Trope: "Asexuality & Aromanticism = Frigid/Emotionally Stunted"
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| Image caption: Sherlock Holmes as illustrated by Sidney Paget. Holmes and Watson (also pictured) have been recreated in various media throughout the decades and nowadays many AroAce people wonder if Holmes could be considered an AroAce icon. However, his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has some thoughts on Holmes' lack of sex and romance that help form the backbone of this essay. |
Nowadays, when we want to see characters with superhuman powers, chances are we turn to superhero media or fantasy and sci-fi to satisfy us. But there are other characters who, although completely mortal, have what many people may describe as superhuman qualities nevertheless. Think, for instance, of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes. The fictional sleuth, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, has enjoyed the type of enduring popularity that any superhero would be jealous of and has been portrayed in various forms of media for decades. Intellect, observation, and deduction are Holmes’s superpowers, even as he insists everything he notices is simply “elementary.” However, just like the powers of flight or invisibility might make a superhero something not quite human, Holmes’s superpowers do likewise for him, setting him apart from everyone around him. In fact, Doyle once described his famous creation as being “as inhuman as a Babbage’s calculating machine and just about as likely to fall in love.” And that brings us to our next aphobic trope, which I call “Asexuality & Aromanticism = Frigid/Emotionally Stunted” – the belief that, if people don’t experience sexual and/or romantic emotions, surely they are missing out on life and basic humanity.
As I said in the post that briefly introduces these tropes, this particular trope is troubling for a few reasons, chiefly because it dehumanizes non-sexual and non-romantic people, turning them into objects of pity, confusion, or ridicule. Sometimes, the examples are incredibly obvious, such as in the aforementioned Sherlock Holmes example and in the character of Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, both of whom will be discussed in this post. Other times, it’s a little bit more subtle, sometimes lurking underneath plot points such as the classic “fear of commitment” or “fear of being happy” romance tropes. In some cases, this trope even literally turns aspec people into objects by portraying them as robots or other non-human things (more on this in a separate future post). But something they all share is the inherent flawed notion that romance and/or sexual desire are the chief emotional states and that those who don’t experience them are flawed.
Spoiler warning!
The Big Bang Theory (various)
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Posts referenced in this one; Spoiler warnings still apply:
Content warning: Discussions of Aphobia/Asexual and Aromantic Discrimination
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The first reaction I mentioned in the intro is pity, feeling sorry for non-sexual or non-romantic people because “surely they must be missing out.” This plays directly into a fact I discussed in my aromanticism essay: the fact that our society treats sex and/or romance as the highest pinnacle one can achieve. As such, not climbing to the top of that particular mountain is portrayed in media as a sad failure. In many cases, that pity is not well-intentioned, but carries with it a certain degree of horror and revulsion, as if these people should serve as a cautionary tale. Think, for instance, of the common (and usually pretty sexist) “old maid” trope – the fear of ending up alone and unloved – and how pervasive it is in most media. Too often, these characters are seen as angry, sullen, cold individuals and the common rallying cry is “you don’t want to end up like them,” which is used to inspire characters into relationships.
Next up is a common reaction most people have towards aspec identities: confusion. While the “pitying” approach focuses on the idea that not reaching this developmental stage is sad, the “confusion” approach treats it as an utter mystery that someone might not actually want that supposed achievement in the first place. This is why amatonormativity is such a problem – because it implies that all other emotions and relationships are second place finishers behind love and romantic relationships. The consequence of forcing people to prioritize romance in their life means that all their other emotions are tied into it, and so romance is forced to stretch to ridiculous proportions until it is enshrined in many people’s lives as the thing that gives them all of their emotional fulfillment. This is a topic I will likely cover more in depth when we talk about the trope I like to call “Compulsory Romance,” but it is applicable to this trope as well.
The last reaction is ridicule, a reaction that many non-sexual and non-romantic people know all too well. It’s one that can be found sprinkled throughout comedies such as The Big Bang Theory and its popular character Sheldon Cooper, whom I spoke about in my last trope essay, “Asexuality = Childish/Prudish”. In that post, I discussed how the show often relishes making Sheldon look childish in matters of sex or romance as a contrast to his intellect and how this is used to mark him as different from everyone else around him. These things are never shown as valid parts of his personality and are almost always used as cheap jokes at Sheldon’s expense.
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| Image caption: The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper (portrayed by Jim Parsons) is usually thought of as cold by most people's standards. Although he nevertheless has friends and other relationships, those same friends often try to get him to change his behavior to better conform with their own emotional standards. |
These different emotional reactions show us the multi-pronged problems with this trope and demonstrate how media teaches us to think of people who are non-romantic or non-sexual as having emotionally plateaued. Worse, however, is the belief that not experiencing these things means you are wholly emotionless. The idea that not experiencing sex and/or romance makes you incapable of experiencing any emotion at all is absurd, and yet it has become an accepted staple in much of our culture’s most recognizable media.
Think back to the quote I used in the intro about Sherlock Holmes and how Doyle described the sleuth as “inhuman,” comparing him to a calculator and saying that love is an impossibility to him. The fact that Holmes does not focus on love and seems to have aromantic and/or asexual tendencies is something that should be an inherent part of his personality, not treated like that makes him a freak. Although this attitude can be somewhat forgiven in the Victorian era, it’s harder to swallow it nowadays when we see that Sheldon Cooper and other characters like him who are not socially inclined are also treated in a similar manner.
There are plenty of non-romantic or non-sexual people who are socially awkward or feel uncomfortable in most social situations (myself included), and that is valid. Therefore, it is incredibly disheartening when we see media ridicule us for that fact and paint us as weird, emotionless enigmas or try to tie that lack of romantic or sexual interest to other negative personality traits. Again, Sherlock Holmes and Sheldon Cooper serve as excellent examples of this. Although neither of these characters can be labelled canonically aromantic or asexual, their lack of interest in love and sex seem to be very much a part of who they are. Unfortunately, the media they are in uses that fact against them and tends to couple those tendencies with parts of their personality that are difficult to deal with or even downright unsavory.
