Ep 332: Aro Week feat. AUREA

Hey what's up hello! This week we're celebrating Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week by chatting with Rachel Levi and Kerry Chin, two of the authors of AUREA's upcoming book on aromanticism!

Episode Transcript: www.soundsfakepod.com/transcripts/aro-week-feat-aurea   

For updates on the book, follow AUREA on:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AromanticAUREA  

X(Twitter): https://x.com/aromantic_aurea 

Tumblr: https://aromantic-aurea.tumblr.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aurea_aromantic/

Donate: patreon.com/soundsfakepod  

Follow: @soundsfakepod    

Join: https://discord.gg/W7VBHMt  

www.soundsfakepod.comEp 332: Aro Week feat. AUREA

Buy our book: www.soundsfakepod.com/book

Transcript

SARAH: Hey, what's up? Hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aro-ace girl. (I'm Sarah. That's me.) 

KAYLA: And a bi demisexual girl. (That's me, Kayla.) 

SARAH: Talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else we just don't understand.

KAYLA: On today's episode, ‘AUREA.’ 

BOTH: Sounds Fake But Okay.

SARAH: Welcome back to the pod. 

KAYLA: Happy aro week. 

SARAH: Happy aro week.

KAYLA: Cha cha cha. We remembered. 

SARAH: We remembered and…

KAYLA: And do you know why?

SARAH: It wasn't even… because… yeah.

KAYLA: We remembered because the lovely folks at AUREA, which is the Aromantic Spectrum Union for Recognition, Education, and Advocacy, reached out to us to collaborate for this aro week, which was very lovely and also a great reminder that it's happening. 

SARAH: Yes.

KAYLA: So…

SARAH: Our housekeeping is everyone have a great aromantic spectrum awareness week.

KAYLA: Yes.

SARAH: I hope it's great. Kayla, what are we talking about this week?

KAYLA: This week…

SARAH: You'll never guess, but we're talking about aromantic stuff.

KAYLA: You’ll never guess. This week, with the help of AUREA, we are going to be talking about all things aroness and aro week, obviously. But specifically, we're going to be talking about a book that AUREA is working on, that is upcoming. It's a book about aromanticism and a bunch of different topics within that. There's a group of authors working on it, so we're going to have two of those authors on to talk about it.

SARAH: Yes. This week, we are talking to Rachel Levi and Kerry Chin, and we're very excited.

KAYLA: Just before we swing it to that convo, just I want to give quick plugs for where you can look out for information about this book. So, it's still in the works. We don't have a pre-order link for anyone yet, but hopefully the book is going to come out either late 2025 or early 2026, so keep your eyes out. You could follow AUREA's Facebook, their artist formerly known as Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, or their website, that's ‘aromanticism.org,’ very easy to remember. We'll have all the links to those social medias in the description of this episode. But if you want to keep up to date on information about how the book is going, and eventually when there is a pre-order link and a publication date, that is where the information will be. 

SARAH: Yay. 

KAYLA: And now to Kerry and Rachel. 

SARAH: Welcome Rachel and Kerry to ‘Sounds Fake But Okay.’ 

KAYLA: Yay. Hello. 

RACHEL LEVI: Thank you for having us.

SARAH: Of course. We're excited to talk to you guys this week because I feel like on this podcast, even though I am aro, so much of the focus is on asexuality and acespec things rather than just arospec things. So, we're excited to highlight some arospec fun. 

KAYLA: Yes. For aro week, especially, which we're always really bad at celebrating. 

SARAH: Exactly. So, shout out to our… is it pronounced “Aria?” 

RACHEL LEVI: I've been thinking about pronouncing it “Aurea,” but I've never really asked anyone. We always just communicate in a written way mostly. 

KAYLA: Yeah. 

KERRY CHIN: I agree with that part. I think naturally I would try to say “Aurea,” but I have also never heard anyone else say it out loud. I think that might actually be a conversation for us to have.

SARAH: Because my instinct is actually to say “Aurea,” not to say “Aria,” but Kayla says “Aria.” So, I started saying “Aria.” 

KAYLA: I’m sorry. I just…

SARAH: Because I just assumed you had some knowledge. 

KAYLA: No, no one told me anything. That's just… well, hey, everyone in the comments, let us know how you would pronounce the acronym A-U-R-E-A, which stands for the Aromantic Spectrum Union for Recognition, Education, and Advocacy. 

SARAH: Yay.

KAYLA: We love the acronym. 

SARAH: Well, thank you to them however they pronounce themselves in the spoken word 

KAYLA: Yes.

SARAH: For reminding us that we should do something for aro week. 

KAYLA: Yes.

SARAH: Let's just dive in Kayla. Why don't you kick us off? 

KAYLA: So, this week we are very excited to have Rachel and Kerry on because they are authors that are working on a new book that is in the works that's coming out. So, AUREA, however you wish to say it, is working with our publishers from our book, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, who do an amazing job of publishing aro and ace content… 

SARAH: Mm-hmm

KAYLA: On a new book that's kind of an intro to aromanticism nonfiction book and Kerry and Rachel are some of the authors. We're going to be talking to them about the process of writing it. So, we can all get excited about the book coming out and also just about aro week.

SARAH: Yeah. There's a whole bunch of authors on the book too. So, there's a lot of perspectives. So very excited about that, but also excited to hear specifically from you, Rachel and Kerry. I'll start out by asking both of you, but I guess Kerry, you can go first. How did you discover your aromanticism? Like what has your aromantic journey been?

KERRY CHIN: So, I first discovered the concept of aromanticism via the asexual community. And actually, in my research for the book I find that this seems to be quite a common experience, which I think makes sense given the history of how like the aromantic community developed, like as much as asexuality isn't that well known overall, it's still considerably further ahead than the aromantic community. 

