Asexuelle Sichtbarkeit- und Awareness-Arbeit (Sensibilisierung), die nicht mit dem Ziel eines gesamtgesellschaftlichen Umdenkens agiert, führt eigentlich auch nur zur Assimilation.
Schön hinten einreihen, bloss nix fordern.
Es lässt sich konstruktiv streiten und debattieren, welche Mittel legitim erscheinen; wie viel Provokation und Wut einzusetzen ist (und von wem) und welche “Strategien” einzelne Bildungsakteur_innen bevorzugen, was im Rahmen des Machbaren möglich ist/sein kann.
Aber inbrünstig “Yay, Long Live The Asexual Agenda!” rufen, um dann die gleichen Fehler vergangener Gruppierungen zu begehen, führt letztlich auch nur dazu, dass es die Privilegiertesten unter uns bequem haben. Ob die Ace Community vorhandenen Privilegierungen ihrer unterschieden Mitglieder wahrhaben will oder nicht. Diese Verleugnung und dem Festhalten an “ace is ace, we’re all the same” hat sich bereits früh herauskristallisiert und wird fleißig weitergetragen.
Wie bei anderen sozialen Bewegungen auch, sollte das Ziel eben struktureller Wandel sein. Dass das eine massive Aufgabe darstellt, die alleine kaum zu bewältigen scheint, schüchtert ein. Es kann daher so leichter erscheinen, sich mit der individuellen Schiene zufrieden zu geben.
Unserer Meinung nach fängt es schon bei dem fehlenden asexuellen Selbstbewusstsein an, dass eben durch gewisse Größen in der Ace Community auf möglichst unbedrohliche Weise vermittelt wird. Ace Pride schön und gut, aber bitte keine Bewusstwerdung des radikalen Potentials von Asexualität, dass wahrhaft Chancen aufweist, gesellschaftliches Miteinander zu verbessern. Zu fordern und durchzuziehen – darauf zu pochen, dass Ace Culture vorteilhaft und hilfreich (auch für Allosexuelle) sein kann.
Nein, das wäre ja zu viel des Guten.
Beziehungshierarchisierung und traditionelle Lebensentwürfe in Frage zu stellen – Ace Culture kann neue Wege aufzeigen, uns und unsere Umwelt besser zu verstehen, sie in einem neuen Licht zu sehen. Die auferlegten, anerzogenen Normen einzureißen, wenn sie uns denn nicht mehr zusagen.
Ace Culture ist in dem Aufzeigen von Perspektive keinesfalls einzigartig und wir dürfen, ja sollten so viel von anderen Ideen außerhalb des Kreises lernen; Polyamorie, Beziehungsanarchie, Wissen aus der Aromantischen Community, z.B., bedachtsam Lebensweisen und kuturelles Gut außerhalb der Mehrheitsgesellschaft des US-Eurozentrismus verstehen, ehren und respektieren – und sich eben nicht im bloßen Sinne einer eigennützigen Aneignung oder zweckentfremdeter weißer, nicht-indigener Selbsterkenntnis/-erleuchtung bedienen.
Ebenso wichtig zu verstehen, wann womöglich (nennen wir es) “asexuelle Konzeption” an ihre Grenzen stößt: Wo Motivation von der Verbreitung von Ideen über Identitäten, die stark von westlichem Denken über Sexualität, Romantik, Gemeinsamkeit geprägt sind, zum Aufzwingen mutieren.
Acefeindlich gesinnte Leute behaupten fälschlicherweise, Asexuelle würden sich für eine Restriktion vom Sexleben Anderer einsetzten (sex negativity) und schüren alte, tief sitzende Ängste; verbinden Asexualität mit Konservativismus. 2. Welle RadFem “sex wars” Bilder werden beschwört. Während diese Menschen genau aus diesem Topf greifen.
Damit soll auch erreicht werden, Asexualität von Queerness zu trennen und vice versa. Das Aufarbeiten dieser hanebüchenen Vorwürfe gegenüber Asexuellen ist zeit- und arbeitsintensiv.
