#aro matters

[my-lady-knight]

I think it’s important to make a distinction between people criticizing others for saying a character’s queer identity “doesn’t add anything to the story” (i.e. impacts the plot or story development, which I agree with, queerness does not have to be a plot point in order to be worthy of inclusion) and people saying “this character is said to be [x] identity in the book and that one moment of labeling is literally all the representation of that person as a queer person there is.” 

I still get annoyed when authors will have a character say they’re ace or aro in the text and it never comes up again or is relevant to anything about their lives, particularly because so few people even now know what asexuality or aromanticism even is, much less personally know anyone who IDs that way, and already authors are acting like if they label a character ace or aro in the book but don’t actually do anything with it, they’re contributing towards expanding diverse representation in fiction, which is such a simplistic and shortsighted thought-process, not to mention incredibly aggravating.

[my-lady-knight]

As an aro-ace person, I feel like unfortunately, the it’s actually a pretty realistic representation that the aro-ace orientation won’t come up in daily life in an obvious way, unless you are explaining your orientation to people? It’s like you don’t like papayas, you don’t go to the papaya market, and most people eat papayas at home in private anyways. You won’t even think about papayas yourself unless there is one in front of you, so other people never realize you don’t like papayas...

If I’m understanding what you wrote correctly, it sounds like being aro-ace is something that doesn’t come up for you as something that impacts or affects your day-to-day life (positively, negatively, or neutrally), and so it doesn’t feel out of place for characters in books to be labeled as aro and/or ace and not have any further mention or exploration of that. That’s totally fine! But it’s the complete opposite of my experience. 

While it’s true it’s not something I tend to bring up in conversation frequently, that’s mostly because having to explain myself to people who don’t share my identity, or make one-off comments that are going to get forgotten or ignored because people won’t get or appreciate what I’m saying, is not something I feel like doing. When I lived with an aro friend of mine, we’d talk or make jokes or do the verbal equivalent of shitpost about it all the time, and while I haven’t done so in a while, I’ve also talked about it at length with other ace/aro friends of mine, particularly in the context of media and fandom. 

(That’s another thing – we’re at the stage in fiction where we can have only one ace and/or aro character at a time, despite the fact I know and am friends with plenty of other (mainly ace) people, socially and even professionally.) 

Otherwise though, my being aro and gray-ace impacts my life constantly. It intersects with my dreams and plans for the future with no romantic prospects (what kind of living situation do I want, will I ever achieve it, who are the people I will build a life with and what will that look like), my varying comfort levels around people in romantic partnerships depending on who they are and how I know them, my relationship to gender (or lack thereof), my reactions to the media I consume and enjoy, my body, my experiences and relationship with the larger queer community, and a whole bunch else. Hell, it even materially affects my life (e.g. remaining unmarried = no chance of those sweet tax benefits married folks get). 

Sex/sexual relationships and romance/romantic relationships are incredibly loaded assumed-universal expectations with an enormous amount of cultural/societal/religious/etc. meaning and import imbued within those ideas and realities that are impossible to ignore. Unlike papayas, I can’t actually avoid the existence of sex and romance, because those narratives and assumptions and expectations are everywhere and affect everything. Even if I don’t engage in sex or romance, I’m gonna have some kind of relationship to them, whether I like it or not.

That’s what I meant when I say that authors labelling characters ace and/or aro and doing nothing beyond that is inadequate. Even if a character isn’t sexually attracted and/or romantically attracted to people and doesn’t engage in any sexy activities and/or date for those reasons, it’s reasonable to expect that their being on the outside of assumed-universal, “human” phenomenons is going to affect how that character sees themselves, relates to their friends and peers and family members, their own expectations and those of others about what they want, etc. 

And that’s what I want to see in fiction. I want to see ace and/or aro characters written with, for lack of a better word, consequences for that specific character to be such in an allosexual, alloromantic world, and the thoughts that character has and the choices that character makes as a result, thoughts and choices they might not have had if they weren’t ace and/or aro but still inhabited the same world. 

