Welcome to the round-up of submissions on the topic of ‘Wishlist.’ You can see the call for submissions here: https://sites.smith.edu/aace/2023/04/16/call-for-submissions-wishlist/. Thank you to everyone who participated! We had three responses, from students at University of Ottawa, SRH School Of Popular Arts (SOPA) Berlin, and Smith College.

 

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1. There’s a lot of things I wish were different in this world concerning asexuality, however one crucial change that could actually be super beneficial is spectrum representation of asexuality. I think a lot of people have a general understanding of what asexual means but they only see the tip of the iceberg since asexuality can come in so many forms as does any sexual identity and is very personal and unique. I want to start seeing stories showcasing the broad spectrum of what the asexual experience is really like; of asexuals who want nothing to do with sex to the rather kinky asexuals who do have sex but just lack attraction for others. I want to hear about graysexuals, demisexuals, aromantics who aren’t asexual, those who are both. I want to hear about the less known types of asexuality like cupiosexual, akoisexual and autochorissexual and everything else. I want to see more than just the simple stereotype of what asexual is thought to be. Not only that but I want to hear about the isolation and exclusion that many ace people feel, including myself, since ace struggles are rarely talked about save for inside the ace community. I want to see more realistic sexual dynamics and scenes like you see in the show, Sex Education where sex is not “flawless” like you see in movies and porno but is layered, complicated and messy. To put things simply, I just want to see authenticity and honesty regarding sex and sexuality so everyone can finally feel good about themselves rather than feel ashamed.

 

2. I wish we had more graphic novels/childrens booklets that break down and accurately reflect the forms of attraction and what they can look like. In general, child books/comics are probably one of the most simple and easily accessible type of education, which can also be used for teens and adults!

For schools and college/university specifically workshops or even mandatory classes that target systematic, social, racial etc. injustices in general, but also sex ed (including sexuality, types of attraction,…) could make a huge difference in spreading awareness and understanding! Todays mainstream media mostly contains stories/characters that only exist to end up in relationships or sex. Therefore it would be amazing to see more movies, that approach relationships from different perspectives (so not from an allo/hetero cis POV).

 

3. I want a society where it is normal to live long-term with your best friend(s), even if you are in a separate romantic and/or sexual relationship. When I was younger, and still to an extent now, I was afraid that I would make close friends as young adult, but then they would leave me for a romantic and/or sexual partner, either in moving out of shared living arrangements or lessening their engagement with me as a friend. Even regardless of the housing market and available incomes, I want a society where you can choose to live with the most important people to you, be they friends, queer platonic partners, or romantic and/or sexual partners.

I also want to see this in books and other media representation. I want characters who live with their best friends, and that’s the main relationship in the story, and they still go do romantic things with someone else. Or they don’t and that’s fine too. I want ace and aro characters who are in QPRs or apply the split attraction model to their own lives, even if they don’t use modern words, just as I want non-ace and non-aro characters to do those things too.

Welcome to the round-up of submissions on the topic of ‘Education.’ You can see the call for submissions here: https://sites.smith.edu/aace/2023/03/19/call-for-submissions-education/. Thank you to everyone who participated! We had three responses, from students at Smith College.

 

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1. I generally don’t feel comfortable talking about my identity in class, and with most of the classes I’ve taken, it’s not relevant. The exceptions for me have been language and literature classes. The college Chinese classes that I’ve taken have included sections on future plans, stuff like having a family, money management, (re)marriage. Those were awkward due to the relatively amatonormative environment, but I never brought up asexuality or aromanticism, and just selectively chose the questions that I could answer comfortably. There was also the factor that I’m not entirely confident my language instructors would have understood either the word “asexuality” or “无性恋.”

My literature courses have mostly been the same deal. In the first one, my professor and some of my classmates were quite focused on sexual imagery they thought was obvious in the texts. I didn’t think so, but the experience turned me off discussing asexuality and aromanticism without knowing how accepting the environment would be. Since then, in my literature classes, I’ve been trying to avoid the sexuality and gender questions to the best of my ability.

The literature class that I’m taking this semester has been a bit different. One time, another student brought up stereotypes that asexual characters often fall into during the class discussion. I didn’t say anything, but I was internally agreeing with her. Then one day last week I was really frustrated with the readings because of how one of them connected non-sexual experiences, disability, and government sterilization programs and how the other assumed common romantic experiences. I told myself that I wouldn’t force myself to participate, but I ended up making a few comments about how uncomfortable the stories were. When one of my classmates asked if I am aroace, I said yes.

