#aro zine

[im-green-salami]

A zine i made about being aromantic and lacking the words in my native language

[toronto-aces-and-aros]

Toronto Aces & Aros Zine issue-- call for submission!

Hey all! We’re going to be organizing a group zine for the Toronto Aces and Aros group (exactly 10 years after the last group zine issue!). The goal is to be able to finalize and print the issue in the Fall of this year.

If you’re interested in submitting a piece for the zine, please read on. Thanks!

Submission deadline August 15, 2025 (We will also be having a zine-making workshop early September and assembling everything immediately after that.)

Theme:

Asexuality and aromanticism, and various grey experiences, are frequently described in terms of a lack of attraction or sometimes a lack of desire. This zine issue seeks to both explore and challenge the framing of these experiences as “lacking” or “missing” something.

What can be learned through an absence? In what ways can we envision asexuality and aromanticism as something gained rather than something missing? What meaning do you find in negative spaces? Or perhaps you find recognition or comfort in the vocabulary of “lack” - what significance does it have to you? What have these things (or questioning these things) brought into your life? What are reasons you’re grateful to be somewhere under the ace and/or aro umbrellas? We’d love to share them!

Submissions should be generally based around this theme, but you are welcome to interpret it in any way you like. 

Submission Instructions:

Submissions may be in text format (essays, poetry, etc), or visual format (collages, comics, etc), or a combination of the two. For visual submissions, note that the zine will be printed in black & white – the online version will be available in full colour.

Text submissions: Maximum 1500 words (no minimum) - with some flexibility if needed

Visual submissions: Maximum of 4 pages (no minimum)

Please email submissions to toronto.aces.and.aros.zine@gmail.com and include the following:

Your submission

A title for your submission, if you want one

The name / pen name / username under which you would like to be published, or “anonymous” if you prefer.

Brief bio (maximum 150 words) that will be published alongside your submission and will help give context to who is writing.

You may wish to include things such as age range, gender, pronouns, racial or ethnic identity, or other aspects of your experience and/or interests. Note: we especially want to interrupt how some aspects of identity, such as whiteness, get treated as the “default” when left unnamed. For this reason we encourage contributors to include these in bios. (e.g. if you are white, we encourage including this in your bio in order to disrupt the idea of whiteness being the unspoken baseline).

Please also be mindful of the group Respect Guidelines in your submissions: https://torontoacesandaros.wordpress.com/accessibility/respect-guidelines/ 

Timeline:

We’ll be collecting submissions via email until 15 August 2024. We may reach out to contributors to do minor editing & clarification of submissions as needed.

We’ll also include submissions collected from the zine-making workshop that will be organized in early September.

Plans for the zine:

The zine will be printed for distribution to recover print costs at Toronto Aces & Aros group events, e.g. tabling at Pride events and/or zine faire type spaces. It will also be made available for free on the Toronto Aces & Aros website.

Questions?

You can email toronto.aces.and.aros.zine@gmail.com with questions, or follow up in the #zine Discord channel. For more information about Toronto Aces & Aros or to join the Discord server, please email toronto.aces.and.aros@gmail.com

[rotten-zucchinis]

Call for submissions (zine): harm in non-normative relationships (deadline extended: Jan 2023)

There’s been some interest in a new issue of “Rotten Zucchinis zine” about harm non-normative relationships. So I’m extending the deadline to January 30, 2023 and inviting people to share the call for submissions!

Inviting submissions:

personal stories, reflections, poetry, art, etc. (i.e., basically anything other than fiction)

What do you mean by “non-normative relationship”?

Basically any personal or intimate relationship that is NOT romantic, NOT a “couple” (or a romantic/sexual triad), and not a “standard” friendship: a personal relationship that is somehow “outside the box” and not adequately or properly described by the term “friendship”– especially relationships for which there are no good specific labels. (The people involved do not have to be arospec and/or ace even though almost everyone who contributed to the first 2 issues was.)

