Cora Rodriguez
Critical Theory Essay
Project 1
Where Do I Fit In?
When I came out as non-binary to my family, they promised to try their best to remember my preferred pronouns. When I later mentioned to my mother that I was asexual, she asked me if that meant I thought that I could reproduce on my own. After a long explanation followed by a Google search, she simply laughed me off and told me that I just hadn’t found “the one” yet. So why is it that being non-binary is fine (unless you ask a homophobe) but being asexual is almost completely out of the question?
“An asexual person does not experience sexual attraction- they are not drawn to people sexually and do not desire to act upon attraction to others in a sexual way. Unlike celibacy, which is a choice to abstain from sexual activity, asexuality is an intrinsic part of who we are, just like other sexual orientations.” (AVEN) But that’s not the whole picture, because asexuality is an umbrella term. Umbrella terms are used to cover multiple things that can be classified into a common category. In this case, asexuality is a category that holds many elements of being asexual. Some asexuals are sex-positive, some are indifferent, and some are sex-negative.
AVEN is actually a great source, despite their main statement. They talk more about sex-positive, sex-neutral, and sex-negative in a different area of the website. They also talk about what they call “The Gray Area”. “Not everything is a perfect fit. You may feel mostly asexual, but not entirely. You may feel slightly sexual on an infrequent basis, but not enough to fit in with other people you know. You may relate more to the asexual community, despite not quite being asexual yourself. This is what we call the gray area – not quite asexual, but experiencing many of the same things that asexuals do and most sexual people don’t.” (AVEN) AVEN also talks about graysexuals and demisexuals (greysexuals are individuals who experience sexuality in some way and demisexuals are individuals who experience no sexual attraction unless a strong bond is formed.) and how even though they may experience feelings of sexual attraction or desire, they are still under the asexual umbrella.
“More broadly, asexuality has been subject to pervasive stereotypes (for example, to be asexual is, really, to be ‘repressed’, ‘confused’, ‘secretly gay’, and so on). In some contexts, this renders asexuality invisible because it is presumed to be impossible – rather than being just something that ought not to be (like homosexuality), it is seen as something that does not exist.” (Asexuality) It’s also a matter of class and race. “Thus, if you are White, well-educated, and middle- or upper-class people, you are more likely to be believed if you claim to be asexual because there is no plausible ‘excuse’ for why you would not find others sexually attractive. Conversely, if others can find an excuse from other parts of your life for why you might not find others sexually attractive, such as that you have suffered trauma or that others will not likely find you sexually attractive, they are more likely to disbelieve that you are really asexual.” Pretty much anyone who is not a white male (or possibly not even white males, because of toxic masculinity) isn’t taken seriously when they come out as asexual.
Some people refuse to believe that we experience none, some, or lots of sexual desire. Some people believe that we need to be “fixed”. Here is a story from Alice Olivia Scarlett that spells it out: “My first relationship was with an older man who constantly used sex as a weapon against me and refused to believe that asexuality could be real. ‘Sex is natural, sex is normal, you’re too young and too inexperienced to know that you don’t want sex, why are you so frigid, our relationship would be so much stronger if you weren’t such a prude’. It went on and on, building and building until the gaslighting and emotional abuse turned into sexual abuse.” (Asexuality is the Queerest Thing) Being “fixed” is also called “corrective rape”.
In a society that seems to be sexually driven, asexuals have a hard time existing. How is someone supposed to exist in peace if people can’t deal with people who have a different skin color than them? A different gender? “Part of it, I think, comes from the aforementioned fact that we are a society obsessed with sex. For individuals who have had to fight for their right to have sex with the people they want to, the idea of not wanting to use that privilege might seem ridiculous, dismissive even.” (Asexuality is the Queerest Thing) I can’t say for sure why our society is obsessed with sex, but it probably has something to do with the fact that our society was founded by men who make everything go their preferred way by shunning anyone who is the slightest bit different.