 

2. My decision to minor in the study of women and gender (SWAG) in college has meant that there were many times when asexuality was relevant to class discussion, but I’m the only student who ever brought it up, even when it seemed glaringly obvious to me. I have, twice now, had professors who actually mentioned asexuality in class, but both times it was more of a passing thought or a suggestion of something to look into on our own.

My confidence in bringing up asexuality (or aromanticism, or allonormativity and amatonormativity) has grown over the years. I remember the first two SWAG classes I took, there were times when I desperately wanted to point out how what we were discussing so clearly pertained to asexuality, but was too afraid to do so. I feared the professor would tell me it wasn’t relevant, or I would be accused of derailing the conversation and bringing up perspectives that weren’t “queer enough.” Finally, however, I spoke up and pointed out that an essay on pervasive sexuality (and not just heterosexuality) in our society was basically just talking about allonormativity. From there, I gained confidence, and was able to start bringing in not just ace knowledge but an ace perspective. I now feel confident talking about my own asexuality, brining the ace/aro/aspec community into conversations about sexual liberation, and again and again have called out amatonormativity as the issue at hand when we’re talking about the privileging of partnered, monogamous, romantic and sexual relationships in capitalist society.

My greatest success, however, has been to convince a professor to incorporate ace literature into her SWAG 101 syllabus. I didn’t make it my mission for this to happen, but by taking a different class with her in which I continually started conversations about asexuality and aromanticism, something must have clicked for her that this was a relevant and necessary topic to add to her curriculum. Thus, one day, she happily informed me that she was adding some ace readings to her syllabus because of me, and it was the most magical feeling in the world to know that I was the cause of that positive change.

 

3. In most of the classes I’ve taken about queerness, asexuality has been mentioned. It generally stays at the definition level though. I suppose it’s because that’s not what people think about when they are planning a course on queerness; you have to really go looking to find much about asexuality, so if it’s not your priority, it doesn’t come up. But I wish I could learn about asexuality in class outside of open-ended projects, and that not only I but also my classmates could learn about asexuality. Yet, compared to aromanticism, asexuality is a common topic. I’ve never had a class even mention aromanticism outside of whatever brief mention of asexuality is offered. Sometimes I write about aromanticism in reflections or other assignments for those courses, and my professors always seem excited to have it mentioned, but it’s never mentioned in the classroom.

In my queer-focused classes, there is at least awareness of asexuality, if not always aromanticism. In my other classes, there is not even that. In literature and language classes, I’m tired of readings focused on romance, and being expected to analyze these romance scenes and inevitably struggling to because I don’t get it. I wish that professors were more open to not everyone enjoying or being excited about romantic scenes. I’m tired of scenes that don’t seem to be about romance, yet there is some hint somewhere I do not see that sends my classmates into headcanoning a relationship that need not be there – why can they not be friends? I only know that there’s supposed to be romance because others said so and yet sometimes I’m expected to write reflection about that romance. I wish that when I said I didn’t empathize with the character in love that I wasn’t told I needed to try harder. I wish people were more open to other interpretations. I wish that when my classes studied relationships between religious ascetics, that it was acknowledged that that could have been friendship or a queerplatonic relationship – that it didn’t have to be forbidden romance.

Welcome to the round-up of submissions on the topic of ‘Stereotypes.’ You can see the call for submissions here: https://sites.smith.edu/aace/2023/02/09/call-for-submissions-stories-about-love/. Thank you to everyone who participated! We had three responses, from students at Smith College.

 

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1. Self-love is something I’ve struggled with all my life (as I’m sure many of us have) but recently I’ve been trying to make more of an effort to act on and express love for myself, even when it’s hard. This Valentine’s Day, I ended up making the whole day about self-love, and it was honestly a healing experience.

I had a major deadline on February 13th, so I’d been working to the point of exhaustion for the whole week prior, and then decided to take the next day off. In the spirit of it being Valentine’s Day, I decided to not just to sleep in, skip class, and treat myself to a little spa-day (which basically just meant doing all the basic self-care I’d been neglecting for the past week) but also taking myself out on a “date.” I gave myself a budget, got a nice lunch, and then did some shopping. I bought things that I’d always thought of as too much of a luxury to “waste” money on for myself, but would buy in a heartbeat if I needed a gift for someone else: expensive chocolates, fancy moisturizer, and cute stationary. I know my main love language is gift-giving, but buying “gifts” for myself is hard, because it feels frivolous.

I ended the day by getting ice cream, and sitting by myself, staring out the window as I ate, I felt completely happy. It was hard and awkward at first, but showing myself love felt so good that I wasn’t even bothered by all the couples out and about. If anything, I was just happy for them. I realized that their celebration of love was just as important as mine, and whether or not anyone else saw that, it only really mattered that I knew it for myself.

