The thing about cultural issues with aromanticism (and asexuality I believe?) is that it affects cishet people more than it affects lgbt people
Homophobes want you to be aro/ace if youâre same gender attracted. They want you to be celibate and call off dating, and even more, they want you to not even want those things.
But if youâre a cishet? You canât be friends with someone of the âoppositeâ gender without it being âweird.â You canât sleep in the same bed, you canât cuddle, women canât blame their male friends for falling for them and expecting it to be reciprocated because âwhat did you expect?â
An aromantic gay cis person could have Christian family members tell them that their gayness is okay because itâs only behind closed doors and they wonât be trying to get married or hold hands with anyone to cause them public shame. An asexual gay cis person in that same family could be told that their gayness is okay because itâs not like the other deviant, over-sexual disgusting and diseased âhomosexuals.â
In those situations, their aro/aceness is used as a weapon of homophobia. Yes, it is a problem. But it is a problem of homophobia, not aphobia.
That same person could be an aromantic cishet, and suddenly itâs a problem that they donât want to date and only want to have sex partners or close friends. (This argument doesnât stand with asexuality because these kinds of Christians literally hold not having sex as the ideal)
In that situation, there is a problem. But the problem is aphobia, not homophobia. There is also misogyny involved, which is deeply intertwined with aphobia in the way that transphobia and homophobia are deeply intertwined.
This isnât just in fundamental Christian households either, you see it in the media too. SGA characters are killed off or break up or SOMETHING to keep them from being with characters of the same gender. But cishet characters are always forced into relationships with each other no matter how little chemistry they have. Thereâs always these unnecessary sex scenes and sexualization of women regardless if itâs relevant to the story or not.
And I am not saying this to diminish the importance of talking about aphobia. It is important to talk about, no matter who it affects. Aphobia is HEAVILY caused by and involved in misogyny, and it definitely is something that needs to be discussed like any other feminist issue.
But this is a point about it that I havenât seen brought up before.
This is also why I feel like a separate ace/aro community could do a lot more to embrace and accept cishet aces/aros who need that. They wouldnât have to worry about ânot being LGBT enough.â We would accept them, LGBT or not.