These could include queerplatonic** (QP) relationship but they also might include relationships people don’t typically think about when we talk of “non-normative relationships”– for example, organising/comrade relationships insofar as they are personal relationships, chosen family, roommates in a community house, etc. They might include cross-generational relationships between adults that are not typical in a particular cultural context, or co-parenting situations of multiple parents who aren’t romantically or sexually involved, etc. Could even be relationship in the context of accountability work gone wrong... So many possibilities.

More info:

In terms of context, this might be helpful:

So many of us have been doing our important relationships without any road maps or “how-to” guides— these relationships aren’t romantic relationships, but they aren’t typical friendships either. And we’ve been fighting for years to get our friends, families and communities to take these relationships seriously. We finally have some language to talk about these “non-normative” relationships existing…

But we don’t have the tools to talk about when our “non-normative” relationships are unhealthy or go wrong. Often we don’t even have the space to admit that sometimes they do. Rotten Zucchinis is a zine about violence / abuse and harm and destructiveness in “non-normative” relationships. This relational territory is messy. Some forms of harm are about power and control and have a perpetrator wielding that power and control on another. Some forms of harm are not about power/control, and can be mutual (or going in more than 1 direction).

Some optional guiding questions:

What does harm or violence or abuse look like in non-normative relationships, and what are your stories? How did you make sense out of this? (and what is non-normative about the relationship in question?)

How do the problems we have in our non-normative relationships play out with other parts of our identities and lives?

How do things like power, oppression and social expectations matter?

When it comes to non-normative relationships, what do we still need to keep quiet about… and why?  

Please include a contributory bio 

Submissions / questions, etc.: rotten [dot] zucchinis [at] gmail [dot] com

_____________________________

** Note: The term queerplatonic was coined and adopted with particular intentions of expressing relationships that were not romantic but that otherwise could not be named (also along with the word “zucchini, hence the title of this zine).

Increasingly (and for a long time now), people have been reshaping the language of queerplatonic in practice, deploying it for (aro) assimilationist purposes, undermining its radical potential, etc. and categorically erasing its ace-specific roots. [In 2019, Coyote wrote a couple posts presenting “A Genealogy of queerplatonic” and discussing (and fact-checking) the political mess of false-history claims in the non-ace aro world, while attempting to make sense of their political context “QPR misinformation is not an appropriate avenue for aro advocacy”.]

In short, people have been using the word “queerplatonic” to mean a lot of things that don’t necessarily have a much to do with non-normative relationships.

I’m not going to get into an rant about neoliberalism here. I just wanted to note that indeed these days, language of QP relationships is often used to refer to relationships that are “just like most people’s partnerships except not romantic or not as romantic”. (That’s not the meaning of queerplatonic in which the “zucchini” in the title of this zine was grounded.)

This zine is about non-normative relationships, under any name. By “non-normative”, I mean by definition relationships which are NOT “just like most people’s partnerships”-- instead, they are basically *anything* else.

[genderqueerdykes]

"Heartless" is a short zine about the authors' experience with being aromantic, coming out as aro, dealing with aphobia, and learning to love the fact that we don't love!

[that-disabled-princess]

Was inspired by this post and made my first ever zine!! Ignore the crochet hook, that's because I needed both hands to take the photos and didn't have anything else to hold the zine flat.

[art-by-secret]

It‘s (nearly) Valentine’s Day, I‘m aro-ace and this is a mini zine about non-romantic gestures of love I have experienced <3

Maybe some of these things seem completely natural to you, but every one of them made me feel loved :)

(And of course, just because these things are not strictly romantic in nature, they can be a part of romantic love just as much as they can be platonic. Love comes in many shapes and forms :)

Being single is not the same thing as being unloved, and not wanting romantic love is not the same thing as being heartless!

[superflatpsyche]

Happy aromantic awareness week! 💚

This standalone comic was my contribution to an aro-centric zine that was organized a few months back. Copies are pay-what-you-want and available for download here!

Happy reading!

[theepitomeofanakaren]

Zine: Aromantic Fictional Characters 💚🤍🖤

Happy aromantic spectrum awareness week!

This time I made a zine with some of the aromantic fictional characters I know. Some of them were only confirmed by their creators or the actors who played them but I still think it is nice to know that we can see them or read them and relate to their experiences. Representation is so important and looking at the experiences of these characters made me feel so seen and valid.