 

2. How do you write about love when love is a category that have trouble imagining yourself in? Society has coded love so insidiously as a romantic category, as a sexual category, that even as an aroace, someone who believes love can be separate, it is hard to convince myself that other things are, in fact, love. For instance, a big part of my personality is that I love books and reading. And yet here I am, wondering if I can really write a story about my relationship with one of my favorite books, and if that would count as love. So let me prove that it can.

Imagine.

A 13 year old girl, backstage at her dance recital dress rehearsal, only ten pages into the book she’s reading, and already fascinated. She goes and dances, and then comes back to her book. She reads more. It was her first real initiation into sci-fi, and it was also the first book that had a character with a disabled experience that she could fully identify with.

She eats up the first book, and then the second one, but then the third book in the trilogy hadn’t been published yet. Then when it comes out that summer, its still not out in the US because of publication deals. Her uncle gets her the book for Christmas. By this point, she has a new favorite series. When she gets an email address, one of the first things she does is sign up for the author’s newsletter. The author writes more, starts other series, and she reads them too. Her favorite series by the author evolves as more books come out.

Her attachment to these books started as fascination with science fiction as a whole and first character similar in a certain way, but it expands to the worldbuilding – and my, does she love the worldbuilding. She finds little easter eggs and questions and intriguing what-ifs. She starts writing what she would later know to be fanfiction. Some of those what-ifs turn out to be what if these two characters weren’t in a romantic and sexual relationship, but one character was in a lesbian relationship with a third, and had some more-than-friend arrangement with the first.

During the pandemic, she ventures out into online fandom spaces because learns there are other people chatting about these books, and she is really excited to talk to people about her favorite book. They ask questions of each other, and answer them, and read the new books alongside each other, and speculate about what they think is going to happen and why the characters are certain ways and everything. She stays up way to late some nights, messaging back and forth about the books with her friends. She is happy.

 

3. Love is friendship

Late night conversations sharing stories and laughter and tears

Sharing joys and sorrows, hopes and stresses

Joys found in those moments together

Studying together, grabbing lunch, hosting game nights, trading photos

Supporting each other, present for each other

Building community, building belonging

Welcome to the round-up of submissions on the topic of ‘Stereotypes.’ You can see the call for submissions here: https://sites.smith.edu/aace/2022/11/20/call-for-submissions-stereotypes/. Thank you to everyone who participated! We had two responses, from students at Smith College.

 

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1. Do you remember those YA novels where the main character is on some all-encompassing quest to save their country or world? The ones where they might have had a romantic interest and relationship but it’s pushed aside for the sake of the world? I do. On one hand, it was always refreshing to have a story where romance, sex, and relationships weren’t a main focus. As a young aro-ace, those stories were always a bit more special because of what wasn’t there – relationships.

Yet something was always off. I didn’t want to have to defeat a dark lord and lose a finger (LOTR), overthrow a totalitarian government (Hunger Games), or regain my rightful seat as a princess (I’m sure there is some example) to not have a romantic relationship. Asexual and/or aromantic people aren’t disinterested in different types of relationships because they are trying to address pressing calamities. Asexuality and aromanticism do not require justifications to be valid.

To be fair, this stereotype pops up most where there is implicit but not explicit asexual and/or aromantic representation. Its fine for a character or a person to not engage in relationships if they have too much else going on in their life, I just wish we didn’t understand these characters as asexual and/or aromantic. This stereotype primes people to expect a justification for our identities that is not necessary.

 

2. There have been times that I have felt like a stereotype – and sometimes that was validating (because clearly I fit the description) and sometimes that was invalidating (because there is pressure to make it clear that we aren’t stereotypes). And then other times I felt the opposite – that the stereotypes didn’t fit me well – and again, depending on the day, that could feel validating or invalidating. The thing about stereotypes is that there are a lot of them, and many of them are contradictory (e.g. the naïve ace vs the ace who makes all the sex jokes). Some are fun – that we all like cake and dragons – and others are problematic, whether because they conflate distinct experiences or because they are the only popular representation of asexuality or aromanticism. And there’s nothing wrong with fitting or not fitting a stereotype, but there is a lot of pressure to make it clear that stereotypes aren’t completely accurate any time we are discussing asexuality and aromanticism, and while that education work is important, it is also stressful. When someone describes a stereotype that fits me, I have to determine how to respond – how to say that that’s not accurate because it’s a stereotype but it is accurate for me, except that maybe I don’t want to share those personal details, but I also don’t want them getting the wrong impression … – and if there was greater variety of representation, maybe that would be less needed, but at the same time, that puts the pressure on creators to make diverse representations all the time and sometimes to not make representations based on themselves if they fit a common stereotype – which isn’t fair.

