I’m having thoughts about how aros tend to react to the phrase “just friends” and… none of this is to negate those ideas, but rather to add to them. Also these thoughts are half formed, so please do engage with them that way. I’m looking to start a conversation, not make a well-put together point.
Anyway.
I think maybe, when people say “we’re just friends” and the like, sometimes (not all the time) the “just” isn’t alluding to a hierarchy where friends are below romantic partners. It might be alluding to something else:
I think some people consider romantic relationships to be “friendship + romance.” In fact, I also see comments that are like “oh, if you’re not best friends with your romantic partner then that’s an inherently lesser relationship than [friendship + romance].” Romantic flings that do not have strong elements of friendship are also seen as lesser under amatonormativity.
It’s this idea that you need to get all your emotional connection needs met from *one person* (because capitalism) and if a person is not that one person, then it’s an inherently lesser relationship.
Anyway, that’s the thought, would love to hear other perspectives.
Being an aro in fandom is really like, why do you want to suffer? The sheer amount of amatonormativity is astounding.
The particular part of it I want to address here is…pretty difficult to talk about, as it is easily misinterpreted, but I still want to express my feelings so, here I go.
Obviously, the subject is shipping. Namely, “gay” shipping (I here differentiate “gay” from lesbian). Before anything, there are so many mlm ships because, well. Women are less of 30% speaking roles in movies, and it’s not really different in other kind of media. So, with so few women, because alloros still gonna ship, even straight people are going to ship men together: het couples are still doable in small numbers, and lesbian ships will have a hard time given women don’t exist in fiction. So yeah, it’s just stats here, that, out of all the ships, so many are gay.
And I absolutely don’t have an issue with it - if I have to see or read romance, then I’d rather it not be straight. What bothers me, is when people try to “justify” their ship. Not in a “here’s why I ship them” but “here’s why it’s basically canon”. And that’s where you start to see a difference between gay ships, and, for an example, lesbian ones. Any positive interaction between men is seen as “basically canon romance”. And it bothers me. It’s nothing new or revolutionary, but it’s just another way to show how men aren’t allowed positive relationships in their lives. In the context of fandom, friendship can’t exist for men: we’re so unused to seeing men having friends, that people will immediately jump and say “romance”.
I see that less with female characters. Of course, straight people will ship any man + woman, but it’s generally canon (because straights can’t leave anything alone) so I guess it’s different, even when there’s 0 romantic chemistry between the characters (99% of the time, yes, I know). But, when people ship a lesbian relationship, the “justifications” are different. Basic interaction isn’t made out to be oh so romantic, like, looking at someone for 0.1 second. Lesbian ships often need more than that, even when female characters have positive interactions.
I *really* don’t want to fall into the “not everything has to be gay”, especially because, if you replace “gay” with a more general “queer” then that’s actually what I want, but…it is really telling, the way male characters aren’t allowed friendships, or any kind of non-romantic relationship, really. It makes me uncomfortable, but also pretty sad for men, honestly?
My aro dudes out there, I’m sorry, there are so many male characters absolutely everywhere and yet you can’t spend any time in fandom without being smashed under romance.
ways that romance (as a capitalistic social construct, no i’m not talking about the feeling of romantic love) is inherently unhealthy, since apparently this is a debate topic now:
seen as the be-all end-all of adulthood
people expect a partner by the time theyre in their teens/early twenties
if you dont have a partner by then youre sad and pathetic and should be desperately trying to get one
many people’s financial situations only become stable after they marry
many people marry SO THAT their financial situations will become better
people end up trapped in abusive relationships because of financial bullshit (see how this is capitalism yet?)
the entire holiday of valenteins day as it is currently celebrated makes the concept of romance seem like a. something everyone experiences, b. something everyone needs to experience (i know literally almost every single person feels like shit on valenteins day for something out of their control), and c. profits off of all of this
it combined with the patriarchy means many men feel entitled to women’s feelings towards them
people will become romantically involved with complete or near strangers, and all but forget about and even move away from longtime friends to be with their partners
YES, SEEING ROMANTIC PARTNERS AS MORE IMPORTANT AS YOUR FRIENDS IS AN UNHEALTHY MENTALITY
putting all your emotional wellbeing onto one person is inherently unhealthy, for you and the other person
in conclusion: you can feel romantic love, you can date, you can do all that bullshit and i don’t fucking care, but just. acknowledge that as a wider social construct romance is INCREDIBLY unhealthy and feeds a society of extreme loneliness even when you DO have a partner
just like, stop prioritizing your romantic partner over every single one of your friends and family jesus christ
Story: A person can’t find their soulmate in a universe where thats a thing. At first they are sad, but then realize that they already are receiving love in their life from their friends and family, who are just as important. That you shouldn’t rely your happiness on being in a relationship with your soulmate and put one relationship on a pedestal above all others.
