Analyzing the listeners from an asexual perspective
This is something that's been interesting to me for a while, because on one hand "asexual aliens" doesn't feel like a great form of representation. On the other hand though, examining a fictional species with different understandings of sex and attraction can be a great way of analyzing how we ourselves relate to those things. In the end, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this so I figured I may as well try to organize my thoughts on the matter.
Anyway, the first thing that sticks out to me about the listeners specifically is the term "once-mate". It's a pretty simple descriptive term for a relationship, but more significantly, it is the only term for romantic relationships that the listeners have. It sounds similar to how humans might call someone an "ex-partner", but when Venli meets Mazish and Dul, singers who have chosen to be married and refer to each other as spouses, she contrasts this to the term "once-mate", implying that it is a much broader term for relationships in the listener culture than it initially sounds. Of course, there is also the term "warpair" which may have romantic associations, as the only warpair we know is Thude and Bila, who are also once-mates, (Venli and Demid are also called a "researchpair" with similar romantic implications) but we don't know this for certain and there is nothing inherently romantic about it in the same way as once-mate. What I find most interesting, however, is that even if a warpair is romantic in nature, there is still no word for a romantic listener couple that does not fight together and does not "mate" together.
This suggests to me that the listeners, despite being from a primarily asexual species, are actually an extremely amatonormative and allonormative culture. Not only are listeners expected to eventually want to find partners and "mate", as we see in how Venli's resistance to trying mateform is regarded by the adults in her life, but they literally don't have the language to describe a couple that doesn't want to have sex. When I think about what it would be like for a listener who wants to actually have asexual relationships, I think they would end up experiencing alienation similar to what asexual humans in the real world would experience. Not wanting to try mateform is seen as immature or naive, something you'll "grow out of" eventually like we see with Venli. Romantic relationships would probably be taken less seriously or seen as not valid if they don't consummate it, or a listener might be accused of wasting time for pursuing a relationship without wanting to mate.
For a while I wasn't sure if I was thinking too much about this, or if Brandon Sanderson hadn't fully considered the implications of a species with limited sexual desire, however Wind and Truth gave some revelations to the listeners that helped make everything click into place. Rlain explains that despite how the forms work, listeners are fully capable of experiencing a full range of emotions in any form, even if some are muted or enhanced. Most significantly, listeners can experience desire and attraction in any form. We've seen this across the series up until this point, with singers like Mazish and Dul, or Thude expressing attraction and a desire to try out mateform with Bila while still in workform. This scene explains the descrapancy of what we've seen and what we've been told by explaining that the listeners not only sacrificed their forms, but avoid acknowledging intense emotions like love due to a desire to not want to associate with Odium and his associated emotions. The listeners do not acknowledge romantic relationships outsight of pragmatic purposes like mating or battling together because they don't want to acknowledge love for its own sake.
At this point I'd argue that listeners, and singers as a whole, aren't actually asexual outside of mateform. The definition of asexuality can be complexed and nuanced, but it seems as though it's more accurate to say that mateform activates libido, while a singer's sexuality is the same regardless of the form they take. I think Brandon Sanderson may not have fully understood the nuances of what asexuality was when he first described singers as being primarily asexual, and ended up saying something that wasn't totally accurate. Moreover, I think the way singers expereince asexuality would resemble human sexuality quite closely. A lack of desire or outright repulsion to mateform, and lack of sexual desire even while taking mateform, though they'd probably still act silly.
Ultimately, this is a lot of my own thoughts and musings, and I may be projecting a bit. In the end, it's just something I have a lot of thoughts on (perhaps too many thoughts) and I wanted to share them. I think there's a lot to be gained through exploring how singers experience love and relationships (preferably singer/singer couples) and an asexual singer in particular (Venli, I'm talking about Venli) could be a particularly powerful viewpoint to explore. Rather than asexual aliens, I think Brandon may have just created an exaggerated version of our amatonormative/allonormative culture, and it could be interesting to use that to examine those things.
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