Vol. 5, Issue 3: Family
AZE, 5(3): Family
Contributors: Tindriel, Hazel J. Hall, Jam Bridgett, Chandler, Marianna Pizzini Mankle, Isaac, Daniel Yo-Ling, A.I. Moon, and J. Kowalczyk
Editor: Michael Paramo
Cover Artwork: “The Chorus,” Paramo
Supporters: This journal issue would not be possible without AZE’s supporters on Patreon. A special thank you to Lindsey, Alex Hansen, Caitlin McKenna, Chris Pasillas, and Heidi Samuelson!
Date of Publication: November 27th, 2022
Issue Theme: Notes on Family
Asexual, aromantic, and agender encounters with family may inspire feelings of pain, confusion, rejection, conditional acceptance, or love. The ways in which we may become fragmented by familial expectations that approve of certain ‘parts’ of ourselves and yet reject others can leave us in awkward, depressing, and isolating circumstances.
We may make the conscious decision not to ‘explain ourselves,’ even as our families push their prospects for the future onto us. We may internalize that we are leaving our families ‘unfulfilled’ in the process, becoming further disjointed as we witness and are reminded of friends and relatives progressing through cisheteropatriarchal familial (re)production.
What is the place of the asexual, aromantic, and agender figure in the cisheteropatriarchal family then? A disappointment? A pity? A signal of a ‘lost’ future?
Ever a cause for celebration?
To ‘escape’ such notions, where might we find our family?
Is it in the slow decomposition of that cisheteropatriarchal formation of family? The establishment and reliance on non-cisheteropatriachal familial formations, precious in the lovelessness of coloniality? Is it in our non-sexual, non-romantic, non-gendered love that extends beyond the individual, the body, or the human?
A family that we are but one expression of… where judgement is not part of the binding that holds it together… It seems unreachable by the individual’s hand… our own grasp for understanding… it might be… nothing… that is pursued…
Deep roots coarse through us.
Love,
Michael Paramo, Editor
December 27th, 2022
