14th November

Revising the Ol' Research Question

Today we had our workshop on Revising Your Research Question and it was super helpful - I now feel like I have a much better idea of what I'm doing than I did before this workshop. We discussed the key features of a research question, which are 1) It should be an open question 2) that leads you towards finding something out, 3) specifies scope, and 4) specifies context. (I'm still feeling a little fuzzy on the distinction between the last two, but essentially scope has to do with your methods and how much you cover, while context is more about your positionality: the when and where of it all).

We then had this exercise we had to write down a few different versions of our research question. I've circled the second version as this was the one that Emma and most of my coursemates agreed was the clearest and snappiest. Miles also made the very astute point that since I'm doing my research on asexuality and aromanticism, I don't really need to specify that the societal attitudes in question are about sex and relationships - this is kind of implied already by the subject of the research. Me and Emma also discussed the idea of the social role, which I'd thrown in there kind of just on a whim in an attempt to come up with something that could cover both societal attitudes impacting depictions of aspec identities and vice versa. Emma felt that this was too broad, but that the idea of depictions influencing social attitudes is something that could lead on from the 2nd question.

I now have a new and improved formulation of my research question: How do societal attitudes impact depictions of asexuality and aromanticism in film and TV? I am still playing around a little with the scope, so I may end up limiting this further to just TV, or just to the 2010s onwards, or both.

How Me and My Friends Received Permanent Brain Damage From Watching House, M.D.

So my research into every on-screen depiction of asexuality or aromanticism I can find is going great....

In the annals of asexual representation, there is one TV episode that lives in infamy. One TV episode only spoken of in hushed whispers, and awestruck assertiions that surely, surely, they can't have aired something that bad on American TV. One TV episode above all others that has driven stronger men than me mad from sheer badness. I am talking of course, about House M.D. season 8 episode 9: "Better Half".Transcript here!!

It's been discussed by Angela Chen herself. It's been discussed by other grad students. It's been discussed by youtubers like David J Bradley. It has driven even the strongest, smartest minds of our time to the brink. I thought I would be able to handle it. After all, I love bad TV. I've watched all of Angel season 4 twice, and if you guys have never watched Angel season 4, rest assured it is one of the worst things you will ever put in your brain. Surely, I thought, surely I will be able to handle this episode.

Well, I was wrong. I sat down with my fellow MRes student Miles and our friend and resident House M.D. expert Kiwi to watch this absolute shitshow, and I'm going to be honest. I don't think any of us will ever recover. I think this may have driven us over the edge.

First note about this episode: the asexuality plot, as we realised with rapidly dawning horror, was only the B plot. The A plot concerned a patient at the hospital where House works who had Alzheimer's and possibly also something else, and also his wife was cheating on him. If this doesn't sound like much of a plot, this is because it wasn't. Most of the A plot instead seemed to consist of House being racist to Foreman (the one Black person in the show) and generally being a massive dickhead to him for reasons that defy my comprehension. Also this scene, as succinctly summarised by Miles:

If you're confused by any of this, rest assured so were we.

Anyway, the B plot of the episode was all about asexuality. Or, well, kind of. You see, this plot kicks off when House's friend and fellow doctor Wilson learns that a patient of his asexual, and is happily married to her asexual husband. For reasons that once again, defy my comprehension, Wilson decides to tell House about this, and House is immediately sceptical, proposing a bet where Wilson has to pay up if House can prove that there is a "medical reason" for this woman's asexuality. Wilson protests, arguing that it's "a valid sexual orientation" but House is not to be dissuaded. It was about ten minutes into this episode that I had this horrible realisation:

But it was only going to get worse. In the denoument of this whole terrible B plot we learn that the woman's husband is actually not asexual, but has a tumour in his brain that causes erectile dysfunction. The wife, thinking he's asexual, is also pretending to be asexual to make him feel better. If we weren't all mentally broken before this point, we certainly were afterwards.

At this point, we were still holdling out hope that maybe the writers were just stupid. Maybe they didn't understand why what they'd written was a bit fucked. Maybe there was still goodness in this terrible world. These hopes were immediately snuffed out by a couple of Wilson lines that I would describe as akin to two consecutive stabs to the chest.

Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking either. Anyway, this whole subplot resolved with the husband being told that actually his asexuality wasn't real and was caused by a brain tumour, and his wife admitting that she'd lied. Apparently, this is supposed to fix their relationship somehow. Naturally, we were all over the moon about this development.

Anyway. In conclusion:

There's a lot to unpack about this episode. As Dan Olson of Folding Ideas once said, "I'm going to say some unkind things, because the observable facts are just prima facie unkind." The whole plot is predicated on the idea that asexuality is something inherently untrustworthy, and anyone who claims it must be either lying or mistaken about their own identity. I know I've talked shit in the past about "Sirens" and how the other characters treat Voodoo, but at least everyone seems to take her at her word that she is indeed asexual, even if they think she's a bit strange for it. The fact that the happy ending to this episode is 'curing' the patients of their asexuality veers uncomfortably close to the narrative of actual real life conversion therapy, and the writers' awareness that this is in some way analoguous to "telling a gay person he's straight" just makes the whole thing even more baffling.

Anyway, I don't want to make it sound like I have too much anger towards this stupid thing as if the sheer badness of it didn't send me into hysterics multiple times. And at least we've learned some important and educational information about ace people. For example, we have learned that they are either sick, dead, or lying (bad), but on the plus side they have no insecurities and are immune to advertising (good).

Aside from the infamous House episode, I did also watch an episode of Game of Thrones which focuses on the apparently-asexual character of Varys. Transcript here! Now, this character is an interesting case. Or at least he is to me. You see, Varys gets mentioned in a lot of articles etc. about asexual characters, as well as more academic texts like Angela Chen's Ace. However, while the dialogue in this episode certainly indicates asexuality, I can find no corroboration from the actor or writers, which one can usually find for other ace characters that aren't explicitly named as such in the show itself. Therefore, Varys is more of a subtextual case.

This portrayal is a bit harder to analyse than the House episode because Varys is a recurring character - I can't speak with too much authority on how the text portrays him based on just one episode of many that he appears in. However, maybe it's the dramatic lowering of the bar talking, but I'd consider this in itself an improvement on House's portrayal of asexuality. Varys isn't just there as a one-episode curiosity, and his asexuality is not the main feature of his character. He has an important role to play in the show's overall plot, and even in this one episode we get a strong idea of the kind of person he is. While he could be considered quite a negative depiction, since he's portrayed as being pretty selfish and power-hungry, it's important to remember that this also describes basically everyone else in this show, and in fact compared to a lot of the other characters in this episode, Varys seems like a pretty alright guy.

