8th November

Finished reading Refusing Compulsory Sexuality!! And I only almost cried like three times while reading it! Feeling normal about my own research topic tee hee. Anyway here's my final notes:

• A lot of the remainder of the book deals with the medicalisation of "low" sexual desire and stereotypes of sorts around it: "frigid, neurotic, sexually maladjusted (which for a woman means essentially maladjusted) dried-up, barren, to be pitied" (p.69, quoting Dana Densmore - Independence from the Sexual Revolution)
• Because low sexual desire is "still often considered a physiological disorder", this means asexuality is also pathologised in the same way (p.69)
• While the criteria for so-called "desire disorders" MHSDD and FSAD in the DSM-5 do make an exception for patients who identify as asexual, Brown points out that "these exceptions mean that patients need to already know asexuality exists, since they include no mandate for physicians to either educate themselves about asexuality or encourage patients to explore asexuality" - this very crucially demonstrates the importance of visibility and education, and ensuring that people know that asexuality is an option (p.70)
• At least one study found that about 1.7% of "sexual minority adults" identify as asexual, 27% of asexuals are women, 72% are nonbinary/genderqueer, and 86% were assigned female at birth (AFAB) - therefore, "general resistance to asexuality [...] cannot be divorced from [...] misogyny" (p.73) - now I have Thoughts on some of the gender stuff in this book that I will get into later and also I really want to actually track down this study because frankly these results seem pretty fucking skewed, but I think that taking misogyny into account is still absolutely imperative!
• Speaking of misogyny here's Brown's account of expectations placed on women: "women must strive to live up to the constant pressures of fitting into racist, ableist, anti-fat, capitalist beauty standards and follow established gender roles by never showing 'too much' sexual enthusiasm, but always being congenial when their male partneres initiate sex, as 'turning him down' is perceived as selfish and insubordinate" - I think this point should already be clear at this point but asexuality and aromanticism go against typical expectations for women (p.77)
• Really good quote about these sexist double standards: "When a woman experiences lower desire than a man partner, her desire is often labeled low. In the converse situation, however, men are still the referent: in the case of a man reporting lower desire than a woman partner, the woman's desire is labeled too high [...] This highlights the gendered subjectivity inherent to conceptualization of low desire, where low desire is most often seen as residing not just in obides, but in women's bodies relative to men's desires" (p.77, quoting Sari M. van Anders - The Heteronormativity Theory of Low Sexual Desire)
• "The 2018 National LGBT Survey 'Research Report' [...] found that asexuals were the most likely to have undergone or been offered conversion therapy, and racially marginalized people were more likely to have undergone or been offered conversion therapy than white respondents" - found this interesting because I'd always heard the first part but not the second, which just goes to show the importance of actually y'know. getting perspectives from people of colour who will highlight stuff like this (p.78)
• "Because having a 'normal' sexuality and 'normal' sexual desire are conflated with sexual health, a significant amount of acephobia is rooted in healthism and ableism" - healthism = "belief that health is a moral imperative and individual responsibility" (p.81)
• Brown interviews sex educator Ev'Yan Whitney, who argues that "an untold number of people would be significantly helped if there were more awareness of asexuality" and specifically mmentions "representation [...] or just more education" as things that would have helped them realise they were asexual - demonstrates positive impact that depicting asexuality could have (p.82)
• The chapter on "frigidity" turned me into a misandrist. anyway.
• More fun gender points!! "There has long been a practice of connecting gender performance and the gender binary with sexuality" - Brown also points out that this "marked differentiation between the two genders" is also part of white supremacy -> basically ideas of gender in white Western cultures seen as superior (p.86)
• Looking at historical writing on low sexual desire, especially ones that specifically reference gender.... man it's fucking bleak. The 1882 Manual of Experimental Love states that "all women needed to participate in the 'physiology of love' for failure to do so would result in 'the worst kinds of pathology,' such as hysteria" (p.86, quoting manual of experimental love) - CAN YOU SEE WHY I'M BECOMING A MISANDRIST
• One quote that particularly stood out to me was "This is a decisive articulation at the heart of the theme of frigidity: frigid women can and should be awoken from their state through the sexual agency of men", mostly because this is still basically the dominant narrative. again. fucking bleak. (p.89, quoting Cryle and Moore)
• Crye and Moore explicitly discuss romance novels and such in their book on frigidity, and argue that "it is in these fictional writings that we can perhaps most clearly see the reproduced mythology that '(a) all women are filled with [sexual] desire deep down, even if they often seem cold on the surface; (b) frigid women need men to awaken them; and (c) women who criticize or resist domination by men have perversely chosen to be frigid.' Fictional writing and medical writing informed one another, and together they worked to broaden the general public's exposure to the term and concept of frigidity as a distinct and pathologized failure of womanhood. Indeed, 'through repeated affirmation and narrative representation, they established a number of functional 'truths'' about frigidity and those who allegedly or apparently suffered from it" (p.90, quoting Cryle and Moore) - this is interesting to me because it seems to very clearly connect with Croteau and Hoynes' discussion of the ideology of media - that media messages are most effective when they correspond with existing social ideas and biases
