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Why Sex-Positivity Requires Aromantic Inclusion

This week is Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, a time when we are invited to center our advocacy on the projects of raising awareness and fortifying allyship toward anyone who identifies anywhere along the broad aromantic spectrum. Each year, this time of awareness is observed during the first full week—starting on Sunday—following that infamously amatonormative holiday, Valentine’s Day.

“Amatonormativity” is a term coined by philosopher Elizabeth Brake to describe the persistent cultural messaging that tells us over and over from a very young age that anyone who isn’t in a committed, long term, monogamous and romantic relationship had better be seeking one—and if they’re not, they’re in some way deviant, deficient, defective, or delusional. (“Amato” is Italian for beloved, making amatonormativity the “standard of the beloved.”)

And what’s the aromantic spectrum? To understand that, let’s start with the idea of the Split Attraction Model, which has been around since at least 1879 with the work of proto–sexologist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (and perhaps as far back as the ancient Greeks), but has really come into contemporary consciousness with the advent of AVEN, the Asexuality Visibility and Education Network, founded by asexuality activist, David Jay.

Looking through the lens of the Split Attraction Model, we can divide attraction into independently variable species: sexual, romantic, aesthetic, emotional, and so many more. In offering these distinctions, the model is a helpful tool for many ace-spec persons (that is, persons who identify along the asexual spectrum) to understand the nuances of their own experiences of attraction: someone might be asexual but still desire romantic connection, whether that desire be heteroromantic, homoromantic, biromantic, panromantic, or what-have-you.

Just as the Split Attraction Model gives us the conceptual resources to understand asexual-and-romantic identities, it also gives us the resources to understand aromantic-and-sexual identities as well as asexual-and-aromantic identities. The model is therefore also a helpful tool for many aro-spec people (that is, people who identify along the aromantic spectrum) to understand their own nuanced experiences: despite feeling little-to-no romantic attraction toward other people, they might (or might not!) still experience sexual attraction, aesthetic attraction, and so on.

As the term suggests, the aromantic spectrum is a spectrum, rather than an all-or-nothing affair. For some, the use of the term aromantic helps to make affirming sense of their relations to themselves and the people and world around them. Others prefer to be more specific, opting instead for terms like grey-aromantic or greyromantic (someone for whom the presence of romantic attraction fluctuates or only manifests under specific conditions) or demiromantic (someone for whom romantic attraction toward other persons is felt only after a significant emotional bond has been formed).

Or maybe you’re reading this and thinking “none of this sounds like me, I’m definitely a romantic kinda person!” Great! You’re what we might call alloromantic: someone who doesn’t identify along the aromantic spectrum at all. (The “allo” prefix is Greek in origin and means “other,” so alloromantic refers to those who experience other-directed romantic attraction in the sense that they’re, well, romantically attracted to other people.)

Whether you yourself are aromantic, alloromantic, or not really sure how you identify, Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week is a great opportunity to explore and amplify aromantic voices, listen to and share aromantic stories, and help to erode the amatonormative scripts that hold so many of us back from our full flourishing. In fact, we might even argue that attitudes of sex-positivity don’t just encourage aromantic inclusion, but all-out require it.

Being sex-positive doesn’t mean that you’re committed to having orgies six nights a week or hanging from hooks at your local dungeon every Tuesday. Even the most sex-repulsed persons can still be sex-positive, which just means that they accept and advocate for an individual and cultural mindset according to which non-exploitative, risk-aware sexual activities and behaviors among consenting adults—including abstinence!— are not to be shamed, stigmatized, or shouted down. To be sex-positive is to stand for sexual health, autonomy and self-determination, for yourself and for others.

Cultural scripts that tell us how sex has to be—and how we have to be, as sexual beings—are pretty contrary to a full realization of sexual autonomy and self-determination, and therefore to sex-positivity, too. This is true even for those persons who might happily behave in ways that look exactly like what is written into those scripts. There’s a difference, after all, between being heterosexual and cisgender because that’s who you are upon reflection and being heterosexual and cisgender because that’s who you are “supposed” to be.

The practice of sex-positivity encourages us to actually listen to each other’s stories, trust each other’s experiences, and genuinely accept each other’s identities. And, in this case, what goes for sex goes for romance, too. So when someone says that they experience romantic attraction but it’s not accompanied by sexual attraction, it would be pretty sex-negative and invalidating of us to respond by saying “no, that’s impossible, all attraction involves a sexual aspect.” The same holds true in the reverse situation: if someone says that they experience sexual attraction but it’s not accompanied by romantic attraction—or that they don’t experience either at all—it would be pretty cool of us to go ahead and believe them.

It’s more than just believing, though. We could believe someone who claims that they don’t experience sexual or romantic attraction while also still pathologizing them for it, medicalizing their “lack” as a problem to be “fixed,” a condition to be “cured.” There’s an unfortunately long history of these sex-negative practices and perspectives—that is, of treating anything unfamiliar, or anything outside of the received norm, as defective or disordered. Thankfully, as we move forward with the project of sex-posivity, we can see that much progress has been made: non-heterosexual identities are no longer officially pathologized by the medical and psychological mainstream, nor are transgender and gender non-conforming identities. Non-monogamy is finding increasing acceptance, and in 2022, AASECT (the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists) declared its stance in rejecting the pathologizing of identities along the asexual spectrum.

This Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, let’s affirm and reaffirm that the practice of sex-positivity extends to the awareness, acceptance, and validation of identities along the aromantic spectrum, too. To reject or invalidate aromantic identities and behavior is to reject or invalidate the experiences and choices of persons identifying and acting in accordance with their own sexual autonomy and self-determination, broadly construed. In other words, to reject or invalidate aromantic identities is to further enshrine aspects of amatonormative scripts in our culture and practices. And that’s harmful to all of us, alloromantic and aromantic alike.

Of course, we shouldn’t need it to be harmful to alloromantic persons in order for it to motivate us. The fact that it is harmful to aromantic persons should be motivating enough. With this in mind, let’s all—individually and collectively—commit this Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week and beyond to doing what is within our power to raise awareness and fortify allyship toward anyone who identifies anywhere along the broad aromantic spectrum.

Ley David Elliette Cray, PhD (she/they) is LGBTQIA+ Curriculum Coordinator for the Sexual Health Alliance and founder of Transentience Coaching. She lives in New Mexico with her cats and is proudly asexual and aromantic.