Another win for Game of Thrones over House is that GoT makes it very clear that Varys not being attracted to people has no "secret cause". Varys is a eunuch, so it would be easy to assume that this is the reason he is asexual, but in the conversation where Varys explains his lack of attraction to Pedro Pascal (sorry Pedro I don't remember your character's name), he specifies that this has always been the case even before he became a eunuch. In conclusion, I think the fantasy show about dragons and political intrigue may be more accurate to reality than the medical drama. Let's pack it up gang.

I looked back at Angela Chen to see what she had to say about these depictions, since I remembered her discussing them. Her thoughts are as follows:

• Angela Chen on Game of Thrones: "Varys is a castrated eunuch in a fantasyland, which real ace people are not, but at least he is not a joke. Varys is shrewd and good-hearted and conveniently touts the benefits of asexuality" (p.74)
• Angela Chen on House: "Captures the attitude that asexuality is a delusion of the unwell", "When a woman is blonde and pretty, asexuality simply is not possible" (p.88), points out that the episode "remains one of the most high-profile depictions of asexuality on a major show" - complicated by the difficulty of finding streaming figures - "For many, it was their introduction to this 'wildly screwed-up' orientation", "playing right into the idea that aces and the ace-adjacent need to be disabused of their notions" (p.89)

I have to say, I share Chen's frustration with the House, and slightly less intense frustration with Game of Thrones, which is certainly a lot less egregious even if it's not the most quote unquote 'realistic' depiction.

In (potentially) more positive news I've also started watching the latest season of Sex Education, which features an asexual storyline. I'm aware that this season was quite controversial, and that Yasmin Benoit, the asexual activist who helped with writing the storyline in question, was apparently very unhappy with how it eventually turned out. However, while I'm only two episodes in I must admit that so far I really like O (the asexual character in question)! She's a fun character who isn't just defined by her sexuality and who doesn't conform to stereotypes - for one thing, it's nice to see actual acknowledgement that not all asexual people are white, and it's also nice to see an asexual character who's very confident, doesn't seem bothered about their sexuality, and isn't treated as weird by everyone around her - in fact she's a popular and influential member of the strange college community in the show! I'll admit the storyline of her and main character Otis battling for the role of Student Sex Therapist (which is. apparently. an elected position) is pretty bizarre and feels a bit incongruous with the other, more realistic storylines in the rest of the show, but it's bizarre in a way I do actually enjoy!

Still, as mentioned I'm only two episodes in so they still have plenty of time to fuck it up.

Also ended up having an interesting conversation with some friends from improv this week about my research - turns out one of them is very interested in asexual representation and how little of it there is. They were saying that the only good representation they've ever seen of asexuality was in BoJack Horseman "and arguably Heartstopper", so there's another tick for the tally chart. They also made a point which I found very interesting, which is that in their opinion, shows like Sex Education and Heartstopper, which are intended to some extent to be "about" LGBTQ+ issues, "don't really count" when it comes to representation. Now, I don't really agree with this - I do think there's value in having media that is explicitly about being LGBT, as opposed to LGBT characters just existing in a story about something else. However, I do very much understand the frustration of not wanting every single depiction of an identity to be trying to be educational or, to use a very American frame of reference, an "after school special". I mean, I've been getting pretty tired of every show that depicts asexuality treating the audience to an Asexuality 101 basics class - like I'm sure it's useful for some people but I at least am kind of beyond that and have been for a while.

17th November

Over the past few weeks I've read a bunch of different articles in Asexualities: Feminist and Queer Perspectives, edited by Karli June Cerankowski and Megan Milks. These have ranged from mostly fucking incomprehensible to actually really useful for my research.

