The Dangers of Using Aspec-ness As Punishment
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| Image description: "Though you may be young in years, the heart that beats beneath your bosom is as shriveled as an old maid's, your soul as dry as the pages of the books to which you so desperately cleave." Although Hermione from the Harry Potter series does not really have any clear aspec tendencies as far as I know, the way Professor Trelawney describes her in this scene from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban feels like something I might hear as an aspec woman. It also serves as a good example of something I like to call "Using Aspec-ness as Punishment," the subject of today's post |
The problem with uniqueness is that society never seems to
know what to do with it. Being “different,” “unique,” or “individual” is
something lots of things in society will praise – for example, think of how
many commercials you see that praise the uniqueness of people to sell their
products. Think of how many t-shirts you see at popular stores that proclaim a
message of embracing what makes us different. These are lovely sentiments; but
somehow, despite the often-widespread nature of this message, society as a
whole usually seems uninterested in practicing what it preaches. For as often as
you see positive messages about differences making us all better and stronger,
society often seems to encourage us to “other” people for a wide variety of
reasons, and to treat them as freaks simply because we can’t understand where
they’re coming from.
There are countless examples of this phenomenon, so much so
that I'm confident we’ve all experienced it at least once in our lifetimes – and
more likely, probably at least once every day. But of course, I wouldn’t be the
Asexual Geek if I didn’t tie this back to the issue near and dear to my heart –
the issue of being aspec in a world that is often actively hostile to aspec
identities, precisely because they are different. If you’ve read my Trope essays, you know some of the ways this takes shape in both media and real life;
if you’ve read my How to Write essays, you know some of the ways to try and
avoid these pitfalls. But today I want to go a little bit deeper into the
societal tendency to treat aspec-adjacent qualities as bad, sad, or worthy of
ridicule, how media often entrenches this belief by framing a lack of sex or
romance as a punishment, and the negative impact that can have.
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What It Means
to Use “Aspec-ness As Punishment”
I left the title of this post a little vague so I could sketch
the concept of “aspec-ness as punishment” out more fully as I went along,
especially because I don’t think there is any one set example of this. To me,
the notion of using “aspec-ness as punishment” is something that happens in
often subtle and varied ways, but always has the same conclusion – to evoke the
feeling that being non-sexual or non-romantic is a sad and undesirable state.
In some cases, this could show up as the classic “old maid” example, the trope
of pointing to an older unmarried woman who is often bitter, mean, and lonely,
and warning someone (often a younger woman) that they don’t want to end up the
same way. In more modern examples, we see the motif of the “crazy cat lady” or
the “lonely cat owner,” the notion that not having a romantic or sexual
relationship means you will end up a loner with no one but your cats for
company.
(Brief sidebar – not only is this stupid from an aspec
perspective, but as a cat owner, I can’t even begin to express how irksome I
find the notion that cats are aloof and unloving, and thus having cats as your
only companion will be a sad and lonely existence. Believe me when I say I find
my cat infinitely more kind and loving than most people I’ve encountered, and
the love she shows me is far more pure than nearly anything media tells me I should
want. For more on this, see the part of this post where I talk about Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation
and the emotions he feels for his cat Spot.) Okay, sorry, rant over. Back to
your regularly scheduled post.
Both of these tropes take the viewpoint that being alone is
sad and undesirable, and of course they and similar tropes all point to the
“fear of dying alone” motif. This is a very strong and powerful fear that I
think many people can relate to, and personally, as someone who likewise has
this worry but doesn’t have it in a romantic sense, I don’t think it needs to
be tied to sex or romance at all. But media, from romances to tragedies, often
frames this in such a way that ties it exclusively to romantic relationships (or
sometimes children, which is a whole separate thing that I don’t have time to unpack
in this post).
But the notion of using aspec-ness as a punishment takes
this a step further, and has a far darker side. It seems to say that people end
up alone and unloved because of some kind of character flaw, or even that their
loneliness is a just dessert – a valid punishment that comes about because they
are unpleasant or different. This is the main reason why I personally have
trouble with the notion of aspec villains, because it is already very easy to
have antagonists end up alone, or to have plot points where protagonists come
back to the designated side of moral good out of a fear of ending up alone and
unloved as well. The notion is that miserable people are lonely and lonely
people are miserable, and if you want to be good, you shouldn’t be either of
those things.
