An Introduction to Anti-Asexual/Anti-Aromantic Tropes Used in Media

Image caption: An image from Star Trek: Voyager of the crew watching a 3D movie, proof that media is an important fact of life, even in the future. The episode this is from has nothing to do with the substance of today's post, but when Star Trek gives you a gift like this, you don't squander it.

More than once on this blog, I have referenced the website TV Tropes, a wiki-style website that catalogues, names, and defines the many tropes that make up popular media. As the name implies, TV Tropes started analyzing recurring motifs in television shows before expanding to other forms of media. Ironically enough, that’s how I started analyzing asexuality and aromanticism in media as well – by recognizing patterns in some of television’s most popular shows.

It’s not uncommon for me as an aromantic asexual woman to find media that outright ignores these identities, but often times when analyzing media, I have come to find media that goes a step further to mock, trivialize, or dismiss non-sexual and non-romantic people and the lives they lead. Many times, these pieces of media or the genres they’re in have similar repeated instances of this aphobia, to the point where I began to identify specific aphobic stereotypes and tropes that get reproduced.

Now, a trope is not necessarily a bad thing; indeed, many tropes are time-honored creative conventions that, when used properly, can form the backbone of a great story. But like anything, tropes have a dark side, and when it comes to the way media tends to portray the asexual and/or aromantic spectrums (or any experience even remotely like them), that side can get very dark indeed. In some cases, these aphobic tropes have become staples of their respective genres and so we see them get reproduced over and over again. When an aphobic joke gets a laugh in a popular comedy, it slowly becomes a comedic norm. When genre-defining sci-fi or fantasy tells stories where it’s okay to discriminate against non-sexual people/races or showcases stories about non-sexual people searching for sex as part of humanity, it becomes the go-to character and worldbuilding tactic.

Media of all kinds, although endowed with the power to explore endless types of relationships between varied and diverse characters, tends to focus on sexual and/or romantic relationships almost exclusively. Much like tropes themselves, this is not something that should necessarily be embraced or condemned, but the more we see media push these boundaries, the more difficult it becomes for aspec or arospec people to have any sort of recognizable voice. And the more these boundaries get pushed, the more aphobic tropes become relied upon and begin to become accepted parts of our media background and landscape.

The tropes I’ve come to notice as being the most prevalent and pernicious to the aspec and arospec communities are not on any official list; they are simply terms I myself have come up with to describe the trends I tend to see in popular media. Many of these can be easy to spot and all of them will have their own post down the line, but in this post, let’s go over the basic tropes I often notice in media that portrays non-sexual and/or non-romantic characters. These tropes derive from popular misconceptions people in these communities face and ways we are treated as a result: “Asexuality = Childish/Prudish,” “Asexuality & Aromanticism = Frigid/Emotionally Stunted,” “Sex or Romance = An Essential Part of Humanity,” “Asexuality is a Ploy for Attention/a Medical Condition/a Lie,” “Asexual & Aromantic People Need to Be/Can Be Fixed,” and a scenario in media I like to call “Compulsory Romance.”

A note on terminology:

As you can tell, I refer to a lot of these tropes using the word "asexual" or "asexuality," or focusing on the sexual nature of a trope in particular. This is mostly done for brevity. I want to emphasize that all of these tropes also tend to apply to arospec people and generally non-romantic characters too, as well as a variety of identities on the asexual spectrum. Additionally, when I discuss the aphobia in these tropes, this discrimination applies to ace and aro identities both, as well as many other identities on and in between those spectrums.

Additionally, I tend to refer to many of the characters I discuss here as "non-sexual" or "non-romantic." Of course, any identity, regardless of where it falls on the asexual or aromantic spectrums, does not automatically mean "no sex" or "no romance." However, this is usually what these pieces of media tend to portray, so I am using these terms as broad, catch-all terms to describe what we see portrayed. Please see my Glossary of Terms for more in-depth definitions for many of the terms I will use today and on the blog in general.

Posts referenced in this one; Spoiler warnings still apply:

"Asexuality in Star Trek," "Remembering the Forgotten Boy: An Asexual Analysis of Cole from Dragon Age"

Content warning: Discussions of Aphobia/Asexual Discrimination

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Trope #1: “Asexuality = Childlike/Prudish”

The first trope, “Asexuality = Childish/Prudish,” is the long-enduring stereotype that people who do not express interest in sex are naïve to the point where they don’t understand sex. Worse, believing asexual or non-sexual people are prudish – scared or shocked by sexual intimacy – is a derogatory way to dismiss us and the things we value. “Prude” and any other terms associated with this particular trope imply that non-sexual people are boring, bland, buttoned-up weirdos who are outside the realm of the norm. We tend to see this portrayed a lot in media on a sliding scale ranging somewhere from “non-sexual people are so innocent they’re like children” to “non-sexual people are sticks in the mud who just need to be shown how to have a good time.” The first of these makes it so that allosexual people (those who do experience sexual attraction) set themselves up as being more knowledgeable than aspec people, meaning they can set themselves up to call the shots over what is good for aspec people. This plays into that second off-shoot, leading sexual people to think they are not only allowed to make judgement calls about what aspec people need, but that this meddling is an important and necessary thing.

