This review contains spoilers for Next to Normal and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

I recently watched a local production of Next to Normal, a 2008 musical about Diana, a mother who has had bipolar disorder for 16 years. I walked out during the intermission, after the end of the first act. I don’t know how the story ends, and I’m not sure I want to.

The musical was actually quite good. It also don’t think it was bad representation, like I had feared going in. The story of Diana actually articulates something I’ve been thinking about ever since I got my diagnosis.

In the opening scene we’re introduced to Diana’s family. And despite her complicated family dynamics, she’s thriving. She’s getting the housework done and then some, she’s initiating and enjoying sex with her husband for the first time in months, she’s staying up until the early hours of the morning just to see her son get home safely…

She’s having a manic episode.

Her husband Dan recognizes the symptoms, and takes her to see her psychopharmacologist.

Diana starts a new medication regimen. She tries medication after medication, slowly titrating up and down, the sessions dragging on for weeks, meanwhile each time she reports to her doctor that her depression and anxiety persist, while the side effects only get worse. There’s a surprisingly hilarious musical number where they list off all the horrible side effects of the meds commonly prescribed for bipolar. At the end of the scene, Diana reports that she doesn’t feel anything, she’s numb. Her doctor confidently declares: “The patient is stable.”

I chuckled.

This story resonated with me. I have a great deal of frustration and distrust of the field of psychiatry—not in the sense of distrusting modern medicine, but because:

1. Prescribing psych meds is more throwing-shit-at-the-wall than it is an exact science. That isn’t for lack of expertise on the part of doctors—we just don’t know how these meds work, why these meds work, why they work for some people and not others, or how to choose which meds will work best for a given person. You just try one drug after the other and hope one of them sticks.
2. The process is agonizingly slow. Titrating up on a new medication takes weeks or months. And there’s no telling how many drugs you’ll have to try before you find one that helps, if ever. Meanwhile, you’re suffering. It can be difficult to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
3. When it comes to bipolar, cessation of symptoms is often your healthcare provider’s primary goal—not your quality of life. Diana achieved “stability,” but at what cost? She couldn’t feel anything; she was numb to her emotions. No happiness, no joy. I see a lot of bipolar people who report having this experience on meds.

That last point in particular is where a lot of the anger comes from. When the news media reports on a high-profile case of some famous bipolar person having a breakdown, or even hurting someone, the question is always, “Why weren’t they taking their meds?” As if it’s like taking your daily vitamins. In “You Don’t Know,” Dan tries to empathize with her, assuring her that he understands, Diana lashes out—and rightly so—telling him he couldn’t possibly understand the pain she’s going through.

These meds are brutal. They make you obese and sedated and unable to focus, they kill your libido, they make you lose your memory, they make your hair fall out. Lithium can outright kill you if you’re not diligent about getting your blood work done every three months. And as in Diana’s case, they often numb your emotions, robbing you of your happiness. Bipolar people often describe it as being turned into a zombie.

Diana eventually flushes her meds down the toilet, and I deeply empathize, because I’ve been there. In “I Miss the Mountains,” she sings about how she misses the peaks, and even the valleys. Mania is a hell of a drug; it was one of the most challenging and scary experience of my life, and I miss it every day. Having the self-confidence I always wanted, having no shortage of energy for hobbies and personal projects, feeling like I could do anything… I don’t judge her for quitting her meds. People tell you to take your meds, but they don’t know what they’re robbing you of. They’re also not the ones who have to live with the side effects.

That being said, mania doesn’t just affect you, but the people around you, the people you love. During her episode, Diana experiences psychosis, and her family has to deal with the consequences. You take your meds, and unless you’re one of the lucky ones who finds a regimen that works for you (I’ve been remarkably lucky in this regard), they can make life a living hell. You don’t take your meds, and you can hurt people. This is the bipolar experience; having to make an impossible choice about what sacrifices you’re willing to make to protect the people you love. It’s not fair.

Eventually Diana faces the consequences of her decision to stop taking her meds: she tries to end her life. This isn’t something medication can always prevent—these medications are generally much less successful at treating depression than they are at treating mania—but in Diana’s case, this was a risk she took so she could experience happiness again, and people got hurt because of it.

While in the hospital, her doctor recommends electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), an operation in which electric current is passed through the brain to induce a seizure. It’s used as a last-resort intervention for medication-resistant depression and bipolar disorder, and it commonly results in permanent memory loss. When the treatment is proposed, Dan and their daughter Natalie are both horrified, surprised that the the procedure is even still carried out.

However, Diana’s doctor eventually convinces Dan, who is required to give his consent to the procedure in addition to Diana. From there, Dan pressures Diana into going through with it. This scene in particular was the breaking point for me. The decisions bipolar people have to make—the sacrifices they have to make—to protect the people they love. For Diana to have her agency and bodily autonomy stripped away by her husband and the medical system, pressured to undergo to a procedure that will change her life in ways nobody can predict.

What are humans besides a collection of memories? When those are gone, what’s left?

Ernest Hemingway once said to his biographer:

Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory […] It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient.

ECT did not save Hemingway’s life.

I left the theater because I didn’t want to know what happened next. Would the ECT “work” and alleviate her symptoms, tacitly condoning it as an effective method of treatment? If that was going to be the message, I didn’t want to stick around to hear it. Would the ECT leave her lobotomized, her memories gone, a shell of her former self? I didn’t want to bear witness to that, even in fiction.

Clearly Diana saw the latter outcome as a real possibility. She compares herself to McMurphy from the classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, who is forcibly lobotomized at the end of the book; a fate portrayed by the book as worse than death, given how the story ends with the main character murdering him as an act of mercy.

In the end, Dan convinces her to go through with the procedure. She signs her life away to protect the people she loves from getting hurt.

My friend held me as I choked back sobs. I left the theater in tears while they comforted me. I can’t recall the last time a piece of media made me cry.

It’s not fair.

Content warning: This post discusses sex and kink, though not in graphic detail.

When I first came out as ace, I had this specific idea in my mind of what sex is, and I knew it wasn’t for me. It still isn’t. So I labeled myself asexual. Later on, I began to realize there are some forms of sexual play that I do enjoy, and I joined my local kink community as a way to explore them. I’ve come to appreciate the kink community for providing a space where explicit negotiation about expectations and desires and limits is the norm (and, indeed, mandatory), which makes negotiating play much easier as an asexual person. There’s a strong culture of working together to plan a scene that everyone will enjoy, without judgement. Nobody looks at me strange for having limits around certain kinds of sexual contact, and I have in fact met many asexual people in the community.

Most folks think of sex as this concrete, definable thing, just like I did when I first came out as ace. But kink challenges that notion. The more experiences I’ve had in this community, the more I’ve come to realize that the distinction between “sex” and “not sex” is entirely arbitrary. It doesn’t exist. You can probably imagine at least one activity that is definitely sex, and at least one that is definitely not sex, but there’s an infinite field of gray space in between. A fun thought experiment you can practice is to list decreasingly lewd acts to try and tease out exactly when sex becomes not-sex. I’ll spare my audience this exercise in the interest of not squicking anyone out, but you quickly realize how silly it is trying to draw these arbitrary lines.

I eventually came to realize that what makes something “sexual” has a lot more to do with how you’re feeling than what you’re doing. It’s about the energy and connection; you can have sexual energy in your dynamic with someone without ever touching them. I like how Janet W. Hardy and Dossie Easton explain it in their book The Ethical Slut:

We think the question of when you’re having sex is actually sort of meaningless. Sexual energy pervades everything all the time; we inhale it into our lungs and exude it from our pores. While it’s easy to determine whether or not you’re engaging in a particular sexual activity at any given time—neither you nor we are probably having intercourse at this moment—the idea of sex as something set aside, a discrete definable activity like driving a car, just doesn’t hold up very well.

Recontextualizing sexuality through this lens, it’s perhaps no longer appropriate to say I’m completely sex-averse, because I do have that sexual energy in many of the relationship in my life. There are still boundaries to the kinds of sexual play I’m comfortable with—these relationships might not always resemble what most people imagine a sexual relationship to look like—but everyone, kinky or not, has their limits.

This raises the question of what exactly it means for me to be asexual. Because for a long time, when I’ve called myself asexual, being sex-averse is what I was referring to. If we expand our definition of sex to include things I’m not particularly averse to—as kink as done for me—am I still asexual?

Is having boundaries around certain kinds of sexual contact what makes me asexual? I hesitate to describe these limits as asexuality because they’re also tied up in my transness and my biochemistry. Should I attribute to asexuality what could be better explained by gender dysphoria or HRT or meds? Any ace who’s been told their asexuality is the result of a “hormone imbalance” will be quick to point out that these things are not the same as being asexual.

I find comfort and familiarity in calling myself ace, but I’m left without a clear definition of what it means to me. Common definitions of asexuality are predicated on the existence of a cohesive concept of sex and sexuality: asexuality is not experiencing sexual attraction, or it’s not having sexual desire, or it’s not being interested in sex. But if we accept that there’s no good definition of “sex,” then how do we define asexuality? If I don’t consider there to be a meaningful distinction between “sexual” and “nonsexual” play, how can I differentiate between allosexuality and asexuality?

The reason I continue calling myself ace despite all this doubt is the inescapable feeling that there’s something different about my relationship with sex compared to most allo people I’ve met. Sex is supposed to be this intense, intimate experience that connects you with someone on a deep level. For me, it’s more of an activity. Getting tied up and having the shit beat out of me is a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon with a friend. It’s a very casual thing; my favorite scenes are the ones where we’re cracking jokes and laughing the whole time. I don’t see sex as the foundation of an intimate relationship so much as a hobby I share with my friends. In fact, I don’t really associate sexuality with emotional partnership at all; my relationship with my nesting partner is completely nonsexual, whereas I do have a sexual dynamic with many of my friends. I don’t attach any special emotional weight to physical affection or who I share it with; affection is something I share freely because it brings me closer to the people in my life.

The kink community has really expanded my perspective on sex and eroticism. Kink has helped me explore my sexuality by giving me the tools to work within my boundaries and negotiate for play that I find enjoyable. Because for me, kink isn’t just about sex or bondage or dominance or pain; it’s a framework for negotiation and consent. It’s a core part of my experience of physical intimacy. My relationship with kink even extends beyond the scope of a particular scene or encounter: It’s the affectionate playfulness between me and my friends. It’s the unapologetic sex-positivity. It’s the sense of community.

I don’t know what exactly it is that makes me asexual. I don’t know how to disentangle my sexuality from my transness. I don’t know what “sexual attraction” is or if I experience it. And that’s okay, because “sex” is an arbitrary distinction anyways. Sex doesn’t exist.

Back in 2021 I got really interested in queer history after I wrote an essay on the history of the term “asexual.” Eventually, that interest expanded to aromantic history as well, and learning a bit about the history of our community has given me a new perspective on it.

Learning about aro history has shown me how this community was built by real people chatting online and making connections and building spaces together. Even the term “aromantic” was just proposed one day by a person in an ace forum trying to find people like them, and the term stuck. In a world of rainbow capitalism and performative displays of queer solidarity, the aro community feels refreshingly grassroots; we’re all just people trying to make sense of our identities and have fun along the way.

The aro community is small compared to other queer communities, and that gives it a sense of closeness and safety and comfort that I’ve come to love. Aro spaces feel like home to me, and that’s because they’ve historically been built by and for aros. These are spaces for exploration and discovery; I love how inventive this community is—inventing new ways of conceptualizing our identities and relating to one another, like when Meloukhia coined the term “queerplatonic.”

I love how silly this community can be at times too. Like how Meloukhia started the trend of calling your QPP your “zucchini.” Or how how Sciatrix coined the term “WTFromantc” to refer to their romantic orientation. Or how Raisin decided to start calling their platonic crushes “squishes.” These are terms that have stuck around and that many aros identify with, all because someone was having fun and being creative with identity labels.

Our history doesn’t stretch back very far; the aro community is still quite young, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. It means we get to decide the direction this community takes and nurture it for the next generation of aros. It means we get to build a world where aros feel accepted and validated and [platonically] loved.

I love this community. I love the fun terminology and the silly in-jokes. I love experimenting with new labels and terminology. I love talking to other aros about their experiences and learning more about myself in the process. I love writing for this carnival and hearing from all of y’all. I sincerely hope that as the aro community grows and matures, we keep sight of our history and don’t lose this close-knit sense of community I’ve come to love. I hope the aro community stays silly.

I hope this is appropriate for the Carnival, but I want to mention a project I’ve been working on for the past two years or so. It’s called Ace Archive, and it’s a website to document the history of the aro and ace communities. I would love to include more sources related to aromantic history in the archive, and I would love y’all’s help doing that. If there are any documents, pictures, videos, forum threads, blog posts, or anything else you think is significant in aromantic history, please get in touch! You can email me at contact@acearchive.lgbt or follow the instructions here. Even if you don’t have any sources to contribute, I would love to hear from you!

We typically define aromanticism in terms of “romantic attraction,” and we think of allonormativity as the assumption that romantic (and sexual) attraction is a universally shared experience. As I talk about in “Confessions of a Former ‘SAM Aro’” and “Plotting My Queer Identity on the Convergence-Divergence Spectrum,” this isn’t quite how I think about my experience of being aro. Since I don’t find concepts like “romance” and “attraction” intuitive, I prefer to define my aromanticism in terms of the way I navigate relationships, and I think of allonormativity as the collection of assumptions our society holds about how we can relate to one another. These assumptions underpin many of the problems I face being aromantic in an allonormative world.

One such problem that allonormativity imposes on me is how it complicates negotiating relationships, particularly with alloromantic people. I consider myself a relationship anarchist¹, so for me, relationships require negotiation; everyone needs to be on the same page about the boundaries and expectations of the relationship. How emotionally intimate will this relationship be? How physically intimate will it be? Will it involve certain kinds of commitments, and if so, which kinds? How will we refer to one another, and what do those terms mean to us? And so on. Tools like the relationship smorgasbord can help with this:

I’ve found that often, alloromantic people come into these kinds of negotiations with certain preconceptions of how relationships “should” work. They tend to categorize their relationships as either “romantic” or “platonic,” and they have a set of expectations for what relationships in each bucket involve. Through this framework, the negotiation is happening implicitly; the boundaries and expectations of the relationship are inferred from the labels. Relationship anarchy flips that on its head; the negotiation happens explicitly and upfront, and the labels come later. RA leans heavily on explicit communication, but for people who are used to relationships working a certain way, it’s very easy to fall back on implicit communication instead.

In an allonormative world, when you ask someone to be your romantic partner, there is a whole heap of implicit negotiation happening. You’re telling them you want your relationship to be monogamous, and assuming you’re both on the same page about what constitutes a violation of that exclusivity. You’re telling them you want to be emotionally and sexually intimate with them. You’re telling them you want to refer to one another using terms like “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” or “partner.” You’re telling them that you eventually plan to cohabitate with them. The list goes on.

The problem with negotiating a romantic relationship implicitly like this is that any aspects of the relationship that aren’t negotiated explicitly—anything that is left unsaid—is assumed to default to this standard prototype of romantic relationships that allo people carry around in their heads. And this is a problem for me, because I don’t have this intuitive sense of how relationships are “supposed” to work. Something is left unnegotiated because both people consider it “obvious,” and they only discover weeks or months or years down the line that they were not on the same page at all.

Alloromantic people have certain expectations of what an intimate relationship should look like, and a big part of what makes being aromantic in an allonormative world so difficult for me is that I need to make sure the people I bring into my life aren’t coming into the relationship with the wrong assumptions, or someone will get hurt.

Lately, I’ve been tackling this problem by avoiding “dating” and just negotiating the relationship in my life as friendships instead. I’ve found it’s often easier to say, “I want a friendship, but with xyz” than “I want a romantic relationships, but without xyz.” The distinction is unimportant to me, but it is important to many alloromantic people, and I’ve found that using the label “friends, but…” helps keep expectations in check.

There’s also something delightfully subversive about calling the intimate and affectionate relationships in my life friendships. I love my friends, and I love being affectionate with my friends, and I think that should be normalized. I don’t think these things need be reserved for “romantic” relationships.

I enjoy many of the things “romance” is considered to entail—terms of endearment and physical affection and going on dates—but I’ve never related to the concept of “romantic attraction.” I still don’t have a complete picture of how allo people experience the thing they call romance, but I can tell that it’s very different from how I experience it, and I don’t want that mismatch to result in hurt feelings and disappointment. So for now, I’m done trying to make “romantic” relationships work. And I think I’ll be content without them, because I have my friends ❤

In the US, our traditional model of family is the nuclear family: a husband and a wife and some number of children. Any other configuration—single parents, same-gender couples, childfree couples, multigenerational households (despite being the norm throughout much of the world)—we call “non-traditional.” But even among these “non-traditional” family archetypes, there are still certain commonalities. Even “non-traditional” families must align closely enough with prevailing social norms for us to consider them “families” at all.

Conventional narratives about family prescribe a rigid progression of life milestones people are expected to follow as they transition from being solely a member of their family of origin to having a family of their own: having a sexual and romantic partner, cohabitating, getting married, having children, and so on. Once you deviate far enough from this script, society stops seeing the people you surround yourself with as a “family”; they’re downgraded to “friends” or “roommates” instead.

There are allowances for “non-traditional” paths to family—being queer, being divorced, being childfree—but these are always framed as deviations from the prototypical nuclear family ideal. Exceptions to to the rule. The fact that we consider these circumstances “non-traditional” in the first place demonstrates the primacy of the nuclear family in our social fabric.

This strict progression that we’re expected to follow in order for our families to be considered legitimate in the eyes of society is closely aligned with the “relationship escalator” concept from polyamory discourse: the observation that in conventional romantic relationships, the relationship is expected to progress monotonically through a series of stages that represent increasing levels of commitment. Couples are expected to “ride the escalator” all the way to the top: marriage.