• Starting with the Introduction, one of the big things I've been thinking about while reading this collection is the slightly different definitions of asexuality the different writers use. This was already something I've been thinking about while reading other books about asexuality, because while the definitions certainly have things in common they do still differ slightly. According to Milks and Cerankowski, they wanted to use AVEN's definition of asexuality as a "sexual orientation describing people who do not experience sexual attraction" - however they also mention wanting to "push the boundaries" of this definition and of "what it means to be asexual" (p.7)
• The first of the essays was Mismeasures of Asexual Desires by Jacinthe Flore, which deals with the pathologisation of asexuality. It uses a slightly different definition, calling asexual people "people who experience little or no sexual attraction and/or who self-identify with asexuality" - the focus on self identification is notable (p.17)
• Quotes Foucault's work on sexuality - he calls sexuality "a historical construct [...] a great surface network in which the stimulation of bodies, the intensification of pleasures, the incitement to discourse, the formation of special knowledges, the strengthening of controls and resistances, are linked to one another, in accordance with a few major strategies of knowledge and power" (p.18)
• This is then immediately followed the bye writer claiming that a lot of sexuality research has "turned existence into sexistence", which is just. at least in the top 5 phrases I read in this book. And this book has an entire article about clowns. (p.18)
• Criticises the use of the term "sexual dysfunctions" to describe "supposedly insufficient sexual desire" - it inherently pathologises people's levels of attraction and implies that "to be human is to be sexual" (p.19)
• Like Brown, Flore references Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis as an important text in spreading the "narrative of sexual normalcy" and setting out an idea of what "appropriate sexuality" is. Also argues that such ideas are based in "biological determinism" - quotes Tiefer as saying that for sexologists "biological science promised that what is would provide direction for what ought to be (sidenote I really gotta read Tiefer) - I think biological determinism could prove to be a very productive concept to use. I feel like it informs a lot of discourses/stereotypes around sexuality, consider the stereotype that men are "naturally" more interested in sex than women, for example. (p.19)
• Another common idea in sexology is the idea that "if we can somehow peel off the layers of distracting and distorting cultural influence... we would locate a healthy sex drive" (p.20, quoting Janice Irvine)
• William Masters and Virginia Johnson's work on Human Sexual Response was very influential in creating this model of what sexuality "should" look like - might be worth checking out!
• Under this pathologising model of sexuality, "it would appear that a lack of desire for a specific style of sexual intercourse, along with the inability to take pleasure in the act of coitus, are sufficient grounds to constitute asexuality as a mental disorder" (p.21)
• Mentions Anthony Bogaert's definition of asexuality: "the absence of a traditional sexual orientation, in which an individual would exhibit little or no sexual attraction to males or females" - very different to most definitions - however a lot of academics including my friend CJ Chasin consider it a "restrictive definition" and criticise his objections to "asexuality as a sexual orientation" ignores the and doubts the experience and existence of ace people, Flore argues that his arguments seem to rely "on the parameters set by the DSM" (p.23)
• "Asexuals then are perceived of embodying a failure to experience or perform sexuality 'appropriately', which according to the DSM involves a sexuality lived within certain bounds - not excessive, but not too scant, either" (p.24)
• Flore also criticises "the use of medical tools to study asexuality" in studies like Brotto and Yule's study of asexual women and their responses to sexual stimuli - argues that this "serves to perpetuate understandings of low/no sexual desire as a pathological condition that neeeds explanation and/or repair" - wow I can't wait to link all of this to that House episode
• Flore is overall very sceptical of the concept of "sexual dysfunction" - argues that it is incompatible with respect for asexuality: "Asexuality as a legitimate identity category collapses the logic on which the DSM builds its science, shedding light on the relatively naive framework of sexuality with which the APA works. It also clashes with the assumed neutrality and expertise of clinical judgment" (p.26)
• Interestingly: "hypersexual disorder" is also a thing (or at least was at the time) so you truly can't win. You get pathologised if you have too much sexual desire and also not enough. The concept interests me because one of the apparent "symptoms" is "indulging in sexual behavior, while ignoring one's or others' physical and emotional health". (p.26) Now, there's a few different ways you can read it, but it interests me that you could potentially interpret this as a kind of 'excuse' or cause of people committing sexual assault. Which I find fascinating, because as I think we've established by this point, our society isn't actually as big on the concept of consent as it pretends to be. So this kind of feels like a way to blame on pathology a problem that society as a whole has actively encouraged. BUT PERHAPS I'M THINKING TOO DEEPLY ABOUT IT
• "The DSM not only asserts sexuality (within certain delimitations) as healthy, but also deems it a fact of life. As such, asexuality becomes 'not-life', non-intelligible, erased - implementing a thorough dismissal of its possibilities" (p.27)
• Mentions "sexusociety" and "sexualnormativity" as alternate terms meaning basically the same thing as compulsory sexuality (p.29)
• "Several 'asexuals feel attraction but without any sexual component to it, instead regarding it as romantic and/or emotional" (p.29, quoting There's More to Life Than Sex by Jack Carrigan) - we knew but nice to have a source for it I suppose (p.29)
• FINALLY A MENTION OF AROMANTIC PEOPLE. I FELT LIKE I'VE BEEN GOING INSANE. "'Aromantic asexuals' thus further challenge discourses that suggest intimate connections are desirable, healthy, and necessary endeavors. Learning to desire in 'sexusociety' or within the realm of 'sexualnormativity' makes the directionality of desire compulsory, whether this desire is 'romantic' or 'sexual'" (p.29)
• "There's No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship": Asexuality's Sinthomatics by Kristian Kahn was, to be honest, mostly incomprehensible, but I did find some useful nuggets about societal attitudes to sex, particularly from my old nemesis Sigmund Freud, whose work juxtaposes "asexuality with childhood" - this "implies that both are in the process of becoming, with 'normal' sexuality as the teleological aim; as such, the asexual is a subject in a state of childlike (p.55) perversity" (p.56) - relevant to the infantilisation of ace people
• Also quotes a useful bit from Cerankowski and Milks: "a concentrated study of asexuality... is most appropriately begun at the crossroads of feminist and queer studies, as asexuality challenges many existing assumptions about gender and sexuality" - and hey what do you know, that's (hopefully) what I'm doing! (p.57, quoting New Orientations)
• Another very very important point: That the most recent edition of the DSM at the time (DSM-IV I believe from the bibliography) doesn't explicitly call asexuality a "disorder" but does include it "under the aegis of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD)" (p.58) - so asexuality may not be directly pathologised anymore but it is still associated with pathologisation
• Also points out that "the DSM has a notorious track record for medicalizing and taxonomizing sexualities that run counter to heteronormative models" (p.58) - "Although in 1973 the American Psychiatric Association decided to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, the legacy of that pathologizing view still lingers" (p.58, quoting Homosexuality and Psychoanalysis by Dean and Lane)
