Trope: "Asexual & Aromantic People Need to Be/Can Be 'Fixed'"

Image description: Seven of Nine (left) during one of her holodeck romance simulations in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Human Error". Not only does this episode feature simulations where Seven looks, acts, and talks differently than she usually does, it sets up a later plot where she essentially changes herself so she can have more "normal" human relationships - all of which play into the insidious trope of non-sexual or non-romantic people being changed to fit societal norms.

 

When it comes to the notion of "fixing" someone's sexuality or romantic orientation - or in this case, lack thereof - there is a lot to unpack. It’s a concept that has many dark notions in the real world and thus it is extremely unfortunate to see how often it gets reproduced in media with regards to non-sexual and non-romantic people. For a start, the notion that a non-sexual/non-romantic person needs to be “fixed” at all stems from the extremely offensive assumption that that person is somehow “broken” (which I will analyze in more detail when I get to the “medical” trope). When allosexual people assume that aspec people have something wrong with them, what they’re actually doing is setting themselves up as “normal” and setting ace/aro people up as “abnormal” or “defective,” which makes it permissible to make decisions for them and forcibly alter them. If I’m making this sound sinister, that’s the point, because media often frames this as anything but. In fact, usually when characters are “fixed” in media, it’s portrayed as simple, harmless, even kind, often shown as being “for their own good.”

Spoiler warning! 

The Big Bang Theory (various)

Dragon Age: Inquisition ("Subjected to His Will" and related dialogue, including Trespasser dialogue and scenes)

Star Trek: Voyager ("The Gift"; "Unimatrix Zero, pt. 1 & 2"; "Human Error"; "Endgame")

Posts referenced in this one; Spoiler warnings still apply:

"Trope: Compulsory Romance" "Asexuality in Star Trek", "I Am Alone, But I Will Adapt: An Asexual Analysis of Seven of Nine", "Remembering the Forgotten Boy: An Asexual Analysis of Cole from Dragon Age"

Content warning: Discussions of Aphobia/Asexual and Aromantic Discrimination

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So what exactly does it mean to “fix” an asexual or aromantic character? The answer varies considerably depending on the character and the universe in which they exist. For example, in a medical show, this will obviously happen thanks to medicine; in sci-fi media, it might happen thanks to technology (or, like the Vaalians from Star Trek: The Original Series, it might happen because you explode the giant papier-mache dragon that the natives worship). In these examples, it’s a literal fix – something is “wrong” with these characters and methods are employed to change them, again, “for their own good.” In other pieces of media, “fixing” a character is a social process, often involving peer pressure. This is why I believe the characters of Amy and Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory are not good examples of demisexual or even demiromantic representation, because the eventual changes in their relationship do not happen organically. Rather, they are both shown to be “normalized” by the influences of the allosexual people around them and, in some cases, shamed into becoming people that can be more easily identified with.

This is something I've likewise brought up when discussing Cole, the enigmatic spirit-boy from the video game Dragon Age: Inquisition. Cole has several AroAce tendencies, but if the player chooses to make him more human, these tendencies are erased, making it seem like they are unnatural things that only exist under extreme circumstances. This is exactly what gives this trope its fuel and makes it so problematic. Like an uncomfortable amount of media that makes use of this trope, Cole becoming more human is played up as being for his benefit and the benefit of those around him. When you arrive at this pivotal decision, the character advocating for Cole to become human argues that Cole being less spirit-like is essential for his survival, in spite of the fact that it would alter the very essence of who he is. 

In my Cole-specific post, I drew aspec parallels to how Cole first came to learn who and what he is and how it changed his relationships with those around him. No matter what path you take, Cole brings this fact up again, citing the loss of his friends when his spirit nature was uncovered. But in the human path, Cole says, “when I found out I wasn’t human, when I grew, I lost my only friend… this world taught me that changing means losing your friends, but now I know that doesn’t have to be true.” That is a beautiful, optimistic thought, and, in many cases, accurate. I was lucky enough to not lose my friends when I came to embrace my AroAce identity, for instance. But in some ways, it’s also a little naïvely optimistic. When human Cole has this thought, he even laughs at himself a little, which feels as though it diminishes his previous pain and fear (ironic, considering the human path is about learning to live with the hurt).

