Imagine yourself sitting down to watch your favorite television show. The episode starts off normal, but then things seem to change. You notice that all the plots in this episode revolve around non-platonic relationships. Then again, when you think about it, the whole show seems to revolve around this. You’re not sure why, but you get this uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach, almost unexplainable. This is what it feels like for people who identify as asexual/aromantic when trying to find themselves represented in television today.
Asexuality is defined as the lack of sexual attraction to anyone, or low/absent interest in sexual activity. Aromanticism is the same definition, just substituting romantic attraction for sexual attraction (yes they are two different things, both of which can be completely different from one another!). Asexuality and Aromanticism are actually on a spectrum, consisting of asexuality, demisexuality, graysexuality, and many more in-between. One thing to remember is that there are many different types of attractions, but asexuality/aromanticism are just covering romantic and sexual attraction. You can still find someone attractive (aesthetic attraction) and be asexual. You can want to kiss and cuddle someone (sensual attraction) and still be asexual.
Of course, television has been breaking ground in the last few years by having multiple queer characters, but have seemed to have forgotten about the A in LGBTQA+: Asexuality. While it was nice to watch the kids on Glee walk around and sing their hearts out, it seemed as if every episode had a focus on some sort of non-platonic relationship. Most of the glee club would seemingly draw names out of a hat to see who dates whom that week. With all the other representation in that show, why couldn’t Ryan Murphy write in an asexual character? I can’t think of one character that didn’t go through some sort of relationship plot, except for the very small characters. With so many main characters on the show, the viewer could get the relationship aspect after the first ten relationships. After those relationships, we did not need the thirty-something more relationship arcs after that. Rather, the viewer needed to experience more, such as an asexual character.
However, the entertainment business needs to be conscientious of doing an accurate portrayal of asexuality. There are stereotypes to overcome, for if they show those, it will give non-asexuals the wrong idea. A stereotype most people believe goes along with asexuality is that they are weird and socially awkward. While this can be true, it is not a mandatory characteristic! People tend to think Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory and Sherlock Holmes from Sherlock Holmes on BBC are both on the asexuality spectrum, due to the socially awkwardness they share. While it’s possible they could be, this is not what the reasoning would be. Instead we would look at their personal relationships, not their personality. Personality does not determine orientation.
While people may think it is unnecessary for such representation because “we already have so much representation for the LGBTQA+!!!!”, this is wrong. Each letter in the acronym stands for different orientations. While the world may try and erase asexuality (the fact that they say A stands for “ally” proves this) we can not let it happen. Think of the young children thinking they are broken because they don’t relate to the relationships they watch or read about. Think of people crying themselves to sleep because they don’t understand. We’ve seen how much representation impacts different populations; it will only do the same here. Change the media representation; give us a voice.