• MAN On the Racialization of Asexuality by Ianna Hawkins Owen is so good.....
• References a possible new definition of asexuality by Kristin Scherrer, one that "places asexuality squarely within the domain of sexuality and, within this, centers 'intimacy, romance and emotional connectedness'" (p.120, quoting Coming to an Asexual Identity by Kristin Scherrer) - NOW PERSONALLY. Personally. I don't think I'm a huge fan of this mostly because I can't help but feel like it falls into the trap Brown and Chen both discuss of trying to make asexuality seem more palatable by distancing it from aromanticism. As Chen mentioned, there is a narrative that aro people are one step further removed from normal than ace people who experience romantic attraction. The centering of romance may work for such people, but surely it excludes those who are both aro and ace?
• BUT ONTO THE GOOD STUFF: Hawkins' argument is that the concept of asexuality is "implicitly tapped in discussions of racial normativity" e.g. the stereotype of the 'mammy', the 'cult of white womanhood' - it may be a different concept of asexuality than the "asexuality-as-orientation" we are familiar with, but it is still relevant (p.121)
• "Mills' racial contract not only accounts for the codification of a racially structured domination but also describes the formation of 'an agreement to misinterpret the world. One has to learn to see the world wrongly, but with the assurance that this set of mistaken perceptions will be validated by white epistemic authority'" (p.121) - I don't have anything else to say I just think this quote slaps
• Discusses the concept of "asexuality-as-ideal" and its relevant to white supremacy - describes it as "the misinterpretation of asexuality as the honorable achievement or performance of sexual restraint; the white practitioner is considered pure and deserving of reverence, while the black asexual figure is considered less threatening than her hypersexual counterpart" (p.122)
• Also a really useful summary of the mammy stereotype: "The tamed and docile black woman bereft of sexual desire" (p.122), "typically portrayed as overweight, dark, and with characteristically African features - in brief - as an unsuitable sexual partner for [w]hite men. She is asexual and therefore free to become a surrogate mother [to white children]" (p.123)
• Love a good reference to Foucault - "The simultaneous existence of the [hypersexualised] jezebel and the [desexualised] mammy are in accord with Michel Foucault's observation that 'discourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can exist different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy'" (p.123)
• Another important point about the mammy is that her asexuality "says nothing about the mammy's own desire and everything about the white male master. Because she is not constructed as desirable, the question of the subordinated mammy's own desire is rendered a non-issue. Her so-called asexuality is not agentive but restrictive and stands as evidence of her subjugation" (p.123)
• The expectations for white people during this time period were similar but distinct: "white men were expected to 'struggle against' sexual desire as a show of their strength and capacity for self-sacrifice while white women were expected to lack such desires altogether, save for their reproductive function" - however importantly, white women were still expected to have a sexuality, they were just also expected to deny it (unlike Black people) (p.123)
• Here's an important quote to think about: "As shorthand for the attributes of chastity, celibacy, respectability, morality, restraint, and self-sacrifice, asexuality would seem to be another such property of whiteness" - is this still the view today? (p.124)
• Another potentially useful anecdote in terms of sexualisation of Black people: the case of Sarah Baartman, a Black woman who was exhibited in 19th century freak shows and "received unprecedent sexualized racial attention, and the alleged size of her genitalia constituted the draw of her exhibition" - this was apparently one of the earliest examples of the sexualisation of Black people that became prevalent (p.124)
• The expectations for white people changed during the early 20th century, "on the tail of an interwar public increasingly concerned with the erosion of marriage, a union described as the structural foundation of the state and the nation. Recognizing that, taken to an extreme, asexually-styled sensitivity and restraint could ultimately threaten white elite reproduction rates, a new marriage manual market pushed for the cultivation of erotic desire in monogamous, heterosexual marriage." (p.125)
• While the article doesn't explicitly bring up aromanticism, this quote is v relevant to an aromantic perspective: "Sex educators of the period endeavored to explain romantic love and family as evolutionary triumphs of whiteness. These narratives go hand in hand with 'racist and imperialist constructions of nonwhite people as permanent children, incapable of self-rule and therefore requiring guidance frrom more advanced races'. The conflation of love (p.125) and family with whiteness provided yet another avenue for whiteness to recede from view, and rendered a norm, ringed by Others, such that it need not speak its name" (p.126)
• "Given that whiteness is a tacit agreement to misinterpret the world, asexuality is necessarily misinterpreted in order to recruit the orientation's symbolic possibilities to further the project of racial domination. It is my contention that whiteness desires asexuality. By this I mean that whiteness desires to locate in asexuality the success of its own historical endeavors to achieve self-mastery, claiming sexual superiority as an aid to racial superiority and vice versa" (p.126)
• WELL I WROTE OUT A WHOLE LIST OF NOTES ON THE REST OF THE CHAPTER AND THEN MY LAPTOP CRASHED AND DELETED THEM ALL. TIME TO RE DO ALL OF THEM FROM MEMORY. FUCK MY STUPID BAKA LIFE.
• Proposes two possible responses to asexuality: "asexuality-as-ideal" and "asexuality-as-reparable". The first is where "asexuality is misinterpreted as the practice of celibacy or the denial of an extant desire", the second is where asexuality is "pathologized" and treated as something that needs to be cured. Owens argues that because asexuality is associated with whiteness, it is treated as "not deviant, but as deserving of grief, care, support, and rehabilitation" (p.126)
• Owens goes on to discuss interviews with asexual people on talk shows - argues that they "merit examination for the audience size and type reached" - essentially these shows inform more people of the concept of asexuality who would perhaps never even think to learn about it otherwise. While this section is specifically about talk shows, I would argue that this could also apply to popular (fiction) TV shows just as easily (p.127)
• Interestingly mentions different keywords used in the narrations for these talk shows, including "priest", "abstinence", "true love", and "celibacy" - Can these also be seen in fictional depictions? (p.127)
• Expands on the point about "asexuality-as-reparable": "asexuals are failing to live up to the ideal of civilized restraint because they lack the sex drive that whiteness aspires to restrain - therefore they are pushed into the discursive category of curable" (p.127)
• "At stake here is the reproduction of whiteness either through controlled sexual contact and childbearing or through controlled moral example. The asexual, whose lack of sexual activity cannot be accounted for as working to model moral authority, is instead interpreted by interviewers as an impaired sexual being unable to carry out either reproductive commandment" (p.128)
• Huge fan of "the only identifiable asexual of color" in any of these interviews studied, who talked about going out partying, had like a million piercings, called himself "the Dennis Rodman of asexuality", and generally completely fucked with the image of asexuality the interviewers were trying to present. This has nothing to do with anything I just think that's kind of king shit. (p.129)