Es braucht also Ansätze, die den Kerngedanken von Liberation zu einem zentralen Ankerpunkt erklärt. Es bedarf das Aufzeigen von Allonormativität und ihrer destruktiven Fähigkeiten: Wie sie Erwartungen schürt, Unsicherheiten in Verbindung mit unser Wertigkeit konstruiert, und durch kapitalistischen Einfluss simple Lösungsvorschläge für die künstlichen erzeugten Probleme unterbreitet. Selbstverständlich wird zugleich auch “Altbewährtes” schmackhaft gemacht und in Zeiten von Veränderung als “sicherer Hafen” präsentiert (Stichwort: Nuklearfamilie).
Dagegen heißt es proaktiv anzugehen. Es muss darauf hinauslaufen, mutig bestehende Unterdrückungsverhältnissen etwas entgegenzusetzen. Wir haben nicht *die Lösung*, aber wir haben Mittel, zukünftig Platz für wertvolle Alternativen weg von der Allo-Amato-Norm zu schaffen.
Image of the “The Simpsons” meme where the bus driver taps the sign. The bus driver is taping the bottom left of the sign in the both images. The first one reads “Asexuality and aromanticism are inherently queer experiences. Even if an ace person is heteromantic or an aro person is heterosexual, they are still queer by the virtue of their aspec experience.”
The next image says, “Our heteronormative society is both allonormative and amatonormative and, therein, expects all people to experience sexual and romantic attraction exclusively to someone of the ‘opposite’ gender by default. Asexuality and aromanticism undoubtedly queer those rigid standards.”
I want to follow up last week’s Thursday Thoughts. I mentioned that if we step outside of a projection mindset and believe that other people experience the world in different ways, a whole new world of possibilities opens to us. Recently I’ve seen some examples of one new possibility, depicted in some of my favorite TV shows. (Vague spoilers ahead for recent episodes of Doctor Who andThis Is Us)
Something that allo people in a projection mindset have a difficult time understanding, while talking to an aro or ace person, is that not everyone wants a romantic or sexual relationship. Allo people tend to point at ace or aro people hanging out with their best friends and say, “Well, why not date them, if they’re so important to you?” For the allo person, if someone is that important to you, then you mustend up together romantically and sexually.
But if we step out of that projection mindset, it opens a new possibility: that not every “you’re important to me” will end in that kind of relationship. Not every important relationship is romantic.
A recent episode of Doctor Who included a love confession that can be paraphrased as, “I don’t date, but if I did, it would be with you. You’re incredible and I care about you 100%, but I can’t give you the kind of relationship you want.” And it’s brilliant. At no point does the show demonize character A for turning character B down. At no point does the show imply that character A doesn’t actually care about character B. They care about each other, and that care is good, valid, and important, even though it doesn’t involve kissing or romantic commitment or a fade-to-black. Not every “I care about you” leads to marriage, and that’s not a bad thing. It can be a very good and healthy thing, in the long run, even if it hurts in the short term.
This Is Us, over its six-season quest to explore all the many forms the American family can take, has portrayed this possibility as well. Yes, a lot of the “you’re important to me” in this show results in romantic endgame, but in season six, the show takes a turn into showing the ways that people can have an important role in each other’s lives but be much better off notmarried,notholding hands, nothaving sex. Parent of my children. Emergency contact. Best friend. Employee or business partner. The person I love but I cannot support right now, given my life circumstances. My parent, my sibling, my child. And, again, it’s all good, valid, and important.
Why shouldn’t this be our priority – having a web of people who fill important roles in our lives, and filling an important role in many other people’s lives – over having just one person who is the most important person? Why shouldn’t there be many ways to be important, to care, to love, instead of having the ultimate expression of “you’re important to me” be going to bed together?
If you come away from this blog post thinking that I’ve said people shouldn’thave a romantic or sexual relationship, you didn’t understand me. You’re getting stuck in that defensiveness I talked about last week, assuming that how sad you feel at the thought of not having this relationship is how sad everyone feels.
Hear me when I say that we can all benefit from acknowledging that that kind of relationship is just one thing. It’s not the be all end all for everyone. It’s just one experience. It may be an important experience for you. It isn’t for everyone. And we can all benefit from acknowledging this.
