Trope: "Asexuality = Childish/Prudish"
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| Image caption: Sheldon Cooper (portrayed by Jim Parsons) from The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon is arguably the most popular character in an immensely popular show, and as such the barrage of non-sexual tropes used in his character are especially problematic and will be a frequent topic of discussion for this blog |
It’s hardly a secret that we live in a culture driven by sexuality, and that we see sex in everything from books to billboards. As a result, our society has come to view sex as the ultimate rite of passage, the boundary line between adolescence and adulthood. Obviously, the discovery of sexuality is a milestone in the development of many people and portraying this topic in various forms of media does make sense; but if you’re reading this blog, you know it is certainly not true for everyone. Furthermore, I believe this trend has given birth to a trope I call “Asexuality = Childlike/Prudish,” the idea that non-sexual people are innocent and naïve precisely because they do not have these experiences.
When it comes down to it, this trope is not a difficult one to find; there are countless instances of it across various media, so much so that I could hardly even begin to cover them all. Shades of this trope can be seen in everything from Fox’s musical comedy Glee, a show that made tolerance a central theme of many plotlines yet still felt the need to belittle and mock its sexually inexperienced characters, to BBC’s Sherlock, a modern-day adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes stories where we see Sherlock’s awkwardness when forced to deal with sexual situations.
Having a character be awkward when confronted with sexual frankness is not in itself a bad thing, but we often see this trope mixed with other tropes to create a dehumanizing cocktail. For that reason, I would say “Asexuality = Childlike/Prudish” does not so much describe what a character is or who they are, but rather how they are treated by other characters and how the media they’re in choses to portray them. This is something we tend to see a lot in comedies, where these characters are put in scenarios that are designed to net a laugh at the character’s expense.
While on the surface, this may not seem particularly harmful, the implications of this trope run deeper than one might imagine at first glance. Portraying a character as childlike because they don’t experience sexual attraction or don’t understand sex means that it is okay to make fun of them and to not take them seriously. This tends to cement the thought that, because they’re like children, they don’t know what’s best for themselves when it comes to their identity and that it is therefore okay to make judgement calls for them.
This is a trend that many aspec people see carried into their regular day to day lives. When the cultural atmosphere says it’s okay to treat you like a child, it becomes nearly impossible to share your struggles with people and have them understand. When everything in society says that sex is not just the norm, but the pinnacle to which all people should be striving, it makes it easy for other people to dismiss your identity as puritanical nonsense that you should probably lose if you want to become a full-fledged adult.
It may seem a little overdramatic of me to point to what has become, in many ways, an accepted comedic trope, but I believe it’s supposed silliness is exactly what makes this trope so pernicious. Being referred to as a “prude” is something that seems completely benign until you live with the reality of being called it every day of your life like I was in high school. Being looked down upon because you don’t understand the sexual side of life, nor do you want to, is a feeling of quiet desperation that has to be felt to be truly understood. Thus, although most people see this and other related tropes as “silly,” to many aspec people they are subtle ways in which we are stripped of our voices.
Spoiler warning!
The Big Bang Theory (various)
Dragon Age: Inquisition ("Subjected to His Will" and various dialogue)
Posts referenced in this one; Spoiler warnings still apply:
Content warning: Discussions of Aphobia/Asexual Discrimination
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As I mentioned earlier, so much of this trope relies on how other characters react to a non-sexual character, and we see this very clearly with how the sexual characters on the show react to Sheldon. When it comes to everything else in life, Sheldon is a genius (and often a very sanctimonious and irritating one), but when it comes to social situations – particularly sexual ones – he is utterly clueless. The fact that he’s intellectually brilliant is supposed to make these things even more amusing and his childlike naiveté is used repeatedly to gain an easy laugh, which is where the problem lies. Sheldon is not at all bothered by his lack of sexual knowledge, but the people around him are, and they decide it is okay to meddle in his life as a result.
That leads into my second point, which is how his relationship with the character of Amy further goes to make him seem like a child. When Amy is introduced at the end of the show’s third season, she is basically a female version of Sheldon and the two become close friends because of these similarities. However, as the show continues and Amy’s character changes a bit, she becomes desperate for her relationship with Sheldon to evolve into one of more emotional complexity, and then eventually to one of more physical complexity. If this were played well, it could be an example of two demisexual or demiromantic characters, but the way it is framed is anything but. What we get instead is Amy’s many vain attempts to initiate a sexual relationship with Sheldon by almost any means necessary. Over the course of several seasons, she attempts to shame, guilt, trick, and bribe him into a sexual relationship, all done in the name of comedy as he “hilariously” resists or else misunderstands her attempts entirely. In all of these instances, we are encouraged to root for and sympathize with Amy, not Sheldon, which further cements the idea that it’s okay to do these things to real-life non-sexual people as well.
The idea of being tricked or shamed into sex is a cringe-worthy notion when used on any character, but it becomes even more so when used on a character like Sheldon precisely because he does not understand it. Just to be clear, the fact that Sheldon doesn’t understand is not the problem; the problem is that the other characters act like it is. The fact that Amy feels the need to go to these over-the-top lengths to get Sheldon to sleep with her sounds to me like an asexual nightmare, as is the fact that Sheldon’s friends go so far as to buy him books about sex so he’ll understand what they’re talking about, in spite of the fact it makes him uncomfortable.
