"For asexual, aromantic, or agender people, coming out is less likely to produce reactions of outright approval or disapproval than it is to provoke confusion or disbelief at the mere existence of such an identity. This is because each of these concepts challenge fundamental ideas related to cisheteropatriarchy: (1) the naturalized belief that all human beings experience sexual attraction and desire,2 (2) that all human beings experience romantic desire and should form coupled relationships built on ‘romantic love,’ (3) that all human beings inherently have a gender within the binary of man or woman.
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Asexual, aromantic, and agender people are commonly subject to the task of educating people to deconstruct internalized narratives about sex, romance, gender, and life in general when we come out. Some people who desire to cling to the perspective that asexuality, aromanticism, and agenderness are unnatural, broken, or somehow in need of correction and bury the possibilities that these identities unearth. This can take many forms, which largely revolve around making our identities conditional or otherwise dependent on some ‘deeper problem
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This narrative has also been used to discredit calls for inclusion. This is because the unknown and misunderstood status of asexual, aromantic, and agender identities can make them easy targets to sell an anti-inclusion narrative to an uninformed population"
Ending the Pursuit, Michael Paramo