SARAH: Yeah. 

KERRY CHIN: So, I found out about asexuality via AVEN. I think somebody happened to have posted a link to it on LiveJournal that I saw when I was 14. I, at that age, I kind of understood that it's like, yeah, logically it makes sense for there to be such a thing. I didn't realize it applied to myself until maybe a bit later when I was 16. And then when I… and then I only started looking more into it when it started becoming a bit more relevant to my life when other people started showing interest in having a relationship with me. 

SARAH: Yeah. 

KERRY CHIN: And then when I looked more into the asexual community, I discovered the concept of aromanticism and how it's separate from asexuality. And I realized that probably on some levels was more relevant to me where it is not having a romantic relationship with other people that's going to be more obvious to others. You know?

SARAH: Yeah. No, I think you and me are very much in the same boat on that front, just in terms of our general timelines also, I think line up quite a bit. Rachel, how about you? 

RACHEL LEVI: I would say I have like naturally felt connected to being aromantic and asexual without having the words for it since I was a child. But when I was younger, I rationalized it as like my feminist viewpoint and felt that really most of my life, I have really just felt naturally like I wanted to be non-partnering until more recently. And I didn't learn about the words for asexuality until about like 13 years ago when I saw a Huffington Post article appear on Facebook on my Facebook feed. So, that introduced me to AVEN and asexuality and made me feel like that was who I was, but I hadn't come across aromantic terms until about five years ago during the pandemic. And I was needing to find something to do besides just stay at home, because I'm… From Illinois we had a very strict stay at home order. I was working from home. So, I ended up trying to find more groups online to talk about. And in Illinois, we have a very active asexual community that had groups in person and online meet in the area. So, by having more time to learn more about asexuality, find more people who are asexual to socialize with, I was introduced to the aromantic terms through websites they were sending out. And one of them happened to be the LGBTQIA+ Wiki page that has all the different pride flags on it. And I was just looking through that, finding terms and flags with odd colors in it. So, I find some of those colors for pride flags very distasteful, but I came across the aromantic terms, aro-ace. So, at the time when I came across this website, I felt like I kind of identified with being aro-ace, but there were a lot of other terms that I felt like I kind of identified with. So, I ended up in a relationship with someone that made me feel like I was interested in pursuing romantic relationships and felt like I needed to do more research into microlabels and discovered the term noetiromantic. And that made me feel like that was a good term to describe my romantic orientation in the aromantic spectrum because noetiromantic is a term that could be defined as feeling like I would be interested in a romantic relationship with someone that I had like a strong mental connection with. 

KAYLA: Oh, interesting. 

[00:10:00]

RACHEL LEVI: It's kind of similar to being demiromantic, but demiromantic emphasizes the emotional connection. And I sort of feel like that too, but I feel like I'm kind of in between demiromantic and noetiromantic or both in a way, because I feel there's a strong mental connection between me and my partner as well. Not just an emotional one. 

KAYLA: That's so interesting. 

SARAH: I have actually never heard that term before.

KAYLA: Yeah. I hadn't either. That's really cool. 

SARAH: I love learning new things. 

KAYLA: Me too. That's so cool. 

RACHEL LEVI: Yeah. For example, I've been mostly non-partnering for my life, but the only times when I've really felt like I'd be willing to be in a romantic relationship was when I felt like I actually had a mental connection to someone and could carry on a conversation. Because for me, I'm so introverted and have experienced mental illness related to selective mutism that I find it difficult to have a connection with someone that I could really have a strong conversation with. So those that I do have a strong conversation with can leave me feeling like I'd be willing to be in a romantic relationship with them. 

SARAH: That makes sense. 

KAYLA: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

SARAH: And I realized, Kerry, we never actually specifically asked you, how do you identify? I know you're obviously on the aro and ace spectrums, but is there a particular identity that you, particular term that you use? 

KERRY CHIN: I actually just say aromantic, asexual. I guess my experience of being aromantic and asexual is actually just kind of simple in a way that I don't feel the need for any microlabels, I'm straightforwardly not experiencing sexual or romantic attraction, non-partnering. 

SARAH: You and me both, Kerry. You and me both.

KAYLA: I was going to say, I feel like you and Kerry have like very similar outlooks on your identities. 

SARAH: Yeah. We're the rare aro and ace, just straight up aromantic asexual, you know, sometimes I'm like, “oh.” 

KERRY CHIN: I think over the years, as I meet more other aro or acespec people, I consider my kind of experience to be in some ways, relatively fortunate in that there's not a lot of second guessing of myself to be done where I knew fairly early on, quite straightforwardly, yeah, my preference is no, so, happily single by choice, probably for life, and that's it. Whereas my perception is that people who are aro but not ace or vice versa might have different kinds of struggles. And also just, just in figuring out as well as in any potential relationships, that doesn't sound like that's easy. 

RACHEL LEVI: It's actually much more common than people think to be aro-ace. The largest percentage of people that fill out AUREA’s censuses they're kind of like the AVEN community survey, but AUREA does it for their followers as well. The majority of them are aro-ace. And that's probably because people come from researching asexuality to find out about aromanticism. So, there's probably a lot of people out there that just don't know that aromanticism exists, that could be allosexual and aromantic or anywhere on the aromantic spectrum that just haven't found out about the terms yet. 

