Must the spice flow?

Lately Instagram’s algorithm has taken to pushing sapphic wifey accounts into my feed, and at first I posted on Bluesky about how I was amused, but the more I think about it, the more it feels supremely arophobic. So as we come to the end of this year’s Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week, I thought I would ramble a little on the connections I’m seeing among social media algorithms, shipping, smut, and the quest for liberation.

The Shipping Wars

My podcast Prophecy Girls has given me quite the vantage point for the decades-long ship wars of the Buffy fandom. Our podcast has often been mistaken as Bangel-aligned because of the thirst my cohost, Stephanie, has for Angel, and our intense critique of Spuffy. Yet if you actually listen to our takes (a challenging proposition for some, I know), we come down on the side of no ship for Buffy (even if I admit a certain fondness for Fuffy). Buffy ends her series determinedly single, giving Angel her famous cookie-dough speech, and even a year later, it seems like she and the Immortal are only hooking up. (Do not @ me about the comics.)

Similarly, Kara Danvers in the CW Supergirl ends her series single as well. This show means a lot to me—I named myself Kara because of it—and it meant a lot that Kara closes this chapter of her story without any romantic partner not because she needs to be all aloof to be an effective superhero (as is sometimes posited in these shows) but rather to work on herself and figure out who she is as an individual. We love to see it.

Of course, neither of these women is aromantic. Given that canon arospec rep is so thin on the ground, however, we take what we can get. In a world where compulsory sexuality and amatonormativity pressures everyone but especially women into partnership and marriage, a young woman choosing to be single is a powerful thing indeed.

See You in the Fics

One might argue ending a story without a definitive endgame for a beloved character is a cynical move to pander to as much of the fanbase as possible. If Buffy doesn’t end up with anyone, fic writers can imagine their preferred match as her OTP. I don’t really buy this argument, simply because a canonical endgame has never stopped any fic writer I know from writing an AU they prefer.

Now, I don’t really read fanfic. (I dipped my toes into Supercorp—one of the biggest-ever ships—a while back because if I had to ship Kara with anyone it would be Lena. But it turns out none of it was replicating what I truly loved about that ship, which is Katie McGrath’s incredible ability to justify her character’s villain arc while Melissa Benoist takes it, teary-eyed, in the middle of her Fortress of Solitude. You cannot watch their dynamic in season 5 and tell me there isn’t something there!!)

Indeed, on the rare occasion I go for a ship—Fuffy or Supercorp being the only two I can think of—it’s almost always a queer-coded one with little-to-no canonical acknowledgement. Why is that? Yes, I’ve started calling myself a sapphic-aligned aroace (because women are just … better, sorrynotsorry), but it isn’t just that. I’m starting to suspect my championing of noncanonical ships is a safety blanket: I ship them because they are subtext and not text, because they also allow me, in the back of my mind, to ship the ship that no one talks about: the ship that sails solo. I am happy Buffy and Kara in these shows are alone. There. I said it.

Fellow aspec people can probably relate: there’s something really isolating in fandoms when everyone around you erases a perfect platonic relationship by shipping two characters. To be clear, I think allo queer-coded ships are lovely, and I also never want to discourage someone from shipping their OTP. At the same time, in our haste to imagine more queer rep in mainstream media, we seem to forget that aspec rep is queer rep too. If every pair of same-gender friends is secretly dating in your AU, what does that say about aspec people?

All of this is to say, I love the concept of fanfic with every fibre of my heart, and one day I’ll probably get into reading it. Yet I have not always felt welcome in fanfic. At the same time, however, I still feel safe in fanfic in a way I don’t in the more mainstream romance world, for fanfic at least recognizes a multiplicity of modes of relationships that are still largely ignored—erased—in many other spaces.

See, the real villains are—to no one’s surprise—traditional publishers!

Romantasy Rising

I know this is a long walk, but I am almost back to my point about Instagram, I promise!

