an aromantic manifesto @aromanticmanifesto - Tumblr Blog

【翻譯著作】原文作者：映晨 & 映彤譯者：有靈校訂者：常衿

We’re absolutely delighted to announce that our zine has been translated into Mandarin! This translation means a lot to us, being Chinese ourselves. You can even get an exclusive first look at the original Chinese characters of our names ;)

Many thanks to the translator, Yo-Ling, whom you can find at https://yolingwrites.com/

EDIT: The original link above no longer works. Here’s the new working link https://www.queermargins.tw/an-aromantic-manifesto

aromanticmanifesto

pg 2 (full zine at tinyurl.com/aromanticmanifesto)

‘the here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there… Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.’

- josé esteban muñoz, cruising utopia

‘I want a world where friendship is appreciated as a form of romance… I want a world where our worth isn’t linked to our desireability, our security to our monogamy, our family to our biology.’

- alok vaid-menon

(image: alok vaid-menon by eloy cruz del prado)

nonbinaro

I stumbled across this today, and WOW. What a way to start off Arospec Awareness Week!

This is exactly the kind of thing I was thinking about when I made that post about activism not being ready for aro-influenced politics yesterday.

Holy shit. This is radical. This is aro-influenced politics. And this is exactly the kind of thing alloros would be enraged about; it would make them feel personally attacked; it challenges amatonormativity in the most direct and bold-faced way possible: DESTROY ROMANCE. Not just the hierarchy around it - the social construct it is.

I have so many thoughts about this. This is so radical that it intimidates me! I don’t know if I believe we should abolish romance entirely - but do I feel that way because I’m afraid of the backlash against such a goal? have I been convinced of romance’s superiority in the way this zine sets out to expose? Now I’m asking myself those questions, thinking about them. I don’t know if I’ll have an answer anytime soon, but I’m thinking about it.

One thing that struck me about this was the structure of aromanticism as a utopia and as a political movement, not an orientation. It reminds me of political lesbianism, which while I am not The Most Informed About, I believe has a sticky history….and deep ties to radfem ideology, so uhh. Idk about that.

I’m hesitant to adopt the idea of aromanticism as inherently political. To me it is first and foremost an orientation; it is not a choice. It is political, yes, but it is not an ideology.

Perhaps it should be. Or perhaps I am misreading this. Or perhaps I’m right.

You can’t choose to be aro, just like you can’t choose to be a lesbian. (I’m not talking about “which label should I use”; I’m talking about the experience of attraction.) Then again, I don’t think this is advocating for everyone choosing to be aro…I think it’s advocating the abolition of romance as a social construct, and therefore the elimination of romantic orientation as a whole. (Which is different from political lesbianism. Though again: I am not an expert.)

I am incredibly intrigued by this concept of social aromanticism. Maybe for now it would need a different name… Aromanticism as an orientation is not the same as what this zine - this Manifesto - proposes. Aromanticism as an orientation is “not experiencing romantic attraction.” This manifesto’s idea of social aromanticism is the abolition of romance and the expansion of relationships. They are linked, absolutely, but…not the same.

I don’t know. This is all an initial response to this mind-blowing document I just read. I will probably end up changing my mind on these subjects, and complexifying my responses.

But this doesn’t have many notes right now - despite having been posted over 6 months ago - so I’d like to boost it. I want us to talk about this as an aromantic community. We need to have these discussions.

Outside our bubble of radical aromanticism, people aren’t ready for this. I admire the OPs of this post; from scrolling through their blog I believe they were handing it out at a convention! Which is great. But alloromantics aren’t ready for this kind of activism.

If we adopt this manifesto, how do we make it palatable for them? Can we do that without betraying the ideals of the manifesto? Queer spaces are built around the reclamation of romance; this will be seen as a threat to that, even though it shouldn’t. And straight spaces…god, I don’t want to think about what my religious mother woudl say about this.

I’ve rambled for too long. @aromanticmanifesto Thank you for your work. I hope that the aro community can have a rich discussion around your manifesto.

[also: I use the word radical a lot in this post. I DON”T want that to be associated with radical feminism, which is bad for reasons i’m not going into now. I use the word in the most literal definition of the word “radical”

radical (adj)

1. (especially of change or action) relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.

2. advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social change; representing or supporting an extreme or progressive section of a political party.