SARAH: Yeah. I feel like I always think about it in the context of among ace people, it is less common to be aro-ace, but among aro people, not so rare. It's good for my ego to be like, “no, you're not special.” But yeah, I also think it's interesting that both of you came to discover aromanticism through asexuality because so did I, so did basically everyone else I know because the split model is such a… obviously it applies to everyone in the entire planet, but the split model of attraction isn't really embraced in other communities as it is in aspec, as in both ace and arospec. And so as great as it is that people are able to come to terms with their aromanticism, you know, through asexuality, it sucks that you kind of have to go through asexuality, there's no means of going straight to aro, at least that I have heard of from anyone. 

KERRY CHIN: And I think in some online groups I see people looking for groups that are specifically aro and not ace specifically because they're allosexual, aro. 

SARAH: Mm-hmm.

KAYLA: Yeah. I know we've had a lot of requests from our listeners to have on guests that are aro but not ace. And I feel like, yeah, it's kind of hard to find. It's kind of rare because I think there's probably a lot of people out there who are otherwise allo and heterosexual and have no connection with any queer communities, but are aro and they have just no way of finding that out. And so, you just kind of live your life. 

RACHEL LEVI: I think even when they do find that out, they're probably coming from a point of doing research into asexuality and know about that term before they hear about the possibility of being aromantic and not asexual because they don't fit in the asexual community. 

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely. 

SARAH: Yeah. And I feel like people too, who, if they have that sexual attraction and they don't have that romantic attraction, they might be like, okay, well I have the thing that is most important according to society in a lot of ways, not in every way, but in a lot of ways, like is the sex part, like the sexual attraction that, you know, go forth, have babies, that sort of thing. And so, they're like, well, if I have that sexual attraction and maybe I don't experience romantic attraction the same way, like they might feel as though like, oh, maybe they can just kind of… maybe they're just like not that much of a romantic. Maybe they can just kind of push it. Whereas I think people coming to their aromanticism through asexuality, it's a little bit of a different experience because they're like, oh, I don't experience the sexual attraction at all. And also, I don't experience the romantic aspect of it. So, I think it's just… I mean, it's tough no matter what, but… 

RACHEL LEVI: Yeah. 

KAYLA: I think we've done a little bit of groundwork on introducing ourselves and such. So how did you both become involved in AUREA's book project?

RACHEL LEVI: Well, I saw the call for authors and I've had… I do have some experience publishing work on my main career. So, I felt like it would be a good chance to step outside of my typical area of writing, to get involved with the projects to publish something that is more personal.

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely. What about you, Kerry?

KERRY CHIN: I loosely remember having signed up to join this project, but at first, I don't think I was selected to be on the team and it was only a bit later when I think one of the other team members dropped out of the project and I then got invited to be part of it.

SARAH: You ended up where you needed to be. Here you are.

KAYLA: Yeah. I'm glad that happened. So, I think I've seen that both of you are contributing to the chapters that are focused on mental health and then maybe also intersectionality. Is that right? Do I remember that right? 

SARAH: I don't think you did. 

RACHEL LEVI: Well, I'm mostly working on a chapter on mental health and I'm also working on a chapter on activism and the future of the aromantic community and Kerry is also helping me with that last chapter. 

KAYLA: Okay, that’s…

RACHEL LEVI: I'm also helping to work on all of the chapters, I have my hands in each one as a lead author to try to help guide all of the other authors to get our projects put together as a whole, because there's quite a lot of us working on each chapter.

SARAH: Yeah. Can you give just a quick outline of what things you're focusing on in this book? Like what the main chapters are? 

RACHEL LEVI: Yeah. So, our first chapter is going to be a bit of an introduction into aromantic history because it didn't just start with the creation of the new terms from the asexual community. We're precursors to those terms that we feel relate to being aromantic. We have our next section on general terminology like the microlabels, issues related to amatonormativity

SARAH: It is, yep.

KAYLA: That’s a tough word.

RACHEL LEVI: Sorry, issues related to amatonormativity, general issues related to those normativity type of terms, relationships. We're also having a chapter that's related to intersectionality of a lot of different intersectional identities like gender, religion, ethnicity and so forth. The main chapter I'm working on is mental health. We are focusing on issues related to stigmas and discrimination and how that affects mental health as well as having a section in that that would be advice for mental health practitioners like social workers and psychologists. 

KAYLA: I love that. 

RACHEL LEVI: Our last chapter is focused on activism and the future of the aromantic community. 

[00:20:00]

RACHEL LEVI: So, we're taking a broad look and not just specific to political activism but I've also included a ‘call to action’ for researchers because it's very important for the future of the aromantic community to be able to do research into aromanticism and see research published in peer-reviewed articles and PhD theses so that the terms become more mainstream. 

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely. I know I've seen a lot of work, not a lot, a lot more than there used to be work in the asexuality space for research but I've not seen as much for aromanticism so that would be really cool to see.

RACHEL LEVI: Mm-hmm.

KAYLA: What is it like working with so many different authors? I know even when Sarah and I wrote our book it was just the two of us but even that was kind of a learning process of figuring out how to write together, how to edit together and everything. So, what has the experience been like?

RACHEL LEVI: It has been really interesting to work with authors from around the globe because we have authors from many different continents. We've got Australians, Asian authors from Hong Kong, there's some in Europe and North America. So, we've had challenges finding times to meet because of our different time zones in person so we're mostly just using Discord to communicate but I feel that it has helped us to be able to bring in some different perspectives from different continents that I feel like other asexual and aromantic authors have been challenged by because they frequently just come from the perspective of… like an American perspective or an English perspective from England and through this we're able to include perspectives from people that have other backgrounds.

KAYLA: Yeah. I love that. Wait, that's definitely something that we struggled with when we were writing is knowing like okay this is a very American midwest like one state specific perspective because we grew up in such close proximity so that is a really cool way to get all those different perspectives. 

