn’t feel accepted, on the other hand, did seek them out. So aro communities currently are over-representative of those who have had bad experiences.
There are some pockets of the community that are alloromantic-dominated, and others that are aro-dominated (my local community is one of those). I think there are plenty of alloromantic aces who get extremely frustrated with feeling like it is assumed that all aces are aro, just like many aro aces get frustrated. Often times, reactionary comments from one group don’t sit well with people in the other group, and these two groups of people with very different experiences have been in conflict for quite some time, not just recently.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 14:43 (UTC)As for knowing the ace community history while you're not ace - this strikes me as a very odd wish honestly. When it comes to aromantic community history and its ties to ace communities - sure, if you're aro, it makes sense to know that, know where certain terms that are commonly used in the aro spaces originated. But honestly, specifically ace history that has to do with issues around sexual attraction...?? It seems unnecessary to me. In general I've seen sentiment that aro communities should be grateful to ace communities and that aces don't see enough of that. I actually am grateful, but seeing it articulated like that, when people have valid concerns with the ace community just raises my hackles and makes me want to interact with aspec (or ace and aro) spaces as little as possible.
As for the changes in vocab... well, I think there just isn't one big aro dictionary that defines all the terms and everyone uses them in the same way. Sometimes people don't know where the words came from or hear a personal interpretation of a certain term and it snowballs, I'm not sure. Point is, there isn't a dictionary. People see words and interpret them according to the way they see them used, sometimes incorrectly, but it's hard to find information about those words!! It's hard to find sources!!
The queerplatonic thing is a big conflict point from what I've seen lol. There's so many definitions it just... wow... And there's also the issue of where it came from. I think that the reason there are claims it comes from aromantic communities is because it's characterized as "non-romantic" and things to do with non-romance are more of an aro domain by the virtue of what the aro identity is about. I think the reason for this isn't bad will, no!! I think that the reason for this is that, oh my god, is it hard to find out where/when/by whom it was coined!! I finally did find it, but the thing is: it's not readily available and people who are looking to educate themselves are going to find so many conflicting opinions and no sources.
As for the last point, I agree that yeah, aro communities are over-representative of aroaces who didn't feel satisfied with ace circles, but those aren't the only aroaces here. I have to say I dislike the line of thought that makes it seem like ace communities are the default - I'm pretty sure you didn't mean it like that, but it reads that way to me. Some aroaces just feel more drawn to their aro identity. And lastly, with this point focusing on aroaces I'm kinda wondering where allo aros fit in this. I'm not sure if you were replying to
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 15:43 (UTC)Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 17:04 (UTC)Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 17:01 (UTC)As far as changes in vocab goes, usually its fine, but when the changes in language usage is harmful to people, or excludes people from language that they were already using, that's where I take issue. And this has been happening a lot.
An interesting one is using "romance postive" instead of "romance favorable" because there is nothing wrong with "romance postive" per se, but it is a big problem to say "sex postive" instead of "sex favorable." When aro communities start saying "romance positive," then ace communities start saying "sex positive."
About it making it seem like ace communities being the default... if you read some of the other posts for the carnival by aroaces who have been involved for a long time, it was the default. Actually, I think "only option" would be a better descriptor. It isn't necessarily anymore, but for anyone who joined the community a while back, that's how it was. Many aroaces joined ace communities when that was the only option, and haven't felt a strong need to search out aromantic communities unless they were actively dissatisfied with the ace communities they were in. (and that comment was in regards to the second paragraph in the post talking about hearing about negative experiences)
This is perhaps an example of where knowing the history is really important. We may not always like the history, but we can't change the past...
Also, I have been involved in aro communities off-and-on since I discovered my identity 2015, so I know people who aren't dissatisfied are here because I am one. I wanted to point out that that wasn't the only experience exactly because I am not dissatisfied with the ace community and I rarely see that experience mentioned. I think it is important to know some people don't have that experience, and if someone isn't involved in the ace community at all (for example if they are allo aro), they might not know that.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 17:52 (UTC)With the vocab - I'm on the fence actually!! The words and meanings are changing (and it seems to be a natural process), but I don't fancy words changing meanings on people who used them to mean different things. The greyro vs aro-spec conflation you mentioned for example - I'm not sure if at this point it's possible to change the meaning of aro-spec (as an identity at least) not to mean "somewhere on the aromantic spectrum, but not aromantic". The misuse of positive and favourable I'd like to correct. Anyway, this is a topic for another discussion.
