Course:CSIS200/2025/Mike Wazowski and Redefining Asexuality

Introduction

Sexuality and sexual orientations are more often than not translated into who you want to form a long term, romantic relationship with. If it’s someone of the opposite sex, you are heterosexual. If it’s someone from the same sex, you are homosexual. If it’s both or either, you are bisexual. That is one of the critics queer theory has about gay and lesbian studies and their focus on same sex marriage activism. While it is an important thing, linking sexual orientation, and thus sexual attraction, with marriage and normative long term relationships leaves out other forms of connection and attraction, especially asexual and aromantic folks. It makes centering non-sexual, non-romantic relationships impossible within an adult, western context.

Something interesting happens within children’s stories, though. Since sex is something considered inappropriate for kids, children’s stories can have an almost asexual quality to them. Even though many stories more than reinforce heteronormative and patriarchal norms, they also allow for relationships other than a sexual, romantic one, to take center stage. Mike Wasowski from Disney Pixar’s 2001 film Monsters Inc is a great example of this. While Mike is canonically in a romantic relationship with Celia, the movie focuses much more on his relationship with James Sullivan that is completely platonic.

In this essay I will use Mike Wasowski and his relationships to Celia and Sully as examples of how different types of relationships can function in tandem without their importance being mutually exclusive. Even though Mike Wasowski is not portrayed as asexual—very few characters in mainstream media are—what I argue is that he portrays one of the central ideas of asexuality: the possibility of non-normative relationships that are as fulfilling and important as societal norms make romantic relationships to be.

Asexuality

Asexual Pride Flag

The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) defines an asexual person as someone who “does not experience sexual attraction". When I say children’s stories can have an asexual quality to them I deviate a little from this definition, since I do not mean that children’s stories portray characters who don’t experience sexual attraction. As Ela Prysbylo, an asexuality scholar and associate professor from the University of Illinois suggests, a lot of nuance is lost when making asexuality and other sexual orientations dependant on one type of attraction. It ignores many other aspects of relating that cannot be reduced to whether there’s the desire to have sex with someone or not.

In this case, when I talk about the asexual quality of children’s stories, I refer to the removal of sexual elements from the stories, which allows to see what makes platonic and romantic relationships distinctly different. What makes Mike Wasowski and Celia’s relationship romantic is the dates they go on rather than whether they have sex or not, because within the realm of children’s stories, sex is not a possibility.

Amatonormativity and the Sexual Imperative

It is important to point out that even though asexuality refers to a lack of sexual attraction, it does not mean that asexual people can’t or don’t want to be in romantic relationships. This misconception is deeply rooted in an assumption, called amatonormativity, that romantic relationships are the highest form of relation there can be; as well as in the sexual imperative, that refers to the centralization of sex as the privileged form of relating, the key to self-making and self discovery, and the main element of love and intimacy in a romantic relationship.

The mixing of amatonormativity and the sexual imperative results in sexual orientations being translated as who you want to form a long term relationship with. It embeds sex into romantic relationships and makes the idea of a romantic relationship with no sex impossible. A relationship like the one Mike and Sully have cannot, within the parameters of these assumptions, be considered romantic even if they are committed to each other in a long term way, and it cannot be considered the highest form of relationship since it is not romantic.

It goes without saying that this is deeply problematic for asexual people since it results in isolation and erasure. Feeling little to no sexual attraction and still pursuing a romantic relationship can lead to asexual folks being under scrutiny, being accused of putting up an act, or simply being sexually repressed. At the same time, being asexual and having no desire of a romantic relationship can lead to people saying it is just a phase, or in denial, or unhealthy and in need of treatment.

Types of Attraction

Amatonormativity and the sexual imperative link sex or sexual attraction to romantic relationships. And the only way to separate them is to stop looking at sexual orientations as the only way of attraction and the only means of getting into a relationship. There is a distinction between sexual attraction and romantic attraction. Sensual attraction and aesthetic attraction. The asexual and aromantic communities push to make these distinctions visible. Sexual attraction is simply the type of attractions that makes you want to have sexual relations with someone else. All these attractions can be felt simultaneously or separately and at different intensities. Here are some other forms of attraction.

This mini-comic by Sally Vinter shows the difference between sexual attraction and aesthetic attraction.

Types of attraction

Romantic Attraction	The kind of attraction to someone that makes you want to pursue a romantic relationship with them
Aesthetic Attraction	The kind of attraction to the way someone looks or how they carry themselves, but does not foster the want to form a sexual or romantic relationship.
Emotional Attraction	The kind of attraction that makes you want to form a deep connection or emotional bond.
Sensual Attraction	the kind of attraction that makes you want to share physical touch or physical intimacy in a non-sexual way. It can include things like cuddling, kissing, holding hands and hugging.

Different forms of attraction might lead to seeking different kinds of relationships and when we break away from normative structures of relationships, the possibilities of what they might look like of the role they take up on our lives expands.

Romance: Celia and Mike

Once attractions are broken down and it becomes apparent that one can exist without the other, the possibility of a romantic relationship that does not involve sexual attraction becomes possible, so it brings out the questions of what do certain attractions mean and how can they be distinguished? This becomes especially hard with romantic attraction since romance can be a confusing term.