KERRY CHIN: I think one of the more seemingly trivial issues but that's real is for some of us overseas we are used to writing in kind of a Commonwealth spelling of certain words… 

KAYLA: Oh, yeah. 

KERRY CHIN: The United States spellings and so having words with having an S instead of a Z kind of thing where I'm having to remember to actually just write it in that spelling that we're not used to in the first place. 

SARAH: American imperialism strikes again. 

KAYLA: No. It's so funny to think about too the publisher is in England so then you have that influence too, that's so funny. 

SARAH: Yeah. 

RACHEL LEVI: Yeah. I would say even though we are trying to get as many perspectives as possible I still feel like we're still very limited, like we can try to reach out to people from say the African continent and it's so difficult to get their perspective in the book if we can't get a response. So, we're limited to who is willing to respond and who is willing to contribute. 

SARAH: And who has the capacity too as well. 

RACHEL LEVI: Yeah. Yeah, because some of it is just like the time period that we have to complete the book may not be able to coincide with someone else's time period for them to think of how to contribute and respond. 

SARAH: Yeah. 

KAYLA: Yeah, definitely. 

KERRY CHIN: I remember being on an ace panel a few years ago that talks about similar issues about international activism that was focused on the Asian acespec movement and for a bit of context I grew up in Hong Kong and I only moved to Australia as a teenager but at that time I think it was in 2021 and the person who organized that particular event lives in Bangladesh and she was trying to organize a panel for ace activists in various Asian countries but I'm not sure how she got in contact with some other Australian ace activists but… and then she found out that I’m originally from Hong Kong and I ended up being invited to speak on that panel from the perspective of somebody from Hong Kong even though at that point I haven't lived in Hong Kong for probably 16 years by then, that was… I think that particular panel we covered kind of a lot of the same issues that we're facing now. One of them being of course language barriers where we… by definition rewriting a book in English. People who are not fluent in English aren't really going to be able to participate in this. 

KAYLA: Mm-hmm.

SARAH: Yeah. And I mean, obviously books can be translated but you know you have to have… the book has to have usually a certain amount of success for that to happen and we love Jessica Kingsley publishers, they're the best, but like with our book as far as I'm aware we haven't had any capacity to even think about that. 

KAYLA: No, no.

SARAH: So, yeah, it's tough to get the word out. 

KERRY CHIN: And in the context of aromanticism specifically it's going to be a challenge figuring out how to translate all the specialist terminology. 

SARAH: Mm-hmm.

KAYLA: Yeah absolutely. 

KERRY CHIN: I've actually been working on AUREA's translation project as well but the part that I was struggling with the most was actually the glossary where as a community in English we have a large number of microlabels and depending on what language you're trying to translate it to, the formation of words just doesn't work the same way as it does in English, where in English I think that we have prefixes from mostly Latin and Greek but also various other languages where… it doesn't work that way in Chinese for example. 

SARAH: Yeah, absolutely. 

KAYLA: I hadn't even thought about that, just the structure of how most microlabels, I think maybe all microlabels, it's the microlabel first and then you know asexual or aromantic or sexual romantic 

SARAH: Yeah. 

KAYLA: I hadn't even thought about that, what a mess, language. 

KERRY CHIN: Yeah, a bit more context, I studied linguistics at university so I have… 

KAYLA: Oh, so you get it.

KERRY CHIN: A level of understanding of how these things work but I don't actually have any formal training in translation and so the linguistics background helps me understand why things are the way they are but I don't necessarily know what to do about it. 

SARAH: Yeah, and I mean translation is hard enough to begin with. I, one of my majors in college was in German which is… I don't use that degree at all, but I have it. And I took a translation class in college just like as an undergrad and like there's so much that you don't even think about that goes into all of that. And like I have a friend who lives in Germany who identifies as non-binary and in English they use they/them pronouns but in German they use the equivalent of she/her pronouns because or they use they/them in English in German. 

KERRY CHIN: Yeah, because my understanding of German is that you form the plural of the third person pronoun by adding and ending but it doesn't change the gender of it so it doesn't work the same way where in English the third person plural they/them is the same regardless of the gender of the person but it doesn't work that way in for example French or German or some other languages so it doesn't help. 

SARAH: Yeah, everything is gendered like even if… in German even if you do use they/them pronouns like for example you say “they” in English and you just stick it into the German sentence every like title like teacher or student or president all of those terms are gendered so you would have to pick one so it's a whole thing, anyway. 

KAYLA: This has been your linguistics and translation lesson for the day. 

SARAH: What do you hope readers gain from reading the book? Like what do you want people to take away from it? 

RACHEL LEVI: That's a great question, I've been thinking about like a lot of the lessons that I want people to take away from the book as I'm writing it and I think for those that are on the aromantic spectrum or questioning it I would say that… I would hope that everyone comes away from the book with a new appreciation for themselves to accept themselves for who they are because I feel that I'm the most moved by the statements that I've read through personal narratives on AUREA’s website… 

[00:30:00]

RACHEL LEVI: In which people say that they feel broken, they feel discriminated against and are struggling with stigmas related to relationships and I feel like that what I've learned from being asexual and aromantic is that it has helped me to set the boundaries, it's helping to set the boundaries that I need in order to take care of myself the way I want to and this has led to an acceptance of myself for who I am so I hope that that's what a lot of people can get from this book so that they can feel that they're not broken and love themselves for who they are. 

SARAH: Yeah, yeah. 

