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Romantic and Sexual Attraction
Though aromanticism and asexuality have had a dim spotlight in recent years, they are not new concepts. Perhaps their separation into distinct attractions is new, as well as their broadening into a spectrum of orientations. Overall, aromantic and asexual are umbrella terms that apply to a range of nonnormative romantic and sexual orientations.
Aromanticism and asexuality are distinct from their allo counterparts. Through allonormativity and amatonormativity, sex and romance have become institutionalized and necessary to our lives. In addition to compulsory sexuality, these rely on their hegemony, the willingness of society to consent to and participate in their perpetuity (Varela et al., 2016). With these concepts in place, aromantic and asexual people are dismissed with their identities being seen as impossible or perpetually single.
Michael Warner (1991), in reference to heterosexuality, says “because the logic of the sexual order is so deeply embedded by now in an indescribably wide range of social institutions, and is embedded in the most standard accounts of the world, queer struggles aim not just at toleration or equal status but at challenging those institutions and accounts” (p. 6). The same can be said of our allonormative society where both straight and queer sex and sexual desire are preeminent.
In describing the coalescence of the study of sexuality as a study of humanity, Jacinthe Flore (2014) says “research into human sexuality has turned existence into sexistence” (p. 18). Where heterosexuality is an oppressive force for homosexuality, as straightness is the norm and queerness is deviant, allosexuality marginalizes asexuality to the point of invisibility thus making asexuality inhuman. Moreover, the comfort queerness takes in these systems, despite its opposition to the dominance of heterosexuality (Chu, 2014), reinforces the normalcy of sex, intimacy, and desire thus discounting the queerness of not engaging in sex or romance at all.
Likewise, Adrienne Rich’s concept of compulsory heterosexuality, from which compulsory sexuality is derived, is useful in its context but less inclusive of the total dominance sex has over all facets of society. Compulsory heterosexuality posits that heterosexuality is a political institution rather than an innate orientation (Rich, 1993, p. 232). Rich’s original context was that of lesbian exclusion from feminist conversations in which an understanding of compulsory heterosexuality would be useful for all women regardless of sexuality. However, an even broader understanding of sex as prescribed, innate, enforced, and normal is what compulsory sexuality describes (Chen, 2020, pp. 34-36). Building upon compulsory heterosexuality, a foundational concept in queer theory, to compose compulsory sexuality demonstrates the necessity of queerness to expand beyond sex to question its position within society.
Fanfiction
Fanfic writers can create entire worlds spanning from single moments in canon. These fannish interpretations can even become fanon, adopted by the fandom writ large. While the canon version of a male character may be straight, on screen chemistry with other male characters can lead to headcanon and fanon versions of him as bisexual or gay. These along with tropes and genres abound in fanfiction, and in combination, they speak to the many ways writers interpret and transform the media they consume. Fan creators (writers, artists, etc.) occupy a space between the source text (the canon of their chosen media objects), fantext (the fandom and its discourse), genre (the norms and tropes of the media object and its fandom), as well as technology (the tools used to create fanworks) (Stein & Busse, 2009). Even so, fan creators work through these limitations to create transformative works that “emphasize intertextuality, community, and a creativity that is not invested primarily in notions of originality” (p. 205). Fan creators disregard ownership of both ideas and media properties in ways that decentralize the owner, the author, and their original intentions.
Aromanticism & Asexuality in Fanfiction Writing 