Recently on Aven, there was a thread - mostly dominated by women and nonbinary people - in which aros talked about the "You'll Meet The Right Guy Someday" speech that so many arospec DFAB people have gotten from our families and friends. I commented something that a lot of arospec women apparently found relatable, about how allosexual aro women, specifically, are affected by amatonormativity, arophobia, and our culture's weird mix of sex-obsession and sexual repression.
Here's the comment: (CW: slut shaming, misogyny, heterosexism, sexualization of children, amatonormativity, arophobia, romance mentions, sex mentions)
I'm bisexual aro and I keep hearing people say things like this. If I mention my romance repulsion, I'm told that "romance isn't bad". No it isn't, but amatonormativity is and could you stop assuming that everyone innately wants to date?
And I feel like things like this are especially harmful to aromantic allosexual women. From a young age, romance is pretty much shoved down our throats. It's in virtually every piece of media we consume. It's what saves Cinderella from an abusive family, wakes up Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, turns the Beast human. Romance is considered a defining factor in what makes someone human, what makes life worth living. And the romances that we saw as children were always always always between women and men. They always included traditionally attractive white men "saving" traditionally attractive white women, and we internalized the belief that men needed to save and protect us.
Then we would go to school and see other little girls, straight little girls, go boy-crazy and not know what to say when they ask us who our crushes were. We'd be "reassured" that we'd have one someday.
We'd listen to our mothers talk about how good girls didn't have sex, especially not with boys they weren't in a serious romantic relationship with and DEFINITELY not ever with other girls, and hear laughingly about how we might not have any crushes on boys right now but we'd meet one some day. We'd listen to our fathers talk about how boys just wanted to use us - what is it with men attacking other men but then turning around and accusing feminists of misandry? - and how we weren't allowed to date until we were thirty, as if it was inevitable that we'd be straight. We were told that we were Daddy's little girls, extensions of our parents but not truly people in our own right.
When we got older, all our friends would get into monogamous, heterosexual romantic relationships and we'd wonder why we weren't interested. If we were sexually attracted to other girls, we would be told that girls like that were disgusting and predatory. If we were sexually attracted to boys, we were told that we were sluts and bitches for wanting sex with boys but not dating them. And god forbid we be attracted to both.
From the mainstream gay rights movement, we'd hear all kinds of "affirming" rhetoric about how love was love, how everyone felt love, how love was what made us human. But then how come we didn't love the same way everyone else did? For aromantic LBPQ girls who didn't feel platonic or familial love either, did they even feel human at all?
We were told that being gay wasn't about sex - as if there was anything wrong with being a girl and wanting and enjoying sex with girls - but for us, it WAS. It WAS about sex, and because of that we were made to feel that we were "bad lesbians" or "bad bisexuals", that we just had internalized homophobia, that we weren't really gay or bi if we didn't want to date women, that we were justifying homophobia by being sexually attracted to women but not romantically.
If and when we entered a queerplatonic relationship, we were told that we should call it friendship but at the same time heard language that devalued friendship while putting romance on a pedestal. "Just friends", "more than friends", "serious relationship" (as if friendship couldn't be a serious relationship), "friendzone" (as if we owed men, or anyone else for that matter, sex for being nice to us; as if our friendship was a punishment or a consolation prize). As aros, our friends in romantic relationships would treat us like background noise, always secondary to their romantic partners but still come to us to talk about them whether we wanted to hear it or not. As women, we were expected to do everyone else's emotional labor for them and to not have any needs of our own. As aro women, we were expected to be okay with all of this.
Aro women shouldn't be expected to be okay with ANY of this.
If you also identify, at least partly, as an arospec woman, comment and share your own experiences with the intersection of arophobia and misogyny.
Here's the comment: (CW: slut shaming, misogyny, heterosexism, sexualization of children, amatonormativity, arophobia, romance mentions, sex mentions)
I'm bisexual aro and I keep hearing people say things like this. If I mention my romance repulsion, I'm told that "romance isn't bad". No it isn't, but amatonormativity is and could you stop assuming that everyone innately wants to date?
And I feel like things like this are especially harmful to aromantic allosexual women. From a young age, romance is pretty much shoved down our throats. It's in virtually every piece of media we consume. It's what saves Cinderella from an abusive family, wakes up Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, turns the Beast human. Romance is considered a defining factor in what makes someone human, what makes life worth living. And the romances that we saw as children were always always always between women and men. They always included traditionally attractive white men "saving" traditionally attractive white women, and we internalized the belief that men needed to save and protect us.
Then we would go to school and see other little girls, straight little girls, go boy-crazy and not know what to say when they ask us who our crushes were. We'd be "reassured" that we'd have one someday.
We'd listen to our mothers talk about how good girls didn't have sex, especially not with boys they weren't in a serious romantic relationship with and DEFINITELY not ever with other girls, and hear laughingly about how we might not have any crushes on boys right now but we'd meet one some day. We'd listen to our fathers talk about how boys just wanted to use us - what is it with men attacking other men but then turning around and accusing feminists of misandry? - and how we weren't allowed to date until we were thirty, as if it was inevitable that we'd be straight. We were told that we were Daddy's little girls, extensions of our parents but not truly people in our own right.
When we got older, all our friends would get into monogamous, heterosexual romantic relationships and we'd wonder why we weren't interested. If we were sexually attracted to other girls, we would be told that girls like that were disgusting and predatory. If we were sexually attracted to boys, we were told that we were sluts and bitches for wanting sex with boys but not dating them. And god forbid we be attracted to both.
From the mainstream gay rights movement, we'd hear all kinds of "affirming" rhetoric about how love was love, how everyone felt love, how love was what made us human. But then how come we didn't love the same way everyone else did? For aromantic LBPQ girls who didn't feel platonic or familial love either, did they even feel human at all?
We were told that being gay wasn't about sex - as if there was anything wrong with being a girl and wanting and enjoying sex with girls - but for us, it WAS. It WAS about sex, and because of that we were made to feel that we were "bad lesbians" or "bad bisexuals", that we just had internalized homophobia, that we weren't really gay or bi if we didn't want to date women, that we were justifying homophobia by being sexually attracted to women but not romantically.
If and when we entered a queerplatonic relationship, we were told that we should call it friendship but at the same time heard language that devalued friendship while putting romance on a pedestal. "Just friends", "more than friends", "serious relationship" (as if friendship couldn't be a serious relationship), "friendzone" (as if we owed men, or anyone else for that matter, sex for being nice to us; as if our friendship was a punishment or a consolation prize). As aros, our friends in romantic relationships would treat us like background noise, always secondary to their romantic partners but still come to us to talk about them whether we wanted to hear it or not. As women, we were expected to do everyone else's emotional labor for them and to not have any needs of our own. As aro women, we were expected to be okay with all of this.
Aro women shouldn't be expected to be okay with ANY of this.
If you also identify, at least partly, as an arospec woman, comment and share your own experiences with the intersection of arophobia and misogyny.
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