Michael Paramo

Michael Paramo is a writer, academic, and artist known for founding the literary magazine Aze (formerly known as The Asexual) and for their work examining interpersonal attraction and love with consideration to asexuality, aromanticism, and agender identity. Paramo identifies on the asexual and aromantic spectrum and advocates for people of similar experience to express themselves toward expanding society's ideas of human sexuality, romance, and gender identity. They published a book Ending the Pursuit: Asexuality, Aromanticism, and Agender Identity in 2024.

Career
Paramo created Aze on October 5, 2016 (at the time under the name The Asexual) while attending California State University, Fullerton as a graduate student in American Studies. The journal was created because of what Paramo saw as an absence of places for asexual people to publish their creative work: "I knew their experiences, stories, perspectives, and voices needed a space of expression."

In 2017, they authored an essay discussing the whiteness of the asexual community and advocated for the community to be more inclusive of BIPOC individuals. They also presented research on the dehumanization of non-traditional gender identities, more specifically of drag queens, and the relationship of this phenomenon to colonialism.

They wrote an essay for the magazine in 2018 on the split attraction model that argued for the expansion of notions of attraction beyond sexual attraction and romantic attraction to include other forms of attraction. They wrote another essay for the magazine that discussed the relationship between transphobia and colonialism, arguing that the former was inextricably linked with the latter. Paramo interviewed Pragati Singh in 2018 on the subject of asexual awareness in India. The magazine also reached 10,000 followers on social media platform Twitter.

In 2019, Paramo was interviewed by Tristan Taormino for their work examining asexuality, aromanticism, and agender identity for a book they were writing. That same year they changed the name of the literary magazine they founded from The Asexual to Aze to include asexual, aromantic, and agender people. They began attending the University of British Columbia as a PhD student.

Paramo published the book Ending the Pursuit: Asexuality, Aromanticism, and Agender Identity with Unbound in 2024, which questioned social norms of sex, romance, and gender. Of the book, academic Ela Przybyło wrote "Paramo refuses to take for granted the normalized ideas we are fed around how relationships should work and what they should look like." In an interview for Geeks OUT, Paramo spoke to the inclusion of poetry in the book as a hybrid method of bringing together critical and creative expressions. In 2024, they were referred to by ITV's platform Planet Woo as "one of the globe's leading aro academics."

Personal life
Paramo is a Mexican American who was born in Orange County, California in 1993. They identify as being on the asexual and aromantic spectrum and as queer and Xicanx. Paramo also creates visual art and releases music under the name COZMECA.