(thanks google for the def..)

uhhh yeah. the zine is explicitly trans-inclusive and i am too. i’m also not about separatism or the superiority of one group of people over the other, which is what being a radfem is about afaik. they’ve warped that word; they aren’t radical at all. i have a post in my drafts about hierarchies Fand how they are inherently bad….anyway, that’s a discussion for another time. if i’m falling into the trap of radfem rhetoric while analyzing this please call me out, but i don’t think i am. just wanted to clear that up.]

ask-an-aro

Yeah I’d be hesitant to link an orientation to a political movement because not all people who identify as aromantic will agree and that would be exclusionary for them.

That said, on a personal level, I do believe our current system of romance as informed by capitalism is queerphobic and destructive. I honestly love this manifesto.

aromanticmanifesto

Hello! Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!!! You are right that aromanticism shouldn’t be treated as a purely political affiliation in the way one might view, say, anti-capitalism. Even if romance is a social construct, different people respond differently to romantic interpellation. Some people find their desires fit easily within it, some, especially aromantics, don’t. This isn’t a “choice.” However, we find (and fear) that a lot of current aro discourse treats aromanticism too much as a static biological identity, echoing what we feel are some of the bad practices of neoliberal white queer activism, that revolve solely around finding the appropriate inclusive language to describe ever more specialized identities without interrogating global histories of gendered (and mostly colonial, in recent history) violence that produced modern queerphobic oppression as we know it in the first place.

By “political aromanticism,” we are not taking inspiration from white separatist political lesbians, but from queer of color and non-western queer theorists who have critiqued the neoimperialism of modern LGBTQ+ identity politics for positing “lesbian,” “gay,” “bisexual,” “transgender,” etc. as ahistorical identities that have always existed in all communities, when they are, in fact, historically-specific reactions (and only make sense in relation) to Eurocentric forms of gender policing and queerphobic oppression. “Cisgender” and “heterosexual” identities didn’t exist before modern biology/sexology/psychiatry pathologized queerness as a reductively biological, essentialist phenomenon that definitively separated queer people from their “normal” counterparts.

So yes, we think aromanticism can function as both a form of politics and identity without debilitating contradiction, although there will have to be some (hopefully productive) tension between the two. Besides, what it means to “not feel romantic attraction” is so difficult to pin down anyway, because the construct of romance itself is highly unstable; what counts as the experience and expression of romantic attraction has varied tremendously throughout history. To know what it means not to feel romantic attraction, you need to have some idea of what the heck romantic attraction is in the first place! And nobody is born knowing what it is. Romance is necessarily a journey of messy (and usually violent) self-discovery under its interpellative force. Rather than try to pin both aromanticism (and its opposite of alloromanticism) down in rigid, biologistic terms, we think it can be far more powerful to politicize this moment of uncertainty into a radical counter-politics, even while acknowledging that people do, for perhaps biological reasons, experience varying levels of receptiveness to coercive romantic interpellation, and being aromantic is often not a “choice.”

eclos1on

I just stumbled across this now when looking for files for my Facebook group. I have to say I dont mind the idea of an aro manifesto(thus being political because if you look at others from the 70s and 90s theyre about the same and the LGBTA+ allyship is a political one).

The one thing I did have an issue with is calling romance inherently queerphobic. Not sure what you meant by that but most other LGBTA+ people feel their romance is a defining aspect and an important one in a world that doesnt want you to love those whom you can’t help loving/being attracted to. This can easily come across as homophobic.

The rest of it I like but I do suggest an ammendment to that phrase if possible.

blood-on-my-french-fries

Maybe I’m wrong but… How I’ve understood it, romance is inherently queerphobic, not romantic attraction.

Society’s views on romance are mostly based on and enforce outdated gender roles along with some other “rules” that exclude both LGBT+ and polyamorous people.

It’s not the sentiment that’s damaging, but the social structure built around it.

angleofmusings

I would even take it a step further and point out that there is no “romantic” attraction without the institution of romance. The label placed on it is one that is created to describe a certain kind of interpersonal social relationship that complies with the romantic ideal. Yes, there is a difference between (to use the societally acceptable phrasing) physical/sexual attraction and emotional/romantic attraction; need there be any difference between “romantic” and “platonic” attraction? Romantic society says there inherently must, and yet simultaneously says that “you can’t be friends with someone you’re attracted to, or could ever potentially be attracted to,” and “guys can’t really be friends with girls, they just want to get with them,” and in doing so forces an unnatural divide that reinforces the idea of exclusive, monogamous relationships.