I don’t really know what to say, this is my first aro week and I already feel so much love and support, I’m happy with my identity and proud to be part of this lovely community. 💚✨

[mysteriouscircumstanceslut]

hello internet aros

yes I have aro zines I want to share with you

I am having the busiest month of my life currently

when I have time to breathe I will work out the best way to share my zines with you

I will post them here

follow for updates

[42-clocks]

💚 a zine on aromanticism 💚

^an informational zine on aromanticism I made for Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week

feel free to share/print!

(pages and image IDs after the break)

Image ID 1: the front and back cover. The front cover reads, “informational zine — Aromantic: What Does That Mean? — by Peter Z.”

there are two simple arrow shapes between lines of the text pointing in opposite directions.

The middle of the page has a long stripe with the colors of the aromantic flag, which extends to the back cover. the back cover side lists what each of the colors represent: green — aromanticism; light green — the aromantic spectrum; white — platonic and aesthetic attraction; gray — gray-romanticism and demi-romanticism; black — the sexuality spectrum.

The back page reads, “more resources!

TAAAP.org

Aro Spec Week.com

gsrc.princeton.edu (SAM)

aromanticism.org (AUREA)

Elizabeth Brake (aromanticism)

Aggressively Aro Spec Tumblr

Aromantic Guide.com”

End text. Two gray silhouettes of lily flowers act as embellishment. End ID 1.

Image ID 2: pages 1 and 2 of the zine.

Page 1: “Aromantic — or just ‘aro’ for short — refers to someone who experiences little to no romantic attraction to anyone — or experiences it in a different way than others. Alloromantic is the opposite — one who does have romantic attraction.” The text is green and dark teal with light green boarders around the sections.

Page 2: small letters says “this might help to understand” and arrow points to the title “Split Attraction Model” — “a way of understanding attraction by separating it into types: sexual, romantic, platonic, alterous, aesthetic, etc.

“Sexual Orientations: bisexual, heterosexual, asexual. Romantic Orientations: biromantic, heteroromantic, aromantic. — sometimes they match, sometimes they don’t! Words like biromantic and heteroromantic commonly refer to both S. O. and R. O.” End ID 2.

Image ID 3: pages 3 and 4.

Page 3: titled “A-spec Community”. Below is a Venn diagram, the left circle labeled “aro”, the right circle “ace”, the overlap space “aro ace”, this is all within a larger circle labeled “a-spec”.

“Aromantic is not the same as Asexual (little to no Sexual Attraction to anyone at all). The identities and communities are related but distinct”

Page 4: titled “Myths” with dark teal flower silhouettes on either side. Myths include “hates all romance, childish “late bloomer”, not LGBTQ+, unemotional, wants to be alone, can’t be in a relationship, afraid of commitment, can’t also be gay/hetero/etc” End ID 3.

Image ID 4: pages 5 and 6.

Page 5: “Are you aro? some common experiences: made up crushes, flirting doesn’t make sense, hard to identify romantic feelings, dating isn’t a priority, don’t like romance heavy media, dating because you’re “supposed to”, rarely if ever “fall in love”, don’t have celebrity crushes. *these are not exclusive to aros though!”

Page 6: the top of the page has the shape of an umbrella, the text inside reads “the Aromantic umbrella”. The body has four microlabel examples;

“Gray-romantic — romantic attraction rarely or weakly.” Next to it is a small rectangular flag with 5 horizontal stripes: green, gray, white, gray, green.

“Demi-romantic — romantic attraction only after a bond has formed.” Rectangular flag with a wide white stripe, narrow green, and wide gray stripe, and a black triangle on the left side.

“Allo-aro — allosexual and aromantic, no romantic attraction, has sexual attraction.” Rectangular flag with even horizontal stripes: green, light green, white, yellow, dark yellow.

“Aro-ace — aromantic and asexual, no romantic or sexual attraction.” Rectangular flag with even stripes: orange, yellow, white, light blue, dark blue. End ID.

[toronto-aces-and-aros]

The deadline for zine submissions has been extended until September 4!

