Alright, let’s get something out of the way: the ancient Greeks were aphobic. Their society had no room for someone who could not reciprocate romantic or sexual love for others. So much so, that the Greek gods had a policy of sentencing aroace people to death. Let’s consult the version of the story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses:
And now the son of Cephisus had added one to three times five years, and he might seem to be a boy and a young man as well. Many a youth, and many a damsel, courted him; but there was so stubborn a pride in his youthful beauty, that no youths, no damsels made any impression on him. The noisy Nymph, who has neither learned to hold her tongue after another speaking, nor to speak first herself, resounding Echo, espied him, as he was driving the timid stags into his nets.
When, therefore, she beheld Narcissus wandering through the pathless forests, and fell in love with him, she stealthily followed his steps; and the more she followed him, with the nearer flame did she burn. In no other manner than as when the native sulphur, spread around the tops of torches, catches the flame applied to it. Ah! how often did she desire to accost him in soft accents, and to employ soft entreaties! Nature resists, and suffers her not to begin; but what Nature does permit, that she is ready for; to await his voice, to which to return her own words.
By chance, the youth, being separated from the trusty company of his attendants, cries out, “Is there any one here?” and Echo answers “Here!” He is amazed; and when he has cast his eyes on every side, he cries out with a loud voice, “Come!” Whereon she calls the youth who calls. He looks back; and again, as no one comes, he says, “Why dost thou avoid me?” and just as many words as he spoke, he receives. He persists; and being deceived by the imitation of an alternate voice, he says, “Let us come together here;” and Echo, that could never more willingly answer any sound whatever, replies, “Let us come together here!” and she follows up her own words, and rushing from the woods, is going to throw her arms around the neck she has so longed for. He flies; and as he flies, he exclaims, “Remove thy hands from thus embracing me; I will die first, before thou shalt have the enjoyment of me.” She answers nothing but “Have the enjoyment of me.” Thus rejected, she lies hid in the woods, and hides her blushing face with green leaves, and from that time lives in lonely caves; but yet her love remains, and increases from the mortification of her refusal. Watchful cares waste away her miserable body; leanness shrivels her skin, and all the juices of her body fly off in air. Her voice and her bones alone are left.
Narcissus, a 16 year old boy, is walking in the forest, and Echo sees him and starts stalking him while developing an obsession over his good looks. When she finally speaks to him, she’s overeager and immediately leaps into an embrace when poor Narcissus just wanted to see who was talking to him. Narcissus is creeped out by the sudden affection, and tells her to stop, doing so admittedly rather rudely. But for an aroace traumatized his whole life by the pressure to perform compulsory allosexuality, I’m sure Narcissus has good reason to feel such stubborn defiance against the status quo, and letting people down none-too-gently could likely have arisen as a habit of survival. Echo, meanwhile, takes the rejection of a stranger so personally that she becomes history’s first incel.
Thus had he deceived her, thus, too, other Nymphs that sprung from the water or the mountains, thus the throng of youths before them. Some one, therefore, who had been despised by him, lifting up his hands towards heaven, said, “Thus, though he should love, let him not enjoy what he loves!” Rhamnusia assented to a prayer so reasonable. There was a clear spring, like silver, with its unsullied waters, which neither shepherds, nor she-goats feeding on the mountains, nor any other cattle, had touched; which neither bird nor wild beast had disturbed, nor bough falling from a tree. There was grass around it, which the neighboring water nourished, and a wood, that suffered the stream to become warm with no rays of the sun. Here the youth, fatigued both with the labor of hunting and the heat, lay down, attracted by the appearance of the spot, and the spring; and, while he was endeavoring to quench his thirst, another thirst grew upon him.
While he is drinking, being attracted with the reflection of his own form, seen in the water, he falls in love with a thing that has no substance; and he thinks that to be a body, which is but a shadow.