(This is for realistic fiction, I have different desires for SFF, where creating societies and species with different understandings of and relationships to gender and sexuality is already relatively normalized, so it theoretically shouldn’t be too much of a leap to incorporate lack of sexual and romantic attraction into that schema, but again without writing it off entirely as “oh that’s just normal here” and going no further, because that continues to defeat the purpose.) 

(Also when I made that comment about the one line thing, I had in mind how I’ve mostly seen it used for secondary characters, not protagonists, which in some ways is even more insulting because then authors have the “excuse” of going “well, I didn’t have room to do more than that, or that wasn’t my focus, or I was worried about shoehorning their identity in”, in which case I’d rather they just not write that sentence and leave the reader to assume the characters are straight, in all senses of the word.)

[my-lady-knight]

I’m sorry, but I’m going to continue calling bullshit on a database of ace and aro characters that refuses to include Clariel because ~the fact that the Clariel became the undead antagonist was partially influenced by her ace and aro~ness~ but does include a short story about an ace women who works for a company that sells sex robots, and a sleazy guy orders a sex robot that looks exactly like the woman, and later the woman ends up having sex with the sex robot and concludes “Yep, still asexual!”

And of fucking course the database doesn’t list whether the stories are written by actual ace and/or aro people so for all I know 99.5 percent of that database is stories written by allo people!!! Such representation and inclusion and diversity!!!!!!

[my-lady-knight]

Irony of the day yesterday I came out to my parents as ace, aro, and agender Just now some guy walked past me angrily muttering about how I'm a lesbian (my hair's really short currently, I'm wearing a sweatshirt and men's jeans) Conclusion? I don't even know

[my-lady-knight]

I've been noticing a bit of a trend with referring to people as "ace lesbians," "ace bisexuals," and "straight aces". This confuses me. A lot. Because my baseline understanding is that in order to be, say, bi, the person is sexually attracted to people of their own gender and other genders. The principle is similar for gay and straight people. Aces? Aren't sexually attracted to people regardless of gender. It's in the goddamn name. So basically these terms reinforce that gender remains seemingly the most salient and important quality by which to understand sexuality. Asexuality can't stand on its own, and aces can't "just" be ace. We also have to be straight, gay, bi, etc. The other takeaway is that straight, gay, bi, etc. are now being used as shorthand in these particular instances for romantic attraction. So which is it? Am I straight if I'm ace but love dudes? Am I also straight of I'm aro and want to fuck dudes? Am I straight regardless, and me calling myself ace and/or aro is a pointless exercise in which I pretend I'm a ~special snowflake~? God forbid I'm both ace and aro. How on earth is anyone going to classify me with terms they're used to classifying people with if I'm not interested in loving or fucking anyone at all? God also forbid that ace and aro people mess with the current model of understanding human sexuality and attraction by inconveniently existing.

[my-lady-knight]

This post is inspired by paradife-loft’s post. I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this for a long, long time, and it’s their post that finally gave me some context with which to put it into words.

I am a “straight” person.

I am a cis woman who is on the ace and aro spectrums and who is once in every other fucking blue moon sexually attracted to people who are men.

I am sorry.

I am sorry I am not “queer”.

I am sorry that, by virtue of being cis and that the gender of the TWO people I have ever been sexually attracted to, I am not “queer”.

I know how much straight privilege I have. I will acknowledge how much privilege I have until I am blue in the face.

I will acknowledge and apologize and apologize and apologize, and maybe if I do it enough times, maybe I’ll stop hating myself, maybe I’ll stop thinking about how much of a freak I am, maybe it won’t be so goddamn painful for me to even *think* of other people my age having sex because that’s something “normal” people do and are capable of doing and that I never fucking will.

How much do I have to apologize until this happens? How many times do I need to erase myself, make myself invisible, pretend that being ace and aro doesn’t count, doesn’t matter, doesn’t affect my life in any meaningful way, I’m practically straight anyway! Stop trying to pretend like you’re special, like you’re anything other than a straight girl, the fact that you’ve been questioning and agonizing over your sexuality since you were goddamn FOURTEEN YEARS OLD means nothing.

I am sorry. I am sorry I am too straight to deserve to call myself anything other than “straight.”

