“Aroace people can still have romantic and have sexual relationships, so it’s okay to ship them!” Only works if that character has been implied to shown to be on that part of the spectrum.
Plus, this can also create a double standard of shipping. For an example for most (sane) people don’t tend to ship lesbians with men or gays with women, because it blatantly erases that representation. But whenever it’s a aroace character that has never shown any interest In romantic or sexual attraction at all is shipped with another character is seen (by surprising a lot of people) to be okay. Which is annoying.
Aroace people barely have any representation in media because of how lesser known the label is. Especially the ones who are completely disinterested in having any relationships unless they are platonic. So it be like adding salt in the wound by using the “aroace is a spectrum” just to ship a aroace character.
But overall when people do ship a gay man with a woman, or vice versa, it’s usually for the sake of shipping. So in my opinion, if you are going to ship a aroace character (who, once again, is completely disinterested any type of romantic or sexual relationship) with another character, just say because you want to ship them instead of grasping at straws and using flimsy excuses.
This post is well over a year old and I feel like I didn’t explain a lot of things well. I think the reason for that is because it was written late at night and I was just pissed off. But after rereading this post and reading a lot of the responses to it. I feel like there’s more to the discussion to be had.
I didn’t get any hate for this post (surprisingly, but it was probably because I wasn’t attacking a specific character/ship lol). But I’ve seen a lot of people ask why it matters so much.
It matters because it feels invalidating for people to just completely ignore the label all together. If someone ships a gay character into a straight relationship, that person is immediately considered homophobic and is erasing queer rep. But if someone ship a aroace character that is shown to not be interested in relationships it’s immediately all excuses and “it doesn’t matter”.
And then to throw out the “aroace is a spectrum” card like a gotcha moment shows you don’t actually understand what that phrase means. Yes, aroace is a spectrum. Every sexuality and gender is. But aroace being a spectrum doesn’t look like this
I can’t even show you a picture of what the spectrum would look like because it’s so damn complicated. There are a ton of micro labels under micro labels. (Maybe I can and I just couldn’t find a good photo of what would one even look like lol)
I’m not saying you can’t head canon character. But just to throw a aroace character into a relationship and saying “it’s my headcanon!!”. It’s like taking a lesbian character and putting them in a straight ship then saying you headcanon them as bi. And that is the double standard I’m talking about!
Anyways this my opinion and I’m willing to listen what other people think. And I personally hate that I this post is about shipping but I got nothing better to do LMAOO