In this way, we can see how the concept of the nuclear family is closely aligned with conventional attitudes toward romantic relationships: society prescribes rigid rules detailing what makes a family or a relationship legitimate. The idea that marriage is a prerequisite to family, or that partners must cohabitate, or that partners must be sexually and romantically intimate are examples of how amatonormative social rules dictate the terms of our families.

This assumption that family is built around a romantic relationship leaves aromantic people, who often defy conventional relationship norms in their interpersonal relationships, without a clear path to having a socially recognized family of their own.

I think a lot about what my home life might look like in the future—that phase of life where you’re expected to “settle down.” For me, part of coming out as aro was realizing that I get to choose what this stage of my life looks like, without bowing to the “traditional” notions of family I was socialized with. That realization was freeing. But there’s also a certain comfort in the nuclear family archetype, in having a roadmap laid out for you to plan your life by. And conversely, there’s uncertainty and terror in having no well-trodden path to follow as you navigate major life decisions.

Society is so prescriptive about what defines a family that unlearning those narratives has been a journey for me. For a long time, “family” was an unappealing prospect because society had constrained my understanding of what a family can be, teaching me that monogamous romantic relationships are central to the concept. This made “family” feel like something society would one day impose on me rather that something I would actively seek out for myself.

Society fails aromantic people by teaching us that families must look a certain way and by delegitimizing the family structures we choose for ourselves. Even the assumption that “family” is a universally shared goal undermines aromantic people who don’t want or need certain kinds of interpersonal connection. Family is integral to society, but conventional notions of family marginalize people who don’t fit its assumptions.

Folks tend to assume that explicit representation—the kind where you have an explicitly queer character and make their queerness a plot point—is how representation should be done.

Honestly? I’m sometimes inclined to disagree.

Like, I’m as tired as anyone of “representation” being two women holding hands in the background of a shot for 0.4 seconds. I’m tired of companies censoring their writers trying to write queer characters. I’m tired of queerbaiting.

But I’m also tired of explicit queer representation that’s just terrible coming out stories written by and for cishet people.

Aces get real excited on the rare occasion we get explicit representation in media, and for good reason. We’re invisible. Light bends around us like a gravitational anomaly such that most people don’t know we exist.

I remember ace Reddit being hyped when that episode of Sex Education came out in 2020 with an explicitly asexual character. And while I haven’t watched the show, it really seems like they did their ace character right.

But you know what I crave more than that kind of explicit representation? Media that casually bucks amatonormative and allonormative social norms.

Y’all remember when Shang-Chi came out in 2021 and a bunch of aros were talking about Shaun and Katy’s relationship? There was nothing queer or even particularly subversive about it—they were just a male and female lead who didn’t have a romance subplot. And that was so incredibly refreshing to see. Just two close friends without any romantic interest or sexual tension.

And that got me thinking about how amatonormativity in media is so pervasive that it feels like a tired trope the world won’t let go of.

So many films and TV shows would be just as good—maybe better—without the corporate-mandated romance subplot. As cool as it would be to see more explicit aro and ace representation, what I think I want even more is more media that eschews common romance tropes in favor of nontraditional relationships. Romantic relationships that are non-sexual. Queerplatonic relationships—even if they’re not called that. People who are sensually intimate without sexual tension. Ambiguous relationships. Weirdly close roommates. Found families. Platonic friends who mean the world to each other.

From the perspective of asexual visibility and education, I feel like more nontraditional relationships in media would be helpful, maybe even more so than just teaching people the label.

Sure, you can teach people what “asexual” means and give them the whole lecture, and then what? They tell you you’re broken, they tell you you have a hormone problem, they tell you it’s “not possible,” etc. These people don’t have a conceptual framework with which to understand asexuality, and sometimes I wonder if what they need is to be deprogrammed of the amatonormativity and allonormativity they were socialized with.

Back in the mid aughts, David Jay went on a media tour for AVEN. He did interviews on ABC’s The View and MSNBC’s Tucker, and to this day I haven’t been able to watch either of them in their entirety on account of the acephobia. The folks interviewing him are brutal to him, while all he’s trying to do is patiently explain asexuality and his organization. Explicit representation relies on people being willing to change their understanding of the world.

Another reasons I like the concept of portraying nontraditional relationships in media outside of an explicitly queer context because I think amatonormativity harms everyone—not just aspec people. I’ve met non-queer folks who have what I would describe as a queerplatonic relationship¹, for example. I think a lot of folks could benefit from the assurance that things like intimacy and commitment can exist outside the context of a romantic and sexual relationship.

I guess we’re all looking for the same thing: to normalize asexuality. But lately, I’ve been thinking maybe it’s better to go about it by showing what asexuality is rather than telling.

This is one of two submissions I’m writing for the Carnival this month; the other one is “Growing Old and Finding My People”.

Participating in different aro communities and actually meeting fellow aros in meatspace has made me realize some things I didn’t realize when I first came out.

There are generational differences within the aro community. Which is obvious in hindsight, but is easy to miss when you’re a young aro who only talks with other young aros (which is easy to do, since the age distribution in many popular online aro communities tends to skew right).

I had this realization a little over a year ago when talking with an aro/ace friend about the aro communities on TikTok and Reddit. The Reddit aro community was pretty instrumental to me coming out, but I realized that I don’t really participate in that community anymore, and the main reason is that I think I’ve grown out of it.

That’s not a problem with the community itself per se—I just realized I was no longer in the average age range of the popular subreddits, and the content didn’t really feel as relevant to me anymore.

Meanwhile there are folks who have been participating in the aro/ace blogospheres for some 10 years or longer, and it’s a very different vibe here.

I’ve noticed this with the trans community too—realizing I feel somewhat disconnected from both trans folks significantly older and younger than me.

This has all had me thinking about how my place in the broader aro community will change as I get older.

I see a lot of infighting among queer communities between older and younger folks—problems like older queer folks using terms or conceptual models that younger queer folks find problematic or dated, because those were the preferred terms at the time. Older trans folks who call themselves “transsexual” and non-binary folks who came out before the term “non-binary” was in common usage are examples that come to mind.

I guess there’s a sort of persistent existential dread that I will become one of these “problematic” queers someday.

Conventional cultural notions of gender and sexuality have been shifting a lot in recent times. Like, the term “aromantic” is a fairly modern invention in its contemporary/queer sense, even if the underlying orientation is as old as humans.

So what happens if I fall out of touch when I’m older? I think about how impossible it is to explain being aro to most folks over 50, and then I remember that I will be 50 someday.

There’s a general sentiment among folks in my age group that people over a certain age are permanently and irreparably poisoned by the cultural norms they grew up with, but folks don’t always acknowledge that we too will be “old” someday.

Does the fact that I’m thinking about this now inoculate me against it actually happening to me when I’m older? Or is failing to adapt to cultural shifts as you age just part of being human?

Hey! I haven’t posted on this blog or written for a carnival in a while, mostly because I’ve been busy with other projects.

I think I want to experiment with the format of this blog a bit, so we’ll see how this goes.

This is one of two submissions I’m writing for the Carnival this month; the other one is “Navigating Generational Rifts in Queer Communities”.

A lot of aros talk about the logistical challenges of not having a person who fulfills the roles a romantic partner is expected to fulfill: someone to be your emergency contact, someone to split rent or domestic duties with, someone to take care of you when you’re sick, etc.

That was a huge existential fear of mine for the first few years after coming out as aro. What happens when all my friends inevitably find exclusive romantic partners, “settle down,” and forget about me?

Lately, that anxiety has actually started to disappear. These days, most of my friends are non-monogamous, and even the ones who aren’t still have fairly non-normative attitudes toward relationships. And the interconnectedness and level of mutual support in my relationship network has been nothing short of amazing—friends and partners and not-partners and metamours and roommates all looking out for each other.

When my close friend of several years started dating someone, it made us closer, not more distant like I had feared.

This friend and I even managed to fall into the classic aro trope of realizing that what we have is basically a QPR.

So yeah, that long-standing dread of being alone as I get older has started to disappear. It won’t be like this forever—friends will come and go as they always do—but I’ve gained a lot more confidence that among the queer and polyam community, I’ll always be able to find people who don’t treat me as secondary to their romantic partner(s).

I’ve also started to grow more comfortable with the idea that I don’t need to be a main character in all of my friends’ lives. Realizing that I have friends to whom I’m mostly a side character—and being okay with that.

I have friends who I only catch up with every couple weeks—or even months—but that doesn’t make them less important to me. I still treasure the time we spend together.

So yeah, amatonormativity still sucks, but I’m having far more success navigating life as an aro person than I ever expected, and that’s been pretty great.

I talk a lot about neurodiversity and queer stuff on this blog, but something I haven’t had the opportunity to talk about yet is just how interconnected those aspects of my identity are. For me, being autistic actually has a lot to do with me being aromantic/quoiromantic. This is something I tend to avoid telling non-queer and neurotypical people in order to avoid feeding harmful stereotypes that equate queerness with mental health conditions, but I do feel in my case that there’s a connection.

I talk in my submission for this month’s Carnival of Aces, “Plotting My Queer Identity on the Convergence-Divergence Spectrum”, about how my romantic orientation (as well as how I practice polyamory) largely comes down to me not identifying with the norms and social scripts our society has built around romance and relationships. I generally don’t think of my romantic orientation as “I don’t have the ability to experience romantic attraction” so much as “for me, the conventional distinction between romantic relationships and platonic relationships isn’t really applicable.” And I feel like my neurodivergence plays a significant role in that.

Autistic people often talk about our “superpowers”—things we feel we can do better because of our autism. For some autistic people, that might manifest as incredibly deep knowledge about a particular topic (what we call a special interest). For others, it might be an aptitude for problem-solving and rational decision-making. I consider one of my biggest superpowers to be an ability to look at social norms through an objective lens and to deconstruct and question them rather than taking them for granted.

Most of the social norms of the culture we grow up in we internalize as we develop, so they become obvious and intuitive for us. That never really happened to me. Every day I learn more and more about my own culture—things most of my peers never have to think about. My friends and I sometimes joke that I’m actually an alien sent from outer space to observe and learn about human culture, and it certainly feels that way sometimes. While this particular aspect of being autistic certainly bites me in the ass sometimes—particularly when I commit a faux pas because I don’t know any better—I still consider it a superpower.

Being able to look at social norms through an objective lens means that I’m not bound by them in the way most people are; I’m free to challenge and question social norms in a way many people aren’t, which can be incredibly freeing. I feel like this has a lot to do with my romantic orientation because being autistic means that I’m not bound by the social norms that govern how most people go about relationships. Looking at the courtship rituals and relationship escalators that our society expects us to follow—governing everything from how we’re supposed to feel to how we’re supposed to structure our life—the way most people practice relationships feels incredibly prescriptive to me.

The idea that you’re supposed to strictly categorize all the relationships in your life as either platonic or romantic feels very limiting to me. Most people would consider the way I practice relationships to be radical, but I personally don’t see how else I would go about it. The social scripts our society has built around interpersonal relationships don’t make much sense to me, so I simply don’t subscribe to them. And I feel like my autism makes this much easier for me than it might be if I was allistic.

As a non-binary person, I can’t help but go on a tangent to point out the growing body of evidence¹ for a link between autism and gender variance. There are lots of theories as to why this link exists, but the reason why I personally consider my gender identity to be related to my neurodivergence again has to deal with how I don’t internalize social scripts in the way most people do. As I’ve talked about previously, gender is largely influenced by the culture we live in, and being someone who is less susceptible to those kinds of cultural influences, I feel less compelled to identify with the gender binary prescribed by my culture.

I really appreciate this month’s prompts for both the Carnival of Aros and the Carnival of Aces, as I feel like they’ve given me the opportunity to talk about the weird ways in which my identities overlap and intersect. I sometimes feel like acknowledging these overlaps is taboo considering how hard queer people have to fight to dismiss myths about our identities being “mental illnesses,” and I’m happy to have a space where I feel like it’s safe to acknowledge that my neurodivergence and my queerness really are related.

This month’s prompt got me thinking again about my queer identity—not just my romantic and sexual orientation, but how they relate to the very queer way I go about relationships. Coyote’s concept of a divergent-convergent spectrum for understanding queer identities introduces some new language to describe feelings I’ve been trying to piece together for a while: how there are some aspects of my orientation that I consider completely independent and others that I feel can’t be meaningfully separated from one another.

I talked in “Confessions of a Former ‘SAM Aro’” about how I don’t really identify with the concept of a romantic orientation in the way it’s prescribed by the ubiquitous split-attraction model; the whole concept of “romantic attraction” isn’t really intuitive to me, and I don’t find it a useful conceptualization for modeling my identity. Instead, I prefer to use the term “aro” to mean that I don’t do romance and relationships in a conventional way. I use many labels to describe my approach to romance and relationships—aromantic, quoiromantic, polyamorous, relationship anarchist—and to me, these concepts are so intertwined that they’re difficult to meaningfully separate.

Most people would consider terms like “aromantic” and “quoiromantic” to describe a romantic orientation (or lack of romantic orientation or disidentification with the concept) and terms like “polyamorous” and “relationship anarchist” to describe a relationship style. These things are typically considered to be separate, unrelated concepts, to such an extent that having a non-hetero romantic orientation is typically considered queer, while having a non-monogamous relationship style, on its own, is typically not.

However, for me, these facets of my identity are actually fairly interconnected. They all boil down to the fact that I don’t distinguish platonic feelings and relationships from romantic feelings and relationships—at least not in a conventional way. I have lots of different kinds of interpersonal relationships in my life, and I’m not really comfortable strictly classifying them as either “romantic” or “platonic.”

This manifests as me being aromantic because it means that a lot of the social scripts and courtship rituals associated with romance don’t really make sense for me. If I don’t distinguish between romantic and platonic relationships, what does it mean for me to date someone? To be partners with someone? To be “in love” with someone? That’s not to say that I won’t consider someone a partner or describe our relationship as dating or participate in romance-coded activities, but I certainly don’t seem to understand these concepts in the same way an alloromantic person does.

I also consider myself aro because I don’t relate to the concept of limerence. Since limerence is, as I understand it, a large part of what differentiates romantic feelings from platonic feelings among alloromantic people, I consider my disidentification with the romantic/platonic binary to be intrinsically related with my lack of experience with limerence and my aromanticism.

My approach to romance and relationships also manifests as me being polyamorous. I don’t see the sense in my intimate and affectionate relationships being exclusive in much the same way most people don’t see the sense in their platonic friendships being exclusive. Typically romance is the metric which determines whether a relationship is exclusive, but since I don’t make that distinction, it’s not really obvious for me when a relationship is “supposed” to be exclusive by normative standards.

I consider myself a relationship anarchist for the same reason; even other polyamorous people tend to distinguish between friends and partners by the presence of romance, but since I don’t strictly classify my relationships as romantic or non-romantic, the distinction between friends and partners is fuzzy at best.¹ A consequence of this is that I have relationships I call friendships that most people would describe as romantic relationships, and I have relationships I call partnerships that most people would describe as friendships.

Because they all largely boil down to my disidentification with the romantic/platonic binary, I consider my romantic orientation (or lack thereof) and my relationship style to be convergent identities; they’re so intertwined that they’re difficult to meaningfully separate, and often when I talk about one, I’m also implicitly talking about the other. One thing Em mentions in the call for submissions is that the convergence-divergence spectrum is more complicated than just “do your romantic and sexual orientations match,” and I think my experience is a great example of that. However, I wouldn’t necessarily classify myself as a “convergent queer,” because there are also aspects of my identity that I consider more divergent.

Specifically, I consider my sexual orientation to be divergent from the composite of my romantic orientation and relationship style. While my relationship with the term “aromantic” is fairly complicated, my relationship with my ace identity is actually fairly simple: I just don’t relate to the experience allosexual people call “sexual attraction.” I consider this part of my identity to be fairly independent of my approach to romance and relationships; sex and sexual attraction just don’t really have much bearing on how I go about relationships.

So, in summary, I would consider my romantic orientation and relationship style to be convergent identities, while my sexual orientation is divergent from both of them. “Convergent” and “divergent” are probably not terms I will use often when explaining my identity to others; they’re esoteric enough that, for me at least, they’ll probably remain relegated to niche ontological discussions in the ace blogosphere. This is much like how “quoiromantic” is the term that technically describes my romantic orientation (or rather lack of romantic orientation) the best, but I tend to stick with “aro” for the sake of convenience. Still, I’m glad the terms exist, and I definitely feel that they fill an important lexical gap.

Early on in my journey to understand my aspec identity, I came across the concept of queerplatonic relationships. As a baby aro, I found the concept of a relationship that is committed and intimate while also being wholly platonic incredibly liberating. Because of social programming, the thought that I could have intimacy and affection in a relationship without romance and sex had never occurred to me. I immediately knew that a QPR is something I wanted, and this started the long process of unlearning many of the social scripts I grew up with. As this process of deprogramming progressed and I opened my mind to what an interpersonal relationship is and what it can be, I eventually settled on relationship anarchy as the primary conceptualization scheme through which I understand the relationships in my life. However, as I began navigating relationships through the lens of relationship anarchy, the concept of a queerplatonic relationship started to become less and less intuitive to me, and I began to realize that the concept doesn’t necessarily map well to my conceptual model of relationships.

Many relationship anarchists choose to eschew labels in their relationships, as they consider labels to be a form of classification and classification a form of hierarchy. My approach to relationship anarchy has always been that I’m fine with labels as long as they’re descriptive as opposed to prescriptive, meaning that the label should describe the relationship rather than determine the boundaries and expectation of the relationship. Traditionally, people choose how they want to classify their relationship first and allow society to prescribe what relationships of that type should entail. I prefer to pick and choose what I want my relationships to entail independent of existing social scripts—using tools like the relationship smorgasbord—and then choose how we want to label it.

One would think that the concept of a queerplatonic relationship would be well-suited to this style of relationship anarchy; QPRs don’t really have any social scripts associated with them, both because the concept isn’t particularly mainstream and because the definition is vague and fuzzy by design. This means that “queerplatonic” can be adopted as a label for a relationship under relationship anarchy without prescribing anything about the nature of the relationship, and it can potentially be applicable to a wide variety of non-normative relationship styles. Despite this, lately I’ve been finding that “queerplatonic”—even as a descriptive label—isn’t as helpful of a conceptualization for me as it once was.