Image description: Cole from Dragon Age, a favorite subject of analysis on this blog

To diminish what Cole felt before is to ignore that some people do lose everything when they grow and realize who they are – and that even those of us who don’t lose the people closest to us often lose our sense of safety or belonging. I truly love being AroAce, but when I embraced my identity I also had to embrace that I would probably always be uncomfortable. Becoming my true self meant losing a great deal and learning that there will always be things that the people around me can do that I never will. That’s one of many reasons why I find the spirit path more genuine and more meaningful, because spirit Cole expresses his gratitude that the Inquisitor found out what he is, but didn’t change – and, perhaps most importantly, didn’t force him to change either. The human path, on the other hand, is built on the faulty premise that Cole needs to evolve - which means talking differently, acting differently, and, most notably, having a romantic relationship. The game presents romance and attraction as an inevitable part of Cole’s journey to become more human, and the fact that everyone acts like this is a good thing cements the idea that Cole has been normalized into someone more traditionally relatable. This fact, however, doesn't entirely make sense.

When Cole is asked if he’s now fully human, he insists that he was always fully human in terms of body, and that his mind still has some spirit elements left, which makes it even more strange that human Cole now feels attraction. If Cole was always human in body even when he was still a spirit, why wouldn’t he experience attraction then? And if the essence of his mind is still the same despite being more human, why would he experience attraction now? To me, the human path simply doesn't work. Additionally, while there are meaningful moments in the human path, I hate that spirit Cole is treated as “less than”. There’s nothing wrong with his spirit nature and the way he chooses to help people, but there are moments where even a more human Cole himself says he used to only help in the simplest ways, which seems completely at odds with everything we see during the game. In a way, it almost seems like a clunky justification, which makes it all the more confusing to me that players often seem to favor this path. As I’ve said before, I believe this is because media and culture have taught us to believe that fixing characters – forcing them to become more human, more sexual/romantic, more “normal” – is not just the right thing to do, but the accepted default.

Whether a character is fixed because of social influence or because of something otherworldly, this trope makes it difficult for people on the asexual or aromantic spectrums to find pride in their identities and to fully appreciate the freedom these spectrums allow. Aspec people should be free to explore changes in their identity, but this and other related tropes make it seem like any changes in the way you identify are proof that your identity was actually a defect to be corrected. Worse, it makes it seem like other people have the right to interfere in your personal journey in order to facilitate a conclusion that would make them more comfortable. This is something we see a lot in media when it comes to characters who, like Cole, don’t quite fit into people’s expectations. To use another oft-cited character as an example of this, let’s examine Seven of Nine, the former Borg drone from Star Trek: Voyager. 

Seven of Nine began her life as a human girl named Annika Hansen, who was assimilated by the cybernetic Borg Collective as a child, lived most of her life as a drone, and then was separated from the Collective by Voyager many years later. Right from the start, Seven’s liberation has some shades of being “fixed” – an act which is justified because the Borg are terrible, so her de-assimilation is seen as a mercy. Seven was made Borg involuntarily and made human unknowingly, a fact that horrifies her when she realizes what’s happened. Although her de-assimilation is justifiable, it is nevertheless jarring from an asexual standpoint to see the crew decide they know better than Seven when it comes to her own choices. Seven herself routinely says this throughout the episode, calling out the crew for subjecting her to what she refers to as just a different kind of assimilation. But even as she insists she does not want to be what they are and what they are forcing her to be, we are meant to understand that she doesn’t know what’s best for her. Although she becomes a valued member of the crew and learns to embrace her dual identity of both human and Borg, there are many times when Seven’s personality is questioned and not treated as valid, continuing the theme of the crew treating her like she doesn’t know what she wants. Because Seven exhibits many AroAce tendencies throughout the series, this becomes even more unfortunate when the crew tries to change her behavior and alter who she is. Two episodes I discussed previously – “Unimatrix Zero” and “Human Error” – serve as good examples of this.

In “Unimatrix Zero”, Seven is called to a dream-like landscape where drones can interact as the individuals they were before assimilation. Seven, who still has Borg implants even after her disconnect from the Collective, comes to this world as she looks in real life – meaning her implants are still visible. When she encounters a man called Axum, who called her back to the dream world in the first place, he tells her “you don’t have to look like that here.” This is another example of someone trying to control Seven's behavior, and becomes even worse when it’s discovered Axum and Seven used to have a romantic relationship. Bafflingly enough, the episode has Seven go along with this change in appearance, opting to look completely human, answering to her human name Annika, and even talking differently than she does in the real world. It’s a change that her friends notice, to the point where Captain Janeway even says that Seven being more human in Unimatrix Zero “fits her.”

Image description: This is Seven of Nine without Borg implants in Unimatrix Zero during the episode of the same name. Even during moments when she has trepidations about being in the dreamworld, she nevertheless keeps choosing to appear this way when dealing with the people there.