Me: wow this is really nice
Story: but! It turns out one if their friends was actually their soulmate so all that character development is thrown out the window. And being in a relationship is the best thing that ever happened to them!
yes. it is. here’s some examples even you are familiar with.
when your parents or other older relatives ask you why you don’t have a significant other or are married yet.
when you’re holding hands with another person and everyone suddenly assumes that you are a couple.
when people don’t respect your decision to stay single because “everyone needs a romantic partner or they’ll die alone.”
when people assume you’re flirting when you’re just being kind.
when your friends greatly reduce their time spent with you just because they have a partner now.
when people tell you they doubt you’re “just friends” with another person just because you display what they think are signs of romance (that may be more of an aro experience but i’m sure it can happen with anyone).
i know these scenarios are more complex and nuanced than what this post is mentioning but that doesn’t mean amatonormativity doesn’t contribute to them.
Just thinking about how in Sailor Moon, relationships are never put in a bullshit hierarchy. Familial relationships, romances, and friendships are portrayed as equally valuable, as we see them through their importance to Usagi.
When Usagi gets together with Mamoru, her friendships with the Senshi never take a backseat. She still spends tons of time with them and it’s obvious she greatly cherishes her relationships with her friends. Mamoru himself never puts Usagi in a position where she has to choose between him and her friends. For fuck’s sake, he’s practically a cheerleader for the Senshi’s friendships in the 90s anime, where Tuxedo Mask delivers speeches about how awesome Sailor Moon and her friends are and how friendship is the best thing ever.
Familial relationships get less of a spotlight as Usagi’s family gets less and less focus as the series goes on, but it’s still very clear that they mean a lot to her. Moreover, when Chibiusa, Usagi’s future daughter, is introduced, a lot of focus is given to her relationship with Usagi.
It’s just so refreshing given that amatonormativity (a norm where tons of emphasis is placed on the importance of romantic relationships) is so prevalent in most cultures. Yes, Usagi’s romance with Mamoru is a big part of the series, but so are her friendships with the Senshi and her relationship with Chibiusa. It was so awesome of Naoko Takeuchi and the teams behind the various adaptations to defy the typical “romance comes before everything else” formula and portray Usagi and Mamoru’s romance as just one of many healthy, loving relationships in Usagi’s life.
An odd thing I noticed, while studying aromantic allosexual stereotypes, is that aromanticism is frequently used as a device to “debase” sexuality or make it appear inferior. In both fiction and real life, the implication that someone is sexually active but aromantic is almost always intended to degrade that person’s sexuality.
The word “aromantic” itself doesn’t actually come up when this happens, because most people don’t even know what a “romantic orientation” is. But the concept of aromanticism is well-established in Western culture - it’s just that it’s almost always attached to another stereotype or stigma, or it’s treated as a character defect.
For example, most people are aware of the “predatory gay” stereotype. It’s the homophobic idea that gay people target poor hapless heterosexuals, especially heterosexual children, and molest them / emasculate them / convert them into more gay folks. The stereotype is based on the assumption that same-gender relationships are fundamentally different from heterosexual relationships, and this difference is a lack of romantic attachment or love.
On the other hand, pro-LGBT campaigns, posters and activists make a point of emphasizing the “love” aspect of same-gender relationships. They say things like “love is love,” and “the freedom to love,” while downplaying or ignoring the sexual aspect of these relationships.
You can find similar things in negative stereotypes about bisexuals, pansexuals, women with many sexual partners, and people of color. Bisexual and pansexual people are often wrongly stereotyped as being promiscuous, more likely to cheat, and less sincere in their romantic commitments. Their sexuality is acknowledged, but they are not seen as romantic, and this lack of romance is treated as a flaw that debases the rest of their sexuality. For women with many sexual partners, you need only remember “slut-shaming.” The sexuality of these women is treated negatively because it is not associated with a monogamous romantic relationship. They are perceived as sexual but not romantic, and this makes their sexuality a target of scorn. People of color are sometimes stereotyped as hypersexual*; but again, the sexuality is disconnected from any romantic associations, and this is treated as a negative quality. The presence of sexuality without romance is considered lesser or disreputable compared to sexuality withromance.
(*There are also a lot of other ways racism attacks people’s sexuality, but that’s not really the point of this essay, and I’m not qualified to discuss racism in depth anyway.)