His last accents, as he looked into the water, as usual, were these: “Ah, youth, beloved in vain!” and the spot returned just as many words; and after he had said, “Farewell!” Echo, too, said, “Farewell!” He laid down his wearied head upon the green grass, when night closed the eyes that admired the beauty of their master; and even then, after he had been received into the infernal abodes, he used to look at himself in the Stygian waters. His Naiad sisters lamented him, and laid their hair, cut off, over their brother; the Dryads, too, lamented him, and Echo resounded to their lamentations. And now they were preparing the funeral pile, and the shaken torches, and the bier. The body was nowhere to be found. Instead of his body, they found a yellow flower, with white leaves encompassing it in the middle.
Rhamnusia, also known as Nemesis, was the goddess of punishment for hubris. Narcissus’ crime of not wanting to date anyone was seen as a sin against the gods. Sure, he was a bit rude, but if an incel wanted Me to either date them or be murdered by the gods, I’d be rude too! Narcissus was cursed with being enraptured by his own reflection as a punishment by Nemesis, and Nemesis agreed to punish Narcissus because he didn’t date anyone.
To the Greeks, asexuality/aromanticism and arrogance were one and the same. But through a modern interpretation of the events of the story, we see that Narcissus was just an asexual trying to make his way through the world without being forced to have sex with anyone. Narcissus was put to death for being queer. Attribution of his asexuality to vanity is a culturally dependent, queerphobic interpretation. And yes, My interpretation of his refusal to date anyone as queer is culturally dependent as well. But this modern interpretation makes room for queer people to live, while the Greek interpretation says if you don’t date people you deserve to die. I like choosing kinder interpretations.
If Narcissus had been a woman and Echo a man, then we would correctly analyse the story as a misogynistic exercise in heteropatriarchal norms. Modern readers are only able to empathize with the Hellenic view that Narcissus owed other people love, because the heteropatriarchy erases asexual men and maintains that all men are naturally creatures of sexual desire. This is not only aphobic, it contributes to misogynistic rape culture and it degrades men by reducing them to the social role of sexual monster. A role some men take seriously, and to the extent of normalising sexual violence against women.
In making space for men to exist without the pressure to romantically or sexually perform for (or violently against) others, we see that Narcissus is rightfully entitled to his own feelings. Echo is guilty of romantic assault, seeking to make him hers, according to a fantasy she developed in her head while stalking him without his knowledge. Echo fails to respect his right to consent in her heart. And so does the nameless suitor who prays to Nemesis for the act of divine intervention that lead to his death.
Narcissus does not owe his allosexual suitors a polite rejection. From the content of his life, we see that he was constantly sexually harassed, and indeed sometimes violently so. He was 16, for Dionysus’ sake! He was just a kid! Some boys haven’t even hit puberty yet at that age. And given the Hellenic idealization of the beauty of male youth, I daresay Narcissus may have been one of those boys. No 16 year old, regardless of bodily maturity, deserves to be subjected to such sexual harassment. No adult does either, but it’s particularly disgusting in the case of a boy like Narcissus.
I see a lot of people defending the use of the ableist slur “narcissist” by saying it’s not based on a clinical diagnosis, it’s based on a greek myth. I do not find the historical accuracy of this claim compelling, as the word “narcissist” is an English one, not a Greek one. Necessarily, the word must have come through an English etymological process before arriving at the spelling “narcissist”. I find the evidence to be compelling that the popularisation of the word in English comes from Christopher Lasch’s book, The Culture Of Narcissism. But I’m not going to get all the way into that today.
Today, I decided to take the claim that the word “narcissist” is a Greek mythology reference seriously. And I find that if that’s the case, then the word’s original use is to insult someone as vain for not dating anybody. To say that if you’re aromantic or asexual, you deserve to die. It would seem that if the word isn’t an ableist slur, then it must instead be a queerphobic slur. Perhaps we asexuals could reclaim the slur as an ironic self-descriptor. Perhaps I could say, “Yes, I’m a narcissist. My queerness is so powerful it enrages the very gods.” But if the word is to be used as an insult, in reference to Narcissus’ refusal to be in a relationship, then it is a slur. Narcissus wasn’t an abuser, he was queer.
A child didn’t want to date anyone and society decided to hate mentally ill people about it.
