January Carnival of Aros

[cinnamon_possum]

Being the Villain

This month's Carnival of Aros is being hosted by Char, and the theme is Stories.

• What is a story you no longer believe?
  
• What is a story you feel is harmful? 

One of the first stories I was forced to hear about aromantic identity was that you could "still" be a good person if you followed certain rules: loved your friends, not "lead people on", and not "use people". I refer to these as rules now but it very much feels like these make up an entire personality that you must have if you want to be a good aro. The story went that if you didn't have the "good" trait, if you weren't inherently good, then you would be one of those bad heartless aros that used people. 

This still seems to be a popular story. I've especially noticed a focus in ace/aroace media that the success of the character is dependent on them realizing that they can love their friends or family (Loveless by Alice Oseman, Let's Talk about Love by Claire Kann). I've yet to see aros allowed in partnerships at all in media, but that's a branch of a larger problem with lack of aro representation of any kind. Aspec characters are commonly presented as struggling to find their place, and their place is found once they have someone to love in a beautifully romantic or purely platonic way. 

"Voidpunk" and "loveless aro" are concepts and subcultures that rose in resistance to this story that aros must be loving in order to be palatable. Aplatonic also came out of the disconnect that many aros had with the emphasis on loving or caring deeply for friends. Voidpunk in particular is centered around feeling excluded from the idea of "humanity", and thus reveling in being what many people consider monstrous, inhuman, robotic, and other negative non-human archtypes. Voidpunk was created by aros, particularly alloaros, but with the creators' encouragement can be extended to the disabled, the neurodivergent, the genderqueer and non-binary communities, and anyone else who is dehumanized based on their inherent traits and/or preferred ways of existing. 

Aros are not only ostracized for being "loveless", they are ostracized for "using" or being "unable to truly love" others. There is stigma around aros in romantic relationships or engaging in romantic interactions. If they are not miserable and trying to leave, then they are either leading a person on to eventually break their heart or they are lying about their aromanticism. Romance-favorability is expected to only extend towards romance in movies or novels. Aros who engage in romantic gestures because they enjoy the physical sensation, or attention, or the performativity of them are considered manipulative. The person they are participating in these romantic activities with is generally pitied, and the aro person has become a monster who uses people. 

I am tired of this storyline that aros who do not love are an unacceptable kind of aro. I am tired of the storyline that aros that dare to engage in things presumably reserved for alloromantics are an unacceptable kind of aro. Social interactions and relationships should be enjoyable for the people engaging in them. Romantic and platonic attractions are not inherently pure and beautiful emotions that make people good. Desiring solitude, or practicality, or straight-up hedonism does not make someone evil. I and other aros that relate to Voidpunk have come to terms with being evil or inhuman, but this should not be something that all aros must tackle in their personal journeys.

Comments

[violetemerald]

You raise a lot of good points. I also didn't realize how pervasive it was that romance-favorability is expected to extend only to fiction!! Thank you for this post.

[arias_hollow]

Lots of excellent points here. No aro experience or philosophy can be said to be heavily represented in the media, but within the community itself there's definitely been problems with more frequent narratives becoming the 'default' and not leaving room for radically different aro experiences. Romance-favorable and loveless aros both face different kinds of erasure, and we certainly need to work on undoing/preventing that. I'd love to see more stories that center those kinds of experiences as well!