Even if we’re not talking about stereotypes, but individual people or characters, aromanticism is treated as a pretty awful thing. In fiction, the success of an intimate relationship depends upon reciprocated romantic and sexual feelings; if one character in an intimate relationship is revealed to not be romantically attracted to the other, the non-romantic character is automatically seen as a manipulative, lying, heartless villain. (Or, if they get the sympathetic point-of-view, the relationship will be revealed to be a sham in some other way.) Meanwhile, the development of romantic feelings is given far more sympathy and depth by authors than the development of sexual but non-romantic feelings. The ideal relationship is treated as romantic and sexual, while non-romantic sexual relationships are treated as inferior and unfulfilling.
The English language itself reflects the difference in our culture’s attitudes. Compare the connotations of the words “love” and “lust.” “Falling in love with” someone is a big deal. It’s positive and special.But “lusting after” someone is almost dirty; it is treated as shallow, selfish, and relatively meaningless. When preachers warn about the dangers of “temptation” from the opposite sex*, they are always referring to sexual attraction, not romantic attraction, because sex without romance is seen as dirty, but romance without sex is celebrated as “chaste” and “waiting until marriage.” There is a dignity accorded to romantic emotions that is not granted to sexual attraction.
(*Of course, there are more than two genders, and not everyone is attracted to “the opposite sex” in the first place, but preachers tend to forget about that. And conservatism isn’t exactly kind to romantic asexuals, either.)
Aromanticism is used as a tool to denigrate sexuality across a wide range of people and demographics. Merely associating aromantic feelings or behavior with an active sex life is enough to make the entirety of a person’s sexuality appear negative. The only conclusion I can draw is that aromanticism is considered so horrible, that associating it with sexuality is enough to make that sexuality appear lesser, debased, disreputable or dysfunction in most people’s eyes. Allosexual aromantic people constantly receive messages that their sexual feelings are inferior or wrong, and needs to be fixed by falling in love. (The pressure is greatest for aromantic women, but applies to all genders to some degree.) And the worst part is that, even after all this, aromanticism is still not acknowledged as a phenomenon or orientation in its own right, but is merely considered a defect within another sexual orientation or sexual lifestyle.
Asexual aromantic people tend to receive a different set of toxic prejudices, which are closely linked to anti-asexual stereotypes. But anti-aromantic sentiment affects them, too. The lionization of romantic sentiment is so pervasive, and non-romantic relationships are so commonly treated as lesser, that asexual aromantic people may be inclined to see their own emotions and relationships as inferior to their culture’s romantic norm.
Amatonormativity is not just “romantic relationships are treated as more important than friendships.” There is an active, hostile stigma against aromanticism, and this stigma is distinct from anti-asexual prejudice.
I’m doing an assignment where I have to plan a hypothetical social media advocacy campaign and mine’s going to be about fighting amatonormativity and how cultural pressure/expectations around romance can be harmful to everyone. Anyway, I made these weird little logos for it:
[ID: Two images showing a green person inside a heart shape which has lines across it like prison bars. In the first image, the person has their hands resting on the bars. In the second image, the middle two bars have been broken and pushed aside.]
I think one thing that’s always bothered me with aromantic representation in fanfiction is that one, it’s extremely limited because fanfiction is highly romance-focused (especially with queer romance), and two, most aromantic rep I see in fanfiction is in the form of queerplatonic relationships. Which QPRs are great! They’re fantastic! But it gets to be a problem when it’s the only form of representation we have.
Because there are so many aromantic people out there who don’t want to be in a relationship, who don’t see the merit in being in a QPR, who may oppose or may even be downright repulsed by the thought of being in any kind of relationship with other people. And sometimes, I feel like allos put aros in QPRs because it’s still a relationship and they can “love in other ways”.
I guess I’m trying to say is that in a way, having our only representation be queerplatonic relationships feels… isolating, because it makes it seem like we still have to be in a close relationship, just not in a romantic one. It makes it seem like nonamorous, non-partnering, and loveless aros don’t exist. I don’t feel seen. In a way, if putting aromantic characters in QPRs is the standard for aro fanfiction, isn’t that just another brand of amatonormativity?
Maybe someone else can word this more eloquently, but those are just my thoughts on it.
A thing there was not really space for in my most recent piece but that I want to point out is the practical implications for aces trying to have partnered relationships and why some of us have such a hard time maintaining them, of which I think there are two major ones.
The first is that because sexual activity is contextual, and romance is what delineates the sorts of relationships within which it is normatively acceptable to engage in sexual activity, i.e. that very context, it can be pretty hard to actually believe that one is “safe” from sexual activity. You have put yourself in the situation where sex is “expected” to occur, after all.
