The only part of my queerness that I’ve consistently struggled with is my aroaceness and I realized that the reason for that is that I’ll never be able to fully understand that aspect of my identity. While I do know that I genuinely am on the aro/ace spectrums, a large piece of my repulsion from sex and romance is due to the fact that it’s constantly being brought up and even forced on me by greater society.
Everything seems to revolve around romantic/sexual relationships. Oh, you wanna go out with your friends in a safe queer-friendly environment? The gay bar is the only third space you’ve got, where the potential of being hit on is not only normalized, but expected. People will openly discuss their sex lives with people they barely know and act like it’s normal. Marriage, dating, and getting laid are expected of every adult, and if you express no desire to achieve any of that, then you’re antisocial or traumatized and either way need therapy or to just “get over it.” If you’re asexual and in a relationship with someone who isn’t, it’s somehow always on you to push your comfort zones to please your partner, rather than on your partner to accommodate you. Hell, many people still believe that aro/ace people don’t belong in queer spaces. There are no aro/ace-friendly queer adult spaces, and if you have the audacity to advocate for a sex-free queer space, then you’re a conservative puritan who must be anti-sex and hate everybody, and people will tell you to just attend family-friendly pride events because somehow sex and adulthood cannot be mutually exclusive. The message of sexual/romantic liberation is only reserved for those who wish to engage in it, and anyone who wishes to be liberated from it are excluded and looked down upon. The concept of somebody being sex/romance repulsed and wanting to interact with their community without it being present, while also still respecting allos and advocating for the protection of their right to their own sexual expression, is seemingly an incomprehensible concept for most allo queer folks.
I can’t even rely on fiction to escape it because essentially every book, film, TV show, etc. incorporates romance/sex, even when it’s not at all plot relevant or necessary. Hell, at this point the entire fantasy genre of literature is just romantacy. Even in the rare instances where the main character is ace, sex is still brought up and discussed by other characters. Fandom spaces will straight up ignore any aro/ace rep that exists because “it’s fiction, it doesn’t matter,” but if somebody took a canonically gay character and made them straight you know everyone would riot. Aro/aceness in fandoms is treated like an obstacle to circumvent or an optional characteristic, which then makes you feel like your own identity is something others can disregard if they feel like it irl. I’ve seen so much porn of canonically sex-repulsed ace characters that it makes me wonder if people do it out of spite at this point, which is a concerning thought.
And this is why I have such an aversion to romance and sex: I cannot escape it and expressing any ounce of discomfort risks me being ostracized from queer spaces. EVERYTHING is about sex and romance and any implication that not everything NEEDS to be causes such insane backlash that it feels almost comical. So I do my best to avoid it — as much of it as I can. I’m adverse to it because it’s forced on me and I refuse to tolerate that. But then I’ll never know how much of that aversion is part of my natural programming vs defensiveness. Maybe I would want romantic companionship with somebody who respects the way I’m wired. Maybe, someday, I would be willing to make love if it’s on my terms. But I’ll never know that because any moment of ‘what if-ing’ just feels like allonormativity winning, and I hate that notion stronger than whatever desire I have to understand my programming. I’ll never be able to understand my own identity because society will always interfere, and I’ll never truly know if any feeling I experience is genuine or just compulsory allosexuality.
Anyway, happy pride month to everybody, but especially to my fellow aromantics and/or asexuals. Maybe someday we’ll feel like we truly belong in queer communities without having to set aside our comfort zones. And if anything I said made you feel upset or uncomfortable, I implore you to sit back and wonder why that is. Sex is not a bad thing, nor should it be taboo, but I should not be obligated to like it or have to engage with the subject of it simply because you want to — and the same goes for romance, too. Me wanting to be in queer spaces without a focus on sex/romance does not mean I think queer spaces should be ‘censored.’ Not everything needs to include sex or romance. It’s okay to have things that aren’t about sex or romance. It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist at all, just that they don’t need to be in everything.
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