It occurs to me that the entire plot of The Big Bang Theory is ... four neurodiverse or neurodiverse-coded (often poorly, for an NT audience’s amusement) young cishet men with homes, jobs, a decent enough income to nerd freely and a reasonably tight friendship circle who are lacking something more important ... a woman as love interest.
It’s heteronormativity, in that it’s expected that a woman is the last thing these cis men want and need. It’s also amatonormativity, in that having a home, job, income, interests and friends are never once treated as enough by the narrative, to the extent that we’re subjected to umpteen episodes with all the characters but Sheldon moaning about how they can’t get a girl as a romantic or sexual partner. This is followed by umpteen episodes all about the characters making room in their lives for a romantic partner and, totally not coincidentally, becoming less neurodiverse-coded as they shift to lives focused more on amatonormative, heteronormative relationships.
As an ND aro-ace, this is a heartbreaking message, and it’s one backed up by the vast majority of narratives offered to me.
A home, a job, an income, ability to nerd freely and a group of equally-nerdy neurodiverse friends? That’s the dream for me, right there. That’s all I want, as an aro-ace autistic who doesn’t want or need a romantic and/or sexual partner. The precious thing that the characters of The Big Bang Theory open the narrative already possessing? That’s my end-goal, someday. It’s treated by the narrative, though, as though it is easy to get, childish, unimportant. Yet my history, my truth, is that those things are incredibly hard for me to get!
(It actually shows how little the writers of The Big Bang Theory actually understand the neurodiverse coding they write into their characters, because they do not understand that, actually, many neurodiverse people struggle to make, have and keep those kinds of platonic and familial relationships. Some of us don’t even want them.)
Every time I turn around, as an aro-ace person, there’s a new message that found family and platonic relationships are not enough for me to star in a story. Every time I turn around, as a neurodiverse aro-ace, there’s a message that the things I am struggling to achieve are easy and normal to get--so easy that even the ND-coded characters of The Big Bang Theory can manage it! It leaves me feeling that not only am I not able to become an adult (through the having romantic and sexual relationships with others) I am not even able to reach the “child” entry position from which these sorts of narratives begin. The combination of my lack of interest in romantic and sexual relationships (via the lack of attraction) and my neurodiversity leaves me feeling as though I am nothing.
Twice over, I am a child--in fact, I am less than one.
I don’t exist. In a world where sexual and romantic relationships, or even just the wanting of them, grant one a degree of recognition by narrative as someone trying to be adult and hence worthy, I don’t exist. I don’t even exist as a child with the second-best of close platonic housemates and relationships; I don’t exist in any kind of way that grants me positivity and agency as an adult. I just don’t exist--save as a warning message for how people are not supposed to be.
Narrative tells me the steps I need to take to be a human that matters in story, and the truth is that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make it up to the starting line. But, since I can’t make it past the starting line, that doesn’t even matter.
It absolutely breaks my heart to be continually confronted with my own worthlessness, and yet I can’t escape it. It’s there, always, in all the stories that surround me. I am not an protagonist with agency. I am not the kind of adult who matters.
This is why I need stories about being aro-ace and neurodiverse. This is why it is a slap to the face to hear people say that aro-aces get all the autistic narratives, even though those narratives largely end up being about characters like Sheldon Cooper, finding adulthood through amatonormative romance narratives. Or characters who are never treated as proper adults because they lack these things! This is why we need to look at what it means that we define adulthood and agency via sexual and romantic relationships--and, in fact, actually how we define adulthood and agency and worth at all. This is why we need stories about neurodiverse characters who are aro-ace, whether they want platonic relationships or not, and we need them to treat us as though we are intrinsically adult and valuable, as though we are worthwhile protagonists no matter our relationship or or neurodiverse status.
(I’m not saying that sexual and romance narratives aren’t needed for autistic characters. They are. But asexual and/or aromantic narratives for autistic characters who are not treated as children for both their autism and their asexuality and/or aromanticism are also needed!)
I need stories that tell me I am an adult, that I am worthy and valid and important and deserving of the hero narrative, right now. As I am right now. Without romantic and sexual relationships, without the close-knit friend circle and secure job, writing as a person who had to move back in with my parents because I actually am just that disabled--writing as a person who considers talking to someone else online via text a massive accomplishment because I am terrible at being social.
I need people to question how it is romantic and sexual relationships function in the stories that matter, and I need people especially to examine this when it comes to how these things indicate worthiness and adulthood--especially when your character is neurodiverse, when neurodiversity itself is already treated as something that makes us less adult.
I’ll never fall in romantic love. I doubt I’ll have another sexual partner. I don’t even know if I’ll ever get to a point where I’ll have a QPR or best friend as housemate.
But none of that, none of it, makes me any less deserving of being a hero in a story written by someone else. None of it makes me less adult. None of it means that I lack agency--save for my having to operate in an ableist world that routinely tries to deny it.
So please, please--let’s start celebrating stories that don’t put sexual and/or romantic relationships front and centre. Let’s start celebrating stories that don’t require sex and/or romance as a shorthand for indicating a character’s adulthood.
And, speaking as someone who is disabled, neurodiverse and aro-ace--give me well-written disabled and/or neurodiverse aro-ace characters in stories without sexual and romantic relationships. Give me characters who are never treated as a child for any of those identities, or characters who are by others in a narrative that points out everything that is wrong with this trope because yes, we do deserve better.
Give me characters that tell me, right now, I am adult.
Because the truth, so often, is that I don’t feel like I am, and I yearn to pick up a book and find the validation others take for granted.