KAYLA: I love the way you worded it saying how you need to take care of yourself like the way you want to because I think so many people get caught up in what society is saying you need to do with your life or like to live a happy life you have to have a partner or you have to be having sex, you have to have this whole romantic story, when for, you know, a lot of people especially aromantic people that's not going to be a way to like fill your cup or take care of yourself, so, I love that.

RACHEL LEVI: Yeah. 

KERRY CHIN: Yeah. I relate to that idea very much as well. I consider myself lucky that, yeah, I knew about being aromantic and asexual very early on, but I agree that a lot of other aro or ace people that I meet felt broken because they didn't know it's a thing to be aro or ace and I think the most basic underlying reason for having aromantic community is to let these people know they're not alone in those experiences but in writing the book I've been working mainly on the section about activism and I want people who are reading this book who are aro and considering going into activism to know the history of our communities, activism. And not try to reinvent the wheel I suppose because locally I'm mostly involved in ace activism but every now and then in the ace group I see people who are new to group basically try to suggest things that those of us who've been doing it for a long time have done before or we've considered that idea and know why it doesn't work and it can actually be very frustrating for us as long-term activists to see people, yeah, try to reinvent the wheel or… 

SARAH: Yeah, listen to your elders, we're so lucky to have them. 

KERRY CHIN: Yeah, it's a very delicate balance because we don't want to put new people off participating in activism but, yeah, it is pretty frustrating sometimes 

SARAH: It's all about keeping your mind open and accepting what you don't know and so, yes, it's about finding that balance. Rachel what was it you were gonna add? 

RACHEL LEVI: Yeah, so in trying to decide like how to write a book like this we ended up being very academic in our writing so it became like natural for us to want to bridge… find a bridge between the writing style of previously written books like ‘Hopeless Aromantic’ and something that would be very academic. So, I would say that it has also been a goal for me to make this book accessible to those who would want something to be both like general audience level and also be academicians and like college professors or psychologists so I really have a lot of hopes for this books to be accessible to people who aren't just aromantic but are also alloromantic or allosexual who are just trying to learn about aromanticism for the first time and I really hope that they can learn to accept us for who we are and try to learn to not judge us, to not stigmatize us and to be able to understand that even if they don't understand our point of view and have a different idea of how their culture would prefer to live that they can accept that we just have a different experience than them and it's our right to make different choices than they do. 

KAYLA: Absolutely, 10 out of 10. That's the… I think it's so hard to find… as we've talked about early in this episode, it's so hard to find information about aromanticism and I think I was also thinking about that with activism like there's no… I mean, maybe there is, but I feel like it's not common for there to be like a class on like, here's how to be an activist or like a way to teach you like the right way to do it or like what has been tried before, what has worked in history for different groups. So, I'm really excited to see that part of the book especially on, you know, here's what's been done in aro activism before, here's what has been working as kind of a teaching moment for people who want to get into activism.

SARAH: Yeah. 

KERRY CHIN: That's an interesting point because on getting into activism personally I remember first being exposed to activism in general in the university setting and later on I met someone who also has been to university but wasn't that active in like campus life due to personal circumstances. Also, for context, here in Australia living in on campus is the exception, most people travel to and from campus even if they study in person. So, it is a lot more possible for people to have been to university but haven't ever been that active in campus life that I understand is in contrast to the norm in the United States

KAYLA: Mm-hmm.

KERRY CHIN: But in… my point is that in having met this person who hasn't been exposed to activism in the university context they come into the space of activism seeming to not know very much about a lot of things that I consider to be kind of seemingly common knowledge is not actually that common but of course then there's the difference in in-person activism versus online activism and online activism is another whole other area where, yeah, where do you go to learn that? And personally, I think a lot of things I really just learned on the go so yeah seeing it written down would be very useful.

KAYLA: Yeah, I think like Sarah said, listening to your elders, and I think this is especially relevant unfortunately in the United States right now where I know a lot of people are clamoring to understand how to community build and how to be involved in activism right now and they don't know where to start because there is no one really… like there's no formal education in that. So, anyway, it sadly made me think of that but we don't have to dwell on that situation.

SARAH: One more thing that I wanted to hit on was, that you do hit on in the book, is about like the intersection between aromanticism and other identities whether that's gender or race or religion or that sort of thing, have either of you had any experiences that helped, I don't know, helped to define your aromanticism or like that really stood out to you as like something that you think should be talked about more? 

RACHEL LEVI: That's a great question, I think for me my strongest intersectional interactions would probably be with my feelings about feminism because my initial feelings about being non-partnering really came from a place of feeling more like I guess sex-negative and sex-neutral as my attitude rather than a sex-positive feminist and I'm one of the older aces as people would say because I'm in my 40s so for me growing up in the 90s I was really exposed to a lot of sex positive feminism in television and just seeing the beginnings of television that had gay characters in it and so… I was from a very liberal town in Illinois that's well known for being very accepting of the LGBTQ community ever since like the 90s so for me I felt very different being someone who was more sex-negative or sex-neutral than a sex-positive feminist and I feel that really influenced me and my feelings of feminism and reading books like ‘Stone Butch Blues’ made me feel like there's a lot that feminists need to learn in terms of setting boundaries because being sex-positive to me could really lead to a relationship that reverses the dynamics that feminism is trying to go for rather than being in a relationship of equality regardless of what gender you are or what type of relationship you have, whether it's just sex without benefits or a long-standing partnership. 

[00:40:00]

RACHEL LEVI: I was feeling and seeing whether it's in books or in relationships that my friends were having that their relationships were very negative, that they were not setting boundaries to protect themselves and they were getting… experiencing problems with sexual assault and being illegally forced into sex trafficking like a sex slave. And what I personally witnessed made me feel like the position of being sex-positive was actually a very negative experience and I know a lot of people have very good experiences with being sex-positive and I witnessed very specific things that my friends experienced and specific things that I read about that it influenced my feelings towards sex and romance to be more interested in being non-partnering in that period of time.