Since I don’t limit the amount of intimacy or kinds of commitments which are included in a relationship by how I classify it, the only concrete differentiator for me is the label we use to describe it. Still, for me, determining whether to label a relationship as a friendship or a QPR can become a sticking point because it’s hard to escape the notion that there’s some form of hierarchy there. While people in aspec communities do generally make an effort to clarify that a QPR isn’t necessarily “more than” a friendship and “less than” a romantic relationship, it’s difficult to completely escape this narrative when queerplatonic relationships are typically defined in terms of what they include that a friendship doesn’t and what they do not include which a romantic relationship does. There’s also generally an understanding that QPRs progress from close friendships, implying that it’s a sort of evolution or progression from a “standard” friendship. I always see QPRs defined as “transcending” friendship or going “beyond” friendship and usually as having more of something—like intimacy or commitment—than a friendship. It’s incredibly difficult for me to determine exactly when a friendship should be “upgraded” to a QPR, because I don’t measure the relationships in my life on a linear scale of “closeness,” and to me, there are many different kinds of intimacy and commitment.

One appeal of the “queerplatonic” label for me—along with terms like “partner”—is that it provides some social legitimacy for the relationship. Something I’ve found I enjoy in relationships is presenting as someone’s partner in a social sense—having our relationship recognized and fulfilling the social role of a partner. I want the depth of my relationships to be recognized by others, and calling someone my “friend” generally causes people to assume there’s an upper limit to how deep and intimate the relationship can be. Even though the term “queerplatonic” isn’t commonly understood outside queer communities, having a formal label for the relationship and distinct language for how I refer to that person goes a long way toward giving my relationship social legitimacy. My thinking is that if I can’t make other people understand the nuanced and unique relationships I have with each of the people in my life, I can at least pander to the rigid classification system they do understand to gain some social recognition.

Still, I feel like this approach of pandering to relationship hierarchies isn’t how I want to go about relationships. If we go back to the post where the term “queerplatonic” was first proposed, Kaz talks about eir feelings toward relationship hierarchies:

ALSO, I worry that by calling my relationship and desired relationship “in between friendship and romance” (which again feels a bit like I’m boxing it in) I’m trying to get relationship points from the hierarchy - that because I don’t want what I have with my not!GF to be dismissed as “just” friendship I’m calling it sort of romantic ish in a way in order to get some of the importance that gets accorded to romantic relationships in our society - when really I should be trying to break down the hierarchy altogether, point out that friendship doesn’t have to be “just”, and that there are more options than friendship or romance.

This stance really resonates with me; using “queerplatonic” to legitimize my relationships feels like what Kaz describes as “trying to get relationship points from the hierarchy.” I want people to recognize that my relationships are valuable to me, but I don’t want to have to impose a hierarchy them to do it. Unlike Kaz, however, I don’t think “queerplatonic” solves this problem for me. To me, labeling a relationship as “queerplatonic” kinda does feel like saying it’s “in between” friendship and romance. As much as aspec people insist that this isn’t the case, the common messaging around “queerplatonic” still gives me the impression that a QPR is in some way “more than” a friendship. Even if I could conceptualize QPRs as a distinct relationship category with no implied hierarchy, I’m still not sure “queerplatonic” would be a useful concept for me; my relationships are too varied and nuanced to fit into a binary, so trying to fit them into a ternary isn’t really much easier.

I’ve always hated the notion that friendship is inherently less valuable than other kinds of relationships, which is why I dislike phrases like “just friends” and “only friends.” Instead of using “queerplatonic” to legitimize my friendships, maybe I should focus more on defending the validity of intimate and committed friendships. Because to me, friendship is something special. There’s something delightfully subversive about labeling my intimate and committed relationships as friendships, like I’m challenging the commonly held notions of what a friendship is and what it can be. It almost feels like I’m reappropriating “friendship” from an amatonormative society to mean what I want it to mean.

None of this is intended to be a criticism of relationship hierarchies or the concept of queerplatonic relationships. Rather, this is more of a personal reflection on my struggle to reconcile “queerplatonic”—a concept I once found incredibly useful—with my tendencies toward relationship anarchy. I don’t think “queerplatonic” is necessarily incompatible with relationship anarchy or that relationship anarchy is necessarily a better approach to relationships than any other, and I do think that the existence of the term is a net positive. I just feel like as my personal attitudes toward relationships have evolved, I’m moving past the need for “queerplatonic.”

At one point, the concept of queerplatonic relationships was incredibly useful for expanding my conceptual model of relationships; “queerplatonic” gave me permission to seek out the kinds of relationships I’ve always wanted but never thought I could have. However, in retrospect, I was just trading one hierarchical classification system for a slightly less restrictive one. I now realize that I don’t need to classify my friendships as queerplatonic for them to be intimate and committed, and all the term did for me was force me to impose a binary on my platonic relationships where there didn’t need to be one. I do see appeal in the term for socially legitimizing my relationships, but lately my attitude has been that I would prefer to challenge the concept of relationship hierarchies rather than pander to them. I’m glad the term exists and that people find value in it, but I think I might let go of this conceptualization scheme moving forwards.

In the aspec communities I’m originally from (mostly Reddit) and in the vast majority of the educational material I read when first discovering aspec identities, the “split-attraction model” (SAM) is the predominant conceptualization scheme for explaining aspec identities, and its use is largely uncontested. It’s for this reason that I was incredibly surprised when I first came across the ace blogosphere and discovered the many objections some aces have towards it, including the way it reinforces essentialism and identity prescriptivism and its anti-bi and anti-ace origins.

As an aro/ace who at one point identified with the SAM and considered themselves a “SAM aro,” I want to explain my experience with this conceptualization scheme and why I no longer find it useful. Rather than rehash what’s already been said about why “the SAM” can be a harmful concept, my goal is to use the SAM as an example to illustrate the problems with identity prescriptivism and why it’s so harmful to people trying to learn about themselves and explore their identity.

For the purposes of this essay, I’m going to use the phrase “the SAM” to refer to the conceptualization scheme which asserts that “attraction” is the sole determinant of orientation and that attraction can be broken down into roughly half a dozen specific types¹. I’m not going to try and claim that “the SAM” is a well-defined or cohesive concept, as it actually conflates and oversimplifies many different and more nuanced concepts, so I’m only going to use “the SAM” to refer to what I personally understood it to mean when coming to terms with my identity².

When I first started coming to terms with my aspec identity, I found the SAM incredibly helpful for expanding my understanding of sexuality and orientation. Before the concept of differentiating attraction was introduced to me, I didn’t have a conceptual framework to understand my orientation because I didn’t know that things like sexuality, sensuality, and aesthetics could be decoupled from one another. This was one of the major conceptual hurdles I had to overcome in order to start to understand my identity.

Obviously there are other conceptualization schemes built around the concept of differentiating attraction, like the Greek words for love, the primary/secondary/tertiary attraction model, and the triangular theory of love, but the ubiquity of the SAM prevented me from seeing any of these conceptualization schemes as serious alternatives, and I instead only considered them so far as I thought they could be mapped to the types of attraction prescribed by the SAM. I saw the SAM as the “canonical” conceptualization scheme for aspec identities and tried to employ tortured logic to determine whether tertiary attraction is the same as sensual attraction or philía is the same as platonic attraction.

Any time I encountered a case where the SAM failed to account for someone’s experiences—of which there were obviously many—I performed feats of mental gymnastics to rationalize the infallibility of the SAM in my mind. I was so desperate to cling to the SAM as my Theory of Everything that I didn’t just try to use it to explain my own experiences, but to universalize about everyone. The thought that maybe some experiences might be better explained using a different conceptualization scheme never even occurred to me.

I was confused when I first saw some aro people claim to not use the SAM, since nearly all of the aspec educational material I had read—including common definitions of asexuality and aromanticism—were so deeply predicated upon it. If being aro means not experiencing romantic attraction, how could you be aro without a concept of romantic attraction? As a baby aro, I couldn’t conceptualize aromanticism outside the context of the SAM because aromanticism had only ever been explained to me in terms of the SAM. In my mind, being aspec and using the SAM were synonymous.

After initially coming out as aro, I spent considerable time questioning where on the aromantic spectrum I fall. I agonized over the question of whether I had ever experienced romantic attraction—specifically whether emotions I’ve felt were best categorized as platonic attraction or romantic attraction. It never occurred to me that I don’t need to categorize my feelings this way or that this strict romantic-platonic dichotomy might not be the best way for me to understand my identity. I had been taught that romantic attraction is a universally understood concept, even by those who don’t experience it, so I assumed that it must be possible for me to frame my experiences through the lens of romantic attraction. As a result of trying to shoehorn my experiences into the boxes prescribed by the SAM like this, I struggled to understand my identity for a long time.

Once I accepted that the SAM doesn’t fit my conceptual model of relationships, I grew to realize that the whole concept of “attraction” and the idea that attraction is the sole determinant of orientation doesn’t make much intuitive sense to me either. While I do distinguish between things like sexuality, sensuality, and aesthetics, I don’t necessarily think of all these things as “types of attraction.” In fact, I find the whole concept of “attraction” to be very messy and ill-defined, and predicating my identity on it doesn’t really make much sense to me in hindsight. I used to spend a lot of time agonizing over whether I could label certain emotions towards other people as “attraction,” because that would determine my identity. Understanding my identity became much easier once I realized that I don’t need to define it in terms of the nebulous language of “attraction.”

These days I understand my aromantic identity as a rejection of prescriptive relationship norms rather than using any specific conceptualization scheme. Rather than try to shoehorn my experiences into a strict taxonomical identity framework, I’ve sort of a adopted the label “aromantic” to mean that I don’t approach relationships in a conventional way. I’ve found relationship anarchy to be a compelling framework for understanding my identity because it is itself a rejection of prescriptivism in relationships. I also identify with the label quoiromantic as a rejection of the concept of romantic attraction³, although I tend to not use it much because of the practicality issues involved in using esoteric identity language outside of queer communities.

While the prescriptive nature of the SAM is exactly why many aspec people take issue with it, I also think that’s why I found it so appealing for so long. As I was trying to come to terms with my queerness and navigate my newfound sense of identity in an amatonormative world, the structure and rigidity of the SAM gave me comfort. Rather than have to confront and unpack a complicated mess of emotions—a challenging prospect for an autistic person—I could simply refer to this model to tell me how to understand my identity.

I personally don’t have a problem with the collection of conceptualization schemes people collectively refer to as “the SAM,” and if a lot of people find this collection of concepts to be a useful identity framework for them, I’m not opposed to it having a name. My main gripe with “the SAM” is the way it’s presented as the conceptualization scheme for aspec folks rather than one of many. Even among communities that acknowledge that other conceptualization schemes exist, “the SAM” is presented as one monolithic framework that you must either accept or reject rather than a collection of concepts you may choose from individually⁴. As I hope my experience shows, I think the prescriptive nature of “the SAM” is harmful to people trying to explore their identity, as it forces people to try and understand their identity through a framework that may not suit their experiences. I think this phenomenon is especially worrying considering that aspec communities were originally built around the concept of rejecting the prescriptive identity models that don’t leave room for people like us. It shouldn’t be particularly radical of me to say that people should be free to decide their own identity and not have it decided for them.

In minority communities, we tend to use language like, “the asexual community” or “the trans community” to refer to the set of people in a particular identity group. And while my queer and neurodivergent identities do give me a sense of community and solidarity with other people like me, I find labeling identity groups as “communities” to be somewhat disingenuous, as these groups are so large and diverse that it’s impossible to make generalizations about them. Even when I do find myself talking about concepts like “the asexual community,” what I’m really referring to is the set of specific asexual communities I regularly interact with, like the ace blogosphere, the ace communities on sites like Reddit and Tumblr, and asexual people I personally know. It would be unfair of me to assume that these specific communities are representative of the global asexual population, so when I talk about “the ace community,” what I really mean is my ace community.

I often use language like “we” or “us” to refer to the groups I’m a part of as a way of signaling my membership in those groups. But what exactly I mean by “we” in these cases can be complicated and context-dependent, particularly when I’m talking to people outside those communities. When I signal my group membership to someone outside that group, I am implicitly nominating myself as an ambassador to that community and electing to carrying the burden of representing it. This is a challenging prospect, because I can only speak for my ace community, but the person I’m talking to is likely to assume I’m speaking for all ace communities. In my experience, people who aren’t a member of a minority community often have a bad habit of assuming that we’re a hive mind—that we all share the same thoughts, opinions, and perspectives. A consequence of this is that when I’m acting as an ambassador to one of my communities, who I include in my “we” influences how outsiders see and understand it.

Being an ambassador means representing the vast diversity of opinions and perspectives held by people within your community, some of which you are likely to personally disagree with. For example, there are some autistic people who have different perspectives about advocacy than I do, polyamorous people who practice polyamory in different ways than I do, and aspec people who use different conceptualization schemes than I do. While I might think differently than these people, they have as much a right to an opinion as I do. What should I do in these cases? Is it fair of me to only represent the perspectives I personally agree with? What should I do in the case of an opinion that I don’t just respectfully disagree with, but consider harmful? Does my responsibility change when I hold a minority opinion compared to the rest of the community? While I can always explain that I don’t agree with a particular opinion, do I have a responsibility to at least acknowledge it? Is it irresponsible to allow someone outside my community to assume my opinions are shared universally?

Oftentimes, when I use “we” to refer to one of my identity groups, I’m really only referring to the subset of that group that feels the same way I do. This subset might be a majority within the communities I’m a member of, but it would be selection bias to assume that it’s representative of the identity group as a whole. I think sometimes there can be social pressure to actively dissociate yourself from the members of your identity group that you disagree with on important issues—an aversion to identifying with those people, the “bad” ones. However, in doing this, I think it’s easy to end up committing a No True Scotsman fallacy: “They’re not really a member of the neurodiversity community if they support Autism Speaks” or “They’re not really polyamorous if they practice Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” I often wonder if I’m justified in disidentifying with certain subsets of my communities like this, particularly when acting as an ambassador. Do I have a responsibility to represent perspectives I disagree with? Is dissociating myself from parts of my communities destroying the cohesiveness of the communities as a whole?

I think there are certain inherent dangers in distancing yourself from certain subsets of your communities, one of which is succumbing to respectability politics as a mechanism for gaining social acceptance. A great example of this is the relationship between the trans community and the otherkin community. Many trans people—non-binary people in particular—really dislike the otherkin community and make a concerted effort to ensure cis people don’t associate the two. Otherkin folks draw a lot of ire from the trans community for eroding the credibility of the trans rights movement; what trans person hasn’t been called an attack helicopter by some transphobic asshole? We’ve worked hard for decades to be taken seriously and have our gender identities respected, and in the minds of many trans people, the otherkin community is undoing all that hard work. The problem with this attitude is that it’s an example of respectability politics—the idea that the only way to gain social acceptance is to prove that we’re not so different from the rest of society. This means conforming to patriarchal norms to make ourselves palatable to cis people, which isn’t the right way of going about gaining rights.

I’ve talked in the past about how I often have to misrepresent my identity or my communities to make coming out to people easier, and I think this concept applies not just to the definitions I give or the labels I use when explaining my identity, but also to how I represent the attitudes and perspectives held by the communities I’m a part of. When my personal perspectives differ from the prevailing attitudes of my communities, I’m sometimes stuck between accurately representing myself and accurately representing my community. For example, the conceptualization schemes that are most commonly used in the aspec communities I’m originally from and in aspec educational material aren’t the conceptualization schemes that I personally find most useful. Most aro people in my communities explain their identity in terms of differentiating between romantic and platonic attraction, but this dichotomy—and even the nebulous concept of “attraction” as a whole—isn’t how I understand my identity. So when I’m tasked with explaining my orientation to people outside the community, I have to decide whether to explain my identity in the way I personally understand it or to use the language they are more likely to see when interacting with other aspec people. As I explained in another essay, I typically just avoid this problem by labeling myself as “asexual” and leaving it at that. This is a great example of how deciding who is included in my “we” can be complicated when I’m acting as an ambassador to one of my communities.

I don’t believe that I—or any member of a minority group—have a responsibility to educate people about my communities; people have a responsibility to be respectful towards others, even towards groups they don’t understand. However, when I do choose to educate someone about one of my communities, I do feel like I have a responsibility to represent my community fairly, because that person may assume that I speak for all people in my community, and I may be their only exposure to it. This isn’t a responsibility to the person I’m educating, but a responsibility to my community. But who exactly is included in “my community” and whose opinions and perspectives I choose to represent can be complicated. When my perspectives differ from those of other members of my communities—which can range from understanding my identity in a slightly different way to actively dissociating with those whose opinions I find harmful—how far this responsibility extends isn’t always clear. Maybe I have no responsibility to represent anyone but myself; after all, all of our experiences are unique.

Let me know what you feel your responsibility is to your community when it comes to representing dissenting opinions.

1. They think my autism is something I should be ashamed of.
2. They see my autism as a defect rather than a natural variation of humanity.
3. They see my autism as something to be overcome.

While the advice I get from neurotypical people is often well-intentioned, it indicates some deeply ableist attitudes towards autism and neurodivergence as a whole. These people see my autism as a problem with me rather than a problem with society. It’s easy for me to recognize these kinds of ableist attitudes in other people because I had to work hard to overcome them myself; I dealt with deep-seated shame and internalized ableism for years after receiving my diagnosis. Underlying many of these ableist attitudes towards autism is what I consider to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to live with a chronic disability—the idea that by accepting and accommodating my disability, I’m somehow “giving up.”

I often have to explain to neurotypical people that there are some things that I can’t do, can’t do as easily, or need to do differently because of my disability. Often, these people express concern that I’m going to fall into a self-destructive pattern of telling myself I can’t do things because I’m autistic and then not even trying—basically, that I’m “giving up.” While I appreciate the concern for my well-being, this is common form of ableism that people with invisible disabilities face—not being believed when we explain how our disability affects us. People like this see my autism as something that can be “overcome” through hard work, which is ableist both because it frames disability as a defect with the individual rather than a problem with society and because it implies that the only reason why I’m disabled is because I’m somehow not trying hard enough.

