#aromantic rep

Books featured:

Slide 2: Aroace

- Dear Wendy by Ann Zhao

- Loveless by Alice Oseman

- City of Strife by Claudie Arseneault

- The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee

- The Isles of the Gods by Amie Kaufman

- Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

- The Spider and Her Demons by Sydney Khoo

Slide 3: aro-allo

- All You Want For the Holidays by Quinton Li

- A Grim and Sunken Vow by Ashley Shuttleworth

- Something Extraordinary by Alexis Hall

- Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White

- Everything Under the Moon: Fairy Tales in a Queer Light Anthology

Slide 4: On my tbr

- Baker Thief by Claudie Arseneault

- Being Aro anthology

- Cinder by DN Brynn

- Goddess of the Hunt by Shelby Eileen

- Aces & Aros: Volume 1 by Jeremy Whitley, Kat Calamia and Phil Falco

- Common Bonds anthology

- Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman

Some examples of what I mean, and why they’re wrong:

"Don’t write your aromantic characters as loveless! Aromantics still love! We’re still normal!"

I hope I don’t have to explain how this is erasing and dehumanising loveless aros. If you’re interested, I wrote a whole post about how to write loveless character. If you're interested, you can check that out here [link].

"Don’t write your aromantic characters as having low empathy! We still care about people! We’re not emotionless monsters!"

First of all, empathy ≠ care. Second of all, empathy ≠ all emotions. Most importantly though, that is a bunch of ableist bullshit. Emotions, including lack of emotions, are inherently morally neutral. Aromantic people with low/no empathy, or with shallow/blunted emotions deserve to be respectfully represented.

"Don’t have your AroAllo character be interested only in sexual relations! We still make friends! We’re not sex-crazed whores!"

Some people are only interested in sexual relationships, or only relationships that contain sex in some way, and that’s not a bad thing, either. Not everyone wants or needs friends. There’s nothing wrong about any of that.

And I could go on and on and on, but I think these examples suffice.

Now, I do know why those things are said, and why a lot of aromantic people are so adamant about the points mentioned above. There’s actually two reasons for that: Number one is, plain and simple, respectability politics. "We’re just like you, we’re normal, we’re not like those people", you probably heard all that before.

The second is a bit more sensible, though that doesn’t justify the harm done: All those points above are stereotypes used to harm, demean, and dehumanise aromantic people, and people who’ve been hurt by them who don’t fit the stereotypes will try to distance themselves from them (which, tbh, does lead back to respectability politics in most cases), in an attempt to fight those stereotypes. But the solution is not to deny the existence of people who fit those stereotypes, which in turn furthers the abuse and dehumanisation, as well as the exclusion from aromantic spaces, of aromantic people who fit those stereotypes; those with low/no empathy or blunted emotions, aplatonics, or AroAllos who are mainly or only interested in sexual relationships, by basically saying "yes, you're right, those people are freaks and disgusting and inherently evil", even if they don't mean that (typically because they don't think people like that actually exist),

I, personally, believe a list of "Don’t"s is not helpful here at all. All of those points can be easily addressed by some more "Do"s, including the worry of stereotyping and demonisation:

Do know what you’re trying to write, do your research, do listen to aromantic people all over the spectrum, including those who fit the demonised stereotypes. Do keep in mind that aromanticism is a spectrum, no matter which part(s) you choose to represent, and respect the people you’re writing about and those you’re not writing about.

The only "Don’t" I can actually think of that fully applies would be "don’t generalise", but that is both obvious and also should be covered by doing your research. Even something like "don’t write your aromantic characters as a villain" has nuance; you can do it well. Of course, when you have an aromantic villain who is miserable all the time and abuses alloromantic people left and right "because that’s what aros do", and gets defeated by ~the power of love~ of your all-alloromantic main character group in the end, that’s arophobic, and there’s no saving that. But if you make your villain aromantic to, for example, further explore their emotions, and give them more depth, while also not writing it like their aromanticism is the reason for their villainy, that wouldn’t be arophobic; it can become arophobic, depending on how you write it, but it’s not as simple as aromantic villain = arophobia. It does require a lot of care, of course, especially from non-aromantic authors. But it’s not impossible to not make a book with an aromantic villain arophobic.

So, long story short: Instead of just listing a long list of "don’t do that", that is often mainly made up of real people's experiences, it is a lot more important to talk about why those ideas, or the concepts behind them, may be harmful (if at all), and how to write them without falling into that harmfulness. In a lot of situations, of course, that does require more care than in others (like with the aromantic villain), but if you’re willing to put that work in? It could turn out great.