I feel like sometimes I am forced to play the role of the middleman when it comes to conversations between aspec and allo people. I am not aro, but ace, and because of that I kind of feel like I have my feet placed on both sides of a line.
In a sense I sometimes feel like I am not “aspec enough” to be accepted. But I am not the same as allosexual people. Not by a long shot. This has become awfully clear to me as I engage irl with allo people.
I will say, I feel I see some issues. That being, people who are aspec can sometimes devalue romantic/sexual attraction as a “lesser” kind of attraction than “pure” platonic attraction.
But almost all the time, I find that allo people devalue anything that is NOT sexual/romantic attraction, INCLUDING when the attraction is NOT sexual but still romantic.
By that I mean, I love my partner very much. He is indeed the love of my life and I can trust him completely. Because I do not feel any sexual attraction, and thus do not want to have any, allo people will often express their pity for my partner To Me. They act as if I am functionally keeping him hostage. As if I am cruel for being ace.
While I still see the issue of aspec people devaluing romantic/sexual attraction, I feel this is a much smaller case, and sometimes done out of anger for what allosexual people say to us. There have been moments where I have wanted to say how dirty and gross sexual attraction is to me, whenever people pity my partner.
But I don’t say these things out loud, even when I feel them, because I do not want to contribute to the puritanical anti-sex rhetoric that has been pushed by a lot of people recently. That being, I do not want to contribute to the suppression of sex and sexual expression just because it gives me the ick, and because people who have sex keep devaluing my relationship.
It is not the sex that is the problem, nor is it the desire to have sex that is the problem. It is the way they cannot fathom not having sex that is the problem here. And I can’t dismantle such thinking by lashing out and calling them stupid or disgusting.
This all to say, I fear a lot of the talking point on aspec stuff has to do with “purity” and things around that. I want the aspec community to move away from these talking points. And I know. I know!! Maybe you don’t do this or it feels nice and cathartic to lash out. But we can’t keep talking like conservatives if we want sexual justice and freedom, WHICH INCLUDES THE FREEDOM OF US, TOO!! Sexual freedom includes aspec people!! We cannot be using terminology that fights against that.
…What I would like, really, is for allo people to think about why their platonic relationships begin at “sibling” and end at “parent” and why they HAVE to see platonic relationships as siblings or parent and child or something else of that sort. Why aroace characters are still put into ships rather than, at the very least, talking to aroace people in qpr and asking how that works. We have tags on tumblr, just make a post asking about things and someone will usually respond. It’s a wonderful thing to talk with people and learn!
Collectively, we (both allo and aspec) need to dismantle this common trend in fiction and fandom where the “found family” reflects the structure of the nuclear family, and why we want to have that in the first place.
We need to deconstruct the idea that romance is the default, especially for relationships involving men (whose relationships and interactions are frequently sexualized by default).
And even in romantic relationships, the ultimate end goal is not and should not be defaulted to marriage. There are many people who want to be in relationships but don’t want marriage. Please consider this, too, when writing a qpr.
This all to say, I find that there is this dissonance in the conversation between aspec and allo people in regards to relationships and sex that must be bridged in ways that aren’t “but it’s boring not to have my epic toxic yaoi” and “but sex is disgusting and gross and ugly” because we are getting nowhere. Common ground must be found for us to figure things out. And I think talking to each other about our SPECIFIC experiences is important! That way we can understand each other. Even if the answers are “I like sex because it feels good” and “I like strictly platonic relationships because I find more interest in not being distracted by sex”
Because then the conversation might instead go: “I don’t find sex distracting, but an enhancer of my relationship with my partner” and “Interesting, I find a similar thing by cooking with my friends.”