The Solitary Travelers collection is a set of 16 novellas being published this month by Less Than Three Press, each featuring an asexual and/or aromantic protagonist. Looking into this collection has led me to notice some patterns regarding the ace characters, patterns that also hold true for other books. This is part 1 of my observations, focused on gender and romantic relationships.
TL;DR: There are many more m/m romances with ace characters than f/f or m/f. I only know of one book with a male ace character in an m/f Ā relationship. There are next to no non-binary or trans ace characters in books.
Iāll discuss these patterns in more detail below, and Iād love to know other peopleās thoughts on why they might exist.
Since writing this post, Iāve discovered threeĀ more books with aces in f/f relationshipsāmeaning there are twice as many as I originally thought! They are:
The recently-released novella As Autumn Leaves
Endless Days of Summer, a 2015 novel
Sabbath Flames, a 2011 novella
All three are contemporary/realistic.
Iāve been continuing to think about this and ran across this post: http://aceadmiral.tumblr.com/post/134956174133/writingfromfactorx-aceadmiral-you-wanted-to
I hadnāt really thought about asexual F/F relationships being a problem to wlw but I realized that I have touched on the edges of it before. Itās one of the reasons I donāt consider Fried Green Tomatoes to be ace at all, because to me it seems really obvious that they are intended to be lesbians. If you find meaningful representation in it, great, but itās not ours. Also in real life Iāve seen understandable policing by a lesbian friend questioning someone who said she wanted a relationship with a woman but didnāt want it to be serious or long term and planned to eventually marry a man. This clarified my thoughts about the difference in how western (American specifically) society treats F/F and M/M relationships and what kind of stories we see most often.
F/F relationships are considered much less serious in pop culture, easily excused as a phase or sexual experimentation. Iām thinking of the idea of the āLesbian Phaseā or apparently (Google just informed me) āLesbian until Graduationā And those are the tropes actually using the term lesbian instead of just āexperimentationā. A woman can say she was just exploring or just doing it for attention or any other number of excuses because guys find it hot and itās more acceptable to return to a state of availability to dudes and bisexuality is invisible. Also, as both OPs mention, there are many stories of intense ambiguous relationships between women. Perhaps there is less of a need to see intense non-sexual relationships between women because they are already being written since the default for relationships between women is platonic. So what is missing and what is more radical are stories with more of an emphasis on sexual relationships. No wonder we see less of an interest in asexual F/F romances. So, F/F relationships are taken less seriously, with the default for relationships between women being non-sexual.
M/M relationships in pop culture seem to be more all or nothing. Itās still not socially acceptable for men to express affection for other men. I think that the fact that slash shows men in intense, committed, openly emotional relationships in a culture where masculinity is equated with repression and stoicism is a large part of its appeal. The fairly large industry of M/M romance (and unofficially, slash) explores romantic and sexual affection, and bromance as a concept is starting to explore platonic m/m affection, but remains always ready to jump back to the safety of āno homoā and a joke pointing out how hilarious even the possibility is. There isnāt nearly as much coverage of strong male friendships that arenāt repressed homosexuality. I can see that it could be easier/more the default to write an asexual romance than explore a platonic asexual relationship between two men. This would be an excellent place for queer platonic relationships to expand the idea of what a relationship can look like.
And of course menās stories have always been considered universal while womenās stories are for women. Weāre taught so young that girls will read stories about boys but boys arenāt expected or encouraged to read books about girls.
Also point I forget to add previously about the lack of M/F relationships: people/writers who actually know about asexuality are more likely to be part of the queer community and thus less interested in hetero relationships, even if they are non-normative in their sexual attraction.
Although it would be nice to have sex not be the indication of the seriousness of a relationship and for relationships to have much more fluid boxes/labels, something that I can actually see progress towards is having more representation of both asexual and sexual romantic relationships between women. I want to see enough representation for everyone and I think itās within reach.