Think of how often this is framed using phrases that go something like “you will end up alone and with no one to love you.” This weaponizes loneliness – it makes it something to be feared and avoided at all costs – and entrenches the notion that being alone is a personal failing, that you must have done something wrong. It implies that a person who is alone is lacking something fundamental, and subtly (or sometimes not-so-subtly) prods them to change, like in stories about "grumpy loners who find someone to teach them love". Likewise think of all the cringeworthy romance tropes that feature people putting up with terrible behavior from a partner or even changing everything about themselves to get someone to love them, all because they fear being alone so much that they would rather be miserable or uncomfortable than alone. Essentially, these tropes say you should rather be "not yourself" than be "by yourself."
Now, of course there is nothing wrong with someone realizing
they are lonely and seeking to find a romantic and/or sexual partner(s). There
is absolutely nothing wrong with desiring that and wanting to have someone to
be there for you. But there is everything wrong with a society that teaches us
that loneliness is a personal failing or that our worth as a person is tied to
whether or not we’re in some sort of couple. And any relationship that tries to
make us believe we are worthless without it is a toxic relationship – whether
one of a romantic, sexual, platonic, or familiar nature. The worth of a person
is not tied into how they best stave off ever being alone, but rather in how they
deal with being alone and what relationships they choose to build when they
aren’t alone.
In many ways, this issue is also an example of why aphobia
and the discriminatory practices that prop it up can hurt non-asexual people
too. The phenomenon of being “othered” because you don’t believe the same
things as other people is universal, and so these things go hand and hand.
Think of all the times you’ve been sneered at by a friend or co-worker because
they don’t like your favorite TV show, your preferred sports team, or your
favorite band (speaking as a BTS fan, I’ve experienced a fair share of this
last one). Think as well of times this has occurred in bigger things, things
that are more important to the core of who you are – for example, when it comes
to your decision about what job to take, where to live, or whether to have
children. I will be getting into these things more in next week’s post all
about the ways aphobia can hurt allosexual people as well as aspec ones.
Being looked down upon for something that is dearly held to
you hurts. It’s something that can affect anyone at any time, and anyone can be
a perpetrator or a victim of it. But when society not only allows it to happen,
but also creates an environment in which it can flourish the way we see happen
to aspec people, it becomes even worse.
How We See This
Happen in the Real World
Technically, “Aspec-ness as Punishment” could have been part
of my Trope series, since all of those posts look at common media tropes for
non-sexual or non-romantic people that have real world implications. But I
chose to include it in my smaller group of posts about the dangers of certain
behaviors because, like my posts about the dangers of shipping and the dangers of sexualizing non-sexual characters, I think it’s a silent killer. The tropes tend
to be big, flashy examples of why bad portrayals of non-sexual or non-romantic characters
are problematic (and often make for terrible storylines in general). In many
cases, I don’t have to stretch the point much to demonstrate why they are so
egregious. But I call the “Dangers of” posts dangers precisely because
it can be hard to emphasize exactly why these things are such an issue. In the
case of using aspec-ness as punishment, I think it can be difficult to spot it
or understand it unless you yourself are aspec or have an aspec person who is
close to you, and so it can fly under the radar.
I also think it’s tempting to believe that using aspec-ness
as punishment is only found in media. I think it’s easy to believe we only see
it in eye-roll worthy old maids, tasteless jokes about cat ladies, or in
cartoonish villains the likes of which belong in Scooby-Doo episodes. This
ignores the many ways people can do this to aspec – and likewise to allosexual – people in real
life. For instance, earlier in this post I mentioned the phrasing of “ending up
alone with no one to love you,” which I am confident is something people who
don’t have romantic or sexual relationships hear all the time. Another very
simple way to do this without even fully realizing it is to ask “what is wrong
with you?” to someone who does not have or want sex and/or romance in their
life, and to act as though they are missing out.
I often think of the example of seeing someone eating alone
in a restaurant. I think most things in our culture have taught us to assume
that that is a sad thing. The notion of eating alone, sleeping alone, drinking
alone, etc. have become shorthand for “lonely,” completely missing the fact
that "being alone" and "being lonely" are not the same thing. I believe there has
been a somewhat recent shift – especially in female empowerment circles – of
trying to show that being alone is not automatically sad, and in fact is
empowering. While this is generally something I would love to see more of, I do
think it could be taken a step further. Rather than looking at being alone as
empowering, I would love to see more things that just look at it as though it
were normal.