KAYLA: That is so interesting to me and I feel like everyone listening to this podcast is like, “I can hear what Kayla is thinking.” But longtime listeners of the podcast will know that in college I did take a feminism class and I was obsessed with it.

SARAH: And she wouldn’t shut up about it. 

KAYLA: And I wouldn't shut the fuck up about it but I actually did like my final research paper on asexuality and feminism and it was about the same topic of, do aro people and ace people feel like bad feminists because they don't have a bunch of sex and like that's what we're being taught is being a good feminist right now, is being super sex-positive and just like doing as many different weird kinky like open sex things as possible and I was like, that kind of makes me feel like it's not including aro and ace people if that is the attitude that feminists are having right now. 

RACHEL LEVI: Yeah, what has really influenced some of my feminist beliefs too is a book called ‘Yentl's Revenge’ that's about the diversity in feminist beliefs in the Jewish religion because there's a lot of variations in beliefs within Judaism from very liberal and humanist to very conservative and within that range there's a lot of different feminist beliefs so that helps me realize that being sex-negative or sex-neutral doesn't mean that you're a bad feminist, that being sex-positive is not the only way to be a feminist and I was able to feel like I could come to an acceptance of my own viewpoint and not feel broken because I was able to see that there is a range of feminist viewpoints and that it's okay to not be a sex-positive feminist and that it's okay to not be in a relationship. 

SARAH: Yeah, and that being a sex-positive feminist does not mean that you like you have feminism perfectly down, that you're doing it perfectly. You know, there are… I feel like so many… as you kind of touched on, like toxic aspects of looking at sex-positive feminism without enough nuance that just because you're a sex-positive feminist doesn't necessarily mean that, I don't want to say there's a right or wrong way to be a feminist, that there's a good or a bad feminist because that's a whole other thing. 

RACHEL LEVI: Right, yeah, I'm not saying that either. I would just personally advocate for learning how to set boundaries and working on the relationship dynamics so they're not toxic. 

SARAH: Yeah. 

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely. I love talking about feminism. Anyway. 

KERRY CHIN: See, in terms of feminism I do… I think it is very relevant to aromanticism in the context of some of the research I've done for the book about international contexts. So… because of course for us looking at it from a kind of living in a Western country perspective that's one thing but like in some parts of the world where women have like less freedom to say no to getting married, maybe having less career prospects and living alone isn't necessarily that much of a practical option for them and these are obviously issues that would be significant for any aromantic women in particular living in such circumstances.

KAYLA: Yeah, absolutely. 

KERRY CHIN: On the question of aromanticism and intersectionality, yeah, where do I start on that one? So firstly, a bit of context so, yeah, I'm a transgender man and I started my medical transition when I finished university. In my university years I felt that my asexuality and aromanticism were particularly in the foreground of my life because when I still appeared female, I had a lot of unwanted interest from men and I think a lot of them were just being willfully ignorant to… like they won't believe when I tell them I'm aromantic and asexual because they don't want to. Whereas, transitioning mostly got rid of that problem and so now I think my aromanticism and asexuality are a lot more in the background for me where nobody expresses any interest in me anymore and that suits me.

KAYLA: That's so interesting just to see so starkly the difference between how you're presenting your gender and how people are interacting with you in that way, that's so annoying…

SARAH: Yeah. 

KAYLA: That you had to go through that but so interesting to see how just that change can change how people are interacting with you in the world. 

KERRY CHIN: Secondly, I'm also autistic, I run a social group for autistic adults, I'm also involved in my local disability pride movement and in these contexts there's definitely a lot of emphasis on reminding people that neurodivergent or disabled people are also sexual beings like everybody else and while that is true that there is such a thing as people emphasizing too much on reminding people that disabled people can also have sex and forgetting that yes but some of us are actually aromantic and asexual.

SARAH: Mm-hmm. 

KERRY CHIN: Some of us once you know that we are autistic especially then they try to tell us that you're, “oh, you're not aromantic or asexual, you're just autistic” and that's completely missing the point. Amongst the autistic people I know it's like most of them certainly are neither aromantic nor asexual. Although, on the flip side in my local ace community I think there are actually quite a large number of autistic people. 

SARAH: I think people who are autistic tend to be a little bit overrepresented in aspec communities but I don't think that's necessarily a specific connection between autism and aspec identities but more so a connection between recognizing that you don't quite fit into society in the way that people expect you to and so like if you are autistic or if you are acespec you're looking at yourself with a more critical lens of like, oh, there's some sort of… not something that's wrong with me, but something that's different about me, and so you're thinking critically about it already and it may lead you to discover one or the other. And so, people who are outside of those spaces who aren't necessarily thinking about their identities so much might not realize either, even if both are true. 

KERRY CHIN: I mean, there is actually published research showing that statistically amongst transgender people that there’s certainly an overrepresentation of neurodivergent people and as well as to a lesser extent overall LGBTQA+ community. 

SARAH: Mm-hmm.

KAYLA: I mean, we're… Me and Sarah are both neurodivergent out here, so. I love the neurodivergent acespec people. 

KERRY CHIN: Yeah, lastly, I might also want to touch on concept of culture and how that interacts with aromanticism. So, yeah, having grown up in Hong Kong, I want to say it's basically a culture that's very success-driven, highly focused on like career and finance and material success but as part of that bigger picture I think the getting married and having kids is definitely part of it and therefore for those of us who remain single to an older age there is definitely a lot of judgment but I think… people will kind of openly call you a loser for being single. 

