Plato and Patriarchy and Romance Novels

I’m finding all this discussion to be pretty fascinating. Personal bias disclosure: I generally identify as ace, though not as queer, even though I’m not hetero-romantic. Partly it’s that even though I do sometimes say I’m biromantic/panromantic, I’m not entirely sure if those are the best terms for me to use (the short form is that I definitely do not identify as straight, for many reasons, but it’s difficult to explain without getting into a lot of detail, so I’ll just leave it as that for now), and I’ve never been part of the queer community in any significant way anyway.

So, disclosure aside, I do think a lot about whether or not the privileges I do or don’t have ever come from being asexual over simply being femme. Usually it seems pretty clear-cut to me that it’s primarily being perceived as female that is what makes me disprivileged in situations. When I’m out with a man, wondering if he’s taking my enjoyment of our conversation the wrong way, it’s not because I’m worried he won’t respect my rights as an asexual to leave me alone if I say no, it’s that I’m worried he would see me as female-presenting, with all the disprivileges that presentation comes with.

Thing is, I don’t think anyone really targets asexuals specifically because they’re vulnerable, even though we are, because it’s not what’s visible. There’s definitely an element of pressure to have sex in a relationship, whether you are male/female/other in a straight/gay/queer/otherwise relationship, that says if you don’t do this, you’re not doing the relationship right. It’s assumed, you’re in a relationship, if not now, at least at some point you will be having sex, because sex is normal, and sex is supposedly what you do if you want to be the closest to another person that you can be. And this is a disadvantage to aces, especially those that can’t do compromises on sex, because telling someone upfront you’re not interested and never will be tends to have unpleasant consequences.

But in general, if one person tells another person they’re not interested in sex, the other person will think, “Well not now,” and if they tell that person, “No, not ever,” that person either doesn’t believe them, forces it, or gives up on the relationship. It is especially common with women, because of the way they’re sexualized and objectified, but happens to men, too, and it’s certainly not something that happens only to asexuals. Probably happens more frequently to aces, but it’s not surprising since if your frequency of being not-interested is higher, the rate of incidences where someone refuses to acknowledge your disinterest goes up? Which is different from being targeted for being disinterested alone. Correlation, not causation.

As a side note, while I was writing this up and tangenting off in other directions that I didn’t feel like merited posting in full, I ran into a reason why “platonic life partner” is a terrible term: they are not always life partners. I was pseudo-dating a guy for three years, my relationship with whom I would be more inclined to consider “queerplatonic” since it was clearly more than friendship, but not a romantic/sexual relationship the way anyone else would define one, but at no point were we at a stage I would consider we were constant enough that “life partners” would have been appropriate, especially given I no longer speak to him since we pseudo-broke-up and he’s since (real-)dated other women from what I’ve heard. But that said, I still don’t like “queerplatonic” either. I just can’t say “platonic life partner” is a good substitute when I’ve had a number of relationships that could fall under what the former is defining but not the latter. (Or vice versa, since I can think of a couple “platonic life partners” that don’t fall in my category for people I’ve had the more complicated relationships with.)

Hi!
As for the bias—ha, no worries, it takes all kinds to make a party, right?
I mean, I’m a gold star lesbian (for what it’s worth, which is, approximately, nothing), which you’d think would make me pretty queer—but it’s not a label I claim for myself because it does have a concrete meaning to it these days. The queer subculture =/= the gay subculture (gay being the colloquial, in that I am a *gay* woman). I find that I’m not really… what the queer community prefers. I’m an outspoken femme, but I’m not into subverting gender roles or radical action; I’m a moderate who hopes to get married one day, ideally whilst wearing lipstick and alarmingly high heels.
So, despite the fact that I fit the base-line criteria for ‘queer’ in that I do love me some taco, I don’t really fit in the culture and thus am hesitant.
But that’s just me and YMMV. I just always figured that assuming that anything not-straight = queer was reductionist and sort of… watering down a very distinct and vibrant culture.

And I agree with you—women who adhere to traditional notions of femininity do tend to be viewed more as passive/receptive sex objects. I feel like a LOT of violence directed towards both hetero-romantic asexual ladies and femme lesbians/queers is less to do with the orientation (though certainly that plays a major role) and more to do with the fact that we’re subverting the very meaning of what it means to be ‘woman’ in a patriarchal society.
An aggressor isn’t going to care if a woman’s a demi/ace/homo/purplepolkadotbananacremepie-sexual. All he’s going to see is that here’s this bird who has absolutely no desire to have him and hey, wait a minute, where does she get off on thinking that she gets to pick?
I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again: butches and masculine-presenting women get read as “challenge!” and feminine presenting women get read as “lol you’re not REAAAALLY [x]”. I’d spoken about it from a lesbian perspective, but I think it works fairly well for the ace spectrum as well.
It might not be that it’s asexuality that’s pissing these guys off, it’s the fact that they’re being ostensibly rejected (and even in a relationship, a sense of rejection can manifest itself in unpleasant and unexpected ways).
But then again, I’m not asexual, so I can’t speak from that perspective.

It sounds like a shitty, shitty hand to be dealt, certainly.

As for the Life Partners bit, you raise a valid point. Not all relationships are going to last forever. However, just because some relationships are transient doesn’t mean that the term doesn’t fit at the time; for example, do you not call your spouse the love of your life just because statistically speaking you have a 50% chance of divorcing them?
My opinion on the matter (and again, this is my opinion, not gospel, so take from it what you will) is that if the term fits at the time, it should be used. It’s the nature of emotional bonds to wax and wane.
Though I do see your point.
At least personally, I always saw the PLP as sort of filling the gap between friendship <—> relationship, wherein it was a bit more intense than your average friendship (which doesn’t necessarily imply a SEXUAL bond, only a deeper level of intimacy), but not an active relationship.
For example, my best friend M and I are far closer than your average friendship. We’re both lesbians (though she pronounces the word as qw-eer), share a wide variety of mutual interests and for all intents and purposes would probably suit each other fairly well in a more sexual sphere. Both sets of parents are convinced we’re dating, basically.
HOWEVER, that having been said, we’re Platonic Life Partners, because we both realize that we’re each other’s ‘Person’ (Gray’s Anatomy reference for the win), but that we have no desire to sleep with each other. That doesn’t mean we won’t co-author some frankly alarmingly explicit smut together; it also doesn’t mean that I haven’t called her post-coitally with my (then) girlfriend in bed beside me to tease her about something that popped into mind (it happened, and it was hilarious).
So for me, even if that relationship were to end tomorrow and we were never to speak to each other again for some horrible reason, I would still consider her a Platonic Life Partner—because that is the closest way to describe it.
Hopefully that makes sense. I know anecdotal evidence =/- FACTS!, but that’s sort of the attitude I’ve always taken to it.

(And the more I think of it, the term Platonic (with its meaning of ostentibly agape love between two same-sex individuals (albiet with a somewhat sketchy age disparity!)) could work fairly well as a substitute for queer. Go figure.)

Anyways, I hope that wasn’t too much tangent-t whargharbl. I’m afraid my brain isn’t quite at peak form, I’m running on two hours of sleep and about a litre of Rock Star.