In the later episode, "Human Error", the visual of Seven without Borg implants and dressing more “normally” is employed again as a shorthand for the notion of Seven’s “human side,” a notion which already feels flawed on the face of it. The entire plot of the episode, in fact, is based on this notion that Seven is not happy with who she is and, missing Unimatrix Zero, wants to change; she goes about this by practicing romance on the holodeck in simulations where she chooses to look and act more human. Thus, it seems like the writers are saying she can either be Seven the Borg with her implants and her serious nature and no personal life, or she’s totally human and “normal” and has a personal life that involves romance. Because Seven is the one who programmed the simulations, the episode is clearly trying to say that Seven feels her Borg qualities are holding her back, since having the rest of her Borg implants removed in the simulations equals her being able to do more human things, which the episode demonstrates by having her look, act, and talk differently.

Episodes like “Unimatrix Zero” and “Human Error” feel like they take an all or nothing sort of approach with Seven’s character, which feels odd to me given how much she excels when she’s allowed to straddle both her Borg and human sides. Since these episodes are also the two that set up Seven’s eventual romantic relationship with the ship's first officer Commander Chakotay in the series finale “Endgame,” it is even more disappointing. Also disappointing is the fact that “Human Error” was supposed to be a metaphor about PTSD related to Seven's Borg identity. While Seven’s assimilation was obviously traumatic, other episodes make it clear she’s worked through a lot of this already and has learned to embrace the duality of herself. The notion that it’s now a trauma that she must overcome in order to have a “normal” life might have started off with the best of intentions, but it’s troubling from an aspec point of view. While trauma is a valid reason why a person might be on the asexual and/or aromantic spectrums, it should never be viewed as a defect they need to combat or a reason to treat them as "other." Furthermore, this episode makes it seem like Seven is not normal until she changes herself to attain a romance (one of the cringiest types of romance plots I can possibly think of) and makes us ask ourselves whether or not she has been "broken" this whole time.

I would argue that the plot of “Human Error” makes it seem like the answer to that question is yes, because it introduces us to the idea that one of Seven’s Borg implants is designed to shut down if she feels too much emotional stimulation. In essence, her supposition that her Borg implants are holding her back is proved entirely true by that plot point, and with it, so too are all the cringe-worthy implications proved true. But it gets worse when The Doctor reveals he can remove this fail-safe device, an act which even Seven herself refers to as being “repaired.” Given what eventually happens, this word choice becomes even more unfortunate. Although she initially refuses the surgery in “Human Error,” she eventually accepts it three months later in “Endgame” due to her relationship with Chakotay. When she tells The Doctor about her decision, he describes it as being a thing that will allow her to experience “the full range of emotions,” which includes intimate relationships, and which he refers to as an aspect of her humanity. Just in case this didn’t feel enough like fixing already, Seven immediately goes to Chakotay after the procedure and kisses him passionately, as though she can now experience passion in a way she never could before.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times – moments like these make it seem like any other emotion a person experiences is not valid and they’re not normal until they experience sex or romance. It often leads to allosexual characters devaluing the emotions of these characters, as we see when Chakotay accuses Seven of “flipping some kind of Borg switch and turning off” her emotions, implying that she is removed from normal feelings somehow. Moments like these raise another insidious side-effect of this trope and the aphobia that fuels it, because not only do we see instances where allosexual characters are trying to change the behaviors of a non-sexual/non-romantic character, but we’re seeing circumstances in which that character eventually gets so sick of being treated as abnormal that they want to change themselves. And unfortunately, that feeling is not something that exists only in fictional worlds.

That is why this trope is so deeply troubling, and why I tend to have a knee-jerk negative reaction whenever characters talk about being fixed, cured, or repaired, even in situations that are not specifically about sex or romance. By setting characters apart from the normal experience and then showing how their behavior and personalities are altered to better fit expectations, media is unintentionally forcing aspec people to deal with stories about conforming to societal norms, even in media that we should be able to use as escapism. I know what it’s like to exist in a world that wishes I was something I’m not, and I know too what it’s like to find that mirrored in the worlds of my favorite media. Whether in space or a fantasy landscape or just a normal world a lot like ours, the idea of being fixed is everywhere. But the notion that people are broken and require fixing is simply wrong, especially when it comes to the notion of sexual identity. No matter how you identify or don’t identify, you’re not broken because of it. And no matter what the world or media tries to say, you do not need to be fixed.