Romantasy has exploded in popularity in the last several years. I won’t get into the debate over what counts as romantasy or the reasons why it’s currently trendy; I am sure you can find n + 1 thinkpieces about such matters. What I want to explore, however, is the way romantasy’s rise and in particular its influencer culture is both sexist and aro- and acephobic.

My initial reaction, when romantasy first landed on my radar, was pleasure! It’s not a subgenre I will ever gravitate towards—I tried ACOTAR years and years go and bounced off it hard. But romantasy’s target demographic is largely women, and women deserve to read smut. Full stop. Look, I’m bemused but entirely supportive that y’all are out here reading fancy erotica on your daily commutes.

Then I started to follow a few romantasy Bookstagrammers—not because I care about romantasy but because they made funny Reels—and I noticed a weird trend. A subtext, if you will. A lot of the influencers who make their mark via romantasy content do so in a way that reinforces the idea that all women are incredibly horny all the time, and whether or not you are in a committed and fulfilling relationship, you need a lot of spice to get you through your day. I don’t know how much of this is real subtext and how much is a side effect of influencers tailoring their comedy for the algorithm, but it’s definitely there if you look for it, and it makes me super uncomfortable.

To be clear, I am not shaming anyone who writes romance or reads romance. If you want spice and smut, that’s great, and you should keep reading these things without feeling any guilt whatsoever. Ditto if you write this stuff.

What I’m trying to articulate is the way traditional publishing has, once again, harnessed the engine of women’s sexuality in a way that defeats rather than supports our actual liberation. I say “again” because this keeps happening. It’s cyclical.

One of the more recent examples that springs to mind is the “Twilight moms” phenomenon of a decade past: when thirtyplus-something women were horny over the teenagers Edward and Jacob in the Twilight movies. We simultaneously shamed and stanned these women, and it spawned the birth of the Fifty Shades craze, of which the current romantasy trend is in some ways a distant echo.

The basic pattern goes like this:

1. Oh no, we can’t possibly let the men know how horny we are.
2. If we do, we can’t take pleasure from it.
3. If we take pleasure from it, we must express shame. It’s so naughty for us to read/watch horny stuff, and we have to keep it as our dirty little secret.
4. We are openly celebrating ourselves reading/watching smut.
5. Conservative backlash time!

It’s basically the literary world’s manifestation of raunch culture—though that’s not necessarily an analytical framework with which I am in agreement—and we are currently on steps 3 and 4 with romantasy. Pretty much every second Reel I watch from these influencers is either, “Look at me, I am so naughty for liking to read smut!” or “Girl, you deserve this smut, go for it!”

Again, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this sentiment on its own. Yet I can’t help but feel like it is not entirely genuine and is rather manufactured by traditional publishers, via influencers, to sell books that pretend to offer us visions of sexually liberated women while seldom delivering on that promise. It’s Fake Feminist, Girlboss Empowerment 101.

After all, at the same time publishers hawk these books, they refuse to pay women (especially women of colour), who make up the preponderance of their workforce, a living wage. Also, in the United States in particular, the reproductive rights of women and people who can become pregnant are under vicious attack. This fact is seldom acknowledged by either publishers or influencers. (Shout-out to those romantasy influencers who belie this sweeping assertion and advocate loudly for social justice on top of your spicy books; I see you!)

The Algorithm Will Not Break Your Chains

Coming full circle then: the Instagram algorithm has a tendency to conflate things we love and things we have a bizarre, perhaps unhealthy fixation with. Couple accounts fall into this latter category for me: you know, the vloggers-turned-influencers who go around making cutesy Reels about married life. I think this, combined with my trips down romantasy influencer lane, is what tricked the algorithm into serving me up sapphic couple accounts. The algorithm is like, “OK, she’s definitely queer, so that must mean lesbian or bi, right? Here is your content!”

Huge miss, and now it’s getting under my skin, for I am starting to see all of this as being connected. No, not in a big red-yarn-conspiracy kind of way where I claim tradpubs have teamed up with the tradwives to trick us all into marrying and having tradlives. However, everything I’ve discussed so far in this blog post thrums with an underlying sentiment of compulsory sexuality for women. To be free is to be horny, the message goes.

