I Accept That

I accept that

I love science fiction and fantasy.

I’ve always chosen science fiction and fantasy first when I had a choice about what literature I read, and growing up almost all of the characters I identified with were in some kind of speculative setting. An obvious consequence of that is identifying with a fair number of nonhumans.

Here’s the complicated part. I’ve spoken before on the dangers of writing asexual and aromantic characters as “less human” because of these orientations, and I’ve warned against using sexual and romantic relationships as shortcuts to “humanize” characters whose humanity is in doubt. But unless misleading messages come with the stories, I’m more than okay with aliens, robots, fey creatures, and monsters being written as ace or aro. In fact, I want to see it there, because those are the genres I read.

It can become a problem when, under the blanket of science fiction and fantasy, we offer ace and/or aro characters who are simply naturally ace or aro because of their nonhuman status and use that quality to distinguish themselves from humans. You see it a lot when aliens who don’t have sexual reproduction or don’t form similar social relationships will laugh at and condescend to humans over what’s assumed to be a universal urge among them. This is an issue because

a) it suggests there are no asexual or aromantic humans;

b) it implies that a person who identifies with asexuality or aromanticism believes themself superior;

c) it creates a misleading connection between sexual and/or romantic attraction and “really” being human, having emotions, being functional, and having meaningful relationships;

d) it encourages a tendency to see humans without these qualities as more alien/less human or perhaps potentially evil. (How often do you see a SF villain scoffing at “human love” and have them not only be portrayed as robotic or  hateful because they don’t do love, but also be defeated by something related to love?)

I want SF/Fantasy to continue including ace and aro characters, and I’m not offended if they’re sometimes nonhumans, even if that’s how that whole race is and even if they sometimes react with bafflement toward some humans’ relationships. (I sure do.) I will happily take that representation. I want to see perspectives I relate to, even if they come from a robot or an alien or a mystical creature. And I think, if done right, nonhuman ace and aro characters can still get those orientations on the radar for fans who may not have been looking for such things, even if they might have initially questioned and rejected the validity of human characters being ace or aro.

However, when I say “if done right,” I mean they need to avoid these tropes:

Writing robots or aliens to “really understand” humanity by learning to love/having a romantic relationship or sexual experience

Writing nonhuman creatures to “become” more human through the act of falling in love or having sex

Portraying sex, sexual attraction, love, or romantic attraction as the major defining factor of who is human

Writing sex, sexual attraction, love, or romantic attraction as the central explanation in a human character explaining to nonhumans what makes humans human

Creating situations where a character’s humanity is in doubt and it is “proved” or “disproved” through a test that incorporates sex, sexual attraction, love, or romantic attraction (e.g., “if he’s a lizard person, he won’t be able to show love! Oops he failed the test, we found him out!”)

Assigning any nonhumans a lack of understanding about this specific aspect of so-called human relationships and associating this with innocence, superiority complexes, or evil

Having aliens or other nonhumans able to engage in or enjoy virtually every other human experience EXCEPT love or sex, which is on some pedestal they just can’t reach or comprehend

Inventing nonhuman societies that pair-bond or mate in very similar ways to “typical” humans, but having their ways portrayed as more hygienic or less messy than humans’, yet have them still somehow baffled by minor differences in how humans do it

Having alien societies that are as diverse as human societies in most ways EXCEPT that they have only One Way of mating/dating/reproducing, and humans’ heterosexual two-person pairing is presented as the “human” equivalent that they find disgusting

Having nonhumans all be gay, all be polyamorous, or all be asexual, but “learn” from humans that monogamous heterosexuality both exists and is better

Creating characters in the nonhuman world that don’t have physical sex/gender or only have one sex/gender, and never experience love or romantic relationships–portrayed as a Direct Consequence of their gender situation (while having an ace and aro sexless species is fine, just don’t portray it as if lol obvi the reason they wouldn’t have relationships is they don’t have boys and girls lol)

Having nonhuman characters fall in love with human characters and having the experience attached to a moral of This Is What Life Is Supposed To Be About

Having a nonhuman defeated because they Don’t Have Love (and therefore cannot comprehend the deepest and most strength-inspiring emotion in the universe, which can always be defeated by a protagonist who Has Love)

So, while it’s sometimes aggravating to have to find representation in nonhuman characters whose aro or ace status is portrayed as integral to their nonhumanness, I would rather have that than not see my orientations in SF at all. I have also seen plenty of aliens whose romantic and sexual habits are similar to non-ace and non-aro humans’ without the story suggesting those elements of their lives are uniquely human, so I’d like to see some ace/aro humans and nonhumans who just happen to be so. It isn’t automatically insulting to our orientations if a nonhuman character is ace/aro, but I’d like authors to think about how they’re portraying those qualities and whether they are sending negative messages about real ace/aro people through their inclusion in fiction. I’d also like to ask authors to seriously consider why they’re making the choice to attach those qualities to their nonhumans, and if “to make them distinct from humans” and “to make them more alien” and “to make them seem oblivious or innocent or empty or robotic” comes up, do some serious questioning and at least consider including counterexamples.

You can actually move away from and avoid cementing negative messages much more easily if there is more than one ace/aro character in your story. Maybe one of your nonhumans is just like that and you don’t want to change them? Well, great. But maybe have another character from that race, or a human, also be ace or aro and not be like that, or have the nonhuman character say or do something that confirms ace and aro status aren’t uniquely alien.

I say all this because I DO NOT WANT people thinking nonhuman characters can’t have sexual diversity, up to and including asexuality and aromanticism. I want to see them! I just don’t want to feel like my orientations are considered science fiction themselves, or that the only place I can see people like me are in books about things that aren’t possible or are definitively inhuman.