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Asexual characters in media


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Hello! I am writing a chapter about asexual representation in media. I would like to focus on the current cliché tropes that we see in asexual characters. If you have any suggestions or thoughts about characters please add them here. I am from the United States so I do have a focus on United States media but I would love to hear about media from anywhere and have a discussion about it. Thank you!

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just generally speaking, the trope of characters who ID as or are coded as asexual being robots or aliens. *sigh*

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i'm doing some similar writing for school! I have found that asexual characters are typically villains, or morally grey (playing into the steroetpye that ace people aren't as capable of love/emotion i guess). For example the only two i have come across in books who are canonically asexual are Victor in "Vicious" by VE Schwab and Maurice in "A ladder in the SKy" by John Boyne. Zipped through both books and i enjoy them both, but i found it interesting they are not your traditional protagonists 

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I still remember that episode of "House" that was so awful.  Look it up if you don't already know about it.

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The French Unicorn

Hard to talk about specific clichés as the word asexual is rarely mentioned, so when it is, hopefully they did some researches before.

Now for characters who are shown as having no interest in sex, no sexual attraction, no sexual desire, or no understanding of all these things... There are plenty of bad clichés.

Most of the characters I've seen this way are robots, aliens, or have a mental disorder or a neurodivergency (usually autism)... Which is also ableist I guess.

The worst I've seen to this regards is Darling in the Franxx (an anime). Romance and sex is used to humanize the good characters, whereas the fact that the villains don't have sex anymore is one of the way they show how inhuman and detached from feelings and nature their society is. There is these whole scenes where the villains are shaming the girl for having sex and it really bothered me because in this context, it really screamed to my face "look at these villains who lost their humanity when they lose their sex drive". There is also another scene when there is the guys looking at the girls and one of them says "of course I enjoy looking, I'm a boy", which is sexist and show their unability to think about what a society where people don't know what attraction is really looks like.

 

Another is that it can be cure when you meet "the right one". The example I have in mind may not be the best because it is more an example of "romance cures autism" rather than "romance cures asexuality", because I do think Shaun wanted sex with Carly as well, but in Good Doctor, it was weird how much trouble he has to get Carly touches him, but as soon as he is with his "true love" Lea, all troubles seem to be gone. In fact, his willingness to let Lea touches him is a way for the show to say that he loves her and not Carly. There are probably better examples though. I thought about Sheldon Cooper too, but for me he still sounds demisexual so... (though for romance, he said that Amy cure him).

 

The fact that someone who is asexual will be seen as not able to convey drama. I don't know if this is what you look for when you think about "cliché" because this leads to a no representation of aces rather than a representation. But I interpreted the fact that the asexual girl of sex education disappeared, or the erasure of Jughead in Riverdale, as a way to say "you are not interesting enough to be there".

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Some threads related to this, maybe they are helpful:

Asexual Characters - Masterthread
Come up with a film/book/etc. plot featuring asexuality/aromanticism!

First one is about proven or assumed aces and aros in media, latter one discusses about hypothetical plots related to asexuality and aromanticism.

There was also another thread I didn't find, but it had a good point: one big problem with asexual representation is making it look like that asexuals are all the same. Actually asexuality varies a lot: some are sex-favoring, some are not, some hate sex-related jokes, some don't, some are virgins, some are not. A way to mend in in media could be introducing at least two different aces with different attitudes towards aforementioned topics.

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Janus the Fox
11 hours ago, thylacine said:

I still remember that episode of "House" that was so awful.  Look it up if you don't already know about it.

The AVEN fallout was massive at the time now 9 years ago, there’s a thread way back somewhere still.

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8 hours ago, Janus the Fox said:

The AVEN fallout was massive at the time now 9 years ago, there’s a thread way back somewhere still.

The fallout should have been massive; it was awful.

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Well, the thing is, asexual roles very rarely exist in popular culture in the first place. It seems so rare that any brief mention of it is a huge deal lol.

 

While I agree stereotypes are a problem, lack of visibility is a bigger problem. Like, to me, asexual roles are so rarely seen in the mainstream, they basically don't exist. Asexuality simply does not occur as a valid or at least a possible option.

 

I also think the bigger problem is more abstract, it is allonormative stereotyping. They rarely say explicitly that asexuals are broken, but it's more things like "Everyone wants sex." or "XYZ is still a virgin? How sad!". In my experience, it's the "sad virgin" trope that hit me the hardest, I would probably have accepted my asexuality much earlier if it weren't for this trope.

 

As for how aces should be portrayed, I guess just like any queer person: Treat the ace-ness like a character trait, like an aspect of personality, one aspect out of billions. Remember aces are very diverse, and no two aces are alike. Aces can be good, aces can be evil, aces can be big, aces can be small, aces can be favorable to sex, aces can be repulsed by sex, aces can love, aces can hate, aces can be romantic lovers, aces can despise marriage, aces can be all sorts of things and still be fine. And finally, I know this is very controversial but aces can even dislike garlic bread!

 

I've seen a fair share of US movies and one thing that pissed me of in the last year that I sometimes saw good opportunities a character could have been easily be ace in a way that perfectly fits into the main story but was still straight somehow.

