Jump to content

"Too Niche – Lauren Jankowski"


ithaca

Recommended Posts

http://www.jimchines.com/2015/02/niche-lauren-jankowski/

Feb 27, 2015 / Guest Post

Too Niche – Lauren Jankowski

“Like most asexuals, I spent a good portion of my life feeling broken.”

That’s the very first line of Lauren Jankowski‘s guest blog post. Think about that for a minute. Think about being one of those 1 in 100 people growing up with that message.

And it’s not even a lack of representation, exactly; it’s selective representation. Heroes have to have a romantic storyline. Villains, not so much.

Just let that sink in…

Like most asexuals, I spent a good portion of my life feeling broken. While watching a movie or devouring the fantasy novels I loved, I felt more like the villain than the hero. Not in philosophy or beliefs or actions, but being alone and not experiencing the same desires as heroes often do. The hero’s happily-ever-after almost always involves settling down with another person. Even if they fail to achieve that ending, the audience is made to root for that outcome. You read about the chemistry or sexual tension between characters. As a society, we’re made to want that happy ending: marriage, 2.5 kids, and an overall blissful family.

What about the archetypal villain? They tend to be alone (sometimes widowed, sometimes just because). Oh sure, they occasionally have henchmen, but more often than not, they’re isolated. Their arc tends to be opposite the hero’s, probably because their desires are meant to run counter. They don’t want people or family. They want power and control. This is especially true of women villains: just think of almost any Disney villainess.

Imagine being a teenager and everyone around you is sorting out their identities, discovering new labels and desires, and connecting with a community of people who share this label. Gay, straight, bi, or trans. Some of these terms are used in sex education, and all of them are found in U.S. popular culture. Learning these labels helps people discover who they are.

Now, imagine you don’t fit into any of these labels. You don’t fit into any of these communities. Imagine you can’t find a label for what you feel, your identity, because it doesn’t exist as far as you know. Imagine people telling you who you are, telling you that you’re going to fit into one of these groups eventually. Imagine that never happens.

That was the situation I found myself in: I was perfectly content with platonic friendships but experienced no sexual or romantic desire. Not even the typical crush teenagers are expected to have. Everyone around me was pairing up, diving into relationships, and I was left feeling rather confused.

I turned to the fantasy novels I loved so much only to have them suddenly fail me. I searched desperately, often late into the night, my eyes and fingers darting over the tiny black print. “Please,” I would silently plea. “I don’t want to be alone. There must be someone like me. Someone who isn’t broken, twisted, and evil.”

There wasn’t, at least not any women. Every now and again, there would be an old white man who seemed to not experience any attraction (Tolkien’s Istari, Lloyd Alexander’s wizard, etc.). The few women found in these pages were either in a romantic relationship or evil. I was alone.

On a whim, I revisited some ancient myths and I found her. A woman who had always been there, but one who I hadn’t realized would become so important to me in the future. Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt, a woman who went out of her way to remain unattached. This powerful goddess specifically demanded that she not be romantically involved with any man. And Zeus, the King of the gods, agreed! He didn’t protest or suggest that perhaps she just “hadn’t found the right one.” He basically said, “Yeah, sure” and let her do her own thing. At last, a powerful woman who, like me, didn’t appear to experience sexual or romantic desire and was perfectly fine with that. There was hope!

The years went by and I continued to search through modern fantasy for a fellow asexual woman, even before I had the term for my orientation. Books blended together and my search continued to be fruitless. There just weren’t any modern asexual women in fantasy. Whenever I got frustrated with what seemed to be a pointless search, I always returned to stories about Artemis. Yeah, she did some pretty horrible things, but she was a goddess. All deities had their petty and vindictive moments.

DoomsdayAnd then I found Eden Sinclair in the movie Doomsday. Imagine my shock, sitting in a theater, watching a woman kick so much ass and experience little to no attraction to other characters in her story. She wasn’t evil, she wasn’t a villain. Sinclair was a tough-as-nails soldier who was there to get a job done. And she was an interesting character: an orphan (an adoptee like me), someone who was a mystery. Sinclair kept a cool head in hostile territory and outsmarted every opponent she encountered. There wasn’t a large audience in the theater, but I looked around anyway, curious what my fellow movie-goers thought.

