Your a psychopath if you don't love (What?!?)

[Ikarus]

A while back on this forum, we where talking about amatonormativity. Someone said when they first heard the term aro their friend said it meant psychopath. I suppose their friend deduced that psychopath’s dont love, and aros feel no romantic attraction, and thus dont love, therefore aros are synonymous with psychopath’s .

I don’t have to say how completely dehumanizing, and demoralizing this toxic babble is. I mean my goodness, do people really think just because your aro, then something must not just be wrong with you, but that your essentially a classic movie villain, muhahaha!!! They are right, darn how could the allos know I remained single and heartless because Im secretly plotting my rise towards global domination and to plot revenge against all who have damaged my ego. Im being sarcastic…

Why post this? Because this idea, is perpetuated a lot, think about it. The hero has a love interest,  and friends, the villain is typically single, and feels no “love/romantic feels, preoccupied by ambitions and successes.

Also, now that I think about it, this idea makes me afraid of coming out, just a little. 

The aro=psychopath has to be one of the most dehumanizing amatonormative slander I have ever had the misfortune of hearing..

What are your thoughts??

 

[mewix]

Nah a psychopath can "love" others but for the purpose of manipulation and fufiling themselves, a lot of them r out dating lol. A psychopath has antisocial behaviour and such. If your not someone with issues like that you ain't a psychopath it's pretty simple xD

It's unfortunate that media uses such tropes too often, in reality someone with a love interest in not necessarily good. 

[nonmerci]

The first time I see the word aromantic, it was people talking about characters like Light and Voldemort, And saying how they manipulate people bit never care a out them because they are unable of love. It is only when I discover the ace and aro community that I learned what it really means.

I think a lot of people use this word this way, because they saw it use this way and then assume it means "psychopath".

However I do believe that the initial confusion is due to people assuming "lack of love = villain". And when you look at the media, it is always treat this way. If the villain has a love interest, their relation will be hypersexualized, contrary to the one of the heroes. Because society told us : love is good and pure, sex is deviant and bad. Which is barmful for everybody, vut in particular for aro people...

[mewix]

2 hours ago, nonmerci said:

If the villain has a love interest, their relation will be hypersexualized, contrary to the one of the heroes.

I noticed this but I didn't think about it in these words. 

Yeah I do imagine the villian to be a guy with a sexy temptress type girl xP

But even in hero movies the love interest often seems to be a prize and almost treated not really human in own right, but yea less sexualised more innocent.

[Apathetic Echidna]

30 minutes ago, mewix said:

But even in hero movies the love interest often seems to be a prize and almost treated not really human in own right,

It is annoyingly rare to find hero movies where the love interests of hero or villain are not shallow 'place-holders'. They are basically prizes or something to make the other character look cooler/badder/powerful.

 

3 hours ago, mewix said:

Nah a psychopath can "love" others but for the purpose of manipulation and fufiling themselves, a lot of them r out dating lol.

Exactly! Much more likely to meet a psychopath on a dating site than at an aromantic convention! ?

This all boils down to a misunderstanding of what 'aromantic' is as well as what 'psychopath' is, but it is a disheartening conflation. We gotta remember psychopaths are people too, and I would take one of them over a bigot any day.