How aros fit in the wider LGBTQ+ community
Written by the AUREA Team
Word count: 1170
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Merlin, AUREA’s newest news team member, introduces herself with a piece on what aromanticism means as a reflection on Pride.
Editor’s Note: We recognize that straight and queer aren't diametrically opposite. We also recognize there are queer folks who identify as heterosexual, such as heterosexual aromantics, and we consider them a part of the queer community if they wish to identify as such. We refer to straight in this article not necessarily as heterosexuality but to the sociocultural connotations and values around being Straight or cis-het, such as cis-hetero-allonormativity.
Pride Month 2022 is here and, all around the world, members of the community are celebrating! Some loud and proud, some in their own personal way. This is our time to remember that we have no reason to be ashamed of who we are.
We also take this time to remember that we have always been here, and reflect on those who came before.
For Aromantics - as well as Aspecs and other members of the excellently-coined Alphabet Mafia - Pride Month can be a bittersweet experience. “Are aromantics and asexuals part of the LGBT community?” asks one Quora user, with the reply: “A very good question.”
The way we understand romantic and sexual orientation has evolved. The way we understand gender identity and expression has evolved. The language we use to describe our experiences is constantly changing; but when we say LGBTQ+, or Rainbow Coalition, or Queer, what we are really saying is Not Straight.
A brief search of international queer websites will give you a similar glossary of terms in use. But when you define yourself as inherently Not Something, surely the Something becomes pretty important.
The Australian Institute of Family Studies presents it as:
Cisgender/cis: a term used to describe people whose gender corresponds to what they were assigned at birth.
Heterosexual: an individual who is sexually and/or romantically attracted to the opposite gender.
From this, it seems that sexuality and orientation is defined by gender; and gender in turn is defined by society. To be Straight, or cishet, seems to be on somewhat shaky foundations.
Percentage estimates of cishet vary from 95% of the population all the way down to 10%. More people than ever are identifying as Not Straight on the record. After left-handedness stopped being punished by the cane in some places, self-reported left-handedness numbers shot up. Why? Because there was no fear to be open about it anymore.
An historian could point to any place in the world, at any time in history, and probably find some societal prejudice (at best) against the Not Straights. 1075BCE in Middle Assyria. 400BCE in India. 389CE in Rome. 632AD in Saudi Arabia. 780CE in Korea. 1533 in England. History has not been kind.
There are several theories that try to explain the ever-present target placed on queer people including procreation, hedonism, and population size. One thing remains the same: it is always informed by societal judgement. We are judged, and found wanting against some arbitrary standard.
But we have always been here. Not Straight people living through awful times have found ways to live on, sometimes loud and rebellious, sometimes in private, radical ways. We can see the changes and cultural revolutions of days past.
And it’s not just us.
Intersectionality is vital to the understanding of queer history, and what it means to be Not Straight today. How many different segments of society are told that they are not socially acceptable? How many minorities have we been divided into? And how and where do the many challenges that different minorities face overlap to create seemingly insurmountable obstacles to just trying to live that life you want?
In the present day, we are living a cultural revolution. This may not be the first time - but arguably the first for a globally connected network of support.
For the generations of queer people alive today, in an increasingly post-colonial world (inch by hard-fought inch), where we can experience a cultural exchange like never before, we are riding the waves of one of the largest cultural shifts ever seen.
The Counterculture of the 1960s: Free love. Riots. Punk. Mini skirts. The Pill. The Cold War. Austerity. Vietnam. An anti-establishment cultural phenomenon. The First Pride was a Riot. A slogan now proudly displayed on all sorts of rainbow-patterned merch, available on Amazon…
But it’s important to remember that it was. It was a revolution. It was radical. It was Not Straight. It was a rejection of what they deem socially acceptable. To make progress, the rallying cry of ‘Love is Human’ was used to normalise gays & lesbians. To love in a homosexual or homoromantic way was radical.
Famous trans activist Miss Major recalled the routine police raids on the Stonewall Inn and how they would ‘close it down for the night’ in an interview on her experiences for Q on CBC. ‘It would just reopen the next day,’ she said until one night they just didn’t cooperate. She goes on to say, of the Stonewall Riot’s legacy and of trans women and queer people of colour particularly being left out of its history, that ‘it has camouflaged itself so that people will look past it and onto something else.’
In some parts of the world, including in New York where Miss Major lived for many years, to love in an homosexual way isn’t so radical anymore. For some demographics, it’s become socially acceptable. For Miss Major, she says her work is far from done. ‘I need to keep doing what I’m doing,’ she says, ‘because there’s other girls out there who need to know they come from a history…that this has been years in the making.’
We can see then a shift, a paradox: in some places in the world, anyone Not Straight continues to face discrimination, violence, imprisonment; and in some places the community has started to forget that we were ever radical, that we were ever a rejection of how society defines gender and sexuality, love and expression. At what point does “societal judgement” become a euphemism for “make them police themselves so they don’t question us?”
So what makes Aromanticism queer? Is it simply because we’re Not Straight? We don’t fit the mould. We don’t always fall head over heels. We get romance-repulsed sometimes. We question monogamy, marriage, commitment.
Or is it because the queer community at its foundation rejects the idea of life confined to the parameters set by society, just like all the other Not Straights. We’re not a definition. We reject containment.
For Aros, loving in a non-romantic way or rejecting love altogether is our radical. Living in a world where married couples get tax breaks, Valentine’s day is all consuming, Hallmark movies exist as a genre, building a life without romance is counter-culture. And just like the counter-culture of the 1960s, what aromanticism as an identity encourages – building strong relationships and communities outside of amatonormative standards – is going to contribute to a brighter, more loving, world.
We’re here, we’re queer. Get used to it!