I’ll never forget the feeling that bloomed in my chest when I saw how riveted the few people in the audience were. They were rooting for her. They were rooting for someone who was like me. It didn’t matter that she never flirted with the other characters. It didn’t matter that she was an archetypal lone wolf. She was a badass and the audience loved her for it. I think I may be the only person who got misty-eyed during Doomsday, a post-apocalyptic horror film with copious amounts of gore and violence.

As asexual visibility has gradually begun to form into a movement, there has been a predictable backlash. In genre, many creators have dug in their heels to resist the idea that so small a group needs representation. Whether it’s Stephen Moffat declaring Sherlock Holmes can’t be asexual because he’s too interesting, or the literary agent who told me “asexuality is too niche to move books,” ace phobia and the erasure of asexual voices and characters continues in genre.

When I came out as asexual, I decided to be as open as I could. I would wear my label proudly because it was who I was. Being naturally quiet and introverted by nature, this was a bit intimidating. Then I thought of other girls like me: alone and scared, desperately paging through the stories they loved in the hopes of finding someone like them and being disappointed.

Nobody deserves to feel alone or broken or invisible. People should never be labeled as too niche. Asexuals can be interesting and heroic and adventurous too.


Lauren Jankowski is an aromantic asexual fantasy author and a passionate genre feminist from Illinois. She’s the founder of Asexual Artists (on Tumblr and WordPress), a site dedicated to highlighting the work of asexual-identifying artists in all mediums. Author of the ongoing series The Shape Shifter Chronicles (Sere from the Green, Through Storm and Night, From the Ashes, Haunted by the Keres), she specializes in strong heroines and hopes to bring more badass women (including ace women) to the fantasy genre. She’s also still very much platonically enamored with Artemis.

Jankowski-152x300.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

Feb 27, 2015

As asexual visibility has gradually begun to form into a movement, there has been a predictable backlash. In genre, many creators have dug in their heels to resist the idea that so small a group needs representation. Whether it’s Stephen Moffat declaring Sherlock Holmes can’t be asexual because he’s too interesting, or the literary agent who told me “asexuality is too niche to move books,” ace phobia and the erasure of asexual voices and characters continues in genre.

I fail to see why people would have such a problem. I mean, ok, humans and indeed Western culture in particular are obsessed with sex (There was a great documentary on BBC i-player "Sex and the Church", well worth a look on that front), but the fact there's a gloss 'not interesting' response or what have you is...sadly apparent.

I mean, I can't really play Dragon Age at all because I can't seem to be a decent person without inadvertently romancing the dysfunctional allies one acquires. Gets really damn old really damn fast. People even look at me funny I'm more prepared to sacrifice myself than save myself by having sex with a witch (because Sex really does solve everything...). Though to be honest, relationships (particularly sexual ones) are not really managed particularly well in games as of yet. Sure, it might seem complex, but as Extra Credits notes in one of their videos, most Game Relationships are the 'pursuing' phase; you're never in a relationship, leaving a relationship or ever possibly uninterested. You're also never approached by an interested NPC as that'd be outside of the player control, so it doesn't happen.

And if you're male, odds are you will be heterosexually interested in the female cast so the inevitable sexy times will be had if you engage with the female characters. Exceptions in that games like Fire Emblem let you choose to let the relationship reach that point, or Persona 4, where you can be romantically or platonically involved with the girls you can spend time with (from what I understand of it) do exist mind. Games still don't like making 'Female only' protagonists who'll be in a heterosexual relationship because it might 'make the male audience uncomfortable', apparently. Gaming women just have to 'put up with' the straight male protagonist doing basically the same though, apparently.

It really is damn irritating.

However, the fact of the matter is, you can't be not interested most of the time.

World ending? Intergalactic robo-cthulu drinking your species through a straw? No worries, you've got time to romance and seduce anything you like, barring the usual no-nos.

You don't want to do that? You're just be supporting/a good leader? You're not trying to get in their underclothes? Nonsense, who'd want that?!

And if you have a species that isn't into sex? It's only barely 'ok' because people can pass it off as being that race's 'hat' to contrast them to humans in some way. I mean, hey, I've got a race that, compared to humans, is incapable of functional sex outside of the mating season. Their entire society is, as a result, logically a lot less interested in sexual intimacy/relationships; half the reason I'm here in the first place was because of it being so 'similar' to my own feelings on the matter; fine if you like it but not really that important.

But, as I guess the paragraph quoted shows, people want to see relationships (see romantic), and they want to see sexual relationships (not necessarily bothering with romance first). You can't abstain from them, and being required to engage with it in games, films, books and other media is the 'only' way people want to deal with it.

