144. Aro Ace

The Allusionist

Helen Zaltzman

Arts, Education, Words, Linguistics, History, Entertainment, Helen Zaltzman, Etymology, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2021

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The word 'asexual' has been used by humans describing themselves for several decades; 'aromantic' is newer. Both words enable people to voice identities that were unacknowledged for centuries, to find each other and build communities together, and to provide counternarratives to what the allosexuals are pushing.

Lewis Brown, a writer and poet, speaks on behalf of AUREA, the Aromantic spectrum Union for Recognition, Education and Advocacy, about the history and use of 'asexual' and 'aromantic'. Happy Ace Week! aceweek.org.

Find out more about the topics covered in this episode at theallusionist.org/aroace.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the illusionist in which I, Helen Zaltzman, hand out pieces of language to all the neighbourhood children who come and knocking.
0:10.5	Last episode I covered some of the etymology requests that you sent in, but by far the most requested terms were asexual and aromantic.
0:18.0	Your wish is my command, today we are talking about ace and arrow, and it happens to be ace week this week, which you can find out more about at aceweek.org.
0:28.0	On with the show.
0:37.0	How did it feel when you found the vocabulary to explain yourself?
0:43.0	Oh it was so good, it was like maybe a bit of a cliché to say, but it was like I'd found a puzzle piece and it's like oh, that makes sense.
0:51.0	Right, yeah, you know, that checks out. It really helps, I think, to have a term for it.
0:57.0	Before I had words like aromantic in ace actual, I just had a bad feeling.
1:04.0	When I assumed that I did feel attracted to other people, I was thinking, do I just have some trauma or something?
1:10.0	Am I just a selfish person? And these are cruel things to be thinking about yourself.
1:14.0	And then I was like, oh, wait, no, no, I don't. I could think of it all the ways in which I'm pretty giving person.
1:21.0	I care about the people that I care about quite a lot, just not necessarily in the way that everyone thinks is the most important way.
1:28.0	It's important, I think, to reframe it is not that you fail that what is the prevailing narrative.
1:33.0	Yeah. It is an active, something else.
1:36.0	So it's good to have a counter narrative.
1:38.0	My name is Lewis Brown, my pronouns are he and him. I'm a writer, a poet, and a freshly minted volunteer representative for Oria, which is the aromantic spectrum union for recognition, education, and advocacy.
1:50.0	Which is an acronym that I like.
1:52.0	Oria launched in 2019 will also be talking about AVEN, the asexual visibility and education network, which has been around since 2002.
2:00.0	The A part of aromantic and asexual means without or no, no sexual or not sexual, I guess, or no romantic, not romantic.
2:11.0	So an asexual person is someone who experiences little or less or no sexual attraction towards other people, and an aromantic person is a person who experiences little or less or no romantic attraction towards other people.
2:24.0	During the course of this episode, you'll also hear the terms alo sexual and alo romantic, which means not asexual or not a romantic.
2:32.0	The alo means other or different, so it means attracted to other people either physically or romantically.
	...

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