The problem with this message is simple: freedom is not the same as liberation; the former is simply choice within a system while the latter sees the system torn down.

Romantasy’s success is not a result of society being more sexually liberated; it’s a consequence of publishers trying to market to a version of women’s sexuality that is constrained by a white, upper-middle-class idea of “desire.” Similarly, Instagram foisting cutesy couples (of any orientation) on me is a subtle way of reinforcing partnered companionship as the form my desire should take. It’s amatonoramtive turtles all the way down!

I Am My Own Endgame

Lizzo’s “Soulmate” remains one of my favourite songs simply for the line “I am my own soulmate.” It might not be intended this way, but it’s an aromantic anthem as well as an anthem of self-love.

When I tell someone I teach math, they often grimace and say, “Oh, I’m not good at math.” They have a fixed mindset, and one of my struggles as a math/English teacher is helping my students adopt a growth mindset.

When I tell someone I am aromantic (and then explain what that means), they often say, “You mean you haven’t found anyone yet,” demonstrating how quickly one can practise a growth mindset when one chooses.

“But aren’t you afraid of ending up alone?” they ask.

What they’re really asking, sometimes, is, “What do you mean I could have opted out?” They built a tenuous house of cards because they bought into the amatonarrative of our lives.

What they’re really asking is, “Aren’t you afraid of not having anyone to take care of you?” And my answer to that is yes, absolutely! I don’t deny that. I am only thirty-five years old, yet I think constantly about how to build community around myself so that as I age I will have a robust and distributed support network to help me.

But the solution to “how do I avoid ending up alone” isn’t “marry someone,” nor is it even really “build community” like I’m doing. The solution should really be change the world. Dismantle amatonormativity. Make our society less hostile to people who choose not to partner up, who choose not to have kids. Fight the system.

So how do you do that, you ask?

First off, if the campaign is still running when you read this, you should support the Common Bonds 2 Kickstarter. This is an anthology of arospec speculative fiction. I supported the first Common Bonds (you can read my review) and am excited to see Claudie Arseneault and her collaborators launching a sequel. At $15 000, they’ll produce an audiobook version, which would make this important work even more accessible.

Second, I want you to think more critically about media. Not just the mainstream shows and books you consume but the fandoms and algorithmically driven content you swipe through on social media. I want you to think about how you ship (if you ship) and how you talk about sex and romance in story. I’m not suggesting you ever feel shame or hesitation. But I invite you to consider how what you consume might be—intentionally or not—reinforcing rather than dismantling the entrenched hegemonies that hold us back. Is it really empowerment, or is it just using empowerment to sell you stuff?

Finally, to that end, I challenge you to challenge yourself and your ideas about what is possible in our society. It is possible for an unpartnered life to be a good life. It is possible for a childfree life to be a good life. It is possible for me and countless others like me to be your chosen family, aro aunties to your kids, incorrigible elders knitting in the corner of your home, chain-drinking cups of tea like there’s no tomorrow. You might be thinking, “Yeah, I already do that; I already have people like you in my circle.” Great! Affirm them. Remind us we’re loved, just the way we are, and fight for us to stay that way in the face of governments that are trying their best to regress our sexual and gender politics farther back than ever before.

I love the ships, and I love that the spice is flowing freer than ever in tradpub and selfpub and fanfiction alike. I love the funny Reels from the hubbies and wives or the lipstick lesbians and disaster bis. It’s great. But it isn’t enough.

We need more. Arospec people deserve more. We need to be represented in media, be it traditional or social. And we need to live in a world that sees us as fully human and not anomalous or other.

I am, in the parlance of the day, a good little girl. Yet I’m also a misogyny-critiquing podcaster and book reviewer who, metaphorically speaking, might bite off your hand. I contain multitudes, and I want to see all of them reflected back at me in the media we love.