/u/nemaline on Question: is it aphobic to specialise FICTIONAL asexual characters?

I think there's a distinction between what you're doing publicly and what you're doing privately.

Privately, do whatever you like! It's hurting absolutely no one to privately explore tour attraction to a character.

Publicly, I think when characters have a minority orientation, people should respect that. It's still completely fine to say you find them attractive! Finding someone attractive is about you, not about them. But when it comes to fanart or fanfic or headcanons or any other way you might participate in fandom, I would say you should only share things that respect the character's orientation.

(I'm in a fandom where it was recently revealed that a character was aroace and people posting smut or shipping fic with them really upsets me, honestly. It feels like being asexual/aromantic is being treated as an inconvenience that just gets in the way of sex and romance, like it's not worth telling stories about people like me. And the world we live in often pressures us to get in relationships or have sex we don't want because there's something wrong with us if we don't. So seeing people do basically the same thing to an aroace character is really... kind of messed up.)

Again, just because I feel it's needed: stressing that what you do in privacy and in your own head is absolutely fine and harms no one!

January 04, 2021 at 11:23PM