The second is that because of the way that relationships are reckoned both a) by threshhold rather than current state and b) only capable of going up, never back, there is a tremendous pressure to plant one’s feet and stand still, since even a single “lapse” will change the “nature” of the relationship. Having to stand against the “you’ll get there someday”s adds strain to the relationship and hinders the natural evolution all relationships undergo if they are to last.
Now, obviously, actual people in actual relationships can work through and get past these things (and some blessed souls seem not to care in the first place??), but it requires a great deal of trust—something that can’t just appear overnight. It’s the sort of pressure that can absolutely kill a relationship in its early stages, before the trust has a chance to develop. Just speaking for myself, it’s a big piece of why I’m so ambivalent about partnered relationships and why I do not seek them out.
I think it’s important to understand that discussions around amatonormativity usually aren’t (or shouldn’t be) asking people to see their individual romantic relationships as less important, because wanting a long-term monogamous romantic relationship isn’t inherently amatonormative.
Amatonormativity is about the bigger picture of how society treats romantic relationships. It’s about placing romantic relationships at the top of a hierarchy and then claiming that most meaningful close and intimate connections to other humans are only accessable through them. Amatonormativity is the assumption that everyone wants to end up in a monogamous long-term romantic relationship and then decrying anyone who wants a relationship that doesn’t fit into that very narrow category.
Every individual person has to figure out for themselves which types of relationships they desire or don’t desire and how much importance they want to give them. Amatonormativity criticizes the fact that that’s not a question you are normally asked in the first place, because the answer is always assumed.
I think if in the end someone decides to prioritize their romantic relationships, they will still have defied amatonormativity simply through consciously making that decision, and through not assuming the same for everyone else. To me, dismantling amatonormativity is about deconstructing the assumed hierarchy of relationships, giving people the chance to actually think about what they truly want, and opening the pathways for those possibilities.
You may have heard that Boris Johnson has recently become the leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, and, as such, the Prime Minister. This wasn’t an election open to the general public; party leaders are elected by the members of that party, and it’s no real surprise that the Conservative Party members like conservative candidates.
This isn’t a post about that, per se; there are plenty of other people detailing all of his failings and horrifying attitudes and behaviours. It’s just an illustration of how the political situation in this country is devolving faster and faster. I started talking about this in 2014, just a couple of years after I first got on tumblr at all, and I’ve been talking about it ever since, whenever I have the mental fortitude to do so - which, right now, isn’t often.
But, hey, what’s another list of my deepest fears?
I wrote a post a year or two ago with some of the things that we’re facing here, in the UK. I’ll link the entire post, but here is the most important paragraph:
Hot take but amatonormativity should be considered a feminist issue and was in fact eluded to in a lot of early feminist writing, and the fact that we don’t widely regard it as a feminist issue today indicates either a loss of knowledge or an acceptance of harmful social norms on the part of modern feminists
Amatonormativity:
-Teaches young women and girls that you must be in a romantic relationship to be happy, and therefore insinuates that they should prioritize making themselves romanticly available (usually to men) over all other things
- Validates straight men’s feeling of entitlement towards women by equating the right to happiness with a right to women’s bodies and emotional labor
- Helps justify the act of isolating your romantic partner from their friends by promoting the idea that your romantic relationships should be prioritized over all other social relationships, resulting in a climate where it’s easier for domestic abusers to socially isolate their victims
-Promotes negative views of older single women such as “hags”, “spinsters” and “crazy cat ladies”
And all of these things are directly tied to frequently discussed feminist issues, so I really don’t know why no one ever talks about amatonormativity in feminist spaces. These norms don’t just hurt aros and poly people they hurt everyone, and it would greatly benefit y’all to actually listen to us when we discuss these issues.
Hello yes this is important
amatonormativity? all of these examples are of compulsory heterosexuality/heteronormativity under patriarchy
????
So a few people have made this comment, but almost all the rest of them have been terfs, so I’m only gonna be replying to this one.
Amatonormativity does have a lot of overlap with compulsory heterosexuality, and in fact, Elizabeth Brake, the woman who coined the term even talks about that in her explanation of it, but they are not the same thing.
I’m gonna be honest, most of my posts about amatonormativity never actually get popular outside of the aro and poly communities so I didn’t bother to define terms but this one is popular enough that it’s probably worth doing.
Amatonormativity: The widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship.
Compulsory heterosexuality: The idea that heterosexuality is assumed and enforced by a patriarchal and heteronormative society.