There’s immense power in knowing what I can do, what I can’t do, and what I need to do differently, and recognizing this has improved my quality of life dramatically. Far from throwing my hands in the air and accepting defeat, recognizing where my limits are allows me to ask for help when I need it, find alternative solutions or approaches, and grant myself accommodations. Whereas I used to try and force myself to do things that are naturally difficult for me, knowing where my limits are allows me to play to my strengths and accommodate my differences. As a result, I can do many more things than I could do before I accepted my disability. Even so, people equate accommodating my disability to giving up, insisting that I don’t let my autism “hold me back” when I try to explain that I can’t do something in the same way an allistic person can. This is ableist because it assumes that the way I might do something is inherently inferior to the way an allistic person might do something, even if the end result is the same. This would be like telling a wheelchair user that using a wheelchair is somehow giving in to their disability, when for many people, assistive devices like wheelchairs grant them independence they might not otherwise have.

Even though accommodating my differences helps me to be successful and independent, people are often insistent that I do things the same way an allistic person might, even if doing things an alternative way might be significantly easier. Disabled people often face an impossibly high bar for “how disabled” they must be before society will permit them to have an accommodation. For example, many people with chronic pain or nerve conditions that make walking painful or difficult for them use wheelchairs to make getting around easier, but these people often face scorn from bystanders for using an assistive device when, “They can walk just fine!” Non-disabled people are often quick to judge disabled people for using an accommodation when they “don’t really need it,” and of course it’s never left up to the disabled person to determine whether they qualify. Oftentimes, bystanders will make this determination by whether they believe it’s possible for the person to survive without the accommodation—not by how much it increases their quality of life. People often tell me something along the lines of, “it won’t kill you” when I explain that I can’t do something fairly common because of my disability. And while they are technically correct, no attention is paid to how difficult doing that thing might be for me or how easy it would be to accomplish the same goal a different way. When people insist that I’m “giving up” by accommodating my disability, it’s because they don’t believe that I need accommodation in the first place.

A lot of parents and even medical providers are against formal psychiatric diagnoses or “labeling” their children/patients because they’re afraid of them “giving in” to their disability. For me, pretending to be neurotypical actively made my life more difficult, and learning that I’m autistic helped me to better understand where my limits are and how I can accommodate my differences. You might not think that learning how to accommodate your differences requires a label, and I agree that it shouldn’t, but unfortunately, years of internalized ableism made me avoid seeking accommodations out of shame. It took finding communities of people like me to accept that my brain works differently than an allistic person’s and to realize that there’s nothing wrong with that. In my case, people’s aversion to labels and unwillingness to call me autistic even after receiving my diagnosis contributed significantly to the shame I felt about my neurodivergence, making it much harder for me to permit myself to seek accommodation.

Acknowledging that I have a chronic disability means acknowledging that there are some things about myself that I can’t change, and instead of wasting time trying to change them or waiting for them to change, I can make lifestyle changes to accommodate my differences. An example of this is that I can’t drive safely because of my disability; I tried for years to learn how to drive, and it never got any easier. Rather than continue to put myself and others at risk by trying to drive, I moved to a large city with good public transportation infrastructure so I don’t need to drive to be independent. By accepting that driving is something my disability doesn’t permit me to do—at least for the time being—I was able to work the problem and find a solution that allows me to still have my independence. Accepting my disability isn’t “holding me back” from driving; I wasn’t able to drive in the first place. Accepting my disability empowered me find an accommodation that helped me achieve the same goals.

The way society frames my autism as something I need to fight to overcome rather than accept as a core component of my identity is ableist and actively makes my life more difficult. Accepting that there are some things I can’t do or need to do differently has significantly improved my quality of life, because it has empowered me to accommodate my differences instead of fighting against them. If I can’t attend certain kinds of events for sensory reasons, I’ll find other activities that are more sensory-friendly. If I have trouble making phone calls, I’ll find services that offer alternative communication options. If I get anxious in social settings, I’ll bring some stim toys. There are lots of simple ways I can accommodate my differences to make life easier, but society is insistent that I do things the same way allistic people do and that doing otherwise means “giving in” to my disability. I am not “more than” my autism; my autism is part of who I am. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

People in aspec communities talk a lot about the day-to-day challenges amatonormativity imposes on their lives. For this month’s carnival, I want to talk a bit about how amatonormativity harmed me before I realized I’m aro and ace, especially in regards to my mental health. I’ll talk about how amatonormativity impacted my outlook on the future, my sense of self-worth, and my relationships growing up and during my early adulthood, as well as how things improved once I came to terms with my identity and was able to start the process of unlearning the lies amatonormativity made me internalize.

The Future I Never Really Wanted

I don’t think anyone ever told me growing up that I must have an exclusive romantic partner—it wasn’t put forth as a rule or requirement. Rather, there was always an implicit expectation that it was something I wanted. The idea that someone might not want this kind of partnership was never presented as a possibility, barring there being something deeply wrong with them. This expectation was so strong that I internalized it; I assumed that it must be something I want, because how could I not? It would be like saying you don’t want food or water or oxygen.

A consequence of assuming that a romantic partner was something I wanted is that I was never really able to imagine a future for myself growing up. Amatonormativity had taught me that I would someday have an exclusive romantic partner and all the structural commitments that come with riding the relationship escalator—a house in the suburbs, a nuclear family, and so on. So when I tried to imagine what my future might look like, I always envisioned it through the lens of this social script. But because I never actually wanted any of those things, this vision of my future was always hazy at best—as if I was imagining someone else’s life. So while I had career aspirations as a kid, aspirations about my future relationships and living situation always felt intangible. Society had given me a blueprint of what I should expect my future to look like, but it felt wrong in a way I wouldn’t be able to articulate until I realized I’m aromantic.

As I got older, this inability to see a future for myself manifested as a sort of existential dread; adulthood was creeping ever closer, but I just couldn’t picture myself actually getting there. Rather than a promise of future prosperity I could take comfort in, the social scripts prescribed by amatonormativity were nothing more than an inevitability that I would someday have to resign myself to. I was never excited by the prospect of someday meeting The One; getting married always felt like paying taxes—one of those cryptic things that adults do because they’re supposed to. Not being able to picture myself in the life society had laid out for me was incredibly distressing as a young adult, because nobody told me that there were alternative paths through life.

Learning that having an exclusive romantic partner and riding the relationship escalator isn’t the only path through life was an incredibly freeing experience. Whereas I had spent my entire life up until that point distressed by how hazy the future seemed, suddenly the possibilities had exploded and, for the first time in my life, I could imagine a future for myself. I didn’t have to consign myself to a nuclear family and a white picket fence—I could have the future I wanted, even if I didn’t know exactly what that looked like yet.

Loving Myself as a Heartless Robot

In addition to instilling a deep fear of the future, amatonormativity made it difficult to accept myself during the period in my life where I was most vulnerable. As with many queer kids, sometime during my teen years, the obvious differences between me and other kids when it came to romance and attraction had become impossible to ignore. I had never had a romantic partner or even felt the desire to be someone’s romantic partner, and I was reaching an age where that made me an outlier. As much as I tried to justify to myself my lack of attraction, I felt broken. What kind of heartless, emotionless robot doesn’t feel love?

Nobody had prepared me for the possibility that I might not share in this supposedly universal human experience, so I continued to try and convince myself that a romantic partner was something I wanted. And my mental health suffered for it. The cognitive dissonance between subconsciously knowing that an exclusive romantic partner wasn’t what I wanted and consciously telling myself that it was was slowly tearing me apart. If someone had just told me that it’s okay to not want a romantic partner—if I had just been allowed to feel like that’s not a freakish thing—my mental health would have been much improved.

Once I learned about aromanticism, everything clicked into place. Knowing that there are other people out there just like me—happy, successful people who also don’t experience romantic attraction—was incredibly reassuring. Letting go of the self-hatred that I have felt for most of my life has been a tough journey, but this was an important step on the path towards loving and accepting myself.

Breaking Down Emotional Barriers

Amatonormativity also hurt me by making it difficult for me to open myself up emotionally. Before coming to terms with my aromanticism, I tended to keep friends at an arms length because I was always paralyzed by the fear that they might become romantically attracted to me, or worse, that they might think I’m romantically attracted to them. The customs and conventions surrounding courtship rituals have always eluded me, and so a persistent fear of giving people the wrong idea prevented me from forming close emotional bonds. A consequence of this is that I had to go through some of the worst years of my life without a support system of close friends who I could turn to.

In addition to being closed off emotionally, until I came to terms with my aromanticism and asexuality, I was closed off to intimacy and affection. Because of amatonormativity, I had always associated intimacy and affection with romance and sex. Because I was programmed to believe that these things can’t be separated, or shared in a platonic context, I never imagined that intimacy and affection were something I could have. And as a consequence, I built emotional walls around myself to protect myself, not realizing how much damage I was actually doing.

When I explain to people what it means to be aromantic and asexual, they always seem concerned that I’m going to live a miserable, lonely life devoid of emotional connection. Living authentically and being out as aro/ace has actually helped me to build genuine emotional connections for the first time in my life. I was a lonely kid growing up, but now I have the intimate and affectionate platonic connections I never thought I could have. Contrary to what most allo people expect, I’m far less lonely now than I was before I came to terms with my identity.

Conclusion

While amatonormativity still impacts me today—as it does all aro people—I think the worst damage it inflicted on my life happened before I came to terms with my identity, when I didn’t yet understand how harmful a lot of the social programming I had grown up with really is. I think understanding amatonormativity gives it significantly less power over me; I can recognize now that just because an idea is conventional and widely accepted doesn’t mean it’s true.

Being neurodivergent, I struggled a lot with mental health issues growing up. While it wasn’t the only contributing factor to my mental health, amatonormativity exacerbated those issues in ways I wouldn’t understand until much later. I think it’s important to talk about the intersection of amatonormativity and mental health, because while amatonormativity is obviously detrimental to aspec people like me, I also believe it’s is harmful to everyone, in much the same way systems like toxic masculinity and the patriarchy don’t just harm gender minorities. Hopefully someday discussions about amatonormativity aren’t just relegated to aspec circles and can be discussed more broadly.

You know how sometimes you tell those little white lies because the truth is just too complicated to explain? You don’t intent to mislead anyone, but telling the full story would take too long, so you just say something that’s not quite true and not quite false so you can get the point across. Sometimes coming out as queer can feel like that. Previously, I wrote about the many layers of my identity, where I explain the different sets of labels I use to describe my sexual and romantic orientation depending on who I’m talking to. I realized that the circumstances under which I’m coming out doesn’t just affect the labels I use, but also the definitions I use. Coming out to people sometimes requires providing definitions, and sometimes the definitions I give aren’t entirely accurate—they’re little white lies that make coming out easier.

The ace community typically defines “asexual” as “a person who does not experience sexual attraction.” While the language surrounding asexuality has changed a lot over the decades¹, this has been the definition used by most aces since sometime in the early 2000s. One would think, then, that this would make coming out as asexual somewhat simple. Just give them the definition! The problem is that this concise definition requires some context to understand. The phrase “sexual attraction” was chosen by the ace community to mean something specific, but to someone outside the community, it’s not always immediately clear what exactly “sexual attraction” means or how it differs from having a libido, having sexual experience, or experiencing other forms of attraction. The language of “attraction” and the specific definition we give it is deeply entrenched in the discourse of aspec communities, and the phrase “sexual attraction” alone doesn’t convey any information about the conceptualization schemes needed to contextualize it.

When talking to someone who’s never heard of asexuality before, I tend to shy away from the “official” definition because I feel like it requires a lengthy explanation to properly contextualize. I tend to say something less precise, like, “I’m not really interested in sex.” or “I don’t like boys or girls.” These are inadequate definitions because of the way the former conflates sexual orientation with sex-favorability and the way the second is ambiguous about what the word “like” entails (and assumes a gender binary). How much educating I’m willing to do depends on the context, but there are many cases where I’m okay leaving someone with an incomplete understanding of asexuality if it satisfies their curiosity. These are the sorts of approximate definitions I tend to give people when I’m not in the mood to break out a projector and slide deck but still want to answer their question truthfully.

I tend to use these sorts of approximate definitions when talking about my romantic orientation as well. As I discussed in my previous post, I often avoid discussing my romantic orientation as something distinct from my sexual orientation when talking to someone who’s not queer or familiar with aspec communities. When I do feel the need to pull out the term “aromantic” and have to come up with a definition for it, I tend to avoid talking about “romantic attraction” for reasons similar to why I avoid defining asexuality in terms of sexual attraction. Additionally, providing this kind of definition of aromanticism often involves talking about the concept of differentiated attraction, which is a whole lesson onto itself. To avoid the need for a protracted lecture on the topic, I might just say something like, “I’m not really interested in dating.” This is a poor definition, as many aros do desire romantic or queerplatonic relationships², but it might get the extended family to stop asking if you have a girlfriend at Thanksgiving.

Being non-binary, talking about my gender also often involves providing definitions, and these definitions tend to be approximate rather than comprehensive ones. I’ll typically define my gender as being “somewhere between a man and a woman.” I don’t particularly like this definition, as I think it implies that gender is a one-dimensional spectrum from male to female, and I prefer to think of my gender as falling on a two-dimensional spectrum with “maleness” on one axis and “femaleness” on the other. However, for someone who has only ever understood gender as a binary, I think the approximate definition is a good starting point.

Talking about being trans with someone who’s not familiar with the topic typically requires providing some background information, like explaining the difference between sex and gender. This is a thorny one, as “gender” is a somewhat nebulous concept which is understood differently by different people and different cultures. If I were feeling particularly self-indulgent, I might define “gender” as “a big pile of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey fuckshit,” however this sort of definition isn’t particularly helpful for someone who’s trying to learn. Usually, I’ll explain that sex is determined by biological characteristic like hormones, chromosomes, and genitals, while gender is defined by psychological characteristics like how you dress, how you act, and how you feel internally. This definition is somewhat problematic in that it conflates gender identity with gender expression, which is particularly relevant to me as a non-binary person who doesn’t present perfectly androgynously. Trying to explain the concept of gender identity, however, usually involves saying things like, “I just feel non-binary,” which is somewhat ambiguous and difficult for a cis person to relate to. It’s often more helpful to explain gender in terms of things that are easier to understand, like presentation.

Sometimes, coming out requires telling little white lies about my identity to make the process easier. I’m sometimes afraid that giving these kinds of approximate definitions amounts to a betrayal of the community, like I’m undoing the hard work that has been done to spread awareness and debunk myths. I always feel that there’s pressure to be a good ambassador to the queer communities I represent and uphold the oath that I took on my copy of the Queer Agenda. Because of that, I always try to lead with a disclaimer that my experiences don’t necessarily represent those of other queer people. As much as I would like to educate every person I come across, I don’t always have the energy and patience for it, and they don’t always actually care that much about the specifics. Hopefully someday better public awareness of queer identities will mean that these stopgap definitions are no longer necessary.

My bio on this blog currently labels me as “an asexual, aromantic, autistic, non-binary person.” While this isn’t inaccurate, it’s more of a context-sensitive approximation of my identity than a comprehensive examination of it. The truth is that the language I use to describe the different components of my identity changes based on the context; like a layer cake, I have several “levels” of labels I use—particularly when it comes to my sexual and romantic orientations—to describe my identity based on who I’m talking to.

In most social situations, my sexual and romantic orientations don’t come up in the same way my gender identity does. There’s really no such thing as going stealth when you’re openly non-binary and use they/them pronouns, so being trans is more of a public-facing component of my identity. My sexual and romantic orientations, on the other hand, are a more private component of my identity. While I’m “out”¹, I tend to avoid The Question when asked by non-queer people as answering it typically transforms simple water cooler small talk into a Socratic seminar, and I don’t always have the spoons to devote to that.

There are times, however, when I want to come out to someone, and I’ll typically tailor the language I use to the situation. In this post, I’ll explain the different levels of labels I use in different situations.

Sometimes I get asked The Question and answering it is unavoidable. I certainly won’t lie and call myself straight², especially since it’s somewhat unclear what being heterosexual would even entail as a non-binary person. If I know the person asking about my sexuality isn’t part of the LGBTQ community, I’ll often describe my sexuality as “queer.” I do identify as queer as an umbrella term for my non-heteroness and non-cisness, and I appreciate how generic and non-specific the label is. The main point I want to get across by using this label is that I’m not straight, and what I am isn’t really important. I acknowledge that people will typically assume that “queer” is code for “homosexual”, and I’m fine with that. In the cases where I tend to use this word, I don’t really care too much what people think I am. If they want to make assumptions about my sexuality, that’s their problem.

The next level in the layer cake is dropping the a-bomb. Using The Word. “Asexual.” There are cases where the people I’m talking to aren’t queer and aren’t likely to have ever heard this word before, but sharing this aspect of my identity with them is important to me. These are cases where coming out will often involve a brief lesson on asexuality, what it is, and what it isn’t. Using this label is a bit more risky of a move, because it invites the kinds of invalidating questions that aces tend to hate. Questions like, “How do you know you just haven’t met the right person yet?” or “Have you had your hormone levels checked?” (This one is somewhat ironic when you’re also trans).

Something interesting to note here is that in this scenario, I’ll often describe myself as “asexual” but not “aromantic.” While my aroness is an important component of my identity—one I want the people closest to me to understand—in many cases, I just don’t find it worth the hassle to explain. In these cases, I use the term “asexual” as a sort of umbrella term for both my sexual and romantic orientations. The main rationale behind this decision is that most allo people conflate being asexual and being aromantic anyways, and explaining what it means to be aromantic means explaining how that differs from being asexual. If I choose to explaining aromanticism to them, I can’t avoid also explaining concepts like the split-attraction model, and by this point we’ve already been standing by the water cooler for an uncomfortably long time. I don’t find that non-queer people tend to assume I’m alloromantic when I explain that I’m asexual because making that distinction never occurred to them in the first place³.