• Other historical ideas about frigidity include that it was "a phase in woman's struggle for equal rights; it is distinctly a social manifestation" (p.91, quoting Frigidity in Women in Relation to Her Love Life by Wilhelm Stekel) - I feel like this idea is perhaps less relevant to day but worth considering. Does this belief persist?
• It was also believed that frigidity was less common "among 'uncivilized races'" and mostly affected white people (p.91) - stereotypes at play here feel pretty obvious, Black people have historically been stereotyped as hypersexual etc., even today asexuality is seen by many as a 'white thing'
• "In our modern society, performing womanhood means to eternally strive toward appealing to male attention, approval, and comforts, (p.95) which are expected to be valued above all others. Dutiful sex and sexual submission to men - meant to be reflective and reproductive of social submission to men - are integral to this script" (p.96)
• Quotes Wittig's "The Straight Mind" which has some interesting ideas - "'straight society' is based on the necessity of the different/other at every level" and the category of 'woman' is "defined by men on the basis of the relationship of women to men", even argues that 'lesbian' is a distinct category from 'woman' on this basis, since lesbians do not fulfil the role women are meant to in relation to men (p.96)
• Crucially for the aspec perspective, she specifies that the same is true of "any woman who is not in a relation of personal dependency with a man", so for example, aroace women (hell, even just straight women who aren't interested in a relationship for whatever reason) - I think this may be some kind of jackpot. Sorry not to keep bringing up Sirens but it is currently the only potential case study I've looked at with a major female asexual character, but I can't help but be reminded of how that show emphasised Voodoo's asexuality making her "not like other girls"(p.99, quoting The Straight Mind)
• Turns out that fearmongering about "asexual women" is actually a fairly old trend: one writer in 1917 lamented how "the asexual women behave like sexless men, enter men's professions, support themselves, do not marry, or at all events produce next to no children [...] Feminism, begun among the asexual, is spreading to those with normal sexual instincts" (p.101, quoting Feminism by Correa Moylan Walsh) - asexual women were considered "a threat to the social order, as heretics who would surely bring about the destruction of society and the decline of white civilization as a whole. Regardless of whether or not the feminists Walsh wrote about would be considered asexuals or lesbians (or both, or neither) by modern standards, they posed the same threat" (p.101) - Anyway I think the important takeaway from all this is that conservatives accidentally making the people they're fearmongering about sound unbelievably fucking cool is a time honoured tradition. I for one can't wait to enter a man's profession and bring about the destruction of society
• Another new favourite quote: "The masculine womman is self-assertive, the asexual woman wishes to banish all sex-beauty which she does not feel and understand from life, and both are demonstrative, and tend to dominate the woman who is womanly" (p.102, quoting An Interrogatory Note on the Franchise of Women by John Lionel Tayler) - AGAIN. IS TAYLER IMPLYING HE WOULDN'T WANT TO HANG OUT WITH BOTH THESE PEOPLE
• "What both Walsh and Tayler reveal in these works is how asexual existence - whether in concept or in name - has long been recognised as queerness, as non-normativity, as outside of binary understandings of sex and gender" (p.103)
• Brown also includes some discussion of Adrienne Rich's Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence - now, this is a bit of a thorny issue because, as Brown acknowledges, Rich was also very, very transphobic. However some of her points about expectations of women are perhaps worth looking at in spite of this - "Messages to women have been, precisely, that we are the emotional and sexual property of men, and that the autonomy and equality of women threaten the family, religion, and state" (p.103, quoting Rich)
• In terms of media analysis, the book features a lot of discussion of the James Bond novels and films, which Brown argues have "a peculiar interest in asexual and aromantic antagonism and villainy [e.g. Rosa Klebb, Goldfinger, Blofeld, Irma Bunt, Vargas]. And each of the aforementioned characters are contrasted with the heroic Bond's aggressive, virile heterosexuality - which he even uses to 'cure' femme fatale Pussy Galore of her lesbianism." (p.110). So y'know. A lot to unpack there
• Huge fan of Ian Fleming just straight up saying "Sexual neutrality was the essence of coldness in an individual". Lol. Rofl, even (p.109, quoting From Russia with Love)
• Another fictional example Brown looks at is the show Dexter, where the main character is a serial killer who "feels indifference toward sex and romance", but begins to have sexual and romantic relationships later on in the show as he "becomes more 'human'". As Brown puts it, "Ace- and aro-coded characters like Dexter and the Bond antagonists are removed from humanness in some fashion - more aligned with blood-thirsty beasts or cold, unfeeling machines" (p.111) - importantly "this sort of characterization is not reserved only for asexual and aromantic criminality" - Brown uses Sherlock Holmes as an example, but you know who could also fit? Voodoo from Sirens (god I need more examples) (p.111)
• Two types of dehumanization identified by Nick Haslam: denial of 'uniquely human' characteristics and denial of 'human nature' characteristics - first type sees people as "animalistic", second sees people as "mechanistic" (p.112)
• In MacInnis and Hodson study "Asexuals were seen as the least human, as both animalistic and mechanistic, and were believed to have the fewest 'uniquely human' and 'human nature' traits among all sexualities included in the study" (p.113)
• "Though onscreen asexual and aromantic representation is gradually improving, in both quality and quantity, the dehumanized asexual or aromantic character trope continues to occasionally show its unpleasant face" (p.114)
