Asexuality: from pathology to identity and beyond

Abstract

This article draws attention to the constitutive mechanisms of asexual identity. It identifies a shift in expert discourse: a move away from pathology towards recognition of asexual identity. While this discursive shift, propelled by recent research in psychology and sexology, could pave the way for the inclusion of asexuals in public culture, it also reaffirms dominant terms and formations pertaining to sexuality and intimacy. The article argues that the discursive formation of a new asexual identity takes place through a process of objectification and subjectification/subjection at the interface between expert disciplines and activism. The recognition of identity is constitutive of subjects that are particularly suitable for self-regulation within the parameters of (neo)liberal citizenship. Yet, at the same time, the discursive shift also makes room for critical intervention akin to queer critique of naturalised gender and sexuality norms. The recognition of asexual identity could serve to destabilise the sexual regime (of truth) that privileges sexual relationships against other affiliations and grants sexual-biological relationships a status as primary in the formation of family and kinship relations. The article concludes that asexual identity encourages us to imagine other pathways of affiliation and other concepts of personhood, beyond the tenets of liberal humanism – gesturing instead towards new configurations of the human and new meanings of sexual citizenship.

Keywords:

• asexual identity
• psychology and sexology
• power/knowledge
• subject formation
• queer intervention
• citizenship

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Tone Hellesund for inspiring conversations and for collaborating on two paper presentations on asexuality in 2009 and 2010.

Notes

1. Ten years after the launch of AVEN, in January 2011, one of its headlines announces what many asexuals would regard as a breakthrough in policy recognition in the US: Vermont State grants protection to asexuals: Vermont State's Human Rights Commission has included asexuals as a protected category: hrc.vermont.gov/.../gender_sex_sexual_orientation_definitions.pdf.

2. The term expert knowledge refers in this article to research that is characterised by claims to an objective truth and a ‘will to knowledge’ – a will to pursue objectivist goals. The goals are to be pursued by means of intellectual technologies that provide facts and figures – rendering the reality calculable and governable. Expert research is typically oriented around phenomena that can be acted upon in order to be changed. Professional know-how thus comprises a set of power/knowledge techniques that works to interconnect theoretical representations, problem definitions and practical interventions/measures (making the defined problems amenable to diagnosis, prescription and cure) (see, e.g., Rose, 1999a, 1999b, 2008).

3. Clinicians might diagnose asexuality as either ‘hypoactive sexual desire disorder’ (HSDD) or ‘sexual aversion disorder’ (SAD).

4. See http://www.asexuality.org/home/overview.html; see also, e.g., Acebook (http://www.ace-book.net/); Asexual Pals (http://www.asexualpals.com/about.html); Asexual Explorations (http://www.asexualexplorations.net/home/about.html); Apositive (http://www.apositive.org); Asexy Beast (http://theonepercentclub.blogspot.com/); Swankivy.com (http://swankivy.com/writing/essays/philosophy/asexual.html); NewFriends4U.com (http://www.newfriends4u.com/guide/asexual.html); Asexualitic.com (http://www.asexualitic.com/searchmatch.php?txtgender=M&txtlookgender=M&txtlookagestart=16&txtlookageend=86); Asexual Lesbians (http://z4.invisionfree.com/Asexual_Lesbians/index.php).

5. In most studies of asexuality within psychology and sexology, facts and figures provide the basis for discussion, centred on conceptual clarifications and methods for data gathering. The studies are based on pre-existing census data and various demographic material from the US and UK (see, e.g., Bogaert, 2004, 2006; Conaglen & Evans, 2006; Poston Jr. & Baumle, 2010), sometimes in combination with qualitative interviews with self-defined asexuals (see, e.g., Brotto et al. 2008; Prause & Graham, 2007), although the qualitative data are typically quantified in the process of analysis (i.e. reduced to abstract quantities with a view to comparability). Some of the studies include laboratory experiments (i.e. audiovisual testing) (see, e.g., Brotto & Yule, 2011), in accordance with accepted scientific standards. The various contributions seem to be predicated on a common view that the more knowledge one gains from empirical research based on a composite methodology, the closer one gets to the truth of asexuality (in terms of discovering, uncovering, mapping, etc.).