While you can see from the definition where these two ideas intersect (and there has actually been a fair amount of discussion about whether or not one is a subset of the other) they do have some differences. While the examples I was giving were specific to feminism, and as a result, fit into that intersection more than some other examples would, those aren’t the only ways amatonormativity can express itself. It can also look like:
People saying that open relationships aren’t healthy
A relative who’s always saying you need to “meet somebody and settle down”
Only being able to legally marry one person
The assumption that all long term legal partnerships (aka: marriage) are romantic
A stigma against living with friends or family after a certain age
etc etc
None of these things are especially gender-specific, they can be applied to both straight and LGBTQIA+ people, and they don’t necessarily enforce compulsory heterosexuality. Similarly, there are other things that might be considered compulsory heterosexuality but not amatonormativity.
It’s fair, and maybe even necessary, to view compulsory heterosexuality and amatonormativity as a Venn diagram, and I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that any of the things in my original bullet list also fall under the concept of compulsory heterosexuality. That said, my examples falling into the middle of the Venn diagram doesn’t make them any less relevant to a discussion about amatonormativity, and I think examining these issues through the lenses of both compulsory heterosexuality and amatonormativity is important if you want to fully understand the problem. Only looking at these topics through one lens or the other isn’t going to give you a clear picture.
you know replacing blind reverence of romantic love with blind reverence of platonic love really Not It
okay elaborating on this a bit: this post is specifically about the aro community’s tendency to go “We can still love! Just not romantically!”, and the assumption that all aros have/want meaningful platonic relationships (be they in the form of friendship, a queerplatonic relationship, or something else) and that we will always place more importance on those platonic relationships than alloromantics do. Which is just… Not It.
For the record, I’m not saying that you can’t bring trends like this up: aros, in general, definitely prioritize platonic relationships in a way alloromantics usually don’t. We can talk about that without constantly adding disclaimers for the aros that do not feel this way. We can generalize a bit. That’s fine.
It becomes a problem when this idea, the idea that we all place an extremely meaningful priority on our platonic relationships, becomes one central to the aro community, to the point where it’s assumed to be universal. When it’s not. It’s just not.
And then there’s the “we can still love!” attitude that the community tends to have. A lot of ‘mainstream’ (as mainstream as you can get with aro identities, anyway) arospec content focuses on our abilities to love platonically; comics, stories, etc. are all about how much we love our friends ‘despite’ being aromantic, about how we love our family, about all the forms of platonic love we can still feel. There is rarely any mention of aros who have a complicated relationship with ‘love’ in general, of aros who struggle to form and maintain relationships, of aplatonic aros, of everything in between and beyond that. There are a million and one ways to be arospec, and yet, we are so focused on dispelling the stereotype that we can’t love, that we’re heartless monsters, that we’ve been pushing the same one narrative over and over and over again, to the point where we’ve started to forget that it’s not the only one.
Even in the aro community, love is romanticized to the point of reaching a mythical status, when in reality, it’s nothing more than an emotion. That’s it. Love is not the arbiter of humanity. And I think that a lot of the aro community has unconsciously internalized the idea from an amatonormative society that love is, in fact, what makes us human, and that, since we cannot love romantically, we need to be able to love platonically in order to fill that ‘hole’ left in our humanity. (Or at least the hole left in our lives by the absence of a romantic partner.) When the truth is that we don’t need to justify our humanity to anyone: we are human by virtue of being born human. We have nothing to prove to anyone.
This overwhelming focus on platonic love is not a new problem by any means, but during and post-Valentine’s Day it’s become prominent enough that it’s really starting to leave a very bad taste in my mouth, so I had to get this off my chest.
Transcript: We have romanticized the idea of romance, and it is cancerous. And when you raise children in that world, where everything points towards love and everything’s perfect on the outside, when we become an adult for the first time in our late teens and our early 20s, we’re so terrified. We’re so trying to be an adult that some of us will take the wrong person, the wrong jigsaw piece and just fucking jam them into our jigsaws anyway, denying that they clearly don’t fit. I’m gonna force this fucking person into our lives because we’d much rather have something thant nothing. People are more in love with the idea of love than the person they are with. 55% of marraiges end in divorce. 90. Nine Zero. Percent of relationships that started before they are 30 end. If those were the stats for surgery, none of us would fucking risk it. But because it’s love and we’re stupid, we just lie on the operating table like, “Maybe this time I don’t die inside.” There’s nothing wrong with being alone. There’s nothing wrong with taking time to work out who you are because how can you offer who you are if you don’t know who you are? There’s nothing wrong with being selfish for a bit, because you’ve got the rest of your life to be selfless. If you only love yourself at 20%, that means somebody can come along and love you 30%. You’re like, “Wow, that’s so much.” It’s literally less than half. Whereas if you love yourself 100%, a person that falls in love with you has to go above and beyond the call of duty to make you feel special. End transcript]
I don’t know where I stand on a particular romance cliché. Specifically, when you have A in romance with their friend B, but A knows B will not reciprocate. In media like in real life, A will either, still want to confess, or will be encouraged to. The official logic is generally something about honesty, but let’s get real, a lot of the time, it’s because A’s still expecting somehow. Which is human, even when you know something won’t happen, there’s often some amount of unconscious expectation/hope.
