So This Video has been floating around tumblr and despite several bored faces and yawns in the audience, I thought it brought up some really good points.
In the video David Jay of AVEN (Asexuality Visibility & Education Network) brought up the point that at their core all relationships are same. And he wasn’t just talking about romantic-sexual relationships. When you have a meaningful connection with someone, even if they’re just a friend, a family member, or even a coworker, you have a relationship with them. But unlike romantic-sexual relationships, these platonic relationships are viewed as sort of inferior while romantic-sexual relationships are “celebrated, prioritized, and talked about”.
At the end the audience was encouraged to think about a world where these relationships were celebrated, prioritized, and talked about. I started thinking about it and I imagined what it would be like if everyone who had asked me “Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend?” instead had asked “Will you be my friend?” or “Who is your best friend?” or “What is your most treasured relationship?”.
How great would it be if I said my most important relationships are with my immediate family and that was celebrated and talked about the same way as a romantic relationship would have been? How many meaningful friendships are we missing out on because popculture says the only relationship worth pursuing with a perfect stranger is a romantic one? What if Hollywood told a falling-in-bestfriends story the same way it told romantic comedies? That was my take-away from the video.
A³ 
I love your idea of a “falling in best friends” story!
Yeah, this stuff is the most painful part of accepting my asexuality. Because my culture values romantic/sexual relationships above all others, to the point that I believed that they are the only truly portent relationships, I have this deep sense of loss and fear that I’m missing out on what makes life worth living. I don’t have any intrinsic desire for a romantic relationship at all. It’s not something my true self needs. My feeling of loss is truly just a cultural brainwashing–but still so painful.
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I like the idea of making changes in society though story telling. I’m a huge fan of Joseph Campbell and the Mono-myth/Hero’s Journey. I believe by changing the narrative, the way we tell stories to each other, is the first step to changing people’s minds.
If you look at some of the “great” works, the Lord of the Rings movies is the first example that comes to mind; the most important relationships in those films aren’t the romantic ones. Excellent movies and books break the down the romantic paradigm and celebrate and highlight other kinds of relationships. Romance isn’t absent from those stories, but romantic relationships aren’t more important than the non-romantic ones. Storytelling is an art form and it makes little sense to paint everything using the same brushstroke.
I saw an interview clip of Ryan Reynolds saying how the producers at Fox were really trying to push the romantic angle in Deadpool to draw in the female audience and he scoffed at how ignorant they were. Hollywood and Network television are so obsessed with appealing to the different demographics and dividing everything into blue and pink that they over look the obvious that a good, masterful story by itself will appeal to everyone. I think the old adage “sex sells” is actually hindering the book and film industry because they’re looking for a quick buck instead of big bucks. It’s going to take everything just short of a revolution for those industries to realize that.
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