Moving down a level, I typically use both the terms “asexual” and “aromantic” when I’m talking to other queer people. I find this is a comfortable level of specificity where the language is common enough to be understood by most queer people but also specific enough that I don’t feel like I’m misrepresenting my identity to them. Unless I’m confident that they’re somewhat knowledgeable on the topic, I’ll typically avoid the “aro/ace” shorthand when coming out. I might come out as “asexual” and “aromantic” and then switch to the more esoteric shorthand in the ensuing conversation, but I typically won’t lead with it. Even among other queer people, “aromantic” is a niche enough label that they’re not guaranteed to be familiar with it, and “aro” even more so.

The last level of terminology I’ll use is typically reserved for the people I’m closest with, particularly those who are aspec or who I know are familiar with the community. When it comes to my sexual orientation, this may involve explaining that I’m sex-positive and sex-averse⁴. This information really isn’t important for most people to know, so to most people I’m just “asexual.” When it comes to my romantic orientation, I may explain my attitudes towards romance and relationships in more detail. If I were to use a microlabel to describe my romantic orientation, quoiromantic would probably fit best; I don’t really find the platonic-romantic dichotomy to be a useful conceptual model for understanding attraction or relationships. I don’t tend to use this label to describe myself often, however, as the language of the arospec community is esoteric enough as it is. I’ve written before about my attitudes towards microlabels, and while I’m not opposed to them, I find adopting the label “aromantic” makes explaining my identity much easier. While I may not be aromantic in the strictest sense of the word, I do identify with it as an umbrella term to signify that I’m arospec. Explaining my romantic orientation in more detail may also involve explaining that I’m something of a relationship anarchist.

There are many words I use to describe my identity, particularly when it comes to my sexual and romantic orientations. Which ones I use usually comes down to finding the balance between minimizing the amount of explanation required and minimizing the degree to which I’m oversimplifying or misrepresenting my identity. I tend to make a distinction between in-group language and out-group language when talking about my identity, where I tailor the terminology I use to what I expect the person I’m talking to will easily understand. There’s also an element of controlling how much personal information I want to share with a given person, as my sexual and romantic orientation aren’t a public-facing component of my identity to the same extent my gender is. While queer people tend to get flak from non-queer people for the amount of esoteric identity language we use, the different layers of terminology I use to describe my identity helps make the never-ending process of coming out a little bit easier, and at the end of the day, the whole purpose of language is to help communicate experiences.

However, since then, with help from Sennkestra and Phoenix the II, the archive is back! You can browse it here on Ace Archive. Hopefully in the future I will make a followup post talking more about that community specifically. I’ve also updated many of the other links in this essay to link to Ace Archive, where many of the images and document scans have been transcribed.

The asexual community as we know it today is quite young; while the broader LGBTQ rights movement is usually traced back to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, the modern asexual community evolved much later. The founding of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) in 2001 was an important milestone in the asexual movement; the organization was the first to make serious inroads promoting public awareness of asexuality and spawned one of the first large, cohesive online communities for aces. One of the most significant impacts the AVEN community has had is establishing and standardizing the language of asexuality, including the term “asexual.” Before AVEN, people who would come to identify as asexual went by various names, and there was not a common understanding of what asexuality meant. Today, the organization’s website defines “asexual” as “a person who does not experience sexual attraction” in a banner at the top of the page; it’s the first thing you see when you visit the website, and the importance of this definition can’t be overstated in terms of how it allowed many fractured and disparate communities to come together under a single banner.

Understanding how important it was for the ace community to standardize the language of asexuality raises the question of what this language looked like before AVEN. In this essay, I want to trace the history of the term “asexual” and the terms which preceded it, and I want to take a look at how asexuality has been defined over the decades and how we came to our modern understanding of it. This account will focus heavily on academic literature from the 19th and 20th centuries and how they incorporated asexuality into their typologies of human sexuality. We’ll also take a look at the first asexual activists and asexual communities which emerged in the early years of the LGBTQ rights movement. We’ll continue chronologically from the first mentions of asexuality in academic literature up until the founding of AVEN in 2001. Finally, we’ll analyze some of the trends which emerged over the history of asexuality.

In 1869, Karl-Maria Kertbeny authored two pamphlets protesting Prussian sodomy laws. In these writings, he famously coins the terms heterosexual and homosexual. Less well-known is that he also coined the term monosexual to refer to people who exclusively masturbate. While this isn’t quite how we define asexuality today, Kertbeny helped pioneer the idea that sexuality is an innate quality rather than a choice, and this makes his writings one if the first cases where something resembling asexuality is both recognized as a sexual orientation and given a name.

Richard von Krafft-Ebing writes about asexuality in his 1886 work Psychopathia Sexualis (Psychopathy of Sex). In it, he uses the term anesthesia sexual to refer to people with an “absence of sexual feeling.” He provides several case studies of people who he believes fit this description, explaining, “These functionally sexless individuals are rare cases, and, indeed, always persons having degenerative defects, in whom other functional cerebral disturbances, states of psychical degeneration, and even anatomical signs of degeneration, may be observed.” The cases described in Krafft-Ebing’s work describe people who clearly seem to be asexual by our modern definition, but most of these cases don’t mention anything of the “defects” or “degeneration” that Krafft-Ebing insists they experience. This is likely one of the first examples of the pathologization of asexual people which continues to this day.

Another early attempt at creating a sexual typology which includes asexuality came from German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld. Hirschfeld is known for founding the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in 1897, which was the first LGBTQ rights organization in history and campaigned against the legal persecution of sexual and gender minorities. Later, he would go on to found the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sex Research) in 1919, which advocated for sex education, contraception, treatment of STDs, and the emancipation of women. The Institute offered marriage and sex counseling, gender-affirming endocrinologic and surgical services for transgender patients, and “transvestite passes” which allowed transgender people to present in public without facing legal persecution. Among this long list of accomplishments, Hirschfeld also published the pamphlet Sappho und Sokrates in 1896, which recognizes people without any sexual desire under the label “anesthesia sexual”—the same term used by Krafft-Ebing. In this work, Hirschfeld also develops a quantitative scale for describing human sexuality which rates the intensity of same-sex and opposite-sex attraction on separate axes, each from 1 to 10. Many sexologists would attempt to create scales for rating human sexuality, but this is the first I was able to find which explicitly accounts for asexuality.

German sexologist Emma Trosse not only gave us a definition of asexuality, but was openly asexual herself. Trosse was the first woman to publish a scientific work on homosexuality in women and advocated for legal protections for sexual minorities. In her 1897 work Ein Weib? Psychologisch-biographische: Studie über eine Konträrsexuelle (A woman? Psychological-biographical study of a contrary-sexual), she gives us a definition of asexuality under the label Sinnlichkeitslosigkeit (asensuality) and says in a footnote, “Author has the courage to admit to this category.”

One of the earliest uses of the term “asexual” in literature I found comes from Otto Weininger’s misogynist diatribe Sex and Character. In it, Weininger denigrates women for sexually tempting men, asserting confidently that it is not possible for a woman to be asexual, going as far as to say, “And it is clear that if only one single female creature were really asexual, or could be shown to have a real relationship to the idea of personal moral worth, everything that I have said about woman, its general value as psychically characteristic of the sex, would be irretrievably demolished, and the whole position which this book has taken up would be shattered at one blow.”

In 1916, 1918, and 1920, Hirschfeld published Sexualpathologie Teil I–III (Sexual Pathology Part I–III). In these later works, he uses the terms asexual and anerotic to refer to people with no sexual drive and speculates about what could cause people to be this way. He considers that it could be a case of sublimation—where people are too devoted to their hobby or occupation to devote time or energy to sex, exposure to anti-erotic literature, or low levels of sex hormones. While this is the first usage of the term “asexual” to refer to human sexuality I was able to find in scientific literature, Hirschfeld’s analysis is incredibly pathologizing and does not recognize asexuality as a sexual orientation in the same way we do today. Hirschfeld also coins the term automonosexual to refer to people who are sexually attracted to themselves. Unlike later works which would make a distinction in their typology between asexual people with a libido and those without, Hirschfeld seems to use this term specifically to refer to people who are sexually excited by their own body, even going as far as to compare one patient to Narcissus from Greek mythology. Hirschfeld talks at length about automonosexualism in his transgender patients—his thoughts on this topic seem to mirror those of Ray Blanchard, who would later coin the term autogynephilia to describe a similar phenomenon¹.

Another early usage of the term “asexual” comes from the 1933 work The Sexual Urge: How It Grows or Wanes by Charles Samson Féré. However, this usage of the term does not refer to a lack of libido or sexual attraction, but instead to non-sexual motivations for jealousy in interpersonal relationships. An example of this is the jealousy a child might feel when a parent’s attention is focused elsewhere. Féré writes, “The asexual nature of jealousy-psychosis shoes itself in particular when it has regard to persons who have nothing to do with sexual competition, e.g., the parents of those who excite the jealousy.”

In another attempt to come up with a scientific explanation for asexuality, Clifford Allen writes in his 1940 work The Sexual Perversions and Abnormalities about asexuality as a form of sublimation. Unlike Hirschfeld’s theory about sublimation, Allen posits that asexuality is a defense mechanism employed by people with “abnormal” sexual preferences (such as homosexuality or paraphilias) in order to avoid those desires and replace them with non-sexual ones. He writes, “By sublimation we mean the more or less conscious inhibition of the abnormal instinctual object with the substitution of an asexual object.” This problematic attitude towards asexuality persists to this day with the common myths that aces are “homosexuals in denial” or secretly pedophiles.

A more recognizable scientific work recognizing asexuality comes from American biologist and sexologist Alfred Kinsey. Widely considered the father of the sexual revolution in the US, Kinsey is most well-known for publishing the Kinsey Reports in 1948 and 1953. In these works, he argues that humans cannot be exclusively categorized as heterosexual or homosexual, and develops a scale to rate human sexuality on a range from 0, meaning “exclusively heterosexual,” to 6, meaning “exclusively homosexual.” The scale also included an additional “X” classification for people with “no socio-sexual contacts or reactions.” This report gives us some of the first demographic data on the prevalence of asexuality, with 1.5% of adult male subjects and 19% of adult female subjects falling into the “X” category. It’s important to note, however, that the Kinsey Scale was based on sexual experiences and not sexual attraction or self-identity. This means his scale cannot distinguish between people who lack sexual attraction and allosexual people who just lack sexual experience. Additionally, the Kinsey Scale is a one-dimensional scale, which is a step backwards in terms of accounting for asexual people when compared to the scale developed by Hirschfeld in Sappho und Sokrates.

In the Kinsey Reports, Kinsey does not use the term “asexual” to refer to people who fall into his “X” classification. Instead, in males², Kinsey talks about “apathy” towards sex, describing such individual as “low in sex drive.” Unlike Hirschfeld, Kinsey does not attempt to speculate on the causes of asexuality, stating, “Whether the factors are biologic, psychologic, or social, it is certain that such persons exist.” Kinsey also rejects the idea that asexuality is a form of sublimation, stating, “But such inactivity is no more sublimation of sex drive than blindness or deafness or other perceptive defects are sublimation of those capacities.” Kinsey also takes a stance against the notion that asexuality is a condition requiring treatment, saying, “Considerable psychiatric therapy can be wasted on persons (especially females) who are misjudged to be cases of repression when, in actuality, at least some of them never were equipped to respond erotically.” While Kinsey somewhat misses the mark in defining asexuality, his work does make strides in countering the pathologization of asexuals in scientific literature.

One of the first appearances of the term “asexual” in literature outside of scientific publications comes from Anton Szandor LaVey’s 1969 work The Satanic Bible. Modern Satanism is an ideological movement which uses Satan as a metaphor to promote personal autonomy, rationality, and pragmatic skepticism³. Satanists are nontheistic, and don’t actually believe in Satan. Rather, they reappropriate Satanic imagery from Christian theology to promote causes like egalitarianism, social justice, and separation of church and state. LaVey writes, “Satanism condones any type of sexual activity which properly satisfies your individual desires—be it heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or even asexual, if you choose.” In line with other Satanist thinkers, LaVey’s attitudes toward sexuality were remarkably progressive for the time. However, his understanding of asexuality is still incomplete. He also writes:

Asexuals are invariably sexually sublimated by their jobs or hobbies. All the energy and driving interest which would normally be devoted to sexual activity is channelled into other pastimes or into their chosen occupations. If a person favors other interests over sexual activity, it is his right, and no one is justified in condemning him for it. However, the person should at least recognize the fact that this is a sexual sublimation.

Like Hirschfeld, LaVey frames asexuality as a choice borne out of being too caught up with one’s hobbies and occupation to focus on sex. While this work is one of the first to use the term “asexual” in a positive—or at least neutral—tone instead of as a pathology or a pejorative, he fails to recognize that one can lack sexual attraction.

In 1972, The Asexual Manifesto was written by Lisa Orlando and published by the New York Radical Feminists⁴. In this work, Orlando gives us a clear definition of asexuality through a feminist lens, describing it as “relating sexually to no one.” While Orlando doesn’t use the language of “sexual attraction” standardized by the AVEN community, her work is one of the first to acknowledge a distinction between libido and a desire to have sex with others; she explains, “if one has sexual feelings they do not require another person for their expression.” Orlando is clear that asexuals can still desire nonsexual physical affection and intimacy and rejects the common notion that sexual relationships are the only way to achieve them. This is somewhat indicative of how later asexuals would differentiate between sexual and sensual attraction.

The Asexual Manifesto is clearly a product of the feminism of the 1970s⁵; Orlando frames asexuality as a form of protest against the patriarchal norm that women exist for the sexual gratification of men, and she devotes significant portions of it to talking about the sexual objectification of women. However, she does point out that her caucus chose to reject the label “anti-sexual,” as they wanted to avoid the connotation that sexuality is “degrading or somehow inherently bad.” Unlike our modern understanding of asexuality as a sexual orientation, Orlando’s Manifesto frames asexuality as a choice, and an inherently political one at that. Overall, this work is notable for being one of the first pieces of literature written by asexuals for the purpose of defining asexuality.

Lisa Orlando’s The Asexual Manifesto was referenced in the January 1973 issue of the feminist news journal Off Our Backs, where the author mentions attending a workshop on asexuality led by Barbara Getz—another member of the asexuality caucus of the New York Radical Feminists. The article summarizes asexuality as, “an orientation that regards a partner as nonessential to sex, and sex as nonessential to a satisfying relationship.” The next issue of Off Our Backs included a photo of activists at Barnard College with a sign that reads, “This is a chance to choose your own label instead of having someone else do it for you.” followed by a list of labels including “asexual.”

You can find a full transcript of the image and accompanying article here.

Myra Johnson wrote one of the first academic papers about asexuality in 1977, which was published as part of the book The Sexually Oppressed. In the paper, Johnson distinguishes between people who are asexual and people who are autoerotic. The former group consists of people who have no libido, while the latter group consists of people who have a libido but have no desire to have sex with others. The fact that she makes this distinction in her typology is interesting, because while there is discourse about libido in the modern asexual community—which has spawned microlabels like autochorisexual and aegosexual—aces today generally define asexuality by attraction alone, and the modern language of “sexual attraction” is absent in her writing. Still, her paper is one of the first to call attention to the systemic social oppression that asexual people face. She mentions how asexual people are oppressed by their invisibility and the general consensus that they don’t exist, and she talks about how asexuality is commonly construed as being either a religious obligation or a psychological problem, with no room for people who don’t feel sexual desire. Additionally, she is critical of the feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s—particularly how the sexual revolution fails asexual and autoerotic women by glorifying the importance of sexual availability and sexual desire. While this paper’s typology and terminology still differs from that which the asexual community would eventually settle on, she is one of the first to bring attention to the social issues asexual people face—issues which are still relevant today.

In 1979, sexologist Michael Storms published a study creating a new scale for describing human sexuality. The Erotic Response and Orientation Scale aims to explicitly include asexuality by mapping human sexuality on two axes instead of the one axis used by the Kinsey Scale. The purpose of this scale was to address the Kinsey Scale’s inability to distinguish between asexuality and bisexuality. While this scale was a step in the right direction in terms of accounting for asexuality, it still does not account for aces who differentiate between different types of attraction; many of the criteria used to place respondents on the scale refer to what some aces would classify as sensual or romantic attraction rather than sexual attraction.

While at this point in history the use of the term “asexual” to refer to a sexual orientation was starting to become more common, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t significant confusion surrounding the term. In 1989, American talk show host Sally Jesse Raphael interviewed autism rights activist Jim Sinclair under the alias Toby. Jim is intersex, a self-described neuter⁶ person, and asexual⁷. This interview was the first time most audience members had been introduced to these concepts, and it made such a profound impact that many people confused being intersex, being neuter, and being asexual for years after. In literature, the term asexual was often used to refer to Jim’s anatomy instead of intersex. An example of this is the 2004 book, Sexuality Now: Embracing Diversity.

You can find a full transcript of the article here.

In another example of scientific literature which gave credibility to the term “asexual”, Anthony Bogaert published a study on the prevalence of asexuality in 2004 in The Journal of Sex Research. In this study, Bogaert defines asexuality as “the state of having no sexual attraction for either sex,” which is remarkably similar to the definition used by the AVEN community. Bogaert also contrasts asexuality with sexual aversion disorder and hypoactive sexual desire disorder⁸, making this an early example of a study on asexuality which does not pathologize it. A major leap that this study makes over previous research, such as the Kinsey Reports, is specifically defining asexuality as the lack of sexual attraction and not a lack of sexual behavior or self-identification as asexual. As a result, this study was the first to give us a reliable estimate of the prevalence of asexuality without including allosexual people who lack sexual experience or excluding asexual people who have never heard the term before. Bogaert’s study concludes that approximately 1% of people are asexual, which is a statistic that is still cited in ace communities to this day.