Having characters who do not understand, or are even made uncomfortable, by sexual activity is not only okay, but it’s something I as a sex-repulsed asexual would desperately like to see more often. But I want to see those characters respected and valued for who they are, rather than be constantly mocked and belittled. I want to see characters who don’t understand sex nevertheless be competent and respected. I want to see them be emotionally complex or written in ways that allow their lack of sexual knowledge to not only be valid, but also be part of their strength. And above all, I want to see other elements of their personality take center stage. An interesting example of these things can be found in the character of Cole from the fantasy video game RPG, Dragon Age: Inquisition.
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| Image caption: Cole, the spirit who came to the human world in the hopes of offering help even when no one can remember him, and an interesting subversion of the "Asexuality = Childish/Prudish" trope |
I discussed Cole at length in a previous blog post, so if you’d like a more in-depth analysis of him, I recommend checking that out. As mentioned in that post, Cole is a spirit of compassion who came to the human world to try and ease the pain of a dying boy – the real Cole. The spirit fails, however, and is so distressed by the death of the boy that it takes the boy’s form instead and answers to his name. Thus, the Cole we know in the game is not quite spirit and not quite human, but rather a unique and special individual entirely his own. Because Cole is not really human, we do see instances where he fails to grasp human qualities – such as not understanding how to tell a knock knock joke or failing to grasp when people are annoyed with him. And yes, it does often mean he fails to grasp sex, but while this could be used to infantilize Cole, often these moments are used more to make a commentary on his nature as a spirit.
For example, there is an instance in the game where another character believes he can get Cole “sorted out” by hiring him a prostitute. In normal circumstances, we would see this played up as an incredibly cringey awkward scenario in which Cole’s lack of sexual knowledge or experience makes him the butt of the joke. However, Cole turns this joke back around when he reveals he instead used his spirit powers to discover the woman’s hidden emotional pain and help her through it. This moment is brilliant because, not only does it derive its humor from the fact that Cole is able to turn the joke back around on the other character, but it also perfectly demonstrates who Cole is at his core – he doesn’t need to be a sexual being in order to have a purpose, and a very valuable one at that.
On another occasion, Cole is speaking with a character named Solas, who is considered something of a self-taught expert on spirits, and they discuss what happens when spirits possess people and indulge in human feelings, a concept that confuses Cole. When Solas asks if Cole has felt any interest in women since he came to the world of humans, Cole’s reply is literally “no,” said in a simple and matter-of-fact tone. The question is asked, the question is answered, the matter is dropped. Cole is allowed to be uninterested and it’s portrayed as completely okay. This is something I wish we could see in human characters as well, not just non-human ones, but it still feels like a little victory.
In addition to that, we as players are allowed glimpses into the complexity that is Cole’s existence and his world, something that rarely happens with characters like him. Through him, we get deep, cryptic, and sometimes even dark insights to the things that are going on in the game’s fictional world. This, combined with his skill at combat, all directly challenge the idea of treating him like a child, even if he is occasionally innocent or naïve. In this way, Cole represents a sort of best of both worlds, showing how a character can be sexually inexperienced without being treated in the harmful ways mentioned earlier in this post.
Unfortunately, something we see happen to non-sexual characters all too often is the idea that their asexuality – whether real or inferred – can and will be undone as part of their maturation progress, and Cole is a victim of this too depending on player choices. Regrettably, if you choose to make Cole more human, the game undoes a lot of the excellent groundwork it had previously established. In many ways, Cole is actually infantilized more if he’s made human than he was as a spirit because the other characters view him as if he’s “growing up.” Naturally, this comes in the form of jokes about him eventually discovering women and things like that, notions that were previously dismissed when he was still mostly a spirit. I will be talking more about Cole and the fallout of the human path when I get to the trope I like to call “Sex = An Essential Part of Humanity,” but for now, suffice to say that we see some rather unfortunate stereotypes come into play when it comes to the option to make Cole more human.
As a sex-repulsed asexual, this trope hits me particularly hard because I see my own behavior mirrored in these characters. Like Sheldon or Cole, I often fail to pick up on sexual innuendo and am constantly embarrassed by the allosexuals in my life who feel the need to point them out to me. Like the characters in Glee, I was endlessly mocked throughout my adolescence for being uncomfortable with discussing sex and was subsequently mocked for my lack of understanding. As I have mentioned many times before on this blog, my asexual experience included a lot of heartache as my identity was ignored and I was told I would one day come to understand, much like a more human Cole is told he too will understand what he has heretofore been missing.
I have spent a great deal of my life at times running from and at other times combatting the term “prude.” I want to believe that I am more than the limitations that word and idea place on me. I want to believe that people see me for all the things I am, not just all the things I’m not. But when media continues to reproduce the idea that being asexual, aspec, or otherwise non-sexual means being childish or prudish, it becomes increasingly difficult to feel like I or people like me have a space to be heard and respected.
Most of the time, I don’t believe this is coming from a malicious place, but it certainly comes from a place of profound misunderstanding. The idea that “words can never hurt you” is a cold comfort when that word is something that devalues a part of who you are and turns you into something that can be mocked and pushed aside. Just like characters should never be flat or one-dimensional, real people aren’t only one thing either; one day soon, I hope to see media respect non-sexual characters for their lack of sexuality and in so doing respect them for everything that makes them who they are too.
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