“And Now I’m Just Different, but There’s Nothing Actually Wrong With Me”: Asexual Marginalization and Resistance

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between contemporary asexual lives and compulsory sexuality, or the privileging of sexuality and the marginalizing of nonsexuality. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, I identify four ways the asexually identified individuals in this study saw themselves as affected by compulsory sexuality: pathologization, isolation, unwanted sex and relationship conflict, and the denial of epistemic authority. I also identify five ways these asexually identified individuals disrupted compulsory sexuality: adopting a language of difference and a capacity to describe asexuality; deemphasizing the importance of sexuality in human life; developing new types of nonsexual relationships; constituting asexuality as a sexual orientation or identity; and engaging in community building and outreach. I argue that some of these practices offer only a limited disruption of compulsory sexuality, but some of these practices pose a radical challenge to sexual norms by calling into question the widespread assumption that sexuality is a necessary part of human flourishing.

‘“Asexual” Isn’t Who I Am’: The Politics of Asexuality

“…For example, Milks and Cerankowski (2014) argue asexuality has the potential to question a ‘mainstream culture, with its “make it sexy” imperative and “hot or not” hierarchy’ and to ‘radically rethink sexuality, queerness, desire, and intimacy in terms of not desiring sex, not having sex, or not experiencing sexual attraction’ (p. 314). Similar radical claims for asexuality include the problematising of ‘sex’ as an essential act (Flore, 2014; Pryzbolo, 2011), questioning a form of neoliberal ‘liberal humanism’ in which a productive (in all sense of the term) individual is valued (Gressgård, 2013; Pryzbolo, 2013), the ‘desexualisation’ of identity in favour of notions of difference (Gupta, 2017), and suggesting a ‘healthy’ lifestyle which does not require sex (Kim, 2010). A particularly confident version of this argument comes from Fahs (2010) who, in equating asexuality with a choice made by women, frames asexual people as ‘radical refusals’.…”

“…First, whether asexuality is a potentially radical political formation is an empirical claim, which is not justified solely by rejecting a conservative human scientific approach. However, with the exception of Scherrer (2010) and Gupta (2017 see below), none of this literature has used empirical data. This is important for the second criticism: in making these arguments, asexuality is reified as a disembodied entity with its own agency: Asexuality, in choosing to repeat differently, must also choose to abandon its reactive, binary-bound sense of itself, focusing on what it does instead of what it does not do.…”

“…Gupta’s (2017) article, by drawing upon interviews and thus being a rare empirical exploration of this topic, deserves extended discussion here. Gupta (2017) suggests asexual people practice resistance by emphasising a language of difference rather than deviance when it comes to asexuality, encouraging the ‘desexualisation’ of identity, seeking ‘new relationships’ on the boundary of friendship and romance, and building an asexual community (p. 1000–1009). Gupta’s article is a valuable discussion of how her participants experience marginalisation.…”

“…Secondly, Gupta's definition of 'resistance' is extremely broad. For example, seeing asexuality as not a key part of one's identity is, for Gupta, 'radical in that it contests the idea that sexuality is a central part of what it means to be human' (Gupta 2017(Gupta :1013. However, for something to qualify as 'resistance' we surely need to demonstrate whether this attitude engenders forms of social action which seek to encourage forms of social change.…”

Asexuality and Its Implications for LGBTQ-Parent Families

“…In addition to a history of clinical approaches that have marginalized asexualities, popular assumptions about "human nature" have also pathologized asexuality. Sexual desire is often framed in the public imagination as an innate and universal experience among human beings (Gupta, 2017). As a result, research has shown that asexual individuals-or those who do not experience sexual desire-are viewed as "less human" (MacInnis & Hodson, 2012, p. 725).…”