Oliver is a friend of mine and we have got to know each other through EKHO which is a Christian LGBTQIA+ association in Sweden. He has a YouTube channel where he interviews queer people from different places of the world and he also shares his own personal story being a transgender person. I’ve learnt so much from his channel and I love it so much because listening to people’s life stories is the best thing I know. During spring this year he messaged me and asked if I was willing to be interviewed in one of his videos. I felt so humbled! My process of understanding that I’m not straight but asexual and aromantic started in the beginning of 2021 and it has been very overwhelming. Even though I pretty quickly felt assured to identity as aroace (I related to the words from the start and I was also included in the a-spec community through other aromantic and asexual people) it was harder for me to identity with the word queer and being a part of LGBTQ+. It’s just because I’ve always felt such a strong respect for queer people and queer culture and it has been a long process overcoming internalized aphobia and realizing that what I’ve been feeling ashamed of before is actually something to be really proud of. So I felt so validated when Oliver asked me this. We had a long conversation via video call where I was able to tell my whole story and we had planned to meet during Stockholm Pride to film the interview. Unfortunately I got Covid and that messed up our plans but instead it hapened when I visited Gothenburg in the beginning of October. I asked him if it would be ok to upload the video during Ace Week and he also thought it was a good idea!
I’m still so humbled but I feel very good about how the video turned out! I appreciate how both strenght and vulnerability is visible in the video. And that there is a lot about aro-phoria! Visibility for aromanticism is something very important to me so that is also something I was pleased about with the video.
I wanted to share the link to the video here on my blog as well and also write a little about the experience. Please, if you haven’t done it yet, check out the whole YouTube channel Queers of the World and all the interviews with amazing people. Oliver is such a great interviewer who really makes every person feel comfortable enough to share about their lives, identities, hobbies and personalities.
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The Aromantic Perspective 