The Importance of Representation
Written by the AUREA Team
Word count: 791 words
Estimated reading time: approx. 4 minutes
It’s Pride month once again and the community finds itself waiting with bated breath to see what will be brought forth. Running low and underlying is also an expectation, an apprehension. The idea that maybe nothing big will come. That organizations will use acronyms and lists of labels, the most basic form of inclusion, will scrawl by without mentioning aromanticism. That everyone who is gay will talk of love and mean romantic love and they will speak in absolutes. That maybe this year, like many years before, the only aromantic representation we will see will come from within our own community.
And if we’re being forgotten by our own queer community, then it is a stark reminder that the greater amatonormative world is far beyond our reach.
This topic follows in a loose series of articles we’ve written on recognition. The first we wrote was about securing aromantic representation and the second was about having the LGBTQIA+ community include us. While we give tips and suggest tricks on how to get non-aro people involved our general conclusion was that we will have to do the work. If we want to see aro representation then we will have to create our own fiction and be our own PR team. We stand by this, particularly at this time of year. You may have heard about our event Aromantics Create Pride which is all about aros creating and networking. If you want to see more aromantic content in the world this is a fun way to get involved.
There is only so much we can do, within our means and before exhaustion sets in. What we imagine is that perhaps there are people out there, people who aren’t aromantic, who have an interest in amplifying our identity. And why is that exactly? What do we gain from ally made representation?
To see a part of yourself somewhere unarguably public is a gift. To see yourself broadcasted means you are no longer invisible. Back in 1962 a kiss between an interracial couple was shown on screen for the first time. You may have heard that Star Trek held the title of first interracial kiss with Uhura and Kirk in 1968. But the achievement must go to You in Your Small Corner.
What should be noted about this misconception is that Star Trek is known worldwide and this kiss was seen on U.S. television. The kiss on You in Your Small Corner was on British TV and was a televised showing of a play. This is the marketed difference between a niche production and a large organisation at work. It matters less who the kiss was done by, than what the kiss represented, but how would the Star Trek kiss have affected the world if it had come even six years earlier?
There is the personal and the outsider view to be considered. For those this directly affected, folks who were engaging in often illegal interracial relationships this was an acknowledgement - they were no longer being talked about solely under the cover of darkness. And for those this did not directly affect, well, it’s on the big screen it can’t be all that bad.
This is, of course, a gross simplification of the prejudice at hand. The first or second or third interracial kiss on television did not end bigotry, but then it was never mention to. It was meant to be seen.
For aromantics to see themselves out in the public eye means we are beginning to be understood as normal. We can tell ourselves and each other until we’re blue in the face that there’s nothing wrong with not feeling romantic attraction, or feeling it sparingly, or not knowing if you feel it at all. And we will, we will make sure every aromantic knows they are doing just fine. The rest of the world, however, does not agree.
Too often the lack of romantic feelings is equated to a lack of feelings entirely, and thus: sociopathy. As if feelings, and romantic ones in particular, are what make us moral and worth keeping around. Too often the only time aromantics see ourselves on screen is as the unlovable and unloving enemy of the good guys.
Aromantics need representation to normalize us, to stop the pathologizing us, and to properly show what it means to be aromantic. Just as many queer identities are working to remove society’s hypersexual view of them, we too face the same struggle of misconception. Media and fiction are powerful tools that can be used to make progress and spread propaganda. They can be used to legitimize a cause; to provide evidence for academia, history, and discussion. It is important that minorities are brought before the “normal” people in favourable and accurate lights. It is important that we be seen.