Can I stop hating myself now?

[my-lady-knight]

Ace and/or Aro List of Things

A list I made a while ago mostly for my own amusement and curiosity that I've finally decided to share with the internet. This only covers the stuff I've been exposed to. This is also not necessarily a recommendation of things to read or watch, or an indication of quality (though I enjoyed most of the stuff on the list). Some of inclusions are the result of my own personal interpretation. Also spoilers spoilers spoilers everywhere.

Ace and/or Aro Spectrum Characters in Stuff I’ve Read/Watched

Kevin, Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healy (ace)

The Fool, Farseer, Liveship Trader, and Tawny Man trilogies by Robin Hobb (If not actually ace, he is the closest a non-ace person will ever come to being so. Madly loves Fitz, and by the end of Fool’s Fate they’d totally be in an awesome, platonic relationship if the Fool hadn’t decided he should up and leave him.)

Tarma, Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey (made ace and aro through religious ritual, potentially problematic, but when a demon breaks the connection between her and the Goddess, she fights to get it reinstated because she considers it to be a part of her, so not entirely bad? In platonic, life-long, sister-like relationship with Kethry)

The Doctor, Doctor Who (debatably ace and/or aromantic. I personally see him as ace, not sure about romantic orientation. I’m mostly ok with him and Rose and I try to forget that anything between him and River Song ever happened because no.)

Sherlock, Sherlock Holmes (debatably ace and/or aromantic. In a platonic relationship with John Watson)

George Mason, Feed by Mira Grant (ace through headcanon. Most important person in her life is her brother Shaun. Also in my headcanon, their relationship is 100% platonic because fuck that romantic and sexual shit in Deadline and Blackout.)

Loup Garron, Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey (either gray-A or demisexual. In a romantic, sexual relationship with Pilar)

Perceval, Dust by Elizabeth Bear (ace, has romantic feelings for Rien)

Inhabitants of the planet Gethen, The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (ok, so they go into kemmer every month for a couple of days. But they’re ace the rest of the time! There is that connection that’s drawn between sexuality and gender that needs more looking into though.)

Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games trilogy (I've seen internet speculations about her being ace and/or aro. I could definitely buy any of the three interpretations.)

Erin, Girls With Slingshots (ace, in a romantic relationship with Jamie)

Ysaye, Rediscovery by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Mercedes Lackey (ace, although there’s that time she experiences sexual attraction to Lorill b/c of the kireseth flower and jumps his bones, so… not written completely A.OK)

Arya Stark, ASoIaF (ace and aro through headcanon, mostly because I boo and hiss at any and all romantic/sexual pairings involving her.)

This isn’t 100% headcanon - I kinda like the idea of Toph being ace, but I’m also fine with her not being so. Figured I’d include her anyway.

  Awesome Family/Friendship/Platonic Relationships Featuring No Ace and/or Aro People

Sandry, Briar, Daja, and Tris, Circle of Magic and The Circle Opens quartets, The Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce (No matter what romantic/sexual shenanigans they get into, the four of them will always be one. Also Tris/Briar shippers can go STFU.)

Actually, I’m going to include everybody and everyone in TP’s books because there are two reasons why I love them – 1) awesome female protagonists and 2) these books are all about family and friends and how your friends become your families and often those families will also consist of animals and you will make connections with people wherever you are and no matter who you are and there will always be people who love you and FRIENDS AND FAMILIES ARE IMPORTANT GUYS.

Todd and Viola, Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness (I know, it’s a confirmed romantic relationship, and probably would be sexual as well. I DON’T CARE I AM GOING TO PRETEND NONE OF IT IS TRUE.)

Maddie Brodatt and Julie Beaufort-Stuart, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (the amazingly beautiful relationship between an English WWII pilot and a Scottish special agent that brought us this particular gem – “It’s like being in love, discovering your best friend.”)

Nicholas Angel and Danny Butterman, Hot Fuzz (These two don’t need any explanation.)

Firefly crew (duh)

Various Avengers people (also duh, and also ignoring the vast number of ships. The important thing is that together THEY ARE A FAMILY.)