Cody Daigle Orians, an asexual, aromantic, agender activist, defines romance as a socially constructed system of rituals and definitions that assign meaning and expectations to what we feel for another person, and push us in a trajectory to do what is considered the acceptable outcome for those feelings. So, romantic attraction would be what makes you want to go through those rituals and follow the socially expected trajectory with a certain person. More often than not, these social constructions reinforce amatonormativity. They reinforce the ideas that finding a romantic partner is the only way to have what is perceived as being a fulfilling relationship.

In Monsters Inc, Mike and Celia have a romantic relationship. It can be seen through how they act around each other and how they check marks off a societal checklist for romance and romantic gestures. They call each other over the top cheesy pet names (Mike calls Celia Shmoopsie-poo, and Celia calls Mike Googly Bear), they stare lovingly at each other's eyes, they share affectionate physical contact, they go on dates to fancy places. They might not have sex, but any adult viewer might attach that implication into the relationship even if it is not explicitly there.

It is not the relationship in itself that breaks with the patterns of amatonormativity, as I am trying to make a point that often children’s stories can do. Mike makes a comment to Sully about Celia being “the one”, and says that he is so romantic he should just marry himself. The implication that there is just one person for each one and that romance leads to marriage are deeply rooted in amatonormativity.

But it is when we take Mike and Celia’s relationship and the regard at which it is held, and compare it to the relationship Mike and Sully share when a different understanding of the hierarchization of relationships can be seen.

Friendship: Mike and Sully

This image shows pretty well what type of dynamic the characters have. It is casual, but affectionate and just comfortable with one another.

Mike and Celia might have a very cheesy romantic relationship going on, but the relationship that is portrayed as the most important one in Mike’s life is his relationship with Sully. It is undeniable that they have a very close relationship. At the beginning of the movie we get a sense of their dynamic. They are roommates, Mike helps train Sully as a scarer. They share an easy familiarity that is shown through Mike sitting in Sully’s chair and Sully unworriedly moves him out of it and into Mike’s own, and Mike talking to Sully’s mom about the family as if their conversations are everyday occurrences. They walk to work together, saying good morning to neighbors and coworkers as a single unit. They do not do any romantic things like Mike and Celia do, but they do share their lives.

Society likes to make us believe that romantic relationships are the ultimate form of bonds for the fact that they are romantic. Friendship is seen as something momentary, that gets put in the background when long term relationships like marriage come along. But, if we go a little into the lore of the Monsters Inc universe, Mike and Sully already have a long term relationship going on. They have been living together since college and have been working together to achieve a shared goal. Mike is the first person Sully goes to when a problem (a human girl sneaking into the monster’s world) appears, and at the climax of the story Mike talks about them as a unit. “What about us, Sully?” Mike says when they find themselves shunned away from the monster society. “I’m your pal, your best friend, don’t I matter?”.

Mike and Celia’s relationship is portrayed almost as a funny quirk that gets a bit in the way of the main plot while Mike and Sully’s relationship is the one portrayed as steady and more important to maintain. Mike and Celia’s relationship goes through a few bumps as result of the problems Sully drags Mike into, and Mike gets into a big argument with Sully but it is more over the fact that Sully is ignoring what Mike has been saying rather than over the strain that it has put on his romantic relationship. At the end, Mike is the one who decides to help Sully, deeming their friendship more important to maintain than any other thing. His relationship with Celia is left in the background and coincidentally resolves itself as well when Celia finds out about Boo.

Sarah Costello and Kayla Kasyca write in their book Sound Fake But Okay, “The strongest or most important relationship in your life should take that title because of the bond you share with the other person (or people), not merely because you kiss them or have sex with them.” This is what children's stories are able to do, they can focus the attention on relationships other than romantic ones, and it is something that adults have been conditioned to forget. It is what asexuality and aromanticism try to do and what ace and aro folks try to deal with on a regular basis.

Conclusion

Comic by akhtsjerp

Throughout the whole movie, Mike navigates two distinct relationships that serve different purposes. Neither relationship is inherently sexual, but we still designate what is an acceptable “serious” relationship and what is not. The fact that Mike and Sully cannot be portrayed as a couple might be due to the homophobia and lack of representation in mainstream media of the early 2000s, when the movie came out. Celia is most likely there to clarify, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Mike and Sully are not queer because god forbid there is queer representation in mainstream children’s stories. But the fact that their relationship cannot be considered a serious, long term one is thanks to the lack of visibility of asexual and aromantic communities. It’s either a romantic, sexual relationship, or it is not serious at all.

Asexual people may look for serious relationships, whether those take the form of romantic or platonic ones, but with the assumption and loaded meaning both types of relationships have, it is no surprise that asexuality i s also negatively and wrongly linked to being alone and not having relationships at all.

One of the first definitions of asexuality, from the 1972 Asexual Manifesto, refers to an asexual person as someone whose sexual feelings do not require another person for their expression. It was taken as a radical feminist political stand rather than a sexual orientation. This early definition doesn't make it seem as if there are no sexual feelings at all and it doesn’t seem to be as tightly knit with romantic relationships as sexual orientations are nowadays.

Asexuality is about queering sexuality as a whole and exploring different possible relationships rather than narrowing it down to a type of attraction that still falls under other harmful normative paradigms.

About the author

Dany Caballero is a student at the University of British Columbia. She is a writer, trying to major in Creative Writing, and asexual. Her goal in life is to write stories for children and young adult that have characters she wishes she had had growing up, meaning, she is writing stories with ace characters and non normative relationships. One of her greatest pleasures in life is to look at the stars and geek out about constellations and their stories.