6. For one, sexual orientation refers only to the sex or gender of one's preferred partner(s): gender of object choice; second, it concentrates only on sexual attraction and not other elements of sexuality and romantic bonding towards others; and third, it refers to only the subjective element of attraction (and not necessarily physical attraction/arousal) (Bogaert, 2006, p. 244). With regard to sexual orientation and ‘gender of object choice’, Scherrer (2008, p. 636) notes, by reference to Eve Sedgwick (1990), that the phrase ‘sexual orientation’ generally comes to mean ‘gender of object choice’, despite the many meanings that sexuality could have, such as an interest in romance. Even though gender remains an aspect of many asexual individuals’ identities, Scherrer argues, asexuality detracts from gender object choice as the axis for describing one's sexuality (2008, p. 636). Like other marginalised sexualities, she goes on to argue – such as BDSM and polyamorous identities – asexuality includes other dimensions of one's sexuality that may be equally or more important than gender of object choice (Scherrer, 2008).

7. Poston Jr. and Baumle (2010, p. 526) find that asexual behaviour is the most prevalent dimension among female respondents, while the next highest level of asexuality is indicated when only self-identification is used, followed by the combination of behaviour and self-identification.

8. Rosenberg and Milchman (2009) do not distinguish between ‘objectification’ and ‘objectivation’.

9. The division between sexual and non-sexual relations is secured by the family institution, notably the prohibition of incest. According to Foucault (1990), this prohibition was universalised by the West as a generalised taboo at a time when sexuality threatened to escape the grand and ancient system of alliance. In order to secure the laws and juridical form of alliance within the sexual regime, supported by the new psy disciplines, the ‘old’ laws had to be recoded within the ‘new’ mechanisms of power (ibid., pp. 109, 128–129). See, e.g., Butler (2000b) and Eng (2010) for critical discussions of the cultural incest taboo and the attendant Oedipus complex, which work to secure heterosexual family and kinship norms in contemporary western societies. See, e.g., Bartkowski (2008) for a critical discussion of the culturally defined boundaries between human and non-human kinship.

10. It could be argued that in the modern sexual regime, as opposed to the alliance regime of inheritance, asexuality posed a threat because it menaced heredity (see Foucault, 1990, p. 124).

11. According to Linda Zerilli (2005), Butler's Gender Trouble ultimately reflects the problem it purports to address with respect to ‘truth’. As Zerilli sees it, Butler's denaturalisation of gender and sexuality categories involves questioning the reality of such representations by raising sceptical doubt about their truth value. Such sceptical doubt does not, however, challenge the truth orientation per se – and the objectivist distinction between truth and false, real and unreal, etc. Rather, it challenges specific truth claims. My critique of Butler's reassertion of the ‘truth’ of sexuality comes from a different angle. Although I subscribe to Zerilli's assertion that Butler's book ultimately reflects the problem it purports to address, I do not fully agree with her argument about sceptical doubt. My objection concerns the way in which Gender Trouble casts sexual desire as a ubiquitous human experience, which should not be taken to mean that Butler reasserts an objectivist view on reality.

12. It should be noted that the contestation of boundaries between sexual and non-sexual relations is not completely new in an academic context. From a position partly external to the sexual regime and partly within its borders, Adriane Rich (2003/1980) was among the first feminist scholars to take issue with compulsory heterosexuality, criticising the general invisibility in feminist theory and history of both lesbian sexual relations and of non-sexual arrangements among women, such as passionate comrades. In her view, the category ‘erotic’ should be expanded to include a variety of arrangements that cannot be coded as conventionally sexual. One decade after Rich put forward her critique, Ester Rothblum and Kathleen Brehony (1993a) edited Boston Marriages, drawing attention to non-sexual romantic relationships among women. When an intimate relationship lacks the presence of genital sex, Rothblum and Brehony (1993b, p. 6) argue, it becomes difficult to define the components of such relationship. Like Rich, they take issue with the confinement of the erotic implied in sexual categories, including the way in which female friendships have been excluded from the category lesbian. Similarly, Lillian Faderman (1993) argues for an extension of the category lesbian to include a variety of relationships that are regarded as non-sexual (i.e. non-genital). Marny Hall (1993), for her part, suggests that we re-conceptualise the category sex so as to blur its boundaries. More recently, scholars who study polyamory have come to a similar conclusion (see, e.g., Klesse, 2007; Ritchie & Barker, 2006). In a Scandinavian context, Tone Hellesund (2003) has juxtaposed the historical category spinster and the contemporary category lesbian, suggesting that the distinction between sexual and non-sexual relationship is far from obvious.