Welcome to the round-up of submissions on the topic of ‘Favorite Parts About Being Ace and/or Aro.’ You can see the call for submissions here: https://sites.smith.edu/aace/2022/10/14/call-for-submissions-favorite-parts-about-being-ace-and-or-aro/. Thank you to everyone who participated! We had six responses, from students at Smith College and University of Otago.

 

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1. I love that identifying as asexual and somewhere on the aromantic spectrum has made me feel free. Before I learned about the ace/aro spectrum and my place on it, I thought I would have to end up in relationships I wouldn’t enjoy, simply because I was “supposed to” have those relationships eventually. Realizing my ace- and aro-ness helped me understand that I don’t “have to” live my life in any specific way that I know won’t bring me joy! More and more, I’ve allowed myself to explore what I actually want in my future, rather than what I’ve been told to expect. I love my friendships! I don’t want to put them aside later on down the line for romantic and sexual relationships like society pressures people to do. I feel like I now have the confidence to imagine my life the way I’ve always wanted to see it.

 

2. When it comes to being aroace, I appreciate the experience and view it gives me, in which I can better empathize with others and feel better equipped to help people better understand themselves. Realising i was aroace improved my life enormously. I no longer had this huge question mark over my life and I could begin to understand why I felt so out of place and misunderstood for so long.

 

3. I think one of the most obvious perks to being asexual is not having to worry about STDs and pregnancy. Now, this isn’t necessarily specific to asexual people (there are a variety of reasons someone might not have sex or not want to have sex) nor is it true for all asexual people, but it’s true for a lot of us and, just personally, it’s great to not really be that worried when my period is late, because unless I’m the next Virgin Mary, it’s literally impossible for me to be pregnant!

One unexpected way I’ve come to really love my ace identity and the ace/aro community is through the knowledge that we generate by simply being non-sexual-and-romantic-relationship focused people in a society that prioritizes sex and romance. Listening to aromantic people talk about their experiences with love and friendship and inspecting how our society deprioritizes platonic love in detrimental ways has honestly been kind of life changing. Even though I am interested in romance and romantic relationships, being in this community has been so helpful in reshaping the way I think about romance and how I choose to structure my life around relationships and which relationships to prioritize, and for that I will be forever grateful.

 

4. What I love about being aroace is how freeing it is. My exposure to ace communities showed me that people like me could live wonderful and fulfilling lives regardless of whether we had sexual/romantic relationships or not. It allowed me the ability to reflect on my own feelings and desires more deeply. That led me to start using the aromantic label, and to start to explore my gender. And although I am still subject to societal pressures around sex and relationships, I don’t feel bound by them in the way I used to. I love that my identity throws into question so many of the things that society assumes are universal, and that me living into my identity might cause other people to rethink their worldviews as well.

And as I lived into my ace identity, I also felt more and more comfortable calling myself queer. I felt more comfortable being in queer spaces and participating in conversations there. I really felt like I belonged on my (very queer) campus and in my (very queer) friend groups. If I hadn’t started to identify as ace, I would not have the relationship to myself or the world that I have today. I am free to explore and to create my own future outside of what society prescribes. That’s both a daunting task and an incredible blessing.

 

5. As someone who’s alloace, I appreciate not having to worry about sex and all of the issues that it *can possibly* bring up (I know that they’re not guarantees). It just seems like a lot of work and stress, and it feels kind of relaxing to not have it be a concern in a relationship. Accepting and embracing my ace identity has allowed me to be fully comfortable in my skin. Before I knew I was ace, I believed the things people said about me: cold, emotionless, a late bloomer, etc. But not experiencing sexual attraction doesn’t make a person broken. I have a word, a whole slew of words, to describe how I experience attraction, and I’ve never felt better. And don’t get me started on the ace community. To be seen, validated, and understood is a beautiful thing. The ace spaces I’ve entered have been so welcoming and warm. We can bond over shared experiences and discuss the kind of visibility we want to see. Ace people receive so many assumptions about what it means to be ace that we don’t make those same assumptions about each other. That makes for a really understanding and non-judgmental community (one I’m so thrilled to be a part of).

 

6. The process of discovering I was aroace and then exploring what that meant for me helped me understand my life and my experiences, growing my self-awareness, and it helped when I later explored my other identities to have had that first experience of questioning already. It helps me explore who I am and what I want from life. The ace community was my first exposure to the complexity of identities, how definitions and experiences don’t always match up well, and how different identities can intersect. The ace community let me feel comfortable and legitimate in my experiences, and taught me that I don’t need to hide myself. I love the perspective on life that being aroace gives me.