So for my child development/psychology class, we basically write a journal each week or so about key topics in our life starting from infancy and going to (and past) our deaths. This week’s topic was “Me In Love” about our romantic relationships past, present, future and how they define us or whatever.
I basically just wrote two pages lecturing about aromanticism and how I couldn’t answer any of the questions provided because they held no context for me but that my orientation and I were still valid.
Might not get any points for it because I didn’t complete the assignment as provided, but what can you do? 🤷♀️
Oh, I also spoke about asexuality as well.
Ok so if this happens to anyone else here’s what you do:
* write an essay like above, giving zero fucks about grade or what the teacher might think
* give sources to everything. Sources for the definition of aromantic, sources for lgbtq+ communities that support aspec identities, sources for the demographics of the aro community, source everything and mark them clearly.
* sit back and watch as your teacher is forced to give you good marks unless they can dismiss your sources, which they most likely can’t and definitely don’t feel like wasting time doing.
There are plenty of research on sexuality but unfortunately research on aromanticism is still hard to find. A good place to look for asexual research is this database (x). Other sources you might want to use are the various lgbtq+ communities’ informational pages, AVEN’s sources for what aspec identities are and demographics on aspec community, DSM-V (and ICD-10 if you want to be through-out) to show how asexuality is recognized (and not recognized in the case of ICD-10) as a sexual orientation.
Good luck to all of you dealing with essays and school work where you are forced to choose to either lie to conform to what’s expected or to tell the truth and being forced to out yourself and having to defend your identity at the same time. These things suck but if you decide to be open about your identity there are ways to make it less likely for the teachers to be able to punish you for your identity.
Published
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 