Freud didn’t help society being dominated by sex. His idea about the Oedipus and Electra complexes got stuck in psychology for years, adding what is honestly a flimsy idea to an already sex-driven world. Freud’s idea about the Oedipus complex was that young boys are sexually attracted to their mothers, to the point where they actively detest their fathers. The Electra complex is the same thing, but it’s girls and their fathers. Freud thinks this starts between the ages of three to six, which is, for a lack of better words, the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Three to six-year-olds know absolutely nothing about sex and do not feel that kind of attraction for anyone. They only care if they get their favorite snack that day.
As someone who was once a child myself, I was aware that my peers only started thinking about attraction when they hit puberty. (I thought I did, but I was actually just trying to fit in. When I hit puberty all I got was anxious.) Freud tries to back up his claims of the Oedipus complex by linking it to the case of Little Hans, who was a five-year-old that was afraid of horses. Freud decided that Hans’ fear of horses was tied back to a fear of his father, and “…suggested Hans resolved this conflict as he fantasized about himself with a big penis and married his mother. This allowed Hans to overcome his castration anxiety and identify with his father.” (SimplyPsychology) Hans was the only case of Freud’s Oedipal complex, and honestly, I think that kid was just afraid of horses.
Even in our own community, asexuals aren’t accepted by all. “Queer futurity does not underplay desire. In fact it is all about desire, desire for both larger semiabstractions such as a better world or freedom but also, more immediately, better relations within the social that include better sex and more pleasure.” (Queerness as Horizon, page thirty) “There are an infinite number of ways to define queer, which makes it both a useful and sometimes problematically vague concept. One usage of the term is as an identity category that captures a range of nonheterosexual sexual orientations and/or politicized sexual identification and practices that expressly reject heteronormativity. The former functions as a catch-all umbrella under which people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual might stand…” (Queer Theory, page three)
“Even the word queer itself represented a form of subversion whereby the homophobic slur was reclaimed by a new generation of activists who saw queer as liberating and empowering, rather than a tool of intimidation and violence to be used against sexual and gender minorities. These activists also rejected the assimilationist politics of more mainstream lesbian, gay, bisexual, and, to a lesser extent, transgender (LGBT)…” (Queer Theory, page four) What those three quotes have in common is that even though Queer Theory is from 2019, they all exclude asexuality and the notion that someone may not be fighting the LGBTQIA+ fight simply to have sex with whoever they please. Some are fighting to just be accepted completely for who they are, with their range of sexual desires attached.
I believe that queer theory can’t be queer theory without the inclusion of everyone in the LGBTQIA+ community. If someone wants to focus on one part of the community, say, asexuality, then it should be asexual theory. If queer theory doesn’t consider all parts of the community, even parts that some of the community shuns, then it cannot truly be called queer theory. Queer is all of us in the community, and all of us in the community are queer. Including people who are not talked about in the community as often, such as asexuals and aromantics. The A in LGBTQIA+ stands for asexual/aromantic, not ally.
“New Orientations: Asexuality and Its Implications for Theory and Practice on JSTOR.” Jstor.org, 2024, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27919126?seq=3. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.
Brunning, Luke, and Natasha McKeever. “Asexuality.” Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 38, no. 3, Wiley-Blackwell, Oct. 2020, pp. 497–517, https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12472. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.
“Asexuality Is the Queerest Thing.” Stonewall, name, 27 Oct. 2020, http://www.stonewall.org.uk/about-us/news/asexuality-queerest-thing. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.
“Overview | the Asexual Visibility and Education Network | Asexuality.org.” Asexuality.org, 2024, http://www.asexuality.org/?q=overview.html. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.
“Oedipus Complex: Sigmund Freud Mother Theory.” Simply Psychology, 25 Jan. 2024, http://www.simplypsychology.org/oedipal-complex.html. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.
Grzanka, Patrick. (2019). Queer Theory.
Muñoz, José Esteban. “Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism.” Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, NYU Press, 2009, pp. 19–32. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qg4nr.5. Accessed 11 Mar. 2024.
“Little Hans – Freudian Case Study.” Simply Psychology, 25 Jan. 2024, http://www.simplypsychology.org/little-hans.html. Accessed 12 Mar. 2024.
Sprockets and Springes 