The Mine Field

[mesotablar]

 This is my entry for Carnival of Aros December about 'Attitudes Towards Romance', using the prompt: What things are romance-coded to you?


The Mine Field

Baby talk gets on my nerves and makes me nauseous. Thankfully, when a couple do it it is generally seen as an extreme public display of affection and is socially frowned upon where I live. It makes me ill when people do it to animals and kids, yet society is less offended by that.

I am more sickened by it.

For me baby talk is romance-coded.

It is one of the few things that is unequivocally romance-coded for me. Many other actions and activities I see as neutral vessels, only becoming romance-coded if there are romantic intentions behind it.

Friends can hold hands and kiss and go out together for candlelit dinners and take walks on the beach at sunset and buy a house together and sleep together. Intimacy is not romance-coded,

but I know for some people it is.

I have been on the sharp end of a reprimand when three of us were rolling around and laughing in the grass of a public park. Our censor didn’t even have the excuse of thinking us a wlw polyamoury partnership doing PDA, they knew us, we had thought them a friend, they would have been welcome to join our rolling joy. But no, out intimacy was threatening. Not -understandable. Must be stopped.

I feel this is where the aspec community conflict over ‘romance’ content is. One group sharing experience while another doesn’t understand or is threatened. The side they take may switch with each new issue or activity.

If its true love is a battlefield, then the romance-coding of actions is the personal minefield we planted and expect others to respect. We try, oh, our intentions are good, but the mines are hidden!  If they are there at all…

I say I am romance neutral because most of the time it doesn’t bother me, because simply I just don’t see it.

I say I am romance neutral because most of the time it doesn’t bother me, and the things that I am repulsed by I can count on one hand and easily recite the location of my mines.

1. Baby talk
2. Feeding each other
3. Lip-to-lip kissing without prior mutual verbal consent*

 

*Ah, another way we aromantic are let down. Stolen kisses between ‘friends’ or ‘potential love interests’ that do not contain an element of sexual contact are an assault dismissed as trivial.  

Comments

[fred_mouse]

I'm with you on 'stolen' kisses are assault.

I'm going to have to think about baby talk. I don't like it for children or animals either, but I'm not sure what it codes as.

[mesotablar]

They really are, yet complaining about them seems to trigger the receivee-critisisms 'were you leading them on?' etc. more so than something like a slap on the arse.

I know others who dislike baby talk for kids because it is 'talking down' and belittling, yet they still see it as different from what lovers do. I probably romantic-code baby talk because my first exposures to it were all in romantic contexts.

[fred_mouse]

That sucks about the victim blaming. Sadly, with the way that Hollywood rom-coms are such an influence on the way that people view society and interactions, it doesn't surprise me.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes on the baby talk! In fact, I have no idea how to interact with babies because I'm uncomfortable with baby talk and don't really know how I could interact a baby in another way.

"One group sharing experience while another doesn’t understand or is threatened."
I feel you on this. It's just a thing that keeps on happening, and not just in aro spaces, but in just about every human-human conflict, and navigating that can be really frustrating. I'm sorry that censor happened to you.

- Nzcienif (https://nzcienif.wordpress.com/)

[mesotablar]

The last time I found myself expected to talk to a baby I just used my normal voice and asked lots of (obviously rhetorical) questions like: who are you? you like the shiny thing? yes I like the shiny thing too 😂

I tried to be as general as possible with my comment because yeah, it is a very universal thing in conflict. And thanks, they are not so welcome in the group anymore because that was just the start of their red flags.