• A brand new misinterpretation of asexuality occurs in one of these interviews when host Joy Behar jokes that maybe asexuals are just "lazy" - I wouldn't call this a stereotype because frankly I've never heard anyone else argue this ever, but it is interesting because as Owens points out, it's the only "misinterpretation of asexuality that falls outside [...] grievability" and also notably is a stereotype often "levied against" people of colour. As Owens puts it, its "a moment when asexuality might lose itts friendly terms with whiteness" (p.129)
• "The assumption underlying The View's suggestion of laziness stems from a suspicion that asexuals are avoiding the labor of restraint, the labor of sexual intimacy, and the reproduction of whiteness through either or both" (p.129)
• "Constructions of hypersexuality and asexuality have been deployed in justifications for slavery, campaigns concerning national inclusion and exclusion, and in conversations about progress such as fitness to rule and the evolution of love. Over and over again, sexuality as a hegemony of relationality has aided the subjugation of particular bodies, populations, and nations." (p.130)
• Owens ends by criticising attempts by the asexual movement to normalise asexuality e.g. statements like "the plumbing still works" and "we need love, just like anybody else". She argues that these "ultimately fail to challenge the normativity of 'love' and constructions of the body in love" (p.130)
• Following on nicely from this discussion of talk shows is Spectacular Asexuals: Media Visibility and Cultural Fetish by Karli June Cerankowski, which goes into the subject in more detail
• Cerankowski discusses the positives and negatives of "media visibility" - on the one hand increased visibility "potentially exposes the public to AVEN, enabling those who are interested in or identify with asexuality to join a community" but on the other, it places "asexual bodies before an inquiring and incredulous public eye" - as Foucault puts it "visibility is a trap" (p.140, quoting Discipline and Punish by Foucault)
• Interesting discussion about the idea of talk shows and media as potentially educational - quotes Scott Bukatman: "For at least the last three centuries ... the veneer of education [has] clung to visual spectacle" (p.143, quoting Matters of Gravity by Scott Bukatman)
• "Paradoxically, AVEN challenges norms while at the same time seeking to be normalized. For example, asexuality demands an interrogation of how and why some intimate relationships (like sexual ones) are privileged over others (like close friendships) and shifts the frame of reference for what constitutes 'healthy' levels of sexual desire, appetite, and attractions, thus queering normative models of sexual development. However, asexual people still perform a desire to be recognized and to be socially legible - understandably - as 'normal'" (p.143)
• "The kind of consciousness one has of the world in mass culture ... has a tendency to normalize us; that is, to make us aspire to be normal, to make us adjust our perceptions of ourselves and others, so that we fit within the common range" (p.144, quoting The Trouble with Normal by Michael Warner)
• Argues that asexuals are "sensationalized", but not "in exactly the same manner as other sexual and gender outlaws, whose difference is measured as more of an excess, rather than a lack. Transgender people, for example, are often hypersexualized and fetishized as exotic sexual objects, as oppposed to asexual people who are sexualized because it cannot be imagined that a person can actually not desire sex" (p.144)
• One interesting concept that comes up (that I believe Chen discusses as well) is that of the "unassailable asexual [...] the asexual who presents as normative - able-bodied, trauma-free, cisgender, conventionally attractive, sociable - and thus theoretically cannot have his or her asexuality denounced through pathological means" - argues that it is this 'type' of asexual that usually takes "the media spotlight" (p.145)
• Even though spectacles may not reflect reality, they "matter materially because they work to shape popular understandings of the social world that can affect how people lead their daily lives" (p.148, quoting Racial Spectacles by John Markovitz)
• "At what expense does asexuality become interesting or accessible? Must it be presented as a spectacular object of fascination in order for it to be interesting and desirable? Must it again be subsumed within a language system that cannot account for it in order for it to be made accessible?" (p.150)
• "When the individual story is broadened to have universal appeal, it becomes consumable as a spectacle, and consequently paves the way for misunderstandings" (p.150)
• "Too often, when asexual-identified people sit under the spotlight on film and television, they are made into spectacular objects intended to convey some knowledge about asexual identity." - Cerankowski's discussion is specifically about real people e.g. in talk shows or documentaries, but I believe this could be applied to fictional depictions as well, at least in my experience a lot of depictions of asexuality in fiction seem intended to be at least partly educational. Hell, one of the most high profile shows to depict asexuality is literally called Sex Education!
• Perhaps the most relevant to my topic of study is Aliens and Asexuality: Media Representation, Queerness, and Asexual Visibility by Sarah E.S. Sinwell - this essay was fascinating for many reasons, in particular I found it interesting to see just how much the landscape of representations of asexuality has changed since 2014
• First point of interest: "Though asexuals have been increasingly visible over the last several years on television talk shows and news programming, there has been a smaller increase in the visibility of asexuals in other media such as fictional television and film" - there has definitely been a much larger increase since this essay was published, even if it is still quite small (p.162)
• Essay uses a "cultural studies approach" - might be worth looking to do something similar? What does such an approach involve? (p.162)
• Uses AVEN's definition of asexuality: "An asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction" (p.162)
• "As many members of AVEN note, asexuality often focuses on romantic rather than sexual attraction" (p.162) - I already discussed this point in my notes on Owens' essay so I won't harp too much on it, but suffice it to say I do find this focus rather problematic considering that a decent chunk of asexual people are also aromantic (around 26% according to some studies but I wouldn't say that as like. a definitive number)
• This essay also takes a queer theory approach: "Queer theory focuses on the fluidity, multiplicity, and hybridity of identity, rahter than its static nature, sometimes even shattering the concept of identity altogether", "Queer theory was a response to the limitations of Gay and Lesbian Studies, which did not necessarily account for the variation and diversity of sexualities and gender expressions, including cross-dressing, bisexuality, gender ambiguity - and, as we know now, in light of the recent emergence of an asexual identity and politics, it did not account for asexuality. Queer theory refers to the impossibility of defining any 'natural' sexuality, perpetually challenging normative categories of identity and subjectivity" (p.163)
• "Arguing that identity is an effect of discourse, Butler argues that gender and sexuality must be understood contextually, in relation to particular bodies in particular cultures, spaces, and times" (p.164)
• Another interesting queer theory scholar referenced is Sedgwick, who "asks, why we do not differentiate sexuality based on whether we prefer to have lots of sex or very little, whether sexuality makes up a large or small share of our self-perceived identity, whether auto-eroticism is a significant or less significant portion of our sex lives, etc." - trying to expand the idea of sexuality "beyond sexual object choice", which Sinwell calls a "significant contribution [...] in relation to asexuality" (p.164)