This brings me back to the intro of this post where I
mentioned all the things that make us unique and different. For the most part,
I don’t think too many of us feel shame because of the simple things, like your
favorite color being purple or your favorite beverage being lemonade. These things
are just part of who we are – neither good, nor bad, nor worthy of ridicule,
just things. If we do experience any type of shame, it is often jocular, like a
friendly sports team rivalry with a friend, or calling a TV show our “guilty
pleasure.” But even so, there are often many instances in which people try to
shame us for our preferences, and this increases the higher up the ladder you
go. When you get into those big decisions and big factors, criticism is almost
a guarantee. But if we don’t feel shame for our small decisions and the tiny
things that make us who we are, why are we forced to feel shame for the big
ones? Aren’t they just as much a part of who we are as the smaller things?
How to Combat “Aspec-ness
as Punishment”
As I’ve said many times on the blog, I don’t believe this is
something that will vanish overnight – and indeed, I don’t think it will likely
vanish ever. I think it’s intrinsic to human nature to judge people by certain
metrics, and not even necessarily in a bad or discriminatory way, but in a way
that allows us to figure out who we want to associate with. That
is a whole separate debate, but for this post, if we can’t solve the issue, what
are some steps we can take to at least make things a little bit better? While I
don’t have the magic answer, I think a vital tactic is for people to take a
step back and examine their way of thinking and experiencing reality. And that
does not mean having a major paradigm shift necessarily, but it does mean
trying to understand where another person is coming from.
In my last post, which was about writing non-aspec stories
in a manner that is still aspec friendly, I discussed the notion that “something
that’s commonplace to us might be foreign to someone else; our reality might be
unfathomable to them, and our dreams might be their nightmares.” The exact same
thing is true when it comes to “aspec-ness as punishment.” It is a mistake to
automatically assume that someone who is on their own is miserable. It is presumptuous
to think they need a romantic or sexual relationship to feel better about
themselves or the world. It is often erroneous to think that people who are sad
are sad specifically because they're on their own, that they can be fulfilled through some
kind of relationship, or that the relationships they already have or the
passions or the jobs or the pets, etc. cannot fulfill them as much as another relationship could. And above all, it is wrong to assume that people who are aspec
or have aspec tendencies are bad people, or that people who have ended up alone
have taken the wrong path.
Earlier, I mentioned the idea of the “crazy cat lady” as a
motif of someone being sad and alone with just their cats for company. Something
that I often half-joke about with friends is the fact that my desired future
plan is to one day become Madame Adelaide Bonfamille, the rich and single old woman who
plans to leave her fortune to her cats in the 1970 Disney animated classic, The
Aristocats. I say “half-joking,” but in all honesty, it’s really not a joke;
and although this is probably a very silly example, Madame Adelaide does show
us it’s possible to have characters who sidestep the notion of aspec-ness as
punishment. Obviously Adelaide is not shown to be an aspec character in a movie
from 1970, but she does show us someone who is, by the usual societal standards,
“alone” and doesn’t care. Being alone with her cats seems to be the greatest
pleasure Adelaide could want in life, and it doesn’t make her a sad, cold, or
bitter individual. If anything, she is not only still a loving, kind, and
vivacious person, but is all of those things precisely because she's flying solo with her cats. I think you get the picture of why I low-key imagine her life
when people ask me about my ultimate future goals.
All this to say that it is entirely possible to portray
non-sexual and/or non-romantic characters who are thriving. Portraying aspec
tendencies as a punishment needs to become less something that flies under the
radar and something that content creators and regular people alike actively
choose not to do. That begins with something as simple as seeing the difference
between being alone and being lonely. While the two things may be related, they
are not mutually exclusive, and that is a vital lesson for all people to begin
learning.
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| Image description: Madame Adelaide Bonfamille cuddling Marie and Duchess in The Aristocats. Adelaide manages to be elegant, charming, and kind, all while living her life single and with her cats. She is definitely my personal standard of #Goals. |
At the beginning of this post, I discussed the ways we as people are different, but there are also many things I believe are fairly universal for all people. One of those things is love, but not in the way society would often have us believe. The desire to love and be loved is not limited just to romance or sex, but expands to mean so much more and so many things to different types of people. Do we long to love friends? Animals? The environment? A passion project? A job?
This is something I talk about a lot on the blog, including in a post all about redefining love, where I point out how much of a mistake it is to assume that non-sexual and non-romantic people are without love. And it is a problem to assume that, just because they lack these things, they should be pitied or scorned. If love is an essential part of life, as I think many people believe it is, romantic and sexual love cannot possibly do it all. It’s time to put aside the notion that people without these things are lacking love, and to start looking instead at all the ways happiness and fulfillment can exist in a broad spectrum.
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