Medicated Thoughts 3

[mesotablar]

I have been watching and listening to quite a bit of true crime shows and podcasts recently.  Mostly just because it is there and other people seem to be consuming it too which means more articles pointing me at it and it is higher on entertainment rating lists. One common theme that pops up fairly frequently at least in serial killers and cult leaders is repressed sexuality. Why repressed? well parents and society was and is super harsh on stuff they don't like. It just so happens that homophobic male-fixated male serial killers get shows made about them. Lots of shows. 

Repressing things does warp you inside. I thought I was broken for over a decade because I negatively reacted to dates and I didn't actively seek them out. I am SURE that being aromantic but not knowing what aromantic is did contribute to low self esteem and my sense of belonging and community. If I lived in a more dictatorial society (Aka my family 90 years ago) I would have been married off at 19, and even as a theoretical I have no idea how I would have survived....though at least I can take comfort in the fact that with my health I wouldn't have lived to 16. How warped is that? I find it comforting that theoretical me would never have been married. But to know of Aromanticism and be told it is bad and wrong?

I wonder how many people broke under the strain of internalised hate, of feeling isolated, of feeling wrong.
I wonder how many people would make different choices if they knew about Aromanticism and Asexuality.
I wonder how many domestic violence victims and survivors are aromantic or asexual. 
I wonder how many domestic violence perpetrators are aromantic or asexual. 
I wonder how many pick-up artists are aromantic or asexual. 
I wonder how many incels are aromantic or asexual.

Comments

[fred_mouse]

I spent a year living with an older couple when I was in high school. They were friends of my mother's, or at least B (the wife) was (the husband was a bit of a Old White Male and didn't appear to have friends), and they took me in when I couldn't get to a suitable school from where we were living at the time. B and I got on surprisingly well for coming from very different worlds, and they talked quite frankly about a number of things. I'm not sure how much we talked about romance and sex, but I very strongly got the impression that they were entirely asexual (although in 1988 I didn't have the terminology), and I suspect they were aromantic as well. But they came from a cultural milieu where it wasn't necessary for a woman to enjoy sex, and loving one's partner wasn't necessarily a given. They had found someone they were willing to get married to, they had accepted sex as a thing one did, they had three children, and they and husband were growing old together as a couple. I got the impression that they were underwhelmed by the cultural narrative of the time that love and sex were what were necessary for a good relationship.

Not knowing what kind of cultural background you have, I have no idea whether this would have applied to your family-of-past. But B was of good working class country Australian anglo/celtic stock, and I imagine that they were not unusual in their attitudes (I've encountered it elsewhere in the same generation).

[mesotablar]

I was definitely focusing on other people in this ramble because my family history is very much arranged marriages or shotgun marriages. Marriage is pretty much a thing to do to retain respectability, love is something that comes later...if at all. Before I got sick I had been looking into incel rhetoric and that was really probably the spark for this question, because goodness knows there are so many hurting people who stumble into a-spec spaces and with a bit of chat or reading they feel better.