And honestly, I just don’t know how I feel about this culture of always giving the burden of knowledge to B. I mean, it’s useless knowledge for B at best, and it’s harmful at worst. By harmful I mean, either, it’ll ruin the friendship (given there’s a lack of friendship on A’s part) or, worse, it could pressure B.
And on the other hand, I…think I can understand the desire to be honest with the people in your life? Not that I think not confessing is being dishonest but yeah. One could feel like they’re hiding the truth and feel uncomfortable with that.
So I understand the feeling, but imposing those on B really rubs me the wrong way. Depending on the actual intent it could result in terrible consequences, but even with good intents, it doesn’t really bring B anything (maybe some people get an ego boost out of this, but I don’t really get it so I’m not qualified to talk about it).
As aros, we tend to be quite aware of amatonormativity, but it might be hard to explain or give concrete examples of it, especially when explaining it to alloromantics. This guide and workbook aims to explain what amatonormativity is by giving examples of how it manifests and how it can be harmful. Through a series of exercises and reflections, people can learn to better identify and challenge amatornomativity. There are also a number of sources and narratives to help people understand its impact and learn from lived experiences. The worbook is aimed at (monogamous) alloromantic folks, but could be useful for aros who are struggling with internalized amatonormativity.
There are currently five versions of the guide/workbook:
Digital workbook (fillable PDF)
Printer-friendly workbook (printable PDF)
Google Docs version
Youtube (audio with CC)
Downloable MP3
The workbook can be found on here on my WordPress. Feel free to share it, especially with people in your life who could benefit from learning about amatonormativity.
A thanks and a shout-out to those who helped, including @aroace-avenue.
This is an amazing guide written by an amazing person! Finding ways to introduce alloromantics to amatonormativity and to have them actually spend time thinking about it deeply is really hard. This is a starting point to get them going!
i really do feel like people who don’t get why soulmates are bad are just missing the point. like i really do.
that’s why people try so hard to change the definition. because for them it’s a matter of being inclusive so they don’t feel like they are “bad” for assigning any sort of value to the concept, either in a real or literary sense. and that’s not what it’s about! at all!
it’s not “i am excluded by this idea, please expand it to include me” it’s “this idea is built upon and popularized by a cultural hegemony that prioritizes amatonormative expectations, and those ideals are directly harmful to me as an aromantic person. rather than try to change and redefine the idea of soulmates, or even rather than just immediately drop it, we should examine the cultural beliefs baked into it that we take for granted and challenge them.”
it’s not about what you individually call your relationships. it’s about the beliefs reflected in the concept itself. and consistently trying to “widen” the definition (to encompass bonds that you subconsciously see as lesser or as weaker, or else they would have been included to begin with) just says “i am trying to fill the void that lack of romance left behind with whatever you’ll let me fill it with, so that i can feel better about myself and my choices, rather than admit that there was never a void that needed filling at all.”
this is the eternal torment to which i condemned myself the moment i created this blog
[ID: An image of man laboriously rolling a giant boulder up a rocky mountain. Text over the man reads “me” and text over the boulder reads “explaining why soulmates are amatonormative”. End ID]
Hot take but amatonormativity should be considered a feminist issue and was in fact eluded to in a lot of early feminist writing, and the fact that we don’t widely regard it as a feminist issue today indicates either a loss of knowledge or an acceptance of harmful social norms on the part of modern feminists
Amatonormativity:
-Teaches young women and girls that you must be in a romantic relationship to be happy, and therefore insinuates that they should prioritize making themselves romanticly available (usually to men) over all other things
- Validates straight men’s feeling of entitlement towards women by equating the right to happiness with a right to women’s bodies and emotional labor
- Helps justify the act of isolating your romantic partner from their friends by promoting the idea that your romantic relationships should be prioritized over all other social relationships, resulting in a climate where it’s easier for domestic abusers to socially isolate their victims
-Promotes negative views of older single women such as “hags”, “spinsters” and “crazy cat ladies”
And all of these things are directly tied to frequently discussed feminist issues, so I really don’t know why no one ever talks about amatonormativity in feminist spaces. These norms don’t just hurt aros and poly people they hurt everyone, and it would greatly benefit y’all to actually listen to us when we discuss these issues.
