#amatonormativity
Me: I’m Aromantic Asexual
Them: Aww don’t give up! There’s someone out there for you
Me:
Me: I’m Aromantic Asexual
Them: But I don’t understand! Is there no one you want to spend the rest of your life with?!
Me:
Me : I’m Aromantic Asexual
Them: You say that now but just wait ‘til you get older
Me:
Me: I’m Aromantic Asexual.
Them: Yeah, but when you get married…
Me:
Me trying to fit into this amatonormative world before I knew I was AroAce:
I’m having a conversation in which I got to saying that my experiences with allosexual attraction have little in common with alloromantic allosexual attraction, particularly in terms of behaviours relating to expressions of sexual attraction, and this isn’t talked about.
In a world where it is assumed sexual attraction comes with romantic attraction, it is exceptionally difficult to pursue relationships. I don’t approach people on the basis of my sexual attraction. I don’t have one-night stands or casual sex. Most of the time, my sexual attraction is an experience of feeling attraction with a resulting inability to do anything about it, because how the hell do I have the conversation about being aro? Autism is a factor here in that I struggle with initiating any sort of relationship, I will admit, but my aromanticism excludes me from the dating spaces that alloromantic allosexuals, even otherwise LGBP ones, can access, unless I wish to endure the erasure of my identity by being forced into an alloromantic environment. Even sites based around casual hook-ups are still used by allo people who have unconscious expectations about romance developing if they meet the right person! How many news and advice stories have I read about people having hook-ups and getting angry when the other person won’t develop the relationship into romance? About how an unwillingness to move from hook-up to dating is seen as a sign of immaturity?
My allosexual attraction cannot define me in the same way to the outside eye because it isn’t something I can do anything aboutfor fear of expectations I cannot meet and conversations I cannot safely or easily have. I experience it, but I don’t live it. It has no resulting behaviour demonstrable to others because my behaviours are shaped by being aromantic, not by being pansexual.
To the outside, my days as a pansexual look identical to my days as an asexual, and this is because I am aromantic. I think this is what made it so difficult for me to tell the shifts in my orientation–because my aromanticism doesn’t change, and aromanticism shapes my behaviours and interactions with other people, not my asexuality and not my pansexuality.
We tend to either force ourselves into a romantic mould, often unsuccessfully, or step away from relationships altogether. We rarely have the ability to form relationships, casual or long-term, that honour our aromanticism and our sexual attraction both, and most of us do not feel safe enough to voice our identity and needs to someone not also aromantic.
To paint allosexual aros as people who are unrestrained in our attractions, who move from bed to bed or have a series of one-night-stands, is to disregard the aromantic part of our identities. There’s this assumption that aromanticism just erases the romantic attraction, erases the part that drives us towards amatonormative assumptions of marriage and relationships–so that we have the dangerous thing of sex without love. There’s this assumption that romantic attraction holds us back from being predatory in our desires for others, and without it, we just fuck where and how we please, heedless of our partners’ natural (amatonormative) expectation and desire for romantic relationships.
Being aromantic, though, is not a lack or absence in the way it is so often conceptualised. That part in us is filled–filled by amatonormativity, filled by misunderstanding, filled by a world that has no positive concept of sexual attraction without romantic attraction. What others see as an absence is filled by something the world doesn’t understand and won’t acknowledge.
Aromanticismseparatesus from the people to whom we are attracted. We are not liberated by it in our interactions with others as the conventional Chad the Frat Boy narrative suggests; we are hobbled by it. We are either forced to pretend to be something we’re not or we avoid connections with others, and neither response allows us to live an authentic life as an allosexual aromantic.
People need to stop talking as though aromantic allosexual attraction and alloromantic allosexual attraction are the same thing, because doing this dismisses just how big an impact aromanticism has on sexual attraction.
Thank you very much for this post, OP, it’s something I’ve been thinking about as well for a while now. It’s frustrating how allosexual aros are painted as people who just sleep around with everyone, when it would be a lot easier to act on our sexuality if we weren’t also aro.
A thing I would also like to add is that when people talk about allosexual aros, they also seem to take away a lot of normal sex-related emotional responses. For example, one can become very emotionally vulnerable during sex, or desire a partner they are familiar with because they don’t trust or want a stranger to touch them in an intimate way. There’s a lot of reasons one may not want casual sex that have nothing to do with romance, and yet people talk as if they don’t apply to allo aros at all. As if we’re some kind of, I don’t know, sexual machine who can only experience the purely physical aspects of intercourse.
I suppose this could be a part of the Cold Emotionless Aro stereotype, but I feel nobody really talks about this specific thing.
Yes, yes, yes! Oh, I am so glad you said that, @hella-aro, because I didn’t realise I felt that way–it’s like a lightbulb moment over something I’ve never felt allowed to recognise, burbling away underneath, but yes. So much yes! We are not only depicted as lacking that ordinary, human need for emotional intimacy, we’re denied recognition of that need in the first place, even though many of us have it. I’ll be doing some soul-searching on this, so thank you, thank you for saying this, because it changes how I think about myself and how I’ll write aro characters.
Truly, thank you so much for your reblog. I actually feel a bit shaken up by it, in a good way, and I hope this is the beginning of more conversations.
I do need to correct myself and say that, of course, there are allo-aros who do fit the stereotypes in the sense of casual sex or bed-hopping (which is by no means inherently predatory a behaviour–that is a stereotype we must condemn and reject) and this is perfectly okay and fine! I think my words above generalise in places where they shouldn’t be, a habit I need to work harder on breaking. (I’m much better at observing generalisations in other people than I am in myself.) I apologise, because erasing people isn’t my intent (but intent doesn’t erase impact) and frustration doesn’t justify it. What I should have said is that the assumption that aros who experience sexual attraction all fit this stereotype without anyone’s ever stopping to think that the experience of aromanticism itself makes this a very difficult stereotype to live sends a dangerous message and shows a complete lack of understanding for the allosexual aromantic experience.