Okay, I think "the only option" is a better description for this - I know this was the case and the situation of older aroaces is different in this regard. But it's not the only option anymore and from my point of view shouldn't be treated as a default option (for newly discovering aroaces) because the ace communities were here first. I think it's fair to make the fact that not all aroaces who interact with aro communities are dissatisfied with ace communities a more accessible perspective for sure.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 15:32 (UTC)But there is one thing that struck me about your comment, and it's something grzanka's last paragraph also gets at - it seems to me, that from the way you're using 'aro', it might as well be an abbreviation of aroace, rather than a standalone vector of identity. Which I'm not alleging you meant, but it's alienating nonetheless.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 18:38 (UTC)If there is a specific point you would like me to clarify let me know.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 20:29 (UTC)What I'm trying to express is, hm, you wrote almost 800 words on the relationship of ace and aro communities and identities up there (again, including some very valid points), that someone who didn't already know better could come away from with the impression that aros are a sort of ace splintergroup.
And that may or may not be indicative of you opinion overall, 800 words is not a doctoral thesis, and you're certainly not obligated to name-check every possible constellation of identities when talking about your own community - I'm honestly not trying to pin any wrongdoing on you. It just stuck out to me, in a way that felt kind of... symptomatic of the thing crou was talking about in the first place.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 3 Mar 2019 23:41 (UTC)I wouldn't call it a splintergroup because that implies that it is a group that could fit in with the ace community, but there is something that is disagreed upon that makes that not work. The aro community by nature should have a significant separation from the ace community, so that label wouldn't apply.
That being said, there are some individuals who migrated to the aro community for splintergroup-type reasons, sometimes valid (not feeling accepted), but also sometimes bigoted (thinking grey-a and romance/sex-favorable people are just allos pretending). It is also true that the aro community did start as a part of the ace community that split off (adding some people who wouldn't fit in the ace community as it split). We may not like everything about our history, but we can't go back and change it or pretend that it doesn't exist.
Recognizing this history is important, ESPECIALLY when you consider that there is anti-grey, anti-romance-favorable sentiment in our history as a community, because there are still echos of that bigotry today. And that is really at the heart of why I can sometimes be contrary with these things; a lot of the "alloros are stealing our things" arguments inadvertently use anti-grey, anti-favorable rhetoric to get their points across. I just want us to be able to address the issues between our communities without throwing grayromantic people under the bus. Acknowledging our history is the first step towards that.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 5 Mar 2019 11:49 (UTC)Crou wrote about creating spaces that should "prioritise and lionise aro needs and issues in their own right, not just in the context of asexuality", including allo aros' perspectives on events catered to aros as well as aces, rememebering "many [allosexual aros] don't share [aroaces] connection to ace communities" , not being thrilled at being assumed a part of the ace community. You focused heavily on the history of the beginning of aro communities and pointed out various reasons why some aroaces started building aro communities splintered off from ace communities, that there are aroaces who are satisfied with ace communities, that there are aroaces who left ace communities for bigoted reasons, mentioned how greyros don't feel included in the aro community sometimes because of this history.
All this is okay and good to know, but I don't understand those points' relation to the post that's in a big part about the lack of focus on aromanticism separate from asexuality and consideration for allosexual aros in ace-led initiatives that are meant to be inclusive of all aros and not just the ace ones.
I meant (and am assuming Snocks did too) that your focus on aroaces and their connection to ace communities or lack thereof, in reply to Crou's post that's about needing to talk about aromanticism not only in relation to asexuality is kind of symptomatic of focusing on aromanticism only in connection to asexuality, which should be lessened at least to the point of including allosexual aros.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 6 Mar 2019 22:20 (UTC)If I am understanding correctly, you are expressing the need for aromanticism to be respected as an identity in its own right, independently of asexuality. And I can see how you and others felt that this need wasn’t being met in the context of the misunderstanding that the topic was chosen as the first topic for the carnival. As I’ve mentioned, the truth to the situation was that the topic was the impetus for starting the carnival in the first place.
To me, within the context of understanding how the carnival and the topic came to be, comments like “alloaros don’t feel like they have anything to share,” “I don’t want to share what I do think because it’s too negative,” and “It might have been okay as a topic later on” ended up sounding like the following, even though I now recognize this is not the case for the majority of people commenting on these issues:
“I don’t care about solving the problems between the two communities. I say I want aces to treat me better, but I am unwilling to have a conversation with them about how they can do that. I am fine with saying negative things indirectly on the internet, but when aces explicitly invite me into a dialogue trying to solve the issues I have brought up, suddenly being too negative is a problem. Additionally, I think allo aces need to change their behaviors that negatively affect aro people, but at the same time either I don’t recognize or don’t care how I may have some behaviors that may negatively affect aces. I don’t care about how the problems between the two communities negatively affect aros who are also ace, and I think they should be fine with just waiting until this conversation is more convenient for me, which will only happen once the problem that this conversation is looking to find solutions to has already been solved.”
Or, more succinctly:
“I want the problem to be fixed but anyone who tries to fix it is part of the problem.”