Character focussed on saving the world, and nothing else? Damaged in some way if they're not after a relationship, no matter how pragmatic their being at the time.

Character you really like and would love to just be cuddly with? Nope, game rules say there's got to be sexy time or nothing.

Friendships, confidants, comrades? Relationships we can't really explore. It's either romance with inevitable sexual encounter, or nothing (least as far as games go). And heaven help you if your 'options' for relationships aren't all generally similarly attractive in the same, socially approved way.

Apologies for going on. Admittedly bugged me somewhat as a creative sort, that paragraph.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I mean, I can't really play Dragon Age at all because I can't seem to be a decent person without inadvertently romancing the dysfunctional allies one acquires. Gets really damn old really damn fast. People even look at me funny I'm more prepared to sacrifice myself than save myself by having sex with a witch (because Sex really does solve everything...).

For me, it all depends on what sort of character my protagonist is. So for instance, in Dragon Age: Origins the Grey Warden was totally ace and characteristically oblivious to sexual things, and that ritual was carried out by Loghain instead. (This actually worked out perfectly; the Warden survived and was hailed as a noble hero in a classically Good Ending without ever having to engage in any sexual behavior.) In other games I play, the protagonist can be quite different: Hawke in Dragon Age II was poly and lesbian and very flirtatious, not because I am but because she was. This played a big role in her character but also got me kind of uncomfortable during the PG-13 sex scenes. No word yet on Inquisition; haven't had a chance to play it yet.

It bothers me that in most games, being in a sexual relationship is viewed as an upgrade from a friendship, and there's no way to be in an asexual romance (unless the sex just hasn't happened yet). You can be in a friendship with other characters, especially ones in your party, but these generally don't affect the game so much - in Dragon Age games, which are the only games I'm talking about right now, it gives some stat bonuses to you both and maybe one nice conversation, but nothing like the romantic arcs. This reflects our society's privileging of sexual romance over friendship in a way that is more modern than medieval (where quasi-romantic friendships, at least between men, are all over the old sagas and chivalric literature) while simultaneously defining all romance as sexual romance, and that's pretty aggravating for me as an ace.

The Extra Credits episode you mentioned, Blakrana, is really great! Extra Credits is also an interesting channel, especially for its Extra History videos, now posting weekly on Saturdays and currently discussing Shaka and the Zulu. Here it is for those interested:

Link to post
Share on other sites

Character is very fair. I think my problem was less 'having a relationship' but the...ease of it all. It was just so cheap, really. I mean, you really just need to be a reasonably decent person for the most part and I guess picking certain conversations and boom, Alistair's asking you what is going on between you and whoever. Maybe I'm being too harsh on it, but...it wasn't as involved as I would like such a mechanic to be.

As for the privilege aspect, definitely agreed; romantic foci get a big chunk of plot usually, no matter how fresh or what they might be. Whilst some games, like Fire Emblem titles or Persona 3 and 4 are good examples where you can get just as good benefits from being friends as anything 'more'. Granted, FE:Awakening has S ranks, but it's arguably the only main difference to tell which character's are married off and the difference is rather negligible statistically.

It's still somewhat...strange that, for all the 'freedom of choice' games try to say we have...we're rarely given the option to just be 'friends' without any judgements going on. Romances are nice, but when every potential engagement with a generally heterosexual person is 'go too far and the friendship becomes a romance etc' when it comes to games, it does make one wonder if that's entirely healthy to allow without much thought.

I mean, would it be so bad if we had it that we could have a character in a game who, after getting close to another character, just finds that being their friend is all they really want out of it? The kind of close companionship where both people lean on each other, figuratively or literally (think sitting back to back just talking I guess) and it's enough. No 'you've failed to get their clothes off' issues, no neglect by the narrative compared to any love interest, just...a friend?

Not all relationships are romantic ones, and not all relationships are as strong as some close friendships. Sexuality is an interesting facet of the ape that humans are...but when we remove that common ground, what could we say for ourselves?

As you rightly say, the medieval world was a lot fairer on companionship like that. Saying nothing of the kind of poetry that came out of the monks and nuns vowed to celibacy.

I must admit, trekking through some of Extra Credits older videos (Sex in Games and Sexual Diversity) I wonder how they'd consider things like that when discussed. No idea how to go about broaching it though really, let alone 'how does one talk about this?' issues.

Apologies for going on, somewhat.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...