What is Good Asexual Representation?

Harry Potter's Dragon-Obsessed Brother-in-Law Has Answers

My pubescent sexual awakening differed a bit from most others.

Hearing the word “masturbate” in the 2007 Transformers movie piqued my interest during each rewatch, and curiosity eventually impelled me to look it up. The article I stumbled across wasn’t helpful so far as the why but did provide a guide for girls looking to try it.

I walked down the hall to my bathroom to find the recommended instrument: a tube of lip gloss. Given what I was about to do with it, I selected the one I liked least, a shimmery lemon flavor more glue than gloss. Returning to my room, I laid down on the floor, carpet fibers itching against my back, and prepared to give it a go.

The perpetually leaking plastic left my palm tacky and mingled with my nervy sweat as I shifted the tube in my hand, attempting to find the appropriate angle. I turned my head to reread the open webpage on my laptop, sure this must be a joke.

My feelings about sex never much changed after that day. Lauren James’ young protagonist in The Loneliest Girl in the Universe probably explains it better:

“I think about sex a lot. Objectively, the idea is kind of disgusting…. I just can’t figure it out.

“I can’t decide whether all the gross parts would fade away if you’re with someone you really love, or whether you’d still notice things like smells and noises and stickiness, but the emotions overwhelm it all.”

That feeling of perplexed repulsion overwhelmed me. The white page stared at my small, supine body, its emotionless black text demanding I obey its instructions. But I couldn’t. I quickly slipped back into my shorts and put the tube of lip gloss away, pushing it to the very back of my vanity drawer. I never touched it again.

From that moment of failed masturbation onward, I knew my relationship with sex would forever be different from everyone else’s, that I would have to hide my true feelings and avoid the possibility of sex as long as possible. But fear always lingered. Fear, both about dying an aged virgin and about the clock counting down to the day of inevitable defilement. My sexual fantasies subsequently took a page from the Jersey Shore playbook: getting blackout drunk and throwing myself at a man in the hopes that he’d take the initiative and do it to me. If it had to be done—and, of course, there was no other option—I wanted to be objectified, to be used.

The Enigmatic Weasley

Recognizing and overcoming compulsory sexuality—or the presumption that “[s]exuality is not merely what you do, it is part of who you are, part of the truth of you,” as Angela Chen writes in Ace—is a hurdle all aces face. After that incident on my bedroom floor, it took me another 15 years to do so.

When I first heard of asexuality, I couldn’t identify as ace myself—I was in a relationship; how much would I hurt him if I said sex disgusted me?—but knowing it existed provided a sort of safety net. When our relationship eventually, inevitably crumbled, I could finally get around to accepting myself.

After making that monumental shift, I could look at the world in a new way, see people differently. And I came to wonder if Charlie Weasley—a minor Harry Potter character whom fans theorize may be asexual or aromantic—had similar experiences in his youth or past relationships. In many ways, he feels like a kindred spirit. He and I share a fascination with animals and prioritize their role in our lives, albeit in different ways. As one of the only named characters in the series to never have a partner, though, my opinion on the ace/aro theory began to sour. I thought, Why do aces have to be single?

Forever Alone

J.K. Rowling stated in a 2007 documentary that Charlie isn’t gay, he’s just more interested in dragons than relationships.¹ That’s great for him! However, extrapolating this information to conclude that he’s asexual sets an exclusionary precedent.

Aces are just like regular people, except we don’t experience sexual attraction. Ditto for aros, except they don’t experience romantic attraction. Aroaces experience neither. But we’re not robots—we still crave connection. While many aces/aros don’t desire long-term or monogamous partnerships, many do. Our relationships just may not subscribe to allonormative conventions; they may or may not include sexual, romantic, sensual, or platonic expressions of love.

With that understanding, any of the characters in Harry Potter could be ace/aro—from Draco to Dumbledore—but we wouldn’t have any way of knowing because they’re not shouting it from the turret-tops. It’s not the kind of thing that naturally comes up in conversation—“Hey, can I tell you about the attraction I don’t have?”—except in specific circumstances. And it doesn’t need to. It’s our business, our choices, our lives.

In her book, Angela Chen quotes a discussion she had with author Julie Sondra Decker,

“‘I’m only asexual because there’s a word for it and because people have an objection to me not wanting to have sex. If they didn’t, my life would not have involved very much of talking about it.’”

Precisely.

Animal-People

Charlie’s love of dragons carries another connotation, that of the “crazy cat lady” variety. His reptilian fascination serves as an excuse for why such a catch—who could resist those rugged good looks?—is single. But there doesn’t need to be a reason. Asexuality has no relation to a person’s interests, hobbies, or career.