• "The emergent study of asexuality in this context compels a rethinking of queer theory itself, as it redefines notions of sexual identity and identification. Following Foucault, I argue that asexuality as an identity pursues questions about the relationship between bodies and pleasures in multiple ways" (p.165)
• Argues that media representation often links "asexuality to fatness, disability, and nerdiness", which constructs asexuality "in opposition to normative notions of the body, gender, and sexuality" (p.165)
• "Film and TV frequently construct asexuality by desexualizing bodies and identities that do not fit cultural codes of desirability. Fatness, disability, Asian-ness, and nerdiness, for instance, have all been associated with asexuality. These characters are represented as asexual not because they do not experience sexual attraction, but rather because they are not sexually attractive" - interestingly there seems to be a great disconnect between these 'constructed' depictions of asexuality and actual explicitly asexual characters we see in later media, who are usually white, thin, able-bodied etc. I think the last part of this quote is really important: characters that are Asian, disabled etc. aren't given the agency to really have their own sexuality, instead it is defined by them not being seen as attractive to others. (p.166)
• A gender distinction: "It is also significant to note that, whereas more recent media (p.166) representations have allowed the fat female body to be seen as sexual, the fat male body is still primarily seen as asexual" (p.167)
• Might be worth looking at the documentary The Slanted Screen, about representations of Asian people in cinema - "argues that Asian men are not allowed to be the love interest [...] instead these men are represented as asexual as a means of emasculating and disempowering them" (p.167)
• "Asexuality has often been linked with disability. As Milligan and Neufeldt have argued, persons with disabilities have often been perceived as asexual beings" (p.167)
• "It is important to note that in very few of these instances, do the 'asexual' characters in these television shows and films self-identify as asexual, nor do their describe their asexuality as a sexual preference or a sexuality identity category. Thus, whereas narratives of homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism, and transsexuality often revolve around the idea of 'coming out', the relationship between speech and silence, and sexual self-identification, asexual characters do not often 'name themselves as such. Indeed, one of the reasons asexuality may be unseen (and unheard) onscreen is precisely because it is not recognized as a cultural category of sexual identity" (p.168)
• "Asexuality has often been understood as pathology. Often associated with sexual trauma, sexual abuse, hormonal imbalance, or sexual dysfunction, asexuality has historically been considered an emotional and sexual disorder rather than a sexual preference or identity" (p.168) SOME MIGHT EVEN ARGUE THAT IT'S CAUSED BY A TUMOUR IN THE BR-
• "When asexuality is represented within contemporary media, it is often limited to representations that blur the lines between asexuality and desexualization. These representations misname and misrepresent asexuality as a lack of (normative) sexual attractiveness rather than a lack of sexual attraction. Even when asexuality is represented as a lack of sexual attraction or desire as in Dexter and Mysterious Skin, these representations restrict our cultural understanding of asexuality to be one defined by its relationship to trauma, pathology, and abnormality." (p.171)
• Final note I'd like to make: it does feel telling that the essay on media representation is also the shortest essay in the collection lol
• The next essay: Compulsory Sexuality and Asexual/Crip Resistance in John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus by Cynthia Barounis expands somewhat on the connection between asexuality and disability
• Mentions Russell Shuttleworth's concept of the "imposition of asexuality" onto disabled people - disabled people are seen as "undesirable as well as uninterested in or incapable of sexual expression" (p.176)
• Goes the other way too - "Despite an increasingly visible asexual community that rejects medical labels in favor of more affirmative models of minority identity, psychiatric professionals nonetheless persist in interpreting the asexual disinterest in sex as a sign of repression, traumatic avoidance, or other forms of psychological blockage" (p.180)
• On an amusing note, the discussion of the film Shortbus mentions that the character Sofia's own 'sexual dysfunction' is supposed to be "all the more scandalous since she is herself a 'sex therapist'" (p.180) - mildly amusing since I'm pretty sure season 4 of Sex Education also features an asexual sex therapist. More on that later....
• "Cerankowski and Milks suggest that a serious consideration of asexuality has the potential to 'challeng[e] many of the basic tenets of pro-sex feminism - most obviously its privileging of transgressive female sexualities that are always already defined against repressive or 'anti-sex' sexualities'" (p.184)
• And now for the one we've all been waiting for, the essay about clowning! Yes, it's "Why Didn't You Tell Me That I Love You?": Asexuality, Polymorphous Perversity, and the Liberation of the Cinematic Clown by Andrew Grossman!
• First, some useful context on the "demoniz[ation]" of asexuality: "We are told by popular culture, too, that seemingly every attempt at personal freedom or political liberation must fixate on sexuality as both an end and a means. As as result, any rejection of or disinterest in sexuality is automatically seen as an ascetic's retreat rather than a proactive or courageous stand", "We cannot blame psychoanalysis alone for demonizing asexuality, for millenia of religious prescriptions and fetishes have cast it into a frigid ghetto" (p.199)
• Where this essay started to really interest me was in its argument that "we have always mythologized the asocial and asexual aspects of polymorphous perversity in the form of two common literary-cinematic archetypes: the stalwart, lonesome man of action, licensed to commit violence, and the clown outcast from society, licensed to speak the truth. For both the man of action and the clown, genital pleasure is displaced to violent anarchy, even though the action hero upholds the reality principle and the clown betrays it" (p.201) - this intrigues me because while the essay is specifically about silent film clowns like Chaplin and Keaton's characters, I quickly started to draw parallels with the recent asexual character of Todd from BoJack Horseman, who is a comic relief character who often gets into misadventures that wouldn't feel out of place in a Buster Keaton film. Perhaps he can be considered a modern incarnation of this 'asexual clown' archetype?
• Another distinction between the clown and the 'man of action': "If the conpensatorily oversexed hero is enslaved to the unbending demands of his gender, the unthinking clown is empancipated from them, his unrugged individualism opposed to the pitfalls of power-seeking and glory. If the conventional outlaw or avenger preserves the sanctity of domestic spaces from which he is ultimately excluded, the sexless clown's bargain licenses him to subvert the social contract, not prop it up" - so the clown could be considered a kind of gender non-conforming figure! (p.203) (also there's something here about how comedic characters are given more freedom to go against social norms... hmmmm....)
• Summary of the clown character type: "I will limit my analysis mainly to the clown most crucial to our democratic aspirations: the American clown of silent cinema [...] Cinematic clowns confront their potential social assimilations ambivalently, sometimes embracing humanistic, aspirational challenges and elsewhere spoofing heterosexist conventions of romance or rejecting marriage's bourgeois ideology. In most cases, the clown's victory in social contests hinges on physical stunts" - I think you can certainly make an argument that Todd falls into this character type, he's certainly done his fair share of physical stunts during the show! (p.204)