• References the film Selah and the Spades (2020) as a more contemporary example of this trope - the character Selah has a "lack of interest in sex and romance" which "seems to ultimately serve as a means to paint Selah as starkly different from her peers, to point to her inability to develop significant emotional connections, to further demonstrate that she is devoid of certain 'uniquely human' and 'human nature' qualities" (p.115)
• Identifies two ideas about aspec people that overlap in terms of depictions - the idea that "there's something about them that might make them behave without (p.116) care for others" (p.117)and also the idea that being aspec "means you're broken somehow" (p.117) - "A lot of our media depicts intimacy as only a sexual or romantic experience, so removing the interest for romance or sex from a character [often] means removing the potential for showing them forming deeper relationships with anyone" (p.117)
• "Tea Troutman (they/them), a geographer, urbanist, and cultural commentator, sees the utilization of sex to authenticate humanness as inseparable from anti-Black authentications of humanness" (p.119)
• This "unhuman" stereotype has an even more pronounced impact on Black ace people - "Blackness and asexuality are both abjections that cannot live up to humanness" (p.120) - however worth pointing that that they are seen as unhuman for "diametrically opposing reasons" - asexuality is seen as mechanistics and Blackness as animalistic - "[With] the overrepresentation of the Black as sexual, Black asexuality is not simply eerased... The idea of a 'Black asexual' is impossible given the logics of anti-Black humanity" (p.121)
• Worth considering the Black stereotypes of the 'Mammy' - "desexualized and constructed as asexual" - vs the 'Jezebel' with her "typical savage sexuality" (p.131) - Brown argues that the Mammy stereotype has an impact on Black asexual people where they "are never allowed to claim asexuality or sexlessness unless such an existence works to reinforce stereotypes about Black bodies and Black undesirability" (p.135) - interestingly this brings to mind the work of Yasmin Benoit, a Black asexual activist and model - she is very open about being aroace but because she's a model, people see her as attractive, and because of the way she dresses she attracts a lot of criticism - people act like because of this she couldn't possibly be asexual. Benoit has talked a lot about how this often overlaps with racism
• The common thread between the Mammy and Jezebel stereotypes are that asexuality and hypersexuality were "imposed on" them (p.136)
• "Filtered through white supremacist logics, the prospect of Black asexuality that does not resemble the undesirable Mammy - a docile servant to whiteness and an ever-present canvas for its violence - cannot be understood as legitimate or possible" (p.136)
• I don't know how useful this actually is to my research, but I found myself really loving Bella DePaulo's concept of people who are "single at heart", who "prioritize and deeply delve into aspects of their lives outside of the sexual and romantic, finding profound satisfaction in remaining unpartnered and reveling in their solitary nature" (p.144), people for whom not being in a romantic relationship "allows them to be their happiest, most prosperous, and most authentic self" (p.145). Obviously I'm sure you don't have to be aromantic to be such a person, but hey! That's me!
• One point I found interesting (that also was very relevant to our Foucault seminar this week, was the idea that it's "a very Western and new notion that sexuality is an identity" - we actually mentioned identity in the seminar as one of the epistemes of our current culture and academia - concepts that everyone accepts and uses, so it was interesting to see this book discussing how that isn't universal across time periods and cultures (p.148)
• The chapter on asexual history was very interesting to me - history was actually something I mentioned in my original research proposal as something I wanted to look at, but it's fallen by the wayside a bit as my research has gone on. This chapter provides a timeline of asexual history including some parts that blew me away - the fact that the first piece of history Brown discusses is from as early as 1855 frankly made me feel like I needed to go lie down in a dark room somewhere for a couple of hours. Like it's not good. It's a medical guide by Dr J. Teller explaining how 'continence', or a lack of desire to have sex or masturbate, will lead to "madness, societal downfall, and poor heatlh". But still. It was 1855, and we were there. (p.152)
• A pretty telling quote from 1906 that frankly continues to be reflected today: "Sexual feeling is the root of all ethics" (p.155, quoting Psychopathia Sexualis by Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing)
• Interesting tidbit from Bogaert's 2004 study on asexuality - he found that 13% of ace people were "non-White" compared to 4% of non-ace people. However, Brown comments that "the most prominent and celebrated voices" in the ace movement have been white, and "the ideas, talking points, and artifacts produced have been overwhelmingly white" (p.169) - would be interesting to see if media depictions reflect this, I have a hunch they probably will - pretty sure Sex Education this year had the first ever asexual character who was also a woman of colour, so y'know. Looking a bit dire out there.
• The book ends with a series of "insights" (p.173) from different Black ace people that Brown interviewed, a lot of them had really interesting things to say about the intersection between asexuality and race.
• "There are a lot of stereotypes that we as Black people have about our sexuality. It's like we're invisibilized or we are fetishized" - Ev'yan Whitney (p.173)
• "I know Black women are expected to be more sexually available, open, or adventurous than we actually might be, which has made me really cautious about who I have these conversations with" - M (p.174)
• "I see how Black women are sexualized and it's so at odds with how I feel, so it can be... a lot." - Krykit (p.174)
• "Me coming out as asexual definitely broke expectations.... Growing up in a Black family, you are often expected to find a girlfriend, get married, have kids, and live out that life [...] As a Black man, those experiences can be brutal and negative in regards to wanting to explore the spectrum of sexuality." - Marshall (p.175)