Sherlock Holmes, for instance, has always been described as distant, eccentric, and cold, a man who has no qualms about lying to the police, breaking into houses, and manipulating innocent people. Meanwhile, Sheldon Cooper is given his own set of irksome traits or strange quirks, such as his lack of empathy, his sanctimonious attitude, and the disregard he often feels for people he dubs as inferior. His lack of romantic or sexual interest is made to go hand-and-hand with these negative personality traits as if these personality traits are caused by that lack of interest. These qualities only go to entrench the idea that people without sexual or romantic interest are bizarre and unsociable because of this lack. Both Sherlock and Sheldon’s non-sexual and non-romantic natures are not put forth as something normal, but are categorized as quirks that makes them so unlike the rest of their friends and colleagues, marking them as outside of the realm of human experience.
Furthermore, these pieces of media also tend to ignore other emotions these characters experience – such as passion for their work or hobbies, the joy of discovery, and other general emotions that come with day to day life – and continue to label these characters as unemotional because of their lack of love. Ironically enough, in my own personal experience, the reason I am unsociable or may seem “frigid” is not because my lack of sexual and romantic interest makes me so; rather, it is because the rest of the world cannot accept those things about me and so I retreat. The world never sees itself as the problem in these situations and instead chooses to act as if it must be the aspec people who are the problem, and we see this play out in media too.
Through Sheldon and Sherlock, we see what happens when media frames aspec people – even implied aspec people – as cold and emotionless simply because of their identity. But what about characters who don’t experience romantic and/or sexual attraction who are shown to experience those other emotions I described? Two come to mind, both found in the fantasy video game, Dragon Age: Inquisition – the characters of Josephine Montilyet and Cole. Dragon Age: Inquisition follows the titular organization, the Inquisition, as it tries to restore order in a time of great upheaval in the fictional fantasy land of Thedas. I’ve discussed Dragon Age before in previous posts, specifically focusing on Cole, the spirit of compassion.
As I mentioned earlier in this post, I believe there are certain inherent flaws that come about with portraying non-human characters as aspec and I will be discussing those issues in more depth in a future post. Since many times they are some of the only characters we see who are non-sexual or non-romantic in media, in some ways they end up enforcing the negative stereotypes often used against aspec people, such as the notion that aspec people are not quite human. However, in some instances, non-human characters are well placed to force us to analyze what it means to be human and thus they can be used to explore asexuality and aromanticism in interesting ways.
Cole, in my opinion, is one such character. Unlike many non-human characters who fall into the “Frigid/Emotionally Stunted” trope, Cole is feeling personified. In fact, he’s about as far opposite from unfeeling as it's possible to get, given he is not just a spirit, but a spirit of compassion. Cole, a non-human character with AroAce tendencies, has those tendencies precisely because he is the living embodiment of a non-romantic form of love. I can’t recall a time when I’ve ever seen that happen.
Meanwhile, Josephine Montilyet is an excellent example of a human character who bucks this trope. She is the Inquisition’s chief diplomat and from the first moment you meet her, she is shown to be incredibly clever and capable. However, Josephine is not just the Inquisition’s diplomat; she is also a potential romance option for the player character. Within the Dragon Age series, it is extremely common for your romance to be “confirmed” through a sex scene and Josephine’s romance is notable for not having one, whether implied or otherwise, leading many people (myself included) to headcanon her as asexual or somewhere on the asexual spectrum in general. If Josephine is indeed on the asexual spectrum, we see in her an aspec person who is allowed to be so many things aspec people are not usually allowed to be in media – kind, warm, friendly, excitable, romantic, popular, and, on the whole, emotionally complex. Additionally, her romance path is allowed to be sweet without being mocked and, although it is slightly cringey to hear her friends call her “an innocent in love,” she is never ostracized for that innocence. As such, Josephine is a rare character who is allowed to be what she is without being forced to change or conform, a luxury that not even Cole gets to fully enjoy throughout the game, which makes it all the more noteworthy and something I desperately want to see more in media.
While Cole and Josephine demonstrate two good examples of characters who still feel deeply even while having aspec tendencies, they can’t do all the work by themselves. I would like to see more characters like them and also see more characters who don’t experience love at all, but experience the other complex emotional reactions that come with being alive. And above all, I would like to see those people treated as valid equals, not broken things in need of fixing or else sad freaks to be pitied and reviled just because they don’t have the accepted definition of “love” as a staple in their life.
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| Image caption: Josephine Montilyet from the video game Dragon Age: Inquisition serves as a good example of a potentially aspec character who subverts this "Frigid/Emotionally Stunted" trope. |
For as long as I can remember, I have seen media weaponize the idea of being alone. Indeed, it feels as if any media that is primarily concerned with romance frames “dying alone” as being the worst fate anyone can have. And while that is true for many people, what this media leaves out is that there are many different types of fulfilling relationships that exist and that deserve to be explored in media. And above all, this notion devalues all the other emotions that it’s possible to experience as well – pain, sorrow, joy, passion, the satisfaction of dreams realized, hope, and the other countless emotions that make up the human experience.
Sometimes I wonder if these pieces of media even quite understand what “love” is or realize that love can be encapsulated in any number of things that aren’t just expressed in romantic relationships. My own personal hope is that storytellers will broaden their horizons and cast their nets out into deeper depths where emotions and relationships of all kinds can be expressed with the same kind of enthusiasm as romantic ones are. Only then will we be able to dismantle the idea that not having a relationship means you are cold, eccentric, or unfeeling.
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