In refusing “romantic” relationships, aromanticism rejects that barrier. Without a largely untouchable romantic in-group, more opportunities for emotional and social connections can be explored. One can comfort and support their friend who is struggling with the emotional burden of a toxic breakup, disillusioned with romance as an institution, without needing to artificially create distance because there isn’t a romantic relationship present. One can call or text different people each night, rather than being left without that option if their romantic partner is unavailable. Aromanticism allows for connections through action instead of allowing institutionalized labels to restrict the form a relationship can take.

aromanticmanifesto

Yes, this is what we were trying to argue. “Romantic attraction” is not an inherent biological feeling people get. Insofar as some LGBTQ+ people might feel that way, it speaks to the naturalizing power of amatonormativity. The same applies to any other LGBTQ+ identity. These are not timeless categories, but ones that emerge from particular (Western-centric) histories that only acquire some semblance of a universalizing force through the global spread of neo-colonial institutions, the institution of romance being one of them. It may feel necessary to assert the essential truth (aka the “born this way” narrative) of LGBTQ+ identities in societies that still advocate for things like conversion therapy, but that comes at the cost of ignoring the very violent histories through which these categories also emerge.

For further reading on this, take a look at “Taxonomically Queer?: Sexology and New Queer, Trans, and Asexual Identities” by Kadji Amin. If you can’t get past the paywall, feel free to email us at [email protected] for a copy :)

(1) Hi! I really love your manifesto and I would love to help spread its message. I'm a French activist and as estancemoriarty said there is very little ressources available in French on the subject of aromanticism. I saw their ask but sadly arobase don't seem to be active on internet since 2019 and I haven't found their traduction anywhere. I'm part of a group called Microeditions Aroace (medaa on kofi) who creates and spread aroace focused content.

Really sorry about the late reply! The original translator did send us a copy of their translation. Please send us an email at [email protected] so we can put you in touch with them and/or share their version with you.

Hey! would you be ok with a translation of the manifesto into Spanish? Also, I don't know if you have any requests when it comes to distribution of physical zines in other countries (like "please don't do that" or "make it available for free" or anything else really). I'd give you full credit, of course, but I think I'd like to translate it and bring it with me to pride marches and stuff. It's so rare to see things discussing aromantic opinions and politics! And I think there's a lot of overlap with some conversations I've seen among feminists here about romance, so it could be useful for those conversations as well

Sorry, neither of us are very active Tumblr users, to be honest (if that isn't obvious enough already). It doesn't help that our zine only seemed to take off something like a full year after we put it up, by when we had already stopped maintaining this Tumblr page actively. Please please email us at [email protected] about any requests for more timely replies.

Yes, we welcome any and all translations of our work. Distribution of physical copies of the zine should be free (or close to it, e.g., just to cover printing costs).

Hey there! Would you be open to my creating a screen-reader-friendly version of your zine? Or at least transcribing the text for Blind readers? Please let me know, I'm a HUGE fan of your zine — it's been super influential to my thinking.

Hello, sure thing! Thank you for helping out with accessibility. Please email [email protected] and we can send you the transcript :)

Just helping the organizers of the RAD Unconference spread the word for what appears to be a fabulous initiative!! The deadline for registration is 15 March.

From the About page: The RAD Unconference manifests radical, political, anti-oppressive, inspiring non-monogamy practice through a series of participatory break-out discussions, art, zine creation, community building, fun, and more. This unconference and community centers the voices, needs, and lives of those practicing Relationship Anarchy; it is NOT intended as educational outreach for those who don’t have lived experience of RA. Supportive, exclusive, anarchist-centered space is critically needed for folks who are living and practicing RA, and repeatedly compromised by folks who are NOT practicing RA who center outsider questions/needs/experiences/defensiveness/education/apolitical framing of non-monogamy. This conference is in part a response to those experiences of being de-centered in what is ostensibly RA space. We want a space to connect with other folks with lived experience of RA for community, support, and radical inspiration. This is not an outward-focused event for explaining, justifying, and defending RA to “others.” Space will not be made to discuss and focus on polyamory and other general non-mono topics.

#aromanticism #aromantic #relationshipanarchy