Hello yes this is important
amatonormativity? all of these examples are of compulsory heterosexuality/heteronormativity under patriarchy
????
So a few people have made this comment, but almost all the rest of them have been terfs, so I’m only gonna be replying to this one.
Amatonormativity does have a lot of overlap with compulsory heterosexuality, and in fact, Elizabeth Brake, the woman who coined the term even talks about that in her explanation of it, but they are not the same thing.
I’m gonna be honest, most of my posts about amatonormativity never actually get popular outside of the aro and poly communities so I didn’t bother to define terms but this one is popular enough that it’s probably worth doing.
Amatonormativity: The widespread assumption that everyone is better off in an exclusive, romantic, long-term coupled relationship, and that everyone is seeking such a relationship.
Compulsory heterosexuality: The idea that heterosexuality is assumed and enforced by a patriarchal and heteronormative society.
While you can see from the definition where these two ideas intersect (and there has actually been a fair amount of discussion about whether or not one is a subset of the other) they do have some differences. While the examples I was giving were specific to feminism, and as a result, fit into that intersection more than some other examples would, those aren’t the only ways amatonormativity can express itself. It can also look like:
People saying that open relationships aren’t healthy
A relative who’s always saying you need to “meet somebody and settle down”
Only being able to legally marry one person
The assumption that all long term legal partnerships (aka: marriage) are romantic
A stigma against living with friends or family after a certain age
etc etc
None of these things are especially gender-specific, they can be applied to both straight and LGBTQIA+ people, and they don’t necessarily enforce compulsory heterosexuality. Similarly, there are other things that might be considered compulsory heterosexuality but not amatonormativity.
It’s fair, and maybe even necessary, to view compulsory heterosexuality and amatonormativity as a Venn diagram, and I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that any of the things in my original bullet list also fall under the concept of compulsory heterosexuality. That said, my examples falling into the middle of the Venn diagram doesn’t make them any less relevant to a discussion about amatonormativity, and I think examining these issues through the lenses of both compulsory heterosexuality and amatonormativity is important if you want to fully understand the problem. Only looking at these topics through one lens or the other isn’t going to give you a clear picture.
Amatonormativity also affects me as a disabled-from-birth person, since it frames norms of desirability and who is “fit” to be part of a committed “real” relationship.
To quote Jay Timothy Dolmage quoting Margrit Shildrick:
[D]isability’s “exclusion from the very notion of sexual subjectivity is so under-problematized that it is taken almost as a natural fact” (2009b, 116).
Dolmage, Jay Timothy. Disability Rhetoric (Critical Perspectives on Disability) . Syracuse University Press. Kindle Edition.
Besides that – or maybe because of that – the whole ritual of going out on dates, and courtship, and all the othertrappings of amatonormativity are also just inaccessible to me as a disabled person.
(I also happen to be aroace, and polyamorous, but I didn’t figure that out until ten years after the events I’m relating, so let’s all assume – as I did – that I’m talking about a 100% cis/het woman)
My father died when I was 42. Because of my disability, I had relied far more on my parents for emotional and practical support than most able-bodied people.
I wanted to find a grief support group to help me deal with this drastic change in my life circumstance. I’m also atheist, and my father was – if not exactly atheist – at least not religious (he was more interested in talking about quantum physics than God). So the last thing I needed was a grief support group that was run by any particular church – talk of angels and Heaven (I live in a very Christian part of the Country) would have only made me feel worse.
But the only secular / nondemoninational grief support groups for people who’d lost a parent, or other close family member, were for kids 18 and younger.
For people over 18, general grief support groups were either restricted to members of a certain congregation, or they were restricted to widows and widowers.
That’s amatonormativity: the assumption that everyone will be married (in a monogamous relationship), or on the path to marriage, as soon as they reach adulthood – whether that’s a same-sex marriage or not.
(And no – I never did find a support group, and I went through a very dark time, and it was only the love and support I got from online friends that gave me something to hold on to, to pull myself through. And yes, I will die bitter about it)
The term ‘amatonormativity’ enables aromantic people to discuss the unique ways in which their identities are disadvantaged in a romantic-centric society. It does not mean that all forms or romantic love are equally valued, or that all forms of romantic love are privileged over aromanticism.
Amatonormativity is a piece of heteronormativity, and it’s norms are based off of ideals given to bonds that are heteroromantic heterosexual, especially among cisgendermale/femalepairs. The concept does not deny the unique way non-aromantics are disadvantaged re: romantic love.