Speaking as someone who has come out as ace and aro multiple times – coming out is a continual process, after all, and not the one-and-done culmination that the movies portray it as – you get some common reactions from allo (non-ace or non-aro) people. One of these reactions is a kind of defensiveness.
When I say I’m fine without a sexual or romantic relationship, or if I dare to hint that I wish that the world around me wouldn’t put these relationships on such a pedestal, allo people get anxious. They put up their guard, and they try to prove me wrong. “Don’t worry; you’ll find someone,” they say, assuming their anxiety means I am also feeling upset. “You’ll want it someday,” they say, mistaking their desires for mine. “I just don’t want you to be alone,” they say, believing that a romantic and sexual relationship is the only way to not be alone in the world.
I’m fascinated by the concept of being able to walk through the world assuming that everyone around you experiences it the same way that you do – assuming that if something is normal for you, it must be normal for everyone, or that if something bothers you, then it must bother everyone. When an allo person tells an ace or aro person, “Don’t worry,” what they’re actually saying is, “I’m worried,” and a lot of the time, they don’t even realize that they are projecting their experience onto the person who is trying right then to tell them, “I don’t feel the same thing that you feel.”
What must it be like, to hear, “I don’t experience the world the same way as you,” and to be so bothered by this idea as to immediately insist, “Yes, you do!”
Empathy is a human superpower – the ability to understand that other people have feelings. But empathy, I’m starting to think, is a spectrum. At one end of this spectrum is the ability to connect with someone’s feelings even though they differ from your own – true empathy. At the other end of the spectrum is the assumption that everyone else’s feelings are the same as yours – projection.
It’s easy to have a projection mindset when the world around you is constantly telling you that your experience is the “normal” one. When every character who at the start of the story doesn’t want a relationship finds a romantic partner by the end; when even ads for chocolate are filmed like they’re about sex. There’s also no amount of marginalization that makes you immune to projection – it still stings me to think about my gay Jewish friend of color who said, when I told him I was demisexual, “I don’t think that’s really a thing.”
But if we step outside of that mindset? If we commit ourselves to believing that other people experience the world in different ways, and to believing that we can and should try to understand these different experiences? A whole new world of possibilities opens to us.
kinda weird how even though amatonormativity and everything in our society being sexualized negatively affects everyone, asexuals and aromantics are ignored whenever we try to bring attention to these things
You know what we don’t talk about enough in the aromantic community? That moment after you accept yourself as aromantic whre you suddenly realize that you have no goals.
Like sure maybe professional goals and stuff, but personal goals? It feels like everyone else has a plan. Like they’re all going to get married by 25 and have kids by 30 etc. and you don’t have any. You’re future is suddenly feeling very empty, because even though you didn’t necessarily want that future, at least it was a plan.
A plan that revolved around having someone who loved you unconditionally and promised never to leave you.
And now that you’ve realized that that promise comes with stuff you might not want, and the whole idea is scrapped, well your future suddenly starts to look very, very lonely.
Reminder not to assume people are allo just because they haven’t said they’re ace or aro if they haven’t talked about they’re sexuality. That is allonormativity, and should be avoided as much as heteronormativity and cisnormativity.
I hate the fact that I’m expected to understand why people want/like/enjoy/are happy because/are sad because they can’t get romance. I hate the fact that I’m expected to understand why the happy couple is happy just because they’re romantic, and I’m supposed to immediately connect with the fact of whatever the hell alloros associate romance with. That I’m expected to be able to understand and sympathise with people being sad about not having romance, because I’m supposed to understand what a (supposed, apparent) “tragedy” it is to not have romance when you’re alloro, even tho I’m aro and I don’t understand. I hate that when I see romance in media, advertising, artwork, or people’s lives even that I’m expected to just understand it. I don’t. I hate the expectation to experience something I don’t: an understanding of romance/alloros. Because, regardless of if I could potentially learn to understand, the fact is I’m coming from a place where I don’t, and yet I’m expected to already.