KAYLA: I hate that. 

SARAH: Yeah. 

KERRY CHIN: And I think in… there are kind of also slang terms coming from like Korean dramas and other kind of other Asian pop culture influences. Also, this narrative of getting married and having kids, a lot of it is about having somebody to look after you in your old age which I think these days is just increasingly less popular in an environment where financial struggles are common and people can't afford to have kids. So, it's an unfortunate truth that it is because of this context of economic struggle where that narrative is becoming less popular but it's still very much there in the background.

[00:50:00]

SARAH: Yeah, I feel like I hear so often people are like, oh, if you're not gonna have kids, like who's gonna take care of you when you're old? And it's like, first of all, that shouldn't be the reason you're having kids. 

KAYLA: No. 

SARAH: That can be a nice side effect but like who knows if your kids will even have the ability to take care of you when you're… like what… there's so much to unpack there. But I also think, you know, with people not having kids or that sort of thing like that's where community building comes in and it's important to build those communities whether they're around your identity, whether it's aro identity, whether it's an ethnic identity, whether it's just like people who like to play tennis, like… you know, it's so important to build community regardless. 

KERRY CHIN: Although, I think on the flip side it should also be noted that some aro or ace people do have kids. 

SARAH: Of course.

KERRY CHIN: Yep. 

SARAH: And then they can brag about their kids taking care of them and then we'll say, “you know what? Yeah, fair enough.” 

KAYLA: I guess. 

SARAH: I guess. 

KAYLA: Uh, to wrap up, going back to some more happy things, I want to know if y'all are planning to celebrate aromantic awareness week in any special way. 

RACHEL LEVI: Well, just recording this podcast is basically the only plans that I have to share it out with other people. I haven't really thought of participating in other events yet. 

SARAH: And you don't have to, like that's something that we… 

KAYLA: We either 

SARAH: We often say is like celebrating aromantic awareness week or ace or any sort of pride anything, do it to the extent that you want to and if you want to be super involved, great, and if your way of celebrating is just by doing some self-care that week then like that's also great. 

KERRY CHIN: See, a few different points on this, firstly, as someone who is involved in a lot of different communities to some extent or another, this large number of special days can actually be a bit of a pitfall. I personally have a cluster that's around the end of March and the beginning of April where every other day is a different special day for me.

KAYLA: Oh no. 

KERRY CHIN: The joke that one of my friends made is that it is the time when your Venn diagram kicks your ass. 

KAYLA: Oh, that's so that's so true.

KERRY CHIN: Secondly, because aromantic spectrum awareness week is defined as the first full week starting on Sunday after Valentine’s Day which makes it usually in the third week of February, here in Sydney that's when our pride season is on the Sydney gay and lesbian Mardi Gras, starting with a Fair Day on the Sunday so personally I'm going to be very busy with participating in this pride season. Locally I'm quite active with the Australian asexuals, we have a stall at the Fair Day and we march in the parade. I'll be basically busy flying my aro flag and at these events and locally I can probably reasonably claim to be one of the most well-known aro-ace person, so.

KAYLA: I saw that you were… what was it called? A ‘marshal’? Is that the title for last year's Sydney world pride? 

KERRY CHIN: I was one of the rainbow champions, yeah.

KAYLA: Yes, that’s what it was. 

KERRY CHIN: Basically, an ambassador for Sydney world pride. 

KAYLA: That's so exciting. I love that they gave that to an aro-ace person, that's so, so, cool. 

KERRY CHIN: And what I find even more cool is that I'm actually not the only aro-ace person out of the 45 rainbow champions.

KAYLA: I love. 

KERRY CHIN: There's this one other person who I… my perception is that the other person mostly emphasizes their non-binary identity over being aro and acespec back but at one of the in-person events they have explicitly stated that they are also acespec. 

KAYLA: That's so sick, I love Australia. Well, that's amazing. So, I guess if anyone listening is in Australia and is celebrating pride, look out for the aro flags. My favorite is seeing aro and ace flags at pride events because it's like obviously more rare than seeing other types of flags, so… I get so excited every time. 

KERRY CHIN: On a different level, on Tumblr, I'm actually the last remaining admin on the original arospec awareness week group blog.

KAYLA: Oh my God, wow. 

KERRY CHIN: Which makes me very busy at that time the year where I barely have enough time to create any original content for it. So, having to actually find stuff to re-blog is enough work for me. 

KAYLA: God you're so busy, I totally get that though, I feel like especially during COVID we were like really in our era of doing like a lot of stuff online and ace week and aro week were always so stressful because I was like we have to be posting everything and now I'm like, “actually that's not good for me and my mental health, so I'm gonna take care of myself,” but either way that's really, really cool. 

SARAH: Yep, I love it. Well, thank you so much Rachel and Kerry for joining us and dealing with the time zone shenanigans it took in figuring out when to schedule this, it was so great talking to you both. 

RACHEL LEVI: Thanks for having us.

KAYLA: Thank you so much again to Kerry and Rachel for spending time with us and talking about aromanticism and AUREA’s upcoming book. It was so lovely. 

SARAH: It was so lovely. Kayla, please remind the kids about where they can find information about this book and all of the wonderful stuff that AUREA does. 

KAYLA: Yes, exactly. Yes, so AUREA, I think as Kerry mentioned, there's other projects that they're doing as well so for updates about this book which again will be out at the end of this year at the earliest, so information about this project as well as all the other projects they're doing, you can go to ‘aromanticism.org’ or any of AUREA's social medias which we will be linking in the description of this episode but I think if you just look up AUREA, A-U-R-E-A, then I assume it'll come up. But yeah, so keep an eye out for this book and obviously once we know more, we will promo it in the future on episodes so just keep an eye out.