Aro-allos who dolive their lives this way, dealing with society’s censure for just being themselves while having their lives used as a weapon against their own, have more courage and confidence than I can imagine.
@fanficfridge replied to your post:
I feel you so hard. As an autistic bisexual aromantic myself, relationships are so hard. Autism makes me feel like an alien from the start, and then being aro is like discovering that the barest of healthy friendship is deemed the epitome of romance and I’m just over here like urgh.
I’m over here arughing right back at you, honestly.
It’s worth talking about that while neurodiversity does not mean one is a-spec and a-spec does not mean one is neurodiverse, there are a great many a-specs who are neurodiverse in varying ways, and aside from amatonormativity and the challenges faced in being aro-spec, neurodiversity adds another layer of difficult to something that is already beyond challenging. How do you explain being aro when you struggle to talk to people and folks are not predisposed to understand you when you do talk? How do you get people to take your aromanticism seriously when you’re autistic when they don’t take it seriously when you’re neurotypical? How do you talk about your needs as an aro when you’ve been discouraged as an autistic from voicing any need or feeling that is seen as unusual? How do you navigate relationship assumptions and expectations when autism and aromanticism both make your needs, expressions and desires so outside of what is considered normal that you don’t even know what you need?
If navigating relationships as an allosexual aro is 9.5 out of 10 on the difficulty scale, adding neurodiversity or any disability that impacts communication or social interaction makes it a 12 out of 10.
Can I add in something, @hella-aroand@aroworlds? - After saying thanks for finally putting all of this into words.
It’s - it’s not just normal sex-related emotional responses we’re denied: it’s also unusual ones that pertain to the fact that we’re things aside from alloaro.
That we might, for instance, have experiences that make it difficult to trust people.
(Because the thought of having to trust a stranger makes me want to curl up under a blanket. Actually - wait, that blanket is in reach, correction: makes me curl up under a blanket. A comfy blanket.)
That we might have issues with our bodies, that we might be part of a vulnerable group, that we might have sensory issues, that we might…
Point is: We’re not just denied the need for emotional intimacy, I also feel as if we’re denied any other emotional need, too?
Something else - in addition to the fact that other people developing expectations of romance would be really uncomfortable, I also feel a persistent fear that I might end up hurting other people because they develop it, and that this would be my fault?
I’m not quite sure why I feel like this would be my fault no matter how much I would try to communicate that I’m not going to develop romantic feelings, because I really couldn’t do anything about it - but I still feel, on some level, like I can’t try and find a longer-term sexual partner because that would need to be a friend and what if they end up getting hurt? (… trusting other people to exercise their own judgement is… well, hindered by the “trust” part for me. I probably should try to?)
And - I’d really like to know whether I’m alone with that fear. Also, help in thinking through its causes.
Oh I’m so glad @aro-to-the-knee reblogged a version of this post so I saw it even though it’s about 6 months old now - this is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately!
I have so much to say on this topic. First of all I relate so much to what’s been said already in this thread and some of the other responses as well. Being allo aro isn’t just like being allo allo without the romance. It’s an entirely different experience. And I do feel that my options in terms of relationships are very limited. I recently watched an old video by Rowan Ellis about feeling like it’s more difficult as a lgbtq+ person to find relationships and that definitely pertains to me - both as someone generally perceived as a woman who is generally more inclined towards women and as an aromantic person. How difficult is it to find someone who you are attracted to and feel comfortable around and are interested in (especially as a queer person) - who feels the same way about you? What are the chances they don’t have romantic expectations of you? How can you trust that they won’t then develop them?
I’ve tried dating websites but they’re all geared toward romance and I end up feeling like I’m misleading people just by being there.
I also really want to talk about what @crimsonsquare added which is why I reblogged this version. I definitely relate to feeling like my emotional needs are erased and the fact that people act as if romantic needs are the only ones that matter. As well as this, for me it’s like the only socially acceptable way to become close enough to someone to be comfortable in a sexual situation with them is through a romantic relationship which isn’t an option for me.
I might feel comfortable with friends but if you were to begin a sexual relationship with a friend as an aromantic person you’d have to, as crimsonsquare said, trust that they won’t start to develop romantic feelings for you. This is something that terrifies me and I have ignored opportunities because of it.
I don’t think this is an irrational fear? It does require a lot more trust as an allo aro person. The society we live in puts sex in an amatonormative context as default, so when we try to navigate relationships the burden must always be on us to make sure the other person/people aren’t going to get hurt. It is seen as our responsibility to protect other people from their own feelings even when there has been no indication from us that romance is an option.
This is so pervasive that it’s something I deal with even when not trying to begin a relationship. I have entered into friendships and had to explicitly tell people I am aromantic just in case they interpreted my kindness as flirting. And still, when one friend did develop romantic feelings for me, he hoped I would change my mind even though I made it very clear from the very beginning that I was not romantically interested in anyone and never would be. It was not my responsibility to protect his feelings but the whole time I was the one terrified of being accused of leading him on.
There’s definitely an idea that romantic love is pure and beautiful and sex is only pure and beautiful when it’s an expression of that love. And this is present as a default assumption even in sex-positive communities. If someone enters into a sexual relationship knowing they will not experience romantic feelings we expect them to disclose that even when no promises have been made, but we do not expect someone to disclose the fact that they may have expectations of their sexual partner should they begin to develop these feelings.
I’m not saying it’s impossible to find people who it’s safe for aro people to enter into sexual relationships with, but it is a factor we need to consider and it does make it a lot harder.