 

One example (forgot the title): Man and woman escape a totalitarian city and have to survive the wastelands, where they are followed by hunters all the time. It's about the adventure/survival and has no romantic undertones at first but at a few short scenes the woman tries to make romantic advances but he is clearly disinterested which annoyed her quite a bit. At the very end, when their escape was successful, they kiss. Which really pissed me off, he could easily have been ace/aro.

 

But I'm just a random dude from the Internet, not a writer, so don't see this as professional writing advice. ;)

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On 3/5/2022 at 2:29 AM, Frenchace said:

Most of the characters I've seen this way are robots, aliens, or have a mental disorder or a neurodivergency (usually autism)... Which is also ableist I guess.

The worst I've seen to this regards is Darling in the Franxx (an anime). Romance and sex is used to humanize the good characters, whereas the fact that the villains don't have sex anymore is one of the way they show how inhuman and detached from feelings and nature their society is. There is these whole scenes where the villains are shaming the girl for having sex and it really bothered me because in this context, it really screamed to my face "look at these villains who lost their humanity when they lose their sex drive". There is also another scene when there is the guys looking at the girls and one of them says "of course I enjoy looking, I'm a boy", which is sexist and show their unability to think about what a society where people don't know what attraction is really looks like.

 

Another is that it can be cure when you meet "the right one". The example I have in mind may not be the best because it is more an example of "romance cures autism" rather than "romance cures asexuality", because I do think Shaun wanted sex with Carly as well, but it was weird how much trouble he has to met Carly touches him, but as soon as he is with his "true love" Lea, all troubles seem to be gone. There are probably better examples though. I thought about Sheldon Cooper too, but for me he still sounds demisexual so... (though for romance, he said that Amy cure him).

 

The fact that someone who is asexual will be seen as not able to convey drama. I don't know if this is what you look for when you think about "cliché" be ause thid leads to a no representation of aces rather than a representation. But I interpretated the fact that the asexual girl of sex education disappeared, or the erasure of Jughead in Riverdale, as a way to say "you are not interesting enough to be there".

So sad, but this is true.  The stereotypes are terrible.

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On 3/5/2022 at 1:29 AM, Frenchace said:

Hard to talk about specific clichés as the word asexual is rarely mentioned, so when it is, hopefully they did some researches before.

Now for characters who are shown as having no interest in sex, no sexual attraction, no sexual desire, or no understanding of all these things... There are plenty of bad clichés.

Most of the characters I've seen this way are robots, aliens, or have a mental disorder or a neurodivergency (usually autism)... Which is also ableist I guess.

The worst I've seen to this regards is Darling in the Franxx (an anime). Romance and sex is used to humanize the good characters, whereas the fact that the villains don't have sex anymore is one of the way they show how inhuman and detached from feelings and nature their society is. There is these whole scenes where the villains are shaming the girl for having sex and it really bothered me because in this context, it really screamed to my face "look at these villains who lost their humanity when they lose their sex drive". There is also another scene when there is the guys looking at the girls and one of them says "of course I enjoy looking, I'm a boy", which is sexist and show their unability to think about what a society where people don't know what attraction is really looks like.

 

Another is that it can be cure when you meet "the right one". The example I have in mind may not be the best because it is more an example of "romance cures autism" rather than "romance cures asexuality", because I do think Shaun wanted sex with Carly as well, but in Good Doctor, it was weird how much trouble he has to get Carly touches him, but as soon as he is with his "true love" Lea, all troubles seem to be gone. In fact, his willingness to let Lea touches him is a way for the show to say that he loves her and not Carly. There are probably better examples though. I thought about Sheldon Cooper too, but for me he still sounds demisexual so... (though for romance, he said that Amy cure him).

 

The fact that someone who is asexual will be seen as not able to convey drama. I don't know if this is what you look for when you think about "cliché" because this leads to a no representation of aces rather than a representation. But I interpreted the fact that the asexual girl of sex education disappeared, or the erasure of Jughead in Riverdale, as a way to say "you are not interesting enough to be there".

YES. I felt that second paragraph. When I started to write this chapter I immediately came up with "needs to be fixed", "too pure for sex" and "unemotional or not human" as things I do not want to see in my Ace representation but when I started looking for examples I couldn't explain why. Thank you for putting it into words.

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Sure rants alot

Have you seen the movie Lucky (the one with Harry Dean Stanton)? I don't know if this is what you are meaning but the movie is about a 90+ year old man who is an atheist, lives alone in a very small community, a veteran. Sex was mentioned  only once when he was asked if he had any children and he simply replied  not that he knew of and that was about it.  He was never married, had no other  family, lived in the same place and followed the same routine for years and year but he was content with his routine. Not really any discussion about any kind of  past intimate relationship,  yet he developed some very close friendships with those in his community and there is genuine caring and affection between him and others. Like other old people, he was perhaps a bit cranky, could be around people or completely alone. I had a discussion with a friend who thought he was impotent early on but I thought maybe sex just really didn't interest him which would make him more asexual than impotent but he was a well developed character in the movie without all the trappings that comes with trying to add a sex/love interest. 

 

p.s. just an FYI, I think this was the last movie he made before he passed away. 

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