SARAH: Yeah. Once we know more, we will remind you about it. 

KAYLA: Yes. 

SARAH: Fantastic. Kayla what's our poll for this week? Should it just be, “what are you doing for aromantic…”

KAYLA: Yeah, “what are you doing for aro week?”

SARAH: Aro awareness week. 

KAYLA: And it can be nothing. Nothing is a good answer. 

SARAH: It can be nothing, nothing is a great answer.

KAYLA: That's probably my answer. 

SARAH: Yeah, great. Kayla, what's your beef and your juice this week? And bear in mind that we're recording this in advance so it has to be timeless. 

KAYLA: I know, timeless. Timeless. My juice is watching my friends play video games. I really like watching people play video games. I have since I was a wee lad, I loved watching my cousin Allie play ‘The Sims’ and ‘Assassin's Creed’ oh my God, and her mother listens to this, Nina, so you can tell her I said that. 

SARAH: Hi Nina. 

KAYLA: Hi Nina. 

SARAH: Hi Aunt Nina. 

KAYLA: And a lot of my friends play video games and I just like watching them play them, so that's why juice. My beef is, you know?

SARAH: Yeah 

KAYLA: You know. 

SARAH: I mean, we're a couple of weeks out from when this episode is coming out but there will be things. 

KAYLA: I can't imagine. 

SARAH: To you know about. 

KAYLA: I can't, yeah, I can't imagine it's gonna get markedly better the next couple of weeks, so. 

SARAH: Yeah. 

KAYLA: I think that's pretty timeless. 

SARAH: I would love to be proven wrong.

KAYLA: Me too. 

SARAH: My juice is arospec people, I think you are cool and you're great. 

KAYLA: Yes.

SARAH: My beef is people who aren't arospec. 

KAYLA: Well, fuck me.

SARAH: My beef is people who are mean to arospec and think it's made up. 

KAYLA: Yes, that’s fair. What if I'm mean to arospecs specifically ones that are Sarah but it's not because of their aromanticism it's because of who you are as a person. 

SARAH: But it's not related? Yeah, I mean that's fine, it's like… I mean, like if…

KAYLA: Oh, okay. 

SARAH: Well, yeah, because like if you're mean to an aro... like aro person because they've been annoying like that's not a hate crime. 

KAYLA: Sure. 

SARAH: That's just consequences for their actions.

KAYLA: Their actions, sure, okay. 

SARAH: You know, there's a certain line between hate and just… 

KAYLA: That’s what I was… Yeah. 

SARAH: And like neging, you know?

KAYLA: Yeah, sure. Okay. Good to keep in mind. 

SARAH: Anyway, you can answer our poll or tell us about your beef or your juice on our social media @soundsfakepod. We also have a Patreon, patreon.com/soundsfakepod, Sarah from the future will tell you who our patrons are. Hello, it's Sarah from the future on mic if you can even believe it, I am very sleepy, I am full of pasta and I'm very brave, so, let's do this. Our $5 patrons who we are promoting this week are Galvin Ford, Sarah_Green, nope that's Green_sarah, Joch and Jolly Lizbert. We also have a new $5 patron, it's Vince Terranova. Thank you, Vince. Also, I used to watch the TV show ‘Terranova’ back in the day. 

[01:00:00]

SARAH: It was on Fox for one season in like 2011 or 2012 and I liked that show, there is your Sarah fact. Our $10 patrons who are promoting something this week are Elle Bitter who would like to promote a one-time promotion from Elle Bitter, Elle would like to promote that they've passed their train driver test at the zoo. So, everyone please clap, that is so exciting, you can drive trains at the zoo, amazing. You all may recall from our very first ‘Listener Lore’ that Elle used to have to be in the back of the train doing the tours and had to see all of the PDA and so… but now she can drive the train in the front, that's very exciting. So, there's that, fuck yeah. Our other $10 patrons promoting something this week are my Aunt Jeannie who would like to promote Christopher’s Have, Kayla's dad who would like to promote JandiCreations.com and Maff who would like to promote the ‘Don't Should’ sweatshirt which you can buy on our website. Our other $10 other patrons are Martin Chiesl, Olivia O'Shea, Parker, Phoenix Leodinh, Purple Hayes, Barefoot Backpacker, SongOStorm, Val, Alastor, Alyson, Ani, Arcnes, Benjamin Ybarra, Bones, Celina Dobson, Clare Olsen, and Derick & Carissa. Our $15 patrons are Ace who would like to promote the writer Crystal Scherer, Andrew Hillum who would like to promote The Invisible Spectrum Podcast, Hector Murillo who would like to promote friends that are supportive, constructive, and help you grow as a better person, Nathaniel White who would like to promote NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, Kayla's Aunt Nina who would like to promote katemaggartart.com, and Schnell who would like to promote accepting that everyone is different and that's awesome. Our $20 patrons are Dragonfly, Dr. Jacki, My Mom, and River who would like to promote Space Time? I don't know, it's late, I'm tired. Back to Sarah from the past. Wow Sarah from the future thank you so much for that information. 

KAYLA: Thank you. I hate you but not because you're aro, I’m just kidding, or am I? I don't know.

SARAH: Perfect. Okay, thank you again to Kerry and Rachel for joining us and to AUREA for all of the wonderful work you do. Thanks for listening, have a wonderful, wonderful, aromantic spectrum awareness week and tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears. 

KAYLA: And until then, take good care of your cows.

[END OF TRANSCRIPT]