• "Unable to participate in the procreative act, the clown's ahistorical nature becomes indistinguishable from his asexuality. If the word 'intercourse' has both social and sexual contexts, the clown knows neither, for he has no desire to penetrate either the body politic or the pysical bodies of his neighbors. [...] The apolitical clown is not merely parentless but selfless, never pausing to question his own origins, just as, presumably, audiences fail to question the etiology of jokes at which they mechanistically laugh" (p.205)
• "The heroic clown has his own complexity, for he cannot be totally infantile - rather he is something like a permanent ten year old [...] forever stuck in that brief window between polymorphous perversity and the oncoming of pubescence" (p.206)
• "Having no hope of maturation, forever stuck between the heights of perverse pleasures and the frustrations of an adolescence that will never arrive, the clown is truly outcast from society and its attendant sexualization." (p.207)
• "The notion of the clown as semi-human recalls Henri Bergson's familiar theory of comic mechanization, in which the comic figure's automated characteristics degrade human biology and parody the rules of Aristotelian fixity and mechanistic society" - now perhaps I am reading too much into this but this does feel reminscent of stereotypes of ace people as 'mechanistic' and 'inhuman' (p.208)
• "We rarely want the clown to acquiesce to romantic convention and, as I suggested above, thereby surrender his clownish powers of subversion. The happy ending that sees the clown coupled with the girl never satisfies precisely because we know the clown's appropriate place is one of 'in-between-ness'" - while the essay only ever uses the term 'asexual', I think it's fair to say that it presents the clown as an aromantic figure as well! (p.209)
• "This half-ness is also, not incidentally, what separates comedy from Aristotle's notion of tragedy in The Poetics: the clown's death-defying stunts inspire pathos without the tragic complements of fear and suffering, for we know beforehand that the inhuman clown is invulnerable to earthly pain. With an excess of pathos and a deficit of pain, the clown thus enacts his comic half-humanity" (p.209)
• "There are certainly countless moments when the asocial clown engages in a kiss, entertains a date, or engages in rituals that we otherwise would see as preludes to genital conduct, but these are simply moments of play-acting, an outsider's parody of conventional heterosexuality, prefiguring Judith Butler's notion of gender as a parody of a chimerical ideal rather than of a reality" (p.210)
• Something important to note is that "Within the silent era's conservatism, the marriage scenario effectively was the only avenue for sexuality, and to reject it was to reject sexuality itself" - so it's important to remember while today we might separate out sexuality and romantic orientation, in this era they are one and the same (p.212)
• Another interesting point: "If Keaton and Lloyd tend to find themselves within ambivalent marriage plots, it is probably because they, as actors, can look the part. 'Uglier' or older clowns, from the ursine, corpulent silent comedian John Bunny to the 'ethnic' Groucho Marx, never have the narrative opportunities to plausibly exchange polymorphous perversity for heterosexual domesticity" - reminds me of Sinwell's discussion of how film and TV associate asexuality with certain groups that aren't considered attractive (p.214)
• ANOTHER IMPORTANT POINT: "Silent clowns were, after all, primarily male" - once again we see a gender divide, a female character probably wouldn't be able to reject sexuality in the way this character type does (p.215)
• "The fact that our culture has long made the clown - even the desexed, unassimilated clown - into the common man's hero reveals that we desire his nonchalant, asexual daring as much as we desire the heteronormative man of action's overt, more conventional daring" - basically people wish they could reject social norms as much as the clown does! (p.220)
• Maculine Doubt and Sexual Wonder: Asexually-Identified Men Talk About Their (A)sexualities by Ela Przybylo is, as the title suggests, about the experiences of asexual men, and starts with a quote from a talk show that I would really describe as Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud: in an interview with AVEN founder David Jay, the host says "I don't get this. A guy. I could see for a woman. But you? You have to do something." - really hammers home how asexuality goes against expectations for men (p.225)
• Describes this as "discourses that make asexuality more or less implausible and uninhabitable for men" - "unsustainable, uninhabitable, and damaging for men and their 'manhood'" (p.225)
• Przybylo discusses their methodology in interviewing asexual men for their research - refers to the men by pseudonyms chosen by the researcher, makes note of how their ages and backgrounds and well as what information about them wasn't collected. (p.226)
• One point that would be relevant to me is their concern over whether they should disclose their own sexual identity, which they ended up not disclosing "unless directly asked" (p.227)
• "The men I interviewed were each highly aware of the pressures that exist for men to have sex, to be sexual, and to exaggeratedly mobilize their sexuality to bond with other men and to fit in" (p.227)
• Introduces the idea of the "sexual imperative", basically another alternate term from compulsory sexuality - "suggests that sex and sexual identity are integral to one's deepest inner self, and that 'sex is compulsory, for without it one apparently remains deficient in some sense; in-complete, un-healthy'" (p.228, quoting The Science/Fiction of Sex by Annie Potts)
• Also quotes an interview with 'Antony': "Everyone talks about the building blocks of society being marriage which is considered as a hetero, for the most part anyways like, as a heterosexual sexual relationship ... And if you look at characters in television programs who may be of a mature age but um have never been married are kind of thought of as some sort of a loser type" (p.229)
• "According to the sexual imperative, sex is understood as integral to a 'healthy' body and mind and as at the core of 'healthy' relationships. This 'sex for health' discourse, or the 'healthicization of sex', increases the pressure to have sex, rendering 'unhealthy' and 'unfulfilled' those individuals, such as asexuals, who do not desire sex, do not sufficiently enjoy it, or engage in it infrequently." (p.230)
• "Correspondingly, a lack of sex, sexual desire, or sexual attraction has become increasingly medicalized" - more things I can connect to House I guess (p.230)
• "It is also within the context of the couple that a lack of sex, sexual desire, or sexual attraction becomes understood as particularly problematic and in need of medical attention" OH THIS IS VERY RELEVANT TO THE HOUSE EPISODE (p.231)
• Przybylo argues that the sexual imperative makes asexuality "at once both difficult to imagine and possible to formulate" - we wouldn't have a conception of asexuality if sexual attraction wasn't considered compulsory
• More specific than the sexual imperative is the "male sexual drive discourse" - the idea "that men have a physiological and biological drive or libido that requires that they regularly engage in sex. The male sexual drive discourse is thus entangled in a biological imperative according to which sex is formulated as a natural impulse or drive, on par with eating and sleeping, and as unmodulated by cultural and relational contexts" (p.231)
• "Manliness is thus intimately bound up with not only having sex but also with ostentatiously performing an interest in sex when among other men" (p.232)
• Quoting the inteview with Antony again: "There's always that um stereotype, you know, to go out and meet women for the purposes of sex, and you're somehow quote unquote less of a, less of a man because, well, you're not doing that" (p.233)