At this point, some of the first online communities dedicated to asexuality have started to emerge. In 1997, Zoe O’Reilly published a blog post titled “My life as an amoeba”. In the post, O’Reilly describes herself as asexual and talks about her experience coming out to friends and family. While the term “asexual” was in more common use at this point, this is the first instance of the term “amoeba” being used as a tongue-in-cheek label for asexual people, which was popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. After this, in 2000, a Yahoo group for asexuals called the Haven for the Human Amoeba was formed. This group was organized as a single email thread, and this structure quickly became unwieldy as the community grew. The need for an online community of asexuals with support for threaded discussions was quickly becoming apparent.

Finally, in 2001, AVEN was founded by David Jay with the goals of promoting public acceptance of asexuality and facilitating the growth of an asexual community. Without a doubt, the organization has been the first to make serious progress towards achieving those two goals.

The language of asexuality has a complicated history, and this account is by no means exhaustive. Asexuality has gone by many different names and been defined in many different ways over the decades, and it took until the early 21st century for consensus among the community to emerge. Looking back over the history of asexuality, a few general conclusions can be made. First, asexuality was “discovered” and named independently several times by scientists and activists going back to at least the mid 19th century, and it took until at least the mid-to-late 20th century for the term “asexual” to become the predominant label. Second, many of the people to first talk about asexuality, especially in academic literature, were not themselves asexual. Third, asexuality has been defined in many different ways over the decades; while some historical definitions of asexuality do approximate the commonly understood definition we use today, others have defined it as a lack of libido, a lack of sexual experience, a lack of time and energy to devote to sex, a psychological defense mechanism, and even a political ideology. Fourth, for much of the history of sexology, asexuality has been pathologized in scientific literature, with many scientists attempting to devise scientific explanations for its causes.

All of this raises the question of why asexuality took so long to be understood and develop a community when compared to other sexual and gender minorities. Of course, the LGBTQ movement as a whole has had to fight tooth and nail to develop a community and gain public recognition, but those things came later for asexuals than for most other people in the community. Is the issue one of demographics—that there aren’t as many of us? Or is the story of asexuality a testament to how deeply rooted allonormativity is in our society? Whatever the case, with how quickly the ace community has grown in recent years, only good things can come.

The question “Are you single?” can be difficult to answer for people in polyamorous relationships. This question is deceptive because it’s actually two questions disguised as one. This question could mean either “Are you currently unpartnered?” or “Are you romantically available?” which is tricky for people in polyamorous relationships because those two questions might have different answers; one can be partnered and also available. Aromantic people who aren’t interested in romantic relationships also often struggle with this question, because revealing that they’re unpartnered implies that they’re romantically available, which may not be the case.

The question “Are you dating?” and even the term “dating” can be problematic for people in queerplatonic relationships. This terminology is typically reserved for romantic relationships, and it implies the existence of a strict platonic-romantic dichotomy. Many QPRs (and even many friendships) outwardly present as romantic relationships, especially when the people in them participate in traditionally romantic activities or fulfill the social roles of a partner (such as a “plus-one” at gatherings). This is where questions like “Are you dating?” can become problematic. Many people in a QPR would answer “yes” to this question because they want to signify that their relationship with their queerplatonic partner is a form of partnership distinct from a friendship, and many would answer “no” because they don’t want their partnership to be seen as romantic. Either way, a simple answer to this question often requires misrepresenting the nature of the relationship.

All of these problems stem from the amatonormative misconception that all intimate partnerships are monogamous and romantic. The language we use to talk about relationships reinforces these narratives, and makes discussing non-traditional partnerships difficult without resorting to the more esoteric language adopted by aromantic, polyamorous, and other communities.

The inherent problems with romance-coded language leave people in non-traditional partnerships in the awkward position of having to choose between giving a lengthy educational lecture or misrepresenting their relationships every time the topic comes up. For people in QPRs, it’s often much easier to tell a stranger that they’re dating or they’re “just friends” rather than explain what a QPR is and what that entails. Polyamorous and aromantic people are often pressured to pass as monogamous and alloromantic because the kinds of lengthy explanations required to do otherwise can quickly become exhausting. What makes romance-coded language so insidious is that it pressures the people who are victims of amatonormativity to acquiesce to amatonormative narratives. Most poly and aro people would love for their partnerships to be more broadly recognized, but that’s a difficult milestone to reach when the commonly understood language for talking about relationships is so amatonormative.

Obviously, the solution to this problem is better education about non-traditional relationships. This can include dismantling commonly held assumptions about partnerships and normalizing the currently esoteric language used by aro, poly, and other communities. However, the nature of the problem means that this responsibility typically falls on people who really have no obligation to educate others. Unfortunately, there can sometimes be pressure from the community to educate at every opportunity, and acquiescing to amatonormative language can be seen as a betrayal of that community.

Ultimately, we should support people who choose the take the opportunity to educate, and we should support people who accept the convenience of amatonormative language. And maybe we can hope that better public understanding comes with time.

Neurodivergent people often make financial decisions that seem irresponsible from an outside perspective. It’s important to note that this problem isn’t limited to neurodivergent people; poor people regularly face harsh judgment from higher-income people for any purchase not deemed “necessary,” and research has shown that this is the result of a pernicious double standard in which poor people are judged for their purchases not because they can afford less, but because they’re incorrectly presumed to need less. This is a complex topic, but I want to specifically focus on the reasoning that goes into many of the financial decisions that neurodivergent people are forced to make as a result of their neurodivergence and hopefully shed some light on why seemingly irresponsible financial decisions are often actually a result of careful consideration and cost-benefit analysis.

Neurodivergent people are used to being chided and condescended to for the things they do as a result of their neurodivergence. People with ADHD usually spend much of their life being called lazy and told they need to focus more. People with depression and anxiety are often treated like a simple change in attitude or outlook is all that’s needed to solve their mental health problems. This extends to the financial decisions made by many neurodivergent people—particularly when it comes to people with disabilities that limit the amount of mental or emotional energy they have and force them to ration their energy to make it through the day.

In her formative essay, The Spoon Theory, Christine Miserandino introduces the concept of “spoons” as a unit of physical, mental, or emotional energy used by people with various disabilities to explain how their disability affects their life and causes them to have to make tough decisions about how to ration that energy. In the essay, Christine explains to a friend how having Lupus means she has a limited number of spoons at the start of each day, and she has to “spend” them to complete even basic tasks like getting dressed, taking a shower, or cooking dinner. Typically, this means she has to make tough decisions on any given day about what to spend her spoons on—something most people wouldn’t have to think about. In this essay, Christine uses the spoon metaphor to explain the limited physical energy she has because of her disability, but the metaphor has been adopted by various neurodiversity communities to explain the limited mental or emotional energy they have because of their disability.

Having to ration spoons informs a lot of the financial decisions that neurodivergent people make. Often, money can buy spoons. Or rather, not spending money can cost spoons. What appears on the surface to be an imprudent waste of money is often the result of a complex cost-benefit analysis between money and spoons—a resource most people don’t have to manage so carefully. To illustrate, I’ll provide some examples of ways in which this can play out in day-to-day life.

Imagine that you need to buy some new clothes, but going to a clothing store and trying them on will cost a lot of spoons. So you order them online and pay the added cost of shipping. Then you find out the clothes don’t fit, but going through the process of returning them—interacting with customer support and mailing them back—will also cost spoons, so you end up having to eat the cost of the clothes you ordered and just order new ones in a different size.

Maybe the place you go to get your hair cut is really expensive, and you could save money going somewhere cheaper. But part of the reason you go to that place is because they accept walk-ins, saving you the spoons it would cost to call ahead and make an appointment. This place is also not usually busy, crowded, or noisy, which might also save spoons. You’re also familiar with this place—you know exactly what to expect going in. Going somewhere else where you don’t know what to expect will cost additional spoons. Suddenly, going somewhere else to save money doesn’t make much sense, because you’ll be “paying” significantly more in spoons.

Let’s say you get your phone or internet bill, and there’s a charge on it you don’t recognize or know shouldn’t be there. You could probably call their customer service line to get it removed or refunded, but that phone call will cost spoons that you don’t have. So you pay a little extra each month so you don’t have to make the call and spend those spoons.

Learning how to cook is a great way to get healthy and delicious food on the cheap. But maybe you don’t have the spoons to cook for yourself. You need those spoons for work or school, and you’ve got to cut something from the spoon budget. So every week you load up your grocery cart with frozen microwave meals, because that’s all you have the spoons to prepare. They’re bland and unhealthy and expensive, but you just don’t have the spoons to cook for yourself.

To most people, these examples might seem silly. How hard could it possibly be to just go to the store or make a phone call? But just like Christine’s disability makes tasks as simple as getting dressed or taking a shower a challenge, being neurodivergent often means that tasks which are trivial to a neurotypical person can be daunting.

People with disabilities which aren’t obvious to the casual observer—what we call “invisible” disabilities—often face judgment and discrimination from people who don’t understand what it’s like to live with their disability. People with invisible disabilities are regularly forced to justify themselves and often aren’t believed when they explain that their disability hinders or prohibits them from doing something.

If someone tells you they can’t do something or need to do something differently because of their disability, believe them. Instead of demanding justification or passing judgment, offer support and accommodation wherever you can. That’s what being an ally is about.

What are functioning labels?

What do people mean by “high-functioning” or “low-functioning” autism? Generally, people do understand that autism exists on a spectrum; the term “autism spectrum” and the euphemism “on the spectrum” (referring to someone who is autistic) exist in common parlance. However, most people think of autism as a one-dimensional spectrum ranging from “mild” to “severe.” Autistic people are considered to be low-functioning if they fall on the “severe” end of the scale and high-functioning if they fall on the “mild” end of the scale. This understanding of autism isn’t just a gross oversimplification, but can be actively harmful to autistic people.

What’s Asperger’s?

As a quick aside, most people have heard the term “asperger’s” and understand that it is related to autism. What is it specifically? Generally, people consider asperger’s to be synonymous with “high-functioning” autism. The term used to be an official diagnosis in older versions of the DSM—the official manual used by medical providers in the US to diagnose mental disorders. Basically, it referred to a person who meets all the criteria of autism but doesn’t have significant language or intellectual impairments. Since the release of version 5 of the DSM in 2013, asperger’s and other disorders have been removed the only official autism diagnosis is “autism spectrum disorder” (ASD). Some autistic people who were diagnosed with asperger’s still identify with the label, and they’re valid in doing so. I’ll continue to use the term “autism” to refer to both ASD and older autism diagnoses.

What “it’s a spectrum” really means

C.L. Lynch wrote a fantastic article, “Autism is a Spectrum” Doesn’t Mean What You Think, on what autistic people really mean when they call autism a spectrum. I encourage you to stop and read what she has to say about spectrums before continuing.

To summarize, autism is a disorder that is characterized by difficulties in multiple different areas of life, including pragmatic language, social awareness, breadth of interests, information processing, sensory processing, repetitive behaviors, and neuro-motor differences. When a person checks most or all of these boxes, they are diagnosed with autism. However, not all autistic people are equally impaired in all these areas. Different autistic people have different strengths and weaknesses, which is why it’s best to think of autism as a multi-dimensional spectrum. When trying to classify an autistic person as high-functioning or low-functioning, neurotypical people will typically fixate on the traits that are most obvious to them, regardless of how much they actually affect that person. In addition to being overly simplistic, functioning labels are more a function of how neurotypical-passing an autistic person is than how much they actually struggle integrating into society.

Why functioning labels are harmful

Functioning labels are harmful in a number of ways, both to people labeled as high-functioning and those labeled as low-functioning. For “high-functioning” people, their problems often aren’t taken seriously and they struggle to get the support and accommodation they need because, much of the time, they’re able to pass as neurotypical. Some common autistic traits, such as trouble understanding non-verbal communication and social cues, trouble assimilating new sources of information and adapting to new situations, sensory issues, and having a limited set of interests aren’t as obvious to the casual observer. Someone who struggles in these areas can often pass as “high-functioning” because their challenges aren’t as obvious in day-to-day interactions. Regardless of how disabling their disorder may be, these people are often labeled as attention-seekers and accused of drawing attention and resources away from “lower-functioning” autistic people who are considered to need them more.

Autistic people labeled as low-functioning are harmed by functioning labels as well. These people typically have neuro-motor differences including trouble with coordination and fine motor skills, obvious repetitive behaviors (stims), and are often semi-verbal or non-verbal. The common thread between these differences is that they are much more obvious to the casual observer, causing people to label them as low-functioning. These people are often infantilized and held back because people focus on their weaknesses and ignore their strengths. While these differences can absolutely be disabling, many “low-functioning” people are perfectly capable of living independent, fulfilling lives with the right accommodations. Instead, they’re often treated like a basket case with no hope for a future. Semi-verbal and non-verbal people in particular tend to be treated like infants, when many are perfectly capable of following along with conversations and communicating via alternative methods.

Something worth pointing out is the connection between autism and intellectual disabilities. According to the CDC, approximately one-third of autistic children in the US in 2016 also have an intellectual disability. The correlation between these two disorders has caused people to conflate them, when they’re actually separate disorders that happen to commonly occur together. Remember that one of the primary distinctions between autism and asperger’s in the DSM-4 was the presence of a comorbid intellectual disability. It used to be the case that intellectual impairment was a diagnostic criteria for autism, and people who did not meet that criteria were diagnosed with asperger’s instead. The reason why autism, asperger’s, and other disorders in the DSM-4 were consolidated into autism spectrum disorder in the DSM-5 is that it made sense for medical providers to think of autism and intellectual disabilities as separate; they found that providers were using the existing diagnoses inconsistently and causing confusion.

This confusion surrounding intellectual disabilities and autism persists to this day and is deeply embedded in how people apply functioning labels. Typically, autistic people with an intellectual disability are considered to be low-functioning regardless of how their autism affects them in day-to-day life, and people considered to be low-functioning for other reasons are often assumed to have an intellectual disability. This contributes significantly to the problem of “low-functioning” people being infantilized.

Many non-autistic people consider the changes to autism diagnoses in the DSM-5 to be doing a disservice to autistic people. This is because the DSM-4 encoded the low-functioning/high-functioning dichotomy in the official taxonomy of mental disorders as separate diagnoses. To opponents of the change, this meant lumping autistic people with a wide range of experiences into one category, cutting them off from a more specific diagnosis that more accurately describes their experience. While it is true that autistic people exist on a broad spectrum, the dichotomy enforced by the old diagnoses is not helpful to autistic people, which is why it was removed in the DSM-5. Instead of trying to broadly categorize autistic people in harmful ways, we need to start listening to autistic people and letting their own personal experiences dictate what kind of support and accommodation is best for them.

Why functioning labels can be ableist

In addition to the practical problems functioning labels cause for autistic people, the obsession with classifying autistic people using functioning labels is, in many cases, rooted in ableism. That’s not to say that people who use functioning labels never have good intentions—many parents of autistic children cite the need for more specialized resources for their child as a rationale for functioning labels. It’s also worth noting that the use of these labels is typically borne out of a lack of understanding of autism, and ignorance does not equate to ableism. Still, there is often a hidden layer of implicit ableism lying under the surface of otherwise innocent comments, and it’s worth analyzing how ableist tendencies and attitudes influence this phenomenon.

I’ve already mentioned how the label autistic people are given tends to be a function of how neurotypical-passing they are, and the inherent problem here should be recognizable to anyone with an invisible disability. Many people with disabilities that aren’t obvious to the casual observer—what we commonly refer to as “invisible” disabilities—face discrimination from people who equate not being able to see a disability to it not existing. A great example is people who use wheelchairs. If someone is paralyzed from the waist down or missing a lower limb, most people won’t question them if they say they need to use a wheelchair to get around. However, people who don’t have a visible physical disability or are able to stand or walk on their own are often not believed when they say they need a wheelchair. These people may have chronic pain, weakness, or issues with their nervous system that limit their ability to stand or walk for long durations, but people tend to assume that if they can stand, they must not be disabled. People with invisible disabilities are often denied necessary accommodations on the premise that they’re faking their disability for sympathy or attention.

This kind of discrimination is ableism because the people who perpetuate it think they have the right to decide whether or not a person is disabled and whether or not they need accommodation—without knowing anything about them. Autistic people who are labeled as high-functioning face this same kind of discrimination; they are denied necessary accommodation because someone who knows nothing about them decided that they aren’t disabled enough.

Another aspect of the inherent ableism in functioning labels is the way they stigmatize autistic people. Society tends to find “high-functioning” autistic people more palatable—they’re less different, less other. And people tend to use the high-functioning label as a sort of reassurance: “They have autism, but don’t worry—they’re high-functioning.” It’s implied that it’s a good thing that the person in question is high-functioning, and this in turn implies that there’s something wrong with being low-functioning. Autistic people are labeled as low-functioning because their disability is more obvious to the casual observer, and the term is used to imply that they’re lesser people for it

I think even some autistic people who identify with the term “high-functioning” fall into this trap. While it’s important to support peoples’ right to choose how they want to be labeled—especially when they’re members of a marginalized group—I think there’s often a layer of repressed ableism that causes autistic people to be overly concerned with people knowing that they’re not one of the “low-functioning” ones. There’s often a deep-seated distaste for “low-functioning” autistic people that they’ve internalized after a lifetime of social messaging from an ableist society. Many autistic people, especially those diagnosed later in life, have had to contend with this sort of repressed ableism, myself included.

I see these kinds of subtly ableist attitudes among parents of autistic children as well. When asperger’s was removed from the DSM in 2013, many well-intentioned parents complained that they didn’t want their “high-functioning” children to be labeled as autistic and face the associated stigma. Wanting to minimize the stigma your neurodivergent child is going to face is understandable, but telling people that they should accept your neurodivergent child because they’re less disabled than someone else’s isn’t helpful to autistic people and doesn’t sent the right message to your child.