Remember the Vaalians, the non-sexual alien race from Star Trek: The Original Series episode “The Apple”? In them, we see an excellent example of how media encourages us to look down on, trivialize, and belittle the experiences of non-sexual people. In the Vaalians, we see nearly every possible childlike trope thrown at the wall, which shows us with crystal clarity that the Vaalians' lives are ripe for meddling. As I discussed in that essay, this interference is shown as permissible because it will “improve” the Vaalians' lives. For that reason, although this trope can seem harmless, it is actually quite damaging, because it takes a very harmful notion aspec people face on a daily basis and dresses it up as something that is actually helpful. The notion of treating aspec people like children who can’t make decisions about our own lives and setting allosexual people up as arbiters for us has some incredibly dark implications and opens up very disturbing doors that most of the lightheartedness of this trope belies.

Trope #2: “Asexuality & Aromanticism = Frigid/Emotionally Stunted”

Our next trope has shades of the previous one, but in a different flavor. While “Asexuality = Childlike/Prudish” implies aspec people don’t understand sex, “Asexuality & Aromanticism = Frigid/Emotionally Stunted” implies aspec (and especially arospec) people don’t understand life. This trope is the belief that aspec and/or arospec people are cold or emotionless, and that these qualities and our lack of sexual or romantic interest are intertwined. Furthermore, this trope is usually employed to make the audience pity these non-sexual or non-romantic characters and harbor the belief that they are missing out – on sex, on relationships, on emotion, on happiness, and indeed on life in general.

Often times, media frames this as something we should feel sad about, but media is not encouraging us to empathize with the non-sexual or non-romantic character and see through their eyes how it feels to be rejected by the world. We are not at all encouraged to imagine what a world might look like where that person is accepted and is made to feel like they belong. Rather, we are shown that the character’s sadness is because they are living in a way that is adverse and harmful to themselves and that they should change themselves accordingly in order to fully live in harmony with the world and the people around them.

Labeling aspec and arospec people as childish is insidious because it makes it seem like allosexual people are duty-bound to help save us; labeling aspec and arospec people as emotionally stunted is, in some ways, almost worse because it makes it seem like changing an ace or aro person’s behavior is merciful. This trope allows media to claim that not wanting sex and/or romance is this weird, foreign thing that doesn’t mesh with the normal human condition. Thus, this trope is particularly played up for aromantic asexual people.

Trope #3: “Sex or Romance = An Essential Part of Humanity”

Both the aforementioned tropes point to this next trope that “Sex or Romance = An Essential Part of Humanity.” Labeling aspec people as childlike or emotionally stunted is inherently saying they are “other” or “less than,” and often times characters who are victims of those previous tropes are victims of this one too. But this trope often goes a step further in that it portrays non-sexual or non-romantic characters as literally not human. As such, this trope tends to come up a great deal in science fiction and fantasy, although it can be found in all genres and with regular human characters too. However, when it is used for non-human characters, I would argue the result is a one-two punch of stereotypes.

For a start, there are some inherent issues that come about from portraying non-sexual or non-romantic characters as also non-human. If these characters are the only characters in a piece of media like that (and they usually are) then it goes to further entrench the idea that not wanting sex or romance is a strange thing outside of the realm of human experience. However, because it is still possible for non-human characters and races to be well-developed relatable characters with whom we can identify, it is likewise possible that non-human aspec or arospec characters could still be valuable – such as the character of Cole in Dragon Age, for example.

Unfortunately, media tends not to let them be ace or aro and often times sex and/or romance are portrayed as something these characters must experience in order to fully attain humanity. This quest is usually framed as some sort of ultimate pinnacle for which they are striving, as I mentioned in my Star Trek essay for Seven of Nine and will discuss again when I talk about Data. Perhaps the worst part about this trope is the notion that non-human characters are somehow not complete, that they must change who they are in order to be human; that in turn can make real life aspec and arospec people feel less human than everyone else around us and serves as a good example of how something that seems harmless on the surface can actually be dehumanizing.