Now, I didn’t want to think that that is what any of you actually believe, which is why I commented on here explaining how the carnival and topic came to be and why a conversation on this topic is so important to us, in the hopes that you will express that this all is not what you meant. I’m here because for me, and many aroaces like me, there is also an intense need for the ace and aro communities to come to a resolution of the conflict between us. Not because I don’t think it is important for aromanticism to be respected as an identity in its own right. (In fact, the belief that aromanticism should be respected as an identity in its own right is part of what inspired this topic. We wanted to workshop ways of working towards that.)
And largely I think I have learned that the above is not what you think, and I did not intend for my responses to come across as if I didn’t think that your need here was important. Thank for taking the time to explain what you were thinking to me so I could clarify this. We are just both expressing different needs, and expressing one of those needs doesn’t necessarily mean that either of us thinks the other’s need isn’t valid.
To reiterate, the two needs being addressed here are:
1. For aromanticism to be respected as an identity in its own right, independently of asexuality.
2. For the ace and aro communities to come to a resolution of the conflict between us.
I am still at a loss for a way we could have approached this situation where both of these needs could have been met, because the solution of dropping the topic or waiting (6 months? a year? How long would be enough?) is just ignoring need #2 (while it gets worse), which wouldn’t have been a good solution either. Any thoughts? I’m kind of at a point where I am thinking there was no good solution...
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 7 Mar 2019 06:30 (UTC)As for not wanting to post negative things
... well, I think for some people it was fear of being declared "too much work to come to any agreement with those whiny aros" by aces because of their previous experinces with ace communities. This is why Crou wrote about building trust first - so that people like those could maybe see you're really interested in hearing them out and won't just drop the joint initiatives when faced with criticism (sometimes harshly worded too).
I can see how those are conflicting needs right now with the attitudes and fears people have. Tbh I think April would have been fine - because the conversation between the communities is an important subject and it being the 3rd theme wouldn't carry as much meaning and weight as the 1st one. Tho I'm sure some people would still have a problem with it
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 15:40 (UTC)I did read the background, and I do understand how the topic came about. Having a carnival for aros is a great idea. Discussing the connections and conflicts between the ace and aro communities is a great idea. Combining those things so that the first theme of a supposed aro-centric event is about what we think of the ace community? That's where things go wrong.
There is some long-standing and frankly well-founded skepticism in the aro community about ace-led initiatives to support aromanticism. I know you're aware of this at TAACP because you've acknowledged you've made mistakes on this front in the past (and taken steps to correct them, to your credit). But time and again, well-meaning initiatives have disappointed the aro community by presenting aromanticism only in the context of its connection to asexuality.
That’s not to say that we’re not willing to give ace-led initiatives a chance - I'm doing so right now! - but trust in this context must be earned, not assumed. And establishing that trust requires clearly demonstrating that genuine thought and consideration has gone into support for aro needs beyond the context of asexuality, and aspects of aromanticism that do not intersect with asexuality.
When this carnival was announced, there was no indication that any such consideration had happened. And I know not all of this was to do with TAACP, but here's what the situation was at the start of February:
I hope you can understand why the optics weren't great.
If you were really keen to do this topic - which I agree is important! - it would have come across much, much better if it were proposed after there was an established Carnival of Aros, which had earned a trusted place in the aro community by addressing aro-specific issues. That's what I meant by building trust before bridges.
---
Regarding history, I do think it's important to understand how and why certain communities developed. Perhaps that comment could have been phrased better. What I was getting at is how frustrating it is when aros are expected to be as well-versed in ace community history as aces are, because it's assumed that all individual aros came from the ace community. I'm aware that the concept of aromanticism first arose within the ace community, but many aros (like myself) have no personal experience of ace communities, and don't consider ace communities or history to be ours.
I'm not sure where your comments on terminology came from, as I've made no mention of terms like romance-positive/favourable, arospec or queerplatonic here. I also haven't said anything about aroaces feeling unwelcome in the ace community (although I do know some who are), so am not sure what you're addressing there.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 18:55 (UTC)And I meant the terminology bit to be an example of my history comment. Perhaps I was rambling a bit with things that have been on my mind.
And what I was addressing about aroaces feeling unwelcome in the ace community was this:
"What little I do know about the ace community is only what I've seen talked about in aro communities. More often than not, what I've seen is frustration with the way many attempts to include aromanticism under the aspec umbrella seem to pay it little more than lip service. Aromanticism is an add-on, an also-ran, with little recognition of aro experiences as unique and different from ace ones - at least, that's what I'd heard second-hand from other aros who vent about such things in aro spaces."
I realize that I was maybe assuming you were referring to aroaces in that paragraph, mostly because in my experience the "aros who vent about such things in aro spaces" are generally people who either identify as ace or who previously identified as ace. I also realize now that you switched from "ace community" to "aspec umbrella" in the middle of that paragraph, which I missed when I read it the first time. My apologies for that.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 2 Mar 2019 20:56 (UTC)And yeah no I definitely meant aro spaces as a whole there. Unless I specifically say aroaces, when I talk about aros I mean the whole community. (FWIW my experience is actually the opposite of what you describe - I find it's alloaros who are most frustrated by what they see as communities/organisations that have nothing to do with us suddenly declaring "Yeah we support you too!!" while not doing much in the way of actual supporting.)
