Why Amatonormativity Matters
To denormalize amatonormativity, you first have to make the world aware of its existence.
Tiny acknowledgements of its existence can be seen in the everyday. In people who can summarize the pressure they feel to experience romance, and unknowingly paraphrase Elizabeth Brake’s "Minimizing Marriage” where she coined the term amatonormativity.
We can also point to the one who is “focusing on their career,” which often an an excuse to calm their nosy family members who see themselves as privy to their romantic endeavors, or lack thereof.
There are also those who claim they just “can’t find the right one,” and never enter a romantic relationship. It is a sad consequence of amatonormativity that they have never been told there might not be a right one, and that that is acceptable.
People like this, whether aware or not, are actively disrupting a pervasive system of amatonormativity that not only pressures aromantic people into relationships they would never want, but also pressure young alloromantic people into premature relationships that they may only be ready for when another decade passes.
Amatonormativity harms everyone, but it is recognized more widely as an abstract irritance rather than a harmful system that has been identified and recognized by those it has done harm to.
People are capable of unlearning the effects of harmful systems. The problem is that many don’t know that they have been taught to uphold amatonormativity their whole lives. How can one unlearn ideals that they don’t even know they have?
It is a necessary part of undoing harmful systems to put a name to them, and not allow them to live in anonymity. Amatonormativity has existed since long before the coin was termed, in the form of the aforementioned person who prioritizes their career over romance, or the polyamorous and/or aromantic spectrum people who reject the “exclusive, amorous relationship” upon which Brake bases her coining of the term “amatonormativity.”
Explicit language and definitions to describe what harms come to those who do not prescribe to an “exclusive, amorous relationship” was born with the term amatonormativity, which means we can now identify the values and actions in ourselves and others. In this way, the creation of the term amatonormativity is one of the most important things to have happened for aromantic people in recent history.