Not only is the false dichotomy enforced by functioning labels a wholly inaccurate system for explaining the experiences of autistic people—it often has nothing to do with how much an autistic person’s condition affects their life. What functioning labels really tell us is how neurotypical-passing an autistic person is and how well they conform to arbitrary societal standards of normalcy. While people claim their purpose is to ensure the right resources are available to autistic people of different abilities, in practice, they’re used for othering people who don’t fit in and reinforcing the heavy stigma surrounding autism.

What terms should I use instead?

A common question people have when we talk about how functioning labels are harmful is, “What labels should I use instead?” Often these people are missing the point—the problem isn’t with the labels themselves, but with society’s obsession with arbitrarily classifying autistic people and enforcing a false dichotomy.

That being said, there are situations, especially in contexts where you’re trying to provide accommodations to autistic people, where it makes sense to classify them based on how much or what kind of support they need. The DSM-5 has a classification system for this purpose. People diagnosed with ASD are given a “support level.” This is either level 1, meaning they “require support,” level 2, meaning they “require substantial support”, or level 3, meaning they “require very substantial support”. However, these terms are not a drop-in replacement for terms like “high-functioning” and “low-functioning.” If you’re asking the question of what terms you should use to classify autistic people, you ought to ask yourself why you feel the need to classify them at all. Is it really to help them get the accommodation they need? Even in the case of providing accommodations, it’s still typically more useful to ask them or a caretaker what specific challenges they have and what specific accommodations they need.

Conclusion

It’s really time we phase out functioning labels when talking about autism. They represent a gross oversimplification of what autism is, they’re not representative of how much or what kinds of support an autistic person needs, and they reinforce stigmas against “low-functioning” autistic people. Instead of categorizing autistic people based on how neurotypical-passing they are, we need to listen to them and learn what makes them different, what challenges they have, and what they need to be successful.

The multi-faceted nature of gender becomes evident when we take a look at the ambiguity in the language we use to talk about gender. When people refer to their gender, sometimes they’re referring to the label they use to describe themselves (“I am a woman.”), sometimes they’re referring to how they act and present themselves (“I was in girl mode when I went to the grocery store earlier today.”), sometimes they’re referring to how other people see and refer to them (“The cashier totally thought I was a woman!”), sometimes they’re referring to their physical characteristics (“I want to start hormones so I can be a woman.”), sometimes they’re referring to their gender assigned at birth, (“I’m assigned male at birth.”), and sometimes they’re referring to something else entirely. Typically, people in trans communities explain gender using the “genderbread person” model, where we decompose the concept of gender into a few distinct components like identity, expression, and physiology. In this model, we think of each component as existing on a two-axis plane, with male/masculine on one axis and female/feminine on the other.

Something that isn’t talked about often in trans communities is how culture influences our gender identity. Cultures throughout human history have had widely different attitudes toward gender, and it turns out that our genderbread person model doesn’t account for all the variations in gender that have existed throughout history. Even this flexible model of gender provides a fairly limited view of how humans can understand gender, and it really only represents a contemporary, Western view.

For many cultures with third genders—a term anthropologists use to describe any gender which falls outside the binary—gender has been intrinsically tied to not just identity, expression, and physiology, but social class, occupation, religion, sexuality, and other aspects of life. In many cultures, one’s gender determines their social class and occupation or vice versa; people of certain genders hold certain positions in society and government, have certain careers, and enjoy certain legal rights. Religion is an important part of gender in some cultures, where people of some genders hold particular religious significance or have certain religious duties. While we typically consider gender and sexuality to be completely independent, in many cultures, they are intrinsically connected—people’s attraction is part of what determines their gender.

While understanding other cultures’ attitudes toward gender can be an important step in deconstructing toxic gender norms in our own culture, it’s important that we don’t romanticize or idealize these cultures. In some cultures with third genders, forced sterilization and castration of gender minorities is practiced. Often third genders exist to allow women to have certain legal rights in highly patriarchal societies. Gender minorities in some cultures are forced into certain occupations—often sex work. Many of these cultures suffer from systematic inequality and rigid gender roles, similar to our culture.

The wide variance in how humans have understood and continue to understand gender across cultures shows that the genderbread person model of gender is an artifact of how we understand gender and not what gender is or can be. Our contemporary Western understanding of gender is deeply rooted in the gender binary and Western gender norms. We use the term “non-binary” to be inclusive of any gender identity which falls outside the binary, but most non-binary people in our culture still define their gender in relation to the gender binary—some combination of male and female.

This isn’t to say that the genderbread person model is bad or that our understanding of gender is invalid or incomplete; our culture has as much a right to our own concepts of gender as any other. However, when having conversations about gender, it’s important to realize that gender is influenced by one’s culture as much as by innate identity. Gender identity cannot be fully divorced from culture, because a person’s gender can only be fully understood in the context of the culture in which they live. Transphobic people often decry attempts at widespread acceptance and visibility for non-binary genders under the premise that it’s all propaganda designed to recruit impressionable young people to our wicked cause. While these denouncements are obviously laughable and baseless, how trans people understand their identity is influenced by the cultural norms of our time. In a different time and place, that same trans person may have understood their gender identity differently. When having conversations about what gender is and what it can be, I think a more culturally aware understanding of gender would be beneficial to all of us.

Identity labels are incredibly useful to queer communities because they provide language with with which to discuss common experiences. The explosion of new identity labels over the past few decades is largely a product of our understanding of queer identities expanding and becoming more nuanced. Over time, we’ve realized that not everyone’s experiences can be categorized neatly into a half dozen or so labels, and identity is a spectrum with many dimensions. It turns out that sexuality is more complicated than “men, women, or both,” sexual and romantic orientations don’t always match, gender is not a binary, sex is not a binary, and identities can be fluid and change over time. Identity is complicated, and we can’t discuss and further our understanding of it without the necessary language.

Having a robust vocabulary with which to discuss queer identities isn’t just useful from an academic standpoint—it’s also beneficial to closeted and questioning people. Labels help those who are questioning their identity to find a community of people like them—a critical step for many queer people in the process in coming out and accepting themselves. Finding a label that describes their experiences even helps a lot of closeted people start the questioning process by showing them that their experiences are not unique. Many people go through life feeling broken because they don’t realize that there are other people out there like them (something that doesn’t just apply to queer communities), and discovering their identity can be an affirming and liberating experience.

Identity labels also serve as a source of pride for many queer people. In the face of systemic oppression, it can be hard for queer people to be proud of their identity. Pride parades aren’t just for visibility; they’re a public celebration of the identities which people have long been made to feel ashamed of. Pride is important to queer people, and identity labels are a part of that. Even if someone describes their identity using microlabels which aren’t likely to be understood outside of a small community, those labels are still meaningful to them.

For all the good identity labels do, they also do harm. For one thing, labels divide communities. What we call “the LGBTQ+ community” is really a collection of many communities, most of which are built around different queer identities. As we continue to subdivide these identities with increasing granularity, the communities become fragmented. There is a tremendous amount of infighting between queer communities—more than most cishet people realize—and while most queer people are campaigning for the same rights, liberties, and freedoms, constant infighting sabotages this effort. Fragmenting communities only exacerbates this issue, creating more boundaries and walls. It’s important that people be able to find groups of people like them to share experiences with, but the LGBTQ+ community needs unity, and fragmentation is antithetical to that goal.

Another problem with label culture is the way it polices identity. While the intention behind more specific labels is to expand our understanding of queer identities, in practice, labels artificially limit how people can identity and are used to gatekeep. Queer people often use the concept of spectrums to explain and understand queer identities; sexual orientation, romantic orientation, gender, and sex all exist on multidimensional spectrums. Labels are incompatible with the concept of spectrums—they are inherently discrete, whereas spectrums are continuous. No matter how many labels are created, people will always exist in the spaces between them. Every queer experience is unique, and trying to force people to choose a label only limits their understanding of themself. Labels are also used by communities, both intentionally and unintentionally, to gatekeep. People who don’t meet a community’s strict definition of a given label are often barred from membership in that community, and people whose identity isn’t neatly described by any existing labels are left without one. The purpose of labels is supposed to be to aid inclusivity, but instead they’re being used to do the opposite.

Cishet people often ask, “Why do you need all these labels? Why can’t people just be people?” This idea of a post-label society in which people can just be themselves and feel comfortable in their identities without the need to label them is attractive for many queer people, and it avoids many of the problems label culture creates. However, in a cisnormative and heteronormative society where people are taught that they are cisgender and heterosexual until proven otherwise, we need a common language to share our experiences so that closeted queer people can find communities, learn to accept themselves, and not have to go through life feeling broken. Still, that doesn’t meant that some of the problems of label culture can’t be addressed. There are identity frameworks, such as relationship anarchy, which seek to obviate the need for labels by taking a descriptive rather than a prescriptive approach to identity. The idea is that people can focus on what their identity and orientation mean to them and how they affect their life, and either choose a label which they think fits that or eschew labels entirely. We shouldn’t be too quick to cancel labels, because they are still useful to a lot of people. However, we need to normalize the act of going without labels, because not everyone wants or needs them.

When psychiatric diagnoses are slung as insults, this raises the question of what that says about people who actually have diagnosable mental disorders. Even people within neurodiversity communities sometimes dislike disorder labels when used outside of a medical context because of the terrible stigma of having a mental disorder. Generations of hate against neurodivergent people means that even medically accurate terminology comes with a lot of baggage and loaded meaning. Disorder labels can perpetuate stigma against people who are different and can be used to exclude people who aren’t able to pursue an official diagnosis from neurodiversity communities. So what differentiates a disorder from any other kind of difference? What purpose do diagnoses serve in our culture other than to perpetuate prejudice and gatekeeping?

Of the queerphobic people who acknowledge that being queer is more than just a lifestyle choice, many try to argue that being queer is a mental disorder. And, in fact, homosexuality was officially classified as such in the US by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) until 1973. Most queer people have to deal with these sort of attacks, but asexual people are a special case. A lot of well-meaning people who consider themselves to be LGBT allies insist that asexuality is a mental disorder. In this case, however, it’s typically out of genuine concern rather than malice. There are a few reasons why people think this. First, most people don’t know that asexuals exist. Even if they’ve wrapped their head around the idea that people can be non-straight, they might not understand that it’s possible for someone to not feel sexual attraction. Second, a drop in libido can be indicative of an underlying medical condition in some cases—a fact these people use to support their convictions. Of course, plenty of asexual people do have a libido, and many of those who don’t never had one to begin with, but obviously these people don’t know that.

Rather than defend acephobic people, the point of bringing this up is to demonstrate that pathologizing others’ differences doesn’t just happen when people are looking for a cheap insult. Given the way mental health is stigmatized in the US, it isn’t hard to understand why using disorders as insults is as common as it is. It is interesting, though, that even people with good intentions love to give armchair diagnoses. In this case, the purpose of the “diagnosis” is to encourage the person to seek help. But help for what? Most asexual people will tell you that they are perfectly content being asexual, something the acephobe in this scenario rarely has a sensible answer for. Why diagnose someone with a mental disorder if there’s nothing that needs fixing? This reveals something fundamental about how mental disorders are viewed in American culture. People don’t think of the disorder as a label for an underlying issue; they think of the disorder as an issue in and of itself. People aren’t diagnosed with disorders because they need help; people need help because they have a disorder.

The attitude that disorders are inherently bad has given rise to discussion about the language surrounding disorders and disability. Some people propose we replace the term “disabled” with “differently abled” to remove the negative connotation and emphasize that a disability is just a difference. Others have popularized the concept of “person-first” language which favors terms like “person with autism” or “person who is blind” over “autistic person” or “blind person.” The idea here is that people should not be defined by their diagnoses, but rather be considered people above all else. Person-first language actually receives a lot of criticism from neurodiversity communities, the autism community in particular. To autistic people, their autism is a fundamental part of who they are, and person-first language erases that by making it something they have rather than something they are. Additionally, the motivation behind person-first language—the idea that people should not be defined by their disorder—implies that it is something wrong with having a disorder, an attitude many autistic people consider ableist.

Discussions like these are important because language is an incredibly impactful tool for fighting ableism. The problems with these discussions is that disabled people are often left out. Autistic people are regularly talked over and excluded from discussions about autism, which has bred resentment within the community. Many autistic people dislike the organization Autism Speaks because, among other reasons, they claim to speak for autistic people despite having few if any autistic people in leadership positions. Part of the reason why some disabled people oppose these attempts at language reform is that they tend to happen without their input. These are discussions primarily led by parents, families, educators, and healthcare providers, and they’re often viewed by disabled people as a cheap grab for allyship points rather than something that they actually asked for.

In many cases, diagnoses are used to exclude others. Some neurodivergent people feel that self-diagnosed individuals should not be welcome in their communities. They argue that self-diagnosed individuals don’t really have the condition they claim to—otherwise they would have been officially diagnosed—and that this is harmful to the community as a whole because it invalidates the hardship and oppression that “real” neurodivergent people face. A similar issue exists in the transgender community, where some trans people—often referred to as transmedicalists—exclude trans people who don’t have an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria and don’t medically transition to an extent deemed acceptable to the transmedicalist. They argue that these so-called “transtrenders” harm the community by making people take the “real” trans people less seriously.

This phenomenon of excluding people without an official diagnosis is harmful because not everyone has the time, money, or opportunity to pursue one. It’s a long, expensive process that’s out of reach for some people, and just not necessary for others. If a person doesn’t need access to resources which are gated behind an official diagnosis, there’s no reasons to pursue one other than personal validation. Just because someone doesn’t have an official diagnosis doesn’t mean they don’t need a supportive community of people like them, and even if they conclude that they aren’t autistic or transgender, finding and engaging with these communities is still a critical step in reaching that conclusion.

While the neurodiversity community is by and large accepting of people without an official diagnoses, disorder language and official diagnoses are still important to the community. Often, neurodivergent people who weren’t diagnosed in childhood have to discover on their own what makes them different, and finding a disorder label that resonates with them helps connect them to supportive communities of people like them where they can learn more. For many neurodivergent people, receiving an official diagnosis, especially later in life, is an incredibly validating experience. It allows them to prove to themselves that they’re not broken—just different. Now, whether this a valid argument for official diagnoses or indicative of a larger problem that makes people with differences feel like they need someone else to tell them that they’re not broken is hard to pin down. When our society teaches people that they are cisgender, heterosexual, neurotypical, etc. until proven otherwise, people with differences go through all sorts of mental gymnastics in the process of trying to accept themselves, and this typically involves seeking external validation to confirm their suspicions. Any trans person who has googled “Am I transgender?” can relate to this.

Despite how important official diagnoses are to many neurodivergent people, the neurodiversity movement prefers to think of mental disorders as differences, not medical conditions. This isn’t so much a rejection of the concept of a diagnosis as it is a method of distancing neurodivergent people from the harmful stereotypes and prejudices surrounding mental disorders. Our society treats disorders as something inherently bad that needs fixing, and it doesn’t help that organizations like Autism Speaks push the harmful rhetoric that mental disorders are a disease and a plague upon society. Many neurodivergent people, while they may consider themselves to be disabled because of their differences, don’t consider there to be anything wrong with them. A lot of the prejudice neurodivergent people face is this cultural attitude that disorders and disabilities are inherently bad, but there are other ways of thinking about disability that don’t push this harmful attitude.

The social model of disability is a popular concept in neurodiversity communities and disability communities as a whole. The social model of disability teaches that people aren’t disabled because there’s something wrong with them, but because society isn’t accommodating of their differences. Blind people are disabled because the world was built for sighted people. People who use wheelchairs are disabled because the world was built for people who don’t use them. This goes for neurodivergent people too. For many autistic people, the strength of their support network is what determines how disabling their condition is.

We still haven’t addressed the core question of what differentiates a difference from a disorder and what purpose diagnoses serve. In a medical context, diagnoses help ensure that support and accommodation is available to those who need it and that these resources aren’t abused by those who don’t. However, diagnoses and disorder labels also serve a much broader cultural purpose. On the one hand, they help neurodivergent people find supportive communities and accept their differences. On the other hand, they make neurodivergent people targets for prejudice and they’re used to gatekeep people from communities and support networks. And ultimately, when it comes to talking about the issues surrounding the language of mental health, neurodivergent people are left out of the discussion. It’s easy to say that society needs to unlearn generations of hate and stop viewing disorders as defects, but practically, I think a label-focused and disorder-focused attitude toward mental health exacerbates the problem. We don’t need to abandon disorder labels entirely, especially since they form an important part of many people’s identities and are useful in medical contexts. What we need is to adopt a mentality closer to the social model of disability; we need to accept people as they are and provide the accommodation they deserve. No diagnoses. No disorders. Just people.

In response, a lot of cishet people feel like they’re being unfairly attacked. People who consider themselves to be allies of—or at least indifferent toward—the LGBT movement argue that they’re being undeservedly roped in with transphobes and homophobes. Some feel like they’re being attacked for their orientation, complaining that they’re being made to feel like it’s “not okay” to be cisgender or heterosexual. This reaction isn’t completely unjustified. When someone is at least making an effort to be inclusive and accepting, it can be frustrating to be generalized about like this. Also, this reaction puts all the blame on cishet people specifically, when much of the discrimination and erasure queer people face comes from other queer people.

This response, in turn, prompts more ridicule from queer communities. When cishet people complain that not all cishets are homophobic or transphobic, it really annoys queer people for a couple of reasons. First, they already know this. Most queers don’t actually believe that all cishets are evil. Second, this kind of rebuttal derails the conversation. It comes across as cishet people trying to make the conversation about them, when these exchanges typically happen in the context of conversations about the marginalization of queer people. Third, people in positions of privilege victimizing themselves is a really tone-deaf response. Even when these people do have a leg to stand on (which I think they do in this case), complaining to a group of marginalized minorities about how you feel discriminated against for being in a privileged majority typically isn’t going to be well-received. #NotAllMen is an example of this phenomenon; it started as a criticism of feminists who make generalizations about men, and was later reappropriated by feminists to mock men to try to derail conversations about misogyny and sexism.