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 3 Mar 2019 19:07 (UTC)1) I contacted a bunch of people asking (among other things) if they wanted to volunteer to be hosts, and nobody bit. Now that the carnival has launched, I see that they already have volunteers lined up til June. It's much easier to find volunteers for a project that has already materialized than one that's still hypothetical.
2) The Carnival of Aces itself only has host volunteers up until March. Themes are always chosen by hosts, and never announced ahead of time. So the lack of advanced plans is not unusual.
3) The very first Carnival of Aces theme was "coming out". This was probably a more appropriate launch theme, because of its broad appeal. However! Lots of people don't come out, the concept of coming out doesn't make sense to them, or they resent the expectation that they have a coming out story! Some carnival submissions said just that. So, it's been an accepted convention for a long time that you can write articles that are critical about the carnival theme, and it's all part of how a carnival works.
My general feeling about all this is that "the relationship between the aro and ace communities" is a legitimate carnival theme, and the main problem is using it as a launch theme, because that lends it a certain weight. One expects a carnival launch theme to have broader appeal and not touch on community sore spots. However, I hope that people will see that for a long-term project like this, the launch theme is not singularly important, it's just one more in a long sequence of themes, most of which will not have universal appeal and that's okay.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 3 Mar 2019 20:55 (UTC)Yes, that's exactly the problem, for reasons discussed at length above.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 4 Mar 2019 03:02 (UTC)I said in my original post that I understand not every carnival will appeal to everyone - there are always going to be some experiences implicitly excluded by any theme. But there is a long-running trend of aros outside the ace community feeling excluded by ace-led initiatives. An ace-led theme that implicitly excludes the experiences of aros outside the ace community isn't just an innocuous case of not catering to all experiences - it's perpetuating and exacerbating one of the major frustrations many aros have with the ace community. The people who felt excluded by this theme are the same people who have felt excluded over and over again by ace-led initiatives to support aros.
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 4 Mar 2019 16:39 (UTC)Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 4 Mar 2019 12:04 (UTC)But on the other hand, I've been bouncing around the idea that I want to have an aro blogging group carnival for years at this point, and even getting to the point of sending out feelers of interest a few times, but then never taking it everywhere. Because of that, frankly, I didn't trust myself to wait and start again with a new theme in few months - based on my own track records with project ideas, I knew that would likely never happen and it would end up getting abandoned, again. And after several years of seeing the proposal passed around with no one having the time or energy to take the reigns, I didn't want to have to wait another 5 or 10 years for something else to maybe make it happen.
So when TAAAP came to us with the idea, and when the folks behind the carnival of aces came to us with the offer to help connect with other users, set up the initial structure, etc. I wanted to get things rolling while I still had that outside support to push me into actually getting it done. I fully admit that choosing to roll with whatever theme was already there because of my own personal failings is not the ideal way to get this started, so that's on me. But my judgement call (though you are free to disagree, and I understand that people will) is that I wanted to at least get things off the ground so that I could actually start getting feedback like this, and making improvements in the future, instead of having no future at all.
As far as why there were no hosts at launch, that's because of a mix of factors - partially because the monthly schedule of the carnival meant that we had a short timeline once we decided to go with it; but it's also because I actually explicitly asked some of the aro aces who had originally volunteered even before launch (including myself) to hold off on signing up for a slot in order to give some lesser known hosts a chance for visibility first, both because one of the goals of the carnival is to promote lesser known blogs, and because I knew of concerns about ace content dominating aro communities and I didn't want to overwhelm the early carnival with a bunch of established aro aces who already had strong ace community followings.
However, I also realize that I never articulated that outside of private communications, when maybe I should have, so it's clear that came across in a way that was unintended.
(As for no themes, that was because traditional blog carnivals are based on allowing each host to pick their own preferred themes, but it sounds like a list of theme ideas to pick inspiration from is something people would be interested in, so I'll add that to the site as I try to build out more support information for hosts. so thank you for the suggestion)
(Also, I know there are other concerns in this and other posts, that I definitely need to respond to, but it may take me some time to properly read through everything and give appropriate answers, so if I haven't addressed a specific point please know that I will try to respond to everything as I can. If anyone else would like to make more direct feedback / suggestions / criticism I can also be contacted directly through my email on the carnival page - I know that this is a rough start but I do want to make this work for all the different parts of the aro community, and I know that it will probably take several iterations of continued feedback and improvements to get there)
Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 4 Mar 2019 20:15 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 Mar 2019 13:54 (UTC)