Potentially, using Charlie’s preoccupation with dragons to explain his asexuality diminishes the value of his work by implying that he has an unhealthy relationship with animals. He places them at the pinnacle of his life, rather than as a secondary or tertiary pursuit. This kind of classification has been weaponized against animal advocates for centuries. Nearly all criticism of the animal welfare movement of the 19th century heavily targeted the activists themselves—such as the radical American Anti-Vivisection Society and ASPCA founder Henry Bergh—for misplacing their priorities. We still see this today, as a life devoted to animals is often seen as activism wasted.

Animals have long held a subhuman position on the “chain of being,” and thus society’s powerholders (typically white Christian men and the institutions they run) wield animalization as a tool to oppress other humans and nonhumans.² But what if animal advocacy were normal? What if animals were treated as fellow members of society with the right to an autonomous life?

In that kind of society, Charlie could just be another workaholic on a mission to protect dwindling dragon populations. (In my headcanon, he’s a conservationist.) Rather than one of those obsessive animal people who hides his asexuality in his work, he’s simply another person who may or may not have an interest in sex.

Charlie’s (an) Angel

Rather than using Charlie’s job as an excuse for why he never “settled down,” we should celebrate that he’s found a meaningful career working with magical creatures. Not only that, but he has an adoring (and mostly supportive) family and devoted friends even willing to trespass onto Hogwarts grounds to rescue a baby dragon!

Whether he’s ace or aro is up to fans’ interpretation. Contrary to all I’ve just said, I’d love to have him on my team, so he’s ace all the way to me. Regardless, though Charlie doesn’t have a romantic “significant other,” he isn’t truly alone. He’s created a fulfilling life for himself with myriad significant others, both human and animal. That’s something to which we can all aspire.

Rejecting Repression

For most of my life, I thought I was secretly repressing my true sexuality. It’s hard identifying something within yourself that doesn’t exist, especially when the entire world is telling you that it does. But the true repression is what society does to us, putting ideas in our head about who we are and how we should feel. Angela Chen, again, sums up my feelings perfectly:

“‘Repressed’ is the opposite of ‘liberated.’ An insult. In culturally liberated circles, the sexually conservative woman is often considered to be sexually repressed—and the sexually repressed woman is a symbol of a time before freedom. She is uptight and in denial, white-knuckling her way through life. She is the perfectly coiffed fifties housewife, lacking the ease of liberated counterparts who are in touch with their bodies and secure with their place in the world. The sexually repressed woman is an object of pity and a reminder of the importance of progress. She is embarassing.”

I’ve finally recognized that I’m not repressed, I’m not a prude, I’m not broken, I’m not “asexual.” I’m just me. And that’s pretty damn liberating.

be conscious, be kind, be vegan

On my mind: Cat Person & more Potter

Each time I press play on a new movie, I’m hoping for Cat Person.³ If you couldn’t tell, I get very attached to the stories I love, and in the weeks since I first saw this, all I’ve wanted to do is rewatch it. Romances that dance on the line between awkward and flirtatious are like catnip for me, and the descent into horror by the end was a perfect payoff. Getting inside the protagonist’s head as she projected her assumptions onto the stranger she was dating felt like a more pleasurable, less painful version of reality. The exploration of what it means for modern women to be sexual, sexually liberated, and safe grabbed my heart and beat it for me. Perfection!

Now that my fangirling is out of the way (though tbh it never really is), if you—like me—are always in need of more Harry Potter in your life, check out my old blog posts on the wizarding food system (a personal favorite of mine), animal abuse in the books, and S.P.E.W. After years of supporting the Protego Foundation, I’m now a team member, so be on the lookout for some of my writing on the blog!

1. Terms like “gay” get a bit sticky because they imply allosexuality, as I discussed in “Love Is Love (Except When It Isn’t).” Charlie could be alloromantic but asexual, or vice versa, or neither, or both. Of course, the ‘90s and 2000s were a time when single characters were often presumed to be gay and when LGBTQ+ people were not as accepted as they are today. There’s still a lot of progress to be made, and I’m hoping for more awareness around asexuality and aromanticism.

2. For more information on the chain of being—a hierarchical structure that places certain beings closer to God than others, and therefore with more/less moral worth—see Kathryn Shevelow’s For the Love of Animals, a truly fascinating read about the birth of the animal welfare movement in Britain. Tristram Stuart’s The Bloodless Revolution delves further back in history to the middle of the last millennium, paying particular mind to the Indian influence over European vegetarians. If you’re looking for information on U.S. history, there are far too many books to name, so I’ll recommend For the Prevention of Cruelty by Diane L. Beers and the recently-released Our Kindred Creatures by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy.

3. If you’re looking for a free version, check out the short story. I prefer the movie (blasphemy!) because it plays more on the moral ambiguity of the main characters, but the short has its own merits that tell a different kind of story.