The term is also used in academic contexts. It is not an invention of bloggers on social media. This would not necessarily invalidate the term, either, but it is important to acknowledge that this has an academic precedence, with multiple applications in research communities.
I think it’s important to note here that ‘amatonormativity’ is also used to discuss the norm ofmonogamy. Elizabeth Brake, who coined the term, was very explicit about how amatonormativity includes the enforcement of monogamy and that this norm has a high level of impact on polyamorous people in particular. The idea that ‘amatonormativity’ is just a word aro bloggers made up takes the term out of its original context and pushes aside any poly community discussions about amatonormativity in the process.
Also Elizabeth Brake actually talks about the distinction and overlap between heteronormativity, amatonormativity, and compulsory heterosexuality here on her website, so maybe people can listen to the actual academic who created the term before jumping to conclusions.
Yep, the term is useful to aromantic people for obvious reasons. However, people assume the term is an attempt on the part of aromantic people to position themselves as oppressed by people whose romantic experiences are also marginalized.
The term is relevant to multiple communities, and it addresses how heteronormativity impacts all individuals from the angle of relationship norms and the prioritization of romantic love within these norms, which disadvantages others.
I’ve seen posts expressing sentiments like “the aromantic community is tricking you into thinking amatonormativity is real!” but it does not even originate in our community and the term is useful to most marginalized communities.
The emphasis on marriage between monogamous pairs is an especially important part we can’t ignore re: amatonormativity. A lot of people tend to think polyamorous and aromantic issues are so far from each other, but they’re really not.
The term ‘amatonormativity’ enables aromantic people to discuss the unique ways in which their identities are disadvantaged in a romantic-centric society. It does not mean that all forms or romantic love are equally valued, or that all forms of romantic love are privileged over aromanticism.
Amatonormativity is a piece of heteronormativity, and it’s norms are based off of ideals given to bonds that are heteroromantic heterosexual, especially among cisgendermale/femalepairs. The concept does not deny the unique way non-aromantics are disadvantaged re: romantic love.
The term is also used in academic contexts. It is not an invention of bloggers on social media. This would not necessarily invalidate the term, either, but it is important to acknowledge that this has an academic precedence, with multiple applications in research communities.
As much as we talk about how sex / sexual intimacy should not be a reward for being nice / friendly to someone, I don’t think we discuss enough that the same applies to romance.
A lot of the time sex and romance are intertwined in these discussions, but in a way that positions sex as more crude and implies romance to be less of a problem when it comes to entitled attitudes.
But.
Being sexually intimate with another person does not mean that you are entitled to romantic affection from that person, as well as being nice / friendly to someone doesn’t entitle you to that either.
There is a tendency I have noticed, even among those that are vocal against sexual entitlement, to view lack of romance especially in the context of sex as cruel or toxic or abusive. Why?
…because romance is a more ‘tender’ experience and an unwillingness to participate in it will do real harm to another person’s “heart”? Like it is our responsibility not to hurt your feelings?
Sex requires consent, not romantic love. Friendship amongst other non-romantic relationships, do not naturally “blossom” into romantic love the more effort you put into it.
Effort doesn’t entitle you to that.
I don’t know. I grew up being told not to break any one’s heart moreso than I was ever told that it’s only fair to reward a dedicated relationship with sex. I think this message is fairly prevalent.
I “broke a lot of hearts” as they say, but I don’t feel bad about it. I don’t think I should. I don’t think that makes me cruel or toxic or abusive. How can that be when I’m just being… me?
Those people just assumed they would be rewarded for being friendly / nice to me with my romantic affection. It’s not my fault society tricked them into thinking that. That’s what’s toxic.
I don’t know if this is making sense but my point is that in any kind of non-romantic relationship, no one is entitled or guaranteed romantic affection as a reward for effort.
any fellow aros feel like their cynicism/pessimism is intrinsically tied to their aroness because your existence is constantly being rendered second rate by amatonormativity
Personally, I find that amatonormativity puts the label of “cynicism” on aromantic experiences. Perhaps this is why I actually don’t love that song “I Won’t say I’m in Love” in Hercules. But, there’s a tendency to view aromantic people and our way of not experiencing romance as a refusal to embrace the positivity of “love.” We are the anti-love pessimists who just need to be proven wrong! That’s, at least, one way I believe amatonormativity shapes how other people view us.
However, I think you bring up a good point about how aromantics view themselves and the world around them. There may be pervasive feelings of cynicism or pessimism that some aromantics do feel because of how they are positioned in society by amatonormativity. I do find it hard sometimes to feel positive about everything from social interaction to the idea of partnership due to the way amatonormativity belittles aromantic people and our experiences.
ALT