Possible further reading:

• UCLA School of Law Williams Institute: "1.7% of Sexual Minority Adults Identify as Asexual"
• Asexuality: Dysfunction or Sexual Orientation? by Jeanderson Soares and Grayce Alencar
• Frigidity: An Intellectual History by Peter Cryle and Alison Moore
• The Straight Mind by Monique Wittig
• Dehumanization: An Integrative Review by Nick Haslam
• Why Coupling is No Longer Compulsory by Bella DePaulo
• Asexuality: Prevalence and Associated Factors in a National Probability Sample by Anthony F. Bogaert - one of the first ever academic articles about asexuality!!!
• Toward a Conceptual Understanding of Asexuality by Anthony Bogaert - another very early article
• (A)sexual - 2011 documentary
• Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality by Ela Przybylo
• UB Hosts a Presentation about the Combination of Asexual Studies and Critical Race Theory by Lily Smith

Overall this book was a very interesting and engaging read, and definitely gave me a lot to chew on terms of the intersection between asexuality and race. The one area where I felt like it fall short a bit was in terms of the analysis of gender. The book focuses almost exclusively on the experiences of asexual women or people who were assigned female at birth/"socialized as women". Now, while I agree that analysing attitudes to asexuality in terms of how they overlap with misogyny is a very worthwhile pursuit, I can't help but feel as if it presented an incomplete picture. For example, the book brings up the fact that Black men are often hypersexualised, but doesn't really discuss how that might impact Black asexual men, other than quoting an interview with one such man in the last chapter. I also can't help but feel like this book has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to trans women and nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth. In particular, I think of a passage on p.77-78, where the book argues that a lot of attempts at treating 'desire disorders' may in fact be "an attempt to coerce people assigned female toward toward performing seuality in alignment with people assigned male, as that is what is considered 'normal' sexuality". Now, perhaps I am simply being uncharitable here or misunderstanding what Brown is trying to say, but this sentiment does feel like it ignores the experiences of trans women/transfeminine people, who were assigned male at birth but whose sexuality is often still stigmatised. This is something that Chen's book did in fact discuss, and in fact included interviews with several asexual trans women. Now, if Brown wanted the focus of this book specifically to be on the experiences of AFAB people, then that's their prerogative, but I feel like this aspect of their positionality isn't laid out very clearly to begin with, so it ended up feeling a bit lacking.