Trope #4: “Asexuality = A Ploy for Attention/A Medical Condition/A Lie”

Unfortunately, one of the most starkly real-world examples of an aphobic trope is the idea that asexual people aren’t really asexual at all, but rather that something must be wrong with us. In fact, being asked if you’ve been to the doctor when you try to tell someone you don’t experience sexual attraction is so ubiquitous a response that it feels like some kind of grim asexual rite of passage. Therefore, this can be one of the most demoralizing tropes to see reproduced in media. One of the best examples I can think of that showcases this trope is a horrible episode of the medical drama House where a man who is literally identified on screen as being asexual turns out to only be asexual because he has a brain tumor.

Much like some of the other tropes mentioned here, part of what makes this so insidious is because it masquerades as a good intention. Of course those who care about you want to see you healthy, but when that extends to them believing there’s something wrong with you rather than accepting you as a valid, whole person who just happens to be different than they are, being your true authentic self around that person becomes incredibly difficult.

Even worse is the assumption that asexual people aren’t actually asexual because they’re just lying in order to get attention – because they want to feel “different” or “special.” This plays into a lot of why I personally believe aphobia is so widespread in our society. Sex has been a part of the human experience since the beginning of humanity and it's difficult for people to wrap their heads around the idea that there might be people who don’t share in this supposed “common experience.” As discussed with the previous trope, society has been made to believe that sex is such a universal, essential, inherent part of the human experience that any evidence presented to the contrary seems bizarre and out of place. When media reinforces this idea, it becomes even harder for aspec people to find acceptance.

Trope #5: “Asexual & Aromantic People Need to Be/Can Be ‘Fixed’”

All of the tropes and stereotypes we just discussed play into the idea that asexuality, aromanticism, and their related identities are not valid orientations, but some sort of undesirable defects that need to be corrected. In media, this is usually portrayed as something relatively simple and non-harmful, when real world ideas about this very thing are just the opposite. The more media tries to sell the notion that non-sexual and non-romantic people are weird, sad, unfulfilled freaks of nature, the more it becomes accepted – and expected – that those same people will eventually see the error of their ways. And if they don’t, media often tells us that they must be helped along to that conclusion, which is where this trope comes into play.

We see this in everything from comedies to romances to medical dramas and beyond. The worst part of this is that, often times, this harmful behavior is done unconsciously, with people not really realizing just how damaging their actions truly are. When media portrays that “fixing” asexual and aromantic people is not only easy, but possible, acceptable, and even helpful, it shows how much aphobia gets excused in culture and why it’s so important to talk about it.

Trope #6: “Compulsory Romance”

I would argue that the mechanics of the previous trope mean that we are shown how a non-sexual or non-romantic person goes about becoming “normal.” Often times, their discovery of sex or romance is a focal point, and attention is drawn to it by the character themselves or the other characters around them. “Compulsory Romance,” on the other hand, is a trope that feels like it happens behind the scenes rather than in front of us.

Whenever a character has not expressly been singled out as non-romantic but still exhibits those tendencies and then is suddenly given a relationship out of nowhere, I tend to suspect this trope is at play. My belief is that people involved in media – whether the creators, writers, even fans, etc. – find it so incognizable that characters would not wish to be in romantic relationships that they end up forcing them into it. Often times, these romances feel (at least to me) rushed or forced, hence the name of the trope, as if they are being done simply because it feels necessary.

Although this one may seem relatively mild compared to the other tropes I’ve listed here, it serves to take away characters that arospec or generally non-romantic people might otherwise be able to identify with, and makes it all the more challenging for us to feel valid or have characters we can use to describe our experience. Think, for instance, of what I said in my Cole essay; as an AroAce person who finds Cole immensely relatable, the fact that he gets a girlfriend if he becomes more human is a deep wound that, on the surface, probably seems like no big deal. “Compulsory Romance” as a concept is something that many non-romantic people are forced to navigate on a daily basis in our personal lives, and so to have to navigate it when looking for a character to identify with is very draining indeed.

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Earlier in this essay, I mentioned that asexuality, aromanticism, and their other related identities can be hard to accept because sex and romance are considered the longest enduring traditions of humanity. I would argue, however, that there is a more enduring, more universal tradition that makes us human, and that is a love for stories. Whether telling them or experiencing them, the art of storytelling is the way we as people come to understand the world, the people in it, and ourselves.

It can be easy to forget when we simply sit down to watch a few hours of TV after a busy day or play a video game to kill a lazy Sunday that media is a powerful culture shaping tool. Similarly, tropes are a powerful media shaping tool whose impact can be felt in countless pieces of media over countless decades. I know firsthand what media is capable of and the ripples it can cause and so I hope that, by pointing out the negative tropes in media, perhaps the ripples felt by aspec and arospec people can become more positive in the future.