• Another of the men interviewed, Wilfred, explains that his experience that "being a man", "being sexual", and "being straight" are all "closely allied and aligned with each other" (p.235)
• "For Billy, 'all men are horn dogs' who are often 'looking for the lay that night' or 'look[ing] at the butt on that'. To 'be a real man,' as Billy discusses, means having to play along with the (hetero)sexualized performance of masculinity, to become a 'horn dog', to devour with one's gaze" (p.236)
• "Antony is most uncomfortable with the idea that to 'be a man' means that one has 'to deal with being pestered to make the advance.'" (p.238)
• "The participants identified tensions and conflicts between what men are 'supposed to do' and what they feel comfortable doing in terms of their asexualities" (p.238)
• The interviews have several common themes, that "asexual masculinities are in many ways at odds with 'hegemonic masculinity' or the 'most honored way of being a man'" and that asexual men go against the "highly naturalized and scientifically augmented sexual imperative" and the male sexual drive discourse (p.239)
• "Asexuality radically and undeniably questions the centrality of sex in ideals of masculinity, relationships, notions of personal and relational health, and Western society. It denaturalizes sex, pokes fun at it, and renders it a learned, culturally augmented practice as opposed to a biological and self-propelling drive or impulse. Because asexuality questions one of the central linchpins of modernity, is it any surprise that it is not met with favorable reactions?" (p.239)
• This essay also references MacInnis and Hodson's study of prejudice against asexuals - find that "asexuals are targets of dehumanization, avoidance, and discrimination intentions" and that they are seen as "deficient", "less human, and disliked" (p.240)
• "Sexual wonder arises when we learn that some men are content and unharmed without sex" (p.241)
• "What to Call That Sport, the Neuter Human...": Asexual Subjectivity in Keri Hulme's The Bone People by Jana Fedtke is an interesting analysis of the aforementioned novel, and many of its insights I think can be applied to my discussion of depictions of asexuality
• References Kristin Scherrer's discussion of asexuality, and her idea that asexual people "are in a unique position to inform the social construction of sexuality" (p.329, quoting Coming to an Asexual Identity)
• "In our often hypersexualized society where the (hetero)sexual matrix determines more people's identities and where sexuality is often seen as at the core of identity formation, people who do not experience sexual attraction or desire have largely been ignored, pathologized, and/or ridiculed" (p.329)
• I really like Fedtke's framework for thinking about fictional depictions of asexuality - "fiction as a medium provides a safe space for asexual identities because it allows for commonly held assumptions about sexuality and gender to be questioned, challenged, and deconstructed" (p.330)
• Also connects asexuality (or at least how it's depicted in The Bone People) to Judith Halberstam's concepts of "queer time" and "queer space" (p.330)
• There is a "common notion that asexual individuals are often seen as sexually not fully developed yet and/or as traumatized in terms of sexual relations", which is reflected in how other characters treat Kerewin, the asexual character in The Bone People (p.332) - in particular "A common assumption about asexuality is that asexual people have suffered from some kind of abuse in the past" (p.335)
• An important note about AVEN's goals in "engagement of literary texts and of discovering asexual fictional characters": it helps form a contemporary online community and also provides "a diachronic perspective by looking into the past and discovering that asexuality has existed (but has primarily been occluded) for a long time" (p.333)
• Once again, my old nemesis Krafft-Ebing gets brought up, with Fedtke mentioning his specific belief that people who lacked a "sexual instinct" were "necessarily also degenerate and suffered from other cerebral problems" (p.336) CEREBRAL PROBLEMS LIKE A BRAIN TU-
• Concludes that "Kerewin's asexuality represents a form of what Judith Halberstam calls a 'queer time' and a 'queer place'. Halberstam's sense of queer temporalities allows for futures that lie outside the usual parameters of birth, marriage, reproduction, and death [...] The character of Kerewin is decidedly queer in her asexuality because she presents a positive rejection of heteronormativity as well as homonormativity. She also defies the usual categorizations of female and male, prompting critics to comment and speculate on both her gender identity and sexuality" (p.338)
• As a more general note, Fedtke argues that "representations of asexuality have the potential to transform current ways of thinking about sexual identities as social constructions" (p.339)
• The final essay I read was Toward an Asexual Narrative Structure by Elizabeth Hanna Hanson, which I have to admit wasn't as useful as I expected, and also if I'm being very honest I mostly found a bit incomprehensible. Some of it was interesting though!
• Argues that the lack of attention to asexuality in literary studies is "symptomatic of a wider cultural propensity toward asexual erasure" (p.344)
• Once again, we see a subtly different definition of asexuality: "the non-experience of asexuality" - though while Hanson admits this is her personal definition, she specifies that for the purpose of her essay she defines asexuality as being opposed "not only to sexual attraction, but also sexual desire" which is a bit more specific (p.344)
• Like many of the writers, she also has her own alternate term for compulsory sexuality: erotonormativity - "positions and privileges the experience of sexual attraction as normative" (p.345)
• One interesting concept she brings up is the "distinction between asexuality and asexual persons" - important to her analysis because she sees "scholarship predicated on identity politics alone" as "reductive, particularly when the literature one proposes to study predates the genesis of one's preferred identity category by at least a century" (p.346)
• "Asexuality, as the non-experience of sexual attraction, has no object, no aim, no tendency toward movement in any direction, which is precisely what makes the asexual possibility so disruptive in narrative" (p.349)
• "The asexual possibility, on the other hand, introduces the threat that the secret is that there is no secret, p.349) that there is nothing to be found out, that the story may well lead nowhere" (p.350)
• A lot of her analysis rests on Judith Roof's concept of heteronarrative, which "argues that narrative [...] follows the same logic as Freud's narrative of sexuality" (p.352)
• Some interesting analysis of the work of Henry James - "James' novels, furthermore, are often populated by characters that are legible, in a qualified sense, as potential-asexuals, although these are the same figures claimed in other readings as more or less closeted homosexuals. The overlap of these two possibilities is largely the product of our own critical propensity to make an absence stand for a (particular kind of) presence" (p.358)

Possible further reading:

• New Orientations: Asexuality and Its Implications for Theory and Practice by Cerankowski and Milks
• Female Masculinity by Judith Halberstam (general queer theory, also potential parallels between stone butch identity and asexuality)
• Sexual Orientation and Self-Perception by Michael Storms
• Asexual and Autoerotic Women by Myra Johnson (one of the earliest discussions of asexuality in an academic context!)
• Adultery by Laura Kipnis (she intrigues me)
• Gender Trouble by Judith Butler (general queer theory)
• Epistemology of the Closet by Eve Sedgwick (general queer theory)
• The Ethical Prude by Lisa Millbank
• Compulsory Sexuality and the Desiring Woman by Hilary Radner
• Understanding Asexuality by Anthony Bogaert - chapter 11
• In a Queer Time and Place by Judith Halberstam (general queer theory)
• Theoretical Issues in the Study of Asexuality by CJ Chasin

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