I do also worry that in this exclusive focus it can end up falling a tiny bit into gender essentialism. Brown seems to take the statistic that 86% of ace people are AFAB at face value as simply a natural phenomenon, without really interrogating alternative reasons for why we might see that statistic. For example, maybe men are less likely to want to admit to being asexual because there's such a pervasive idea that you must want a lot of sex in order to be a 'real man'. I just inherently find these claims that there's a certain 'way' for people to be depending on if they were assigned male or female at birth to be quite suspect, and at the very least worthy of more consideration than I think this book gives it.

ALL THAT BEING SAID, I don't want to suggest that these shortcomings take away from the important ideas this book presents, and I certainly found it illuminating on the intersection between race and sexuality. It was a wonderful read and also will probably be the last book I read cover-to-cover for this research project, because jesus christ that was a lot of notes.

Some other stuff happened this week! I promise I didn't just spend the entire time reading Sherronda J. Brown!

We had our seminar on disciplinarity and workshop on ethics this week! We had to read the preface to Foucault's The Order of Things, which I found... let's say "a bit oblique", but I think I got the general gist of it. As we discussed, Foucault's basic idea is that everything, including knowledge, is culturally defined and has a history. The assumptions and "figures of thought" we use to organise knowledge change depending on time period and culture. What does this mean for me, you ask?

• Idea that everything is historically and culturally defined is very relevant to my project and to everything I've read - accuse me of having Sherronda J. Brown on the brain if you want, but I couldn't help but be reminded of their discussion of the concept of frigidity, and how the idea of 'normal' sexuality has been defined by culture.
• Thinking about what common concepts we as academics all use was an interesting exercise! Some of the concepts we mentioned were diversity and inclusion, gender, culture, and identity.
• 
• Intersubjectivity - Finding common ground between fields and people instead of trying to impose one, respecting everyone's subjectivity
• Willem referenced Foucault's work on the history of sexuality, which might be interesting for me to look at!
• Also. I drew a little shop!
• 

The ethics workshop and tutorial were super helpful to me, because I want to do some kind of focus group as part of my research, and my research is also dealing with what would be considered a sensitive topic. Stuff for me to think about/remember/consider:

• How will I find people to participate in my research? Think about what information I need to give people
• Secure storage of data - will need to be kept somewhere not just anyone can access it - OneDrive could be good
• Think of it like being a doctor! Do no (forseeable) harm and serve wellbeing of others)
• Think about issues like attribution, at what point participants can lo longer withdraw, how they will receive info, how long you'll need the data for
• Honestly considering how similar our ideas are I should probably just talk to Louise about what they did. Like I already kind of know because I took part in their focus group, but it would be worth grilling them for more details
• My project falls under more than minimal risk because it deals with sensitive topics - these kinds of research projects are usually approved by school ethics advisers
• HOWEVER, I am god's specialest little boy and I am getting ethics comittee-d. The university have never handled anything to do with asexuality or aromanticism before and there's not really anyone with expertise in it so they'll need to send my proposal to the ethics committee to get it approved.
• Deadline for sending to ethics committee is 25th January, so I'd better start thinking about it!
• I also won't be able to change my proposal after submission, so important to cover my bases.

We also had a lecture from Sarah Barker this week - it was interesting if not particularly relevant to any of my interests. I did enjoy the tangent about the evolution of web 1.0 to 3.0 though. I don't know if you can tell from the fact that I am coding my website in HTML like some kind of fool, but this is a topic I'm rather interested in. I will drag myself back to web 1.0 and no one can stop me.

Anyway, every day I regret the fact that I'm choosing to focus on depictions of aspec identities in mainstream media, because it means I can't discuss indie media like The Silt Verses. Or as I like to call it, the only good portrayal of aromanticism in anything ever. The most recent episode featured an in-universe folk song telling an in-universe folk tale about a young and reluctant bride, who chooses to be transformed into a monster by a malevolent god instead of following her family's wishes and getting married. (Fun fact: While the folk tale was created for an earlier episode of the show, I believe the song was actually written by a fan based on it, and the show's writers liked it so much they included it in the most recent episode! How cool!) Anyway, I've been feeling really normal about it. "There’s no where so lonesome as the river’s edge, / And no woman more lonesome than me". “But I cannot fit into this life they’ve made / This thing I just cannot be. / Bound in the shape of this path that’s been laid / Out by my family”. Yeah it's fine this stirs up no feelings in me.

Previous week

Next week

Back to weekly journal

Back to home