A lot of the animosity between queer and non-queer people comes down to a few rotten eggs. There are cishet people who hate queer people (obviously), and there are queer people who hate cishet people. This causes problems because people conflate the voices of a small, vocal minority with those of an entire group. Many people have a bad habit of treating other demographics like a hivemind; one person says something out of line and everyone assumes they speak for their entire group. A lot of the arguing follows the back-and-forth pattern outlined above; Homophobes and transphobes oppress queer people, queer people protest (rightfully), cishet allies (who are not the subject of their protest) get defensive, and queer people mock them for it. It’s a terrible routine that repeats itself constantly and does nothing to help build bridges between the groups.

This sort of mutual misunderstanding is exemplified by a common joke in queer communities: “Are the straights okay?”. This meme is a good case study on how animosity grows between communities where there should be none—in this case, between queer people and their allies. The meme is often interpreted by people outside the community as an attack on cishet people (“What’s wrong with straight people?”), when it’s actually intended as a show of genuine concern (“Are straight people doing alright?”).

The concern comes from the belief that cishet people are more vulnerable to toxic heteronormativity, and the meme is used to point out examples of toxic heteronormativity and sympathize with the cishet people who have fallen victim to it. Toxic heteronormativity can take many forms, but often involves enforcing traditional gender roles and sexist attitudes toward love and romance. The question “Are the straights okay?” isn’t intended to make fun of cishet people or blame them for these problems, but to express sympathy for the people who have to live with these toxic attitudes.

Now obviously queer people aren’t immune to toxic behavior in their relationships. There is a common belief within the community, however, that they’re less prone to it. The rationale is that queer people have already had to let go of these societally imposed attitudes and the associated emotional baggage in the process of coming out and accepting themselves. Being queer teaches you things about gender, sexuality, and relationships that you might not otherwise learn. More importantly, it helps you unlearn some of the toxic attitudes that society teaches all of us.

Cishets misunderstanding the purpose of the meme “Are the straights okay?” is part of a larger trend where many cishet people feel personally attacked when queer people protest larger societal issues. Issues like toxic heteronormativity and the patriarchy were created by cishet people, sure, but blaming them on our cishet allies is like blaming the holocaust on Angela Merkel. When queer people protest toxic social norms and expectations, they are not protesting cishet allies. In fact, these issues harm cishet people as much as they do queer people. This is similar to how many people assume that feminism is the struggle of women against men, when feminism is actually the struggle of people (of all genders) against the patriarchy (which harms all of us).

The point here isn’t that cishet people need to be more queer. There’s nothing wrong with being cisgender or heterosexual—something cishet people don’t hear from this community enough. Cishet people need to realize that most queer people aren’t trying to make harmful generalizations, but rather protest the injustice they’ve faced and the problems that plague society as a whole. Queer people need to learn that when their protest is misconstrued as an ad hominum attack, accusing cishets of derailing the conversation by complaining—even if that is indeed what they’re doing—isn’t helpful. While it’s true that these sorts of complaints are by and large coming from positions of privilege, dismissing and mocking them does nothing to gain public support.

We need to build bridges—not walls.

Relationships anarchy is a descriptive approach to relationships; labels are chosen to suit what each person wants out of the relationships or, more commonly, eschewed altogether. People are free to pick and choose what they want out of the relationship instead of allowing society to choose for them.

There are lots of behaviors that can characterize a relationship. Relationships may or may not involve:

• Emotional intimacy
• Vulnerability
• Affection
• Hugging
• Cuddling
• Holding hands
• Kissing
• Sex
• Saying that you love one another
• Using specific terms to refer to one another (“girlfriend,” “boyfriend,” “partner,” etc.)
• Exclusivity
• Commitment
• Marriage
• Shared responsibility
• Shared finances
• Cohabitation
• Raising children

Most of the items in this list can be categorized as either platonic or romantic. Social norms dictate that people in platonic relationships are barred from the behaviors deemed romantic, while people in romantic relationships are expected to engage in all or most of them eventually. This prescriptive relationship model doesn’t allow for things like romantic partners who don’t want sex or platonic friends who want to cuddle.

Categorizing relationships can be toxic because it artificially limits what constitutes a valid relationship. Some people in “platonic” relationships want to enjoy things society considers to be strictly romantic, and some people in “romantic” relationships don’t want to do all the things which are expected of them. People should be free to decide with their partner(s) what they want out of their relationship, instead of the all-or-nothing approach enforced by the romantic/platonic dichotomy.

People often have a hierarchical view of relationship categories, where they feel like certain types of relationships are inherently more important than or should always take precedence over others. Specifically, people tend to prioritize romantic relationships over platonic ones. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with having some relationships in your life that are more important to you than others. Relationship anarchy doesn’t mean giving all your relationships equal precedence; rather, it means not considering certain categories of relationships to be inherently more important than others. Rather than following the rule that romantic relationships should always come first, people should be free to distribute their time, energy, and affection however they want.

To be clear, relationship anarchy doesn’t necessitate that people abandon the romantic/platonic dichotomy all together. People are still free to label their relationships as such, and are valid in doing so if that’s what they want. The point of relationships anarchy is that people have the freedom to pursue the types of relationships they want and aren’t bound by arbitrary social norms.

While relationship anarchy is a popular concept among polyamorous communities, it’s also important to understand that relationship anarchy and polyamory are not the same thing. Wanting exclusivity in a relationship is valid, and the point of relationship anarchy is that people should be free to define for themselves exactly what that means for them and their partner(s).

Slurs and symbols

Degrading language and symbols are some of the most common tools used to marginalize people, and this makes them prime candidates for reappropriation. Nearly every marginalized group has slurs associated with it—disparaging words used to exclude, belittle, or express contempt. Some groups have reclaimed these slurs—adopting them for use within the community. Within the group, the term becomes a source of pride and a part of their collective identity rather than a slur. A notable example of this is the way “queer” was reclaimed by the LGBTQ+ community. As a result of this reappropriation, its use as a slur has fallen. Members of a group may disagree about whether or to what extent a slur has been reclaimed, who is allowed to use it, and under what circumstances its use is appropriate. Many believe it’s better to let a term die out than try to reclaim it. Still, reclaiming a slur is a powerful method of disarming people who would otherwise use it against others.

Symbols can be reappropriated in much the same way slurs can. During the Holocaust, a system of badges was used to to mark prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, with different shapes and colors identifying why prisoners had been placed there. There were symbols for Jewish people and people of other religious minorities, Romani people, neurodivergent and disabled people, political prisoners, homosexual and bisexual men and women, and other groups. After the war, many of these symbols came to be used on memorials and monuments honoring victims of of the Holocaust. Rather than acting as a mark of shame, they came to represent the memory of those who had been lost. Later, in the 1970s, the pink triangle—the symbol used to distinguish gay men—became a symbol of protest against homophobia and a symbol of pride for the LGBTQ+ movement.

Modern-day witches

Witches and witchcraft are a feature of many cultures worldwide. While cultural attitudes toward witchcraft and the specific practices and beliefs involved vary culture to culture, witchcraft and similar practices are condemned by all the major Abrahamic religions. During the witch trials of the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries, an estimated 50,000 people were burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft. Of these victims, 80% were women.

The persecution of witches is rooted in sexism as much as religion. Women were accused of witchcraft for being childless, financially independent, assertive, sexually progressive, and unmarried, among other reasons. In some cultures, women were considered to have dangerous powers stemming from their ability to give birth. Witch trials were a method by which men controlled women who threatened the patriarchy. Independent, autonomous women challenged the status quo, and that scared people.

In recent years, witchery has seen a resurgence in popular culture, with many people self-identifying as witches. For some people, it’s about spirituality and neo-paganism; for others, it’s about the witchy aesthetic and lifestyle. Regardless of what being a witch means to them, many feminists have adopted witch culture as a means of reappropriating the sexist narratives that have historically been associated with it. “Witch” was once a label used to oppress women. Now, many people have reclaimed the term as a symbol of female power.

Cyborgs, aliens, and robots

People often dehumanize those they don’t like, don’t understand, or don’t want to understand. Sometimes this is a defense mechanism used to justify discrimination against others; enslavers in eighteenth and nineteenth century America justified their actions on the premise that the people they enslaved were sub-human. Sometimes we dehumanize others to separate ourselves from them—to renounce any possible association. Whatever the reason for it, dehumanization is a prevalent form of discrimination.

Neurodivergent people have been dehumanized through much of human history, and continue to be today. People with neurological differences are often portrayed as ill, broken, incomplete, and, yes, subhuman. Aromantic people are another group that is often dehumanized, although, at least in the US, they haven’t really seen recognition as a group until recent decades. People tell them that romantic attraction is a fundamental human emotion and a universal part of the human experience, implying that people who don’t experience it aren’t human. Non-binary people are a third group that has to deal with dehumanization, with many people in contemporary western culture categorizing anyone who doesn’t fit the gender binary as other. These are some common examples, but they are absolutely not the only groups that have to deal with dehumanizing narratives.

In 2018, a Tumblr user started a subculture called Voidpunk, based on the idea of renouncing one’s humanity. Different from Otherkin, Voidpunk isn’t about actually identifying as non-human or believing oneself to be non-human, but about rejecting traditional ideas of what it means to be human. Voidpunkers take on many personas, ranging from robots to cyborgs to aliens to transhumans. The original creator has made it clear, however, that there’s no one way to be Voidpunk. Voidpunk is a form of reappropriation protest because it’s about reclaiming the narrative that being different means being non-human. When an autistic person is called a robot or a trans person is called a freak, many of them choose to wear that label as a badge of honor. They take toxic insults and roll with them. As a result, the dehumanizing narratives which are used against them lose their power.

Nontheistic Satanists

Through much of the history of Christianity, Satanism has been used by Christian groups as an accusation against ideological opponents. Groups accused of worshiping Satan ranged from heretical Christian sects persecuted by the Inquisition of the Catholic Church to pagan groups who were considered to be venerating demons unknowingly. In fact, much of the iconography adopted for Satan and demons come from figures in Classical mythology such as fauns, satyrs, and the god Pan. During the Protestant Reformation, both Catholics and Protestants accused one another of worshiping Satan. The public fear of Satanism came to a head during the witch trials of the 16^th to the 18^th centuries.

More than anything, Satanism is a label used to demonize (literally) people and groups who threaten the status quo. The moral panic surrounding Satanism isn’t just a relic of the medieval or early modern period, however. During the 1980s in the US, the Parents Music Resource Center was formed to protect children from music containing themes considered unsuitable. This is the group responsible for the “Parental Advisory” stickers found on music albums. In addition to drug use, violence, sex, and language, this group flagged music containing references to the “occult”.

In the 20^th century, Satanism started to become an ideology in its own right. A modern example of a Satanist group is The Satanic Temple. The Temple is a nontheistic group, meaning they don’t actually believe in Satan as a supernatural entity. Rather, they use Satanic imagery to promote egalitarianism, social justice, and separation of church and state. Since Satan has long been a symbol associated with ideological dissidents, The Temple has reclaimed that symbol to represent rebellion against arbitrary authority and social norms. The group uses Satan as a metaphor to promote personal autonomy, rationality, and pragmatic skepticism. They use satire and humor in addition to legal action and activism to achieve their mission—performing hilarious and theatrical Satanic rituals to promote religious freedom and prompt people to reevaluate their baseless fears. By reappropriating a symbol of otherness and nonconformity, The Satanic Temple tries to promote civil rights.

Conclusion

Reappropriation protest is a powerful tool for stopping the spread of hatred. However, that doesn’t make it appropriate for all situations. When people have been marginalized and oppressed by a word or narrative, sometimes they don’t want to see it reclaimed; they want to see it gone. Words hurt, and reclaiming those words can just be a reminder of the pain they have suffered. Reappropriation can also cause tension between people inside and outside the group, especially when etiquette dictates that only those inside the group are allowed to participate. This is a common problem with the reclamation of slurs, in which it’s often considered distasteful or rude for someone to use a reclaimed slur who isn’t part of the group affected by it. Regardless, this type of protest is a cool phenomenon that has seen use by a diverse range of groups to great effect.

For people who are underrepresented or hardly represented at all in the media, representation is crucial. Content creators often don’t realize how much harm they’re doing by failing to represent certain groups. Here are some reasons why representation is so important to the people who don’t have it.

People need heroes who are like them

Heroes are people we aspire to be; we choose our heroes because they embody the qualities we want to see in ourselves. When someone has a hero that looks like them, acts like them or comes from a similar background, it’s an empowering experience. It gives them hope that they have the potential to be the person they want to be. When people aren’t represented by the heroes in the media, they don’t have examples of people like them who achieved success. This can make a person feel like their goals are unattainable, which is a discouraging experience and often a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A pantheon of heroes that isn’t representative of the members of a society sends the message that only certain kinds of people qualify as heroes, no matter how brave or selfless or caring they might be. Heroes are supposed to tell us what we need to do to be better people, but poor representation corrupts this purpose by telling us that heroism is something you are, not something you do.

People need to feel validated and acknowledged

When the people in media look and act like you do—when it’s been that way your entire life—representation feels like a given. To someone who is used to having ample representation, it may not be obvious how many others are not being fairly represented, and it may be hard to understand how isolating it can feel.

When almost nobody in the media is like you, it feels exclusionary. When the lack of representation is so pervasive, it can feel more like a deliberate omission than an accidental oversight. It can make minorities feel like society doesn’t want or value people like them—like society is trying to erase them or pretend they don’t exist. We all want to feel accepted, but the media consistently tells minority groups that they are not welcome in our society.

For people who face adversity, having little-to-no representation in the media can be an invalidating experience because it sends the message that their problems are too trivial or unimportant to acknowledge—or even that they don’t exist. Without the affirmation that they are not alone in their struggle, underrepresented minorities can feel isolated.

In some cases, poor representation can go beyond just making people feel invisible; it can actively deny their existence. As we form new communities and coin new terms to celebrate and understand the identities that our society has repressed for so long, some people will always be unwilling to leave behind old labels and assumptions. Sometimes, when people don’t understand some aspect of a person’s identity, instead of seeking to understand it, they will deny its existence. This is one of the most invalidating things you can do to a person—refusing to acknowledge their strengths, weaknesses, struggles, differences, and defining qualities.

Poor or absent media representation feeds into this problem by denying minority groups the simple acknowledgement of their existence. When a group is not just poorly represented, but completely ignored by the media, it can leave members of that group feeling alienated and invalidated. This form of exclusion doesn’t necessarily happen out of hatred or malice; it can happen even when content creators have good intentions.

Media influences public opinion

Members of marginalized minorities often struggle just to be accepted by their peers. For many of these people, adversity and discrimination are a fact of everyday life. Many minorities have to hide who they are just to be treated with common dignity and respect, and many others don’t have that option. Public opinion influences how different minorities are treated in different parts of the world, causing many to be seen as alien, inferior, sub-human or other.

People tend to inherit the opinions of the culture in which they grew up. Homogeneous communities with little diversity are especially at risk of becoming echo chambers of prejudice in which hateful attitudes are passed down through generations and residents are never exposed to contrary views. People in these communities can form dehumanizing narratives about other groups because, in many cases, they don’t know much about them. It’s easier to hate someone you’ve never met because you never risk having your assumptions about them challenged.

Public opinion fuels discrimination against minorities, and the media has the power to influence public opinion. The media is a platform through which ideas and attitudes are disseminated, and we can use it to alter the narratives people have constructed about minorities. By giving minorities representation in the media, we can educate members of the public about different minority groups by disproving stereotypes and eliminating stigmas. The media can reach homogeneous communities to combat a lack of diversity and its influence on public opinion. Through adequate representation, we can give reaffirm the humanity of marginalized minorities in the mind of the public by demonstrating, through example, that they’re people like anyone else.

Media influences how we form our identity

Much of our culture—including what actions and behaviors we consider to be socially acceptable or appropriate—is defined through the media; the media sets the goalposts for what we call “normal.” In this way, a society forms its own definition of normalcy, which almost always describes that society’s majority demographic. “Normal” is an inherently arbitrary distinction which serves to alienate minorities because of their differences, and the media is a tool for enabling this discrimination. Poor representation perpetuates this exclusive definition of “normal,” which is problematic not just because it affects how minorities are perceived by the rest of society, but also because it can influence how they see themselves.

When the media barrages us with its insular notions of normalcy, people who don’t fit those archetypes are left without a sense of identity. When people don’t fit society’s definition of “normal,” they can feel lost, like they don’t belong anywhere. When the media fails to represent the broad spectrum of ways in which people can identify, it leaves minorities feeling like their identity isn’t valid because it doesn’t fit neatly into the boxes prescribed by society. For some groups, a complete absence of representation can leave them unaware that others like them even exist.

The effect that poor representation has on our identity can also influence our self-esteem. When people never seen others like them in the media, they can feel like it’s not okay to be who they are, like there’s something wrong with them, like they’re broken. For these people, the media sends a clear message that they are not normal and that being abnormal is not okay.

Having little-to-no representation in the media can also cause people to suppress their emotions and mask their identity. When the media refuses to represent—or even acknowledge—you, it can feel like society is denying your existence. When society tells you that you don’t exist, that you can’t exist, that you’re an impossibility… you start to believe it. You start to question your own identity and whether you really know who you are. You start to repress the thoughts and feelings which don’t conform to societal norms. No amount of pretending can change who you are, yet many minorities repress their true identities in a desperate attempt to fit society’s expectations of them. For people in this situation, their own happiness is secondary to society’s need for conformity; they are so worried about what society tells them they should want that they are unable to pursue the things that will truly bring them fulfillment.

Participation isn’t the same as representation

Including minority characters in a story isn’t the same as representing them. Diversity in a cast doesn’t constitute fair representation unless that diversity extends beyond supporting roles. When minorities are relegated to secondary roles, their representation consists of flat, token characters. This is a problem because a simplified character gives people a simplified understanding of the group that character represents.

Flat characters tend to be based on generalizations, and when these characters are representing minority groups, they will inevitably reinforce the stereotypes and stigmas of the culture that created them. By failing to create complex, three-dimensional minority characters, the media homogenizes entire demographics and promotes misunderstanding.