This zine issue is centered around exploring and challenging how ace and aro experiences are typically defined in terms of what is absent (e.g. lack of attraction). What does an ace and/or aro lens bring to the table? In what ways can we define our experiences as something gained rather than something missing?

Short essays, prose, poetry, art, comics, etc, are all welcome!

See this post for details about how to submit.

[gdsplicer]

Happy #AroWeek everyone! 💚🤍🩶🖤 I finally, FINALLY am ready to share my first zine, Aro-Other; it's a mini zine covering a few aro terms and factors that go beyond the commonly known aroace identity.

Of course this lays close to me as a non-ace aromantic, and there is still a way to go in breaking the assumption that all aros are ace or that aro falls under ace, and I hope this encourages someone else to help in that or even to help someone else like me feel seen.

And I've made it available to get for free on my Kofi page! You can get all three PDFs I've made, the main digital colour zine you see here and two printable A4 versions to share around if desired too; You will need to follow a zine folding tutorial but there are bounties of resources on how to fold a zine so don't you worry!

My fellow aroallos and non-SAM aros, I see you, I am you.

[faeryvoid]

The Diversity of A-spectrum Experiences Zine Submissions!!

Hiya, I'm Fawn (FaeryVoid) Something to know about me is that I'm AroAce and I'm making a zine about the diversity amongst a-spec experiences. I've already made a post about this on my main blog The DazedPuppyDiaries, but I wanna make an updated post here. Before I discovered that I'm aro, I already really wanted to make a zine about the diversity amongst ace-spec experiences and that kind of evolved into making a zine about the diversity amongst a-spec experiences. I'm inspired to make this zine because I feel it's often forgotten that the a-spectrum is just that, a spectrum. I feel that a-spec experiences are often treated as a monolith which I find really frustrating. If you're a-spec and interested in participating feel free to reach out whether that be through commenting, reblogging this, or direct messaging me. I wanna make it clear this zine is for all a-spec not just aces and aros, so if you're aplatonic or asensual for example I'd like to hear from you as well. I do ask that anyone submitting something is 18+. You can be accredited however you like whether that be, your username, your name, your system name, an alias, or anonymous. I'm open to many mediums for this project so if you'd prefer to share your experience through illustration rather than writing that's also fine. I also have a prompt list available so if you'd like that reach out and I'll send you the document, but the prompt list is completely optional. If you're writing a submission try to be conscious about the length of the submission, but it's not too big of a deal. I should note that I might not be able to use all the submissions I get or I might not be able to use a whole submission if it's very long. Also If you don't want to write a submission, but would like to give me feedback about your experience for me to take into account while writing the zine I'd appreciate that as well, please just differentiate if it's feedback or a submission. This project is going to take me quite a while and I'm going to be taking submissions for quite a while too, so submissions are open unless I edit this saying otherwise.

[submissions and feedback are currently open]

[wilderbas]

Right so I am in the process of making a zine on how aspec relationships inform relationship anarchy (the equalisation or emphasis of importance of all relationships, as opposed to the current social hierarchy of romantic/sexual relationships over platonic, familial, etc. ones) and would love any input fellow aspecs have on the matter.

I’m basically just sick of the covert aphobia /erasure in queer leftist spaces when we have so much to offer.

Please do get in contact and/or share this within ace/aro/agender spec spaces!

Aphobes dni and fuck off xo

[queersilcozine]

[Image ID: Banner that reads "Queer Silco Zine" in the Arcane font with the Philadelphia Pride flag colours. Subheading reads, "Celebrate Pride in the neon streets of Zaun with our favourite crime lord. Applications open on June 6th, 2023." Behind the text, there is a rainbow in the trans pride flag colours. /end ID.]

[art-by-secret]

I'm going to a queer zine-meeting on saturday and I'M SO EXCITED!!! Except this is the first time I'm going to an explicitly queer event completely on my own, and as we will be making zines about it I'll have to talk about my experience and as an aro/ace I'm always scared that someone will get angry because "I'm not queer enough to invade a queer space"...

Anyways... Does somebody have some experience with situations like this and can maybe give me some tips in how to conter just in case someone gets rude?