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Asexualities Feminist and Queer Perspectives 1° Edition
Karli June Cerankowski (Editor) Digital Instant
Download
Author(s): Karli June Cerankowski (editor), Megan Milks (editor)
ISBN(s): 9780415714426, 0415714427
Edition: 1°
File Details: PDF, 4.92 MB
Year: 2014
Language: english
Asexualities

What is so radical about not having sex? To answer this question, this
collection of essays explores the feminist and queer politics of asexual-
ity. Asexuality is predominantly understood as an orientation describing
people who do not experience sexual attraction. In this multidisciplinary
volume, the authors expand this definition of asexuality to account for the
complexities of gender, race, disability, and medical discourse. Together,
these essays challenge the ways in which we imagine gender and sexual-
ity in relation to desire and sexual practice. Asexualities provides a criti-
cal reevaluation of even the most radical queer theorizations of sexuality.
Going beyond a call for acceptance of asexuality as a legitimate and valid
sexual orientation, the authors offer a critical examination of many of
the most fundamental ways in which we categorize and index sexualities,
desires, bodies, and practices.

As the fi rst book-length collection of critical essays ever produced on the

topic of asexuality, this volume serves as a foundational text in a grow-
ing field of study. It also aims to reshape the directions of feminist and
queer studies, and to radically alter popular conceptions of sex and desire.
Including units addressing theories of asexual orientation; the politics of
asexuality; asexuality in media culture; masculinity and asexuality; health,
disability, and medicalization; and asexual literary theory, Asexualities
will be of interest to scholars and students in sexuality, gender, sociology,
cultural studies, disability studies, and media culture.

Karli June Cerankowski is a PhD candidate in the Program in Modern

Thought and Literature at Stanford University.

Megan Milks is currently a visiting assistant professor of English at

Illinois College.
Routledge Research in Gender and Society

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.

4 Gender, Welfare State and the 13 Female Homosexuality in the

Market Middle East
Thomas P. Boje and Histories and Representations
Arnlaug Leira Samar Habib

5 Gender, Economy and Culture 14 Global Empowerment of

in the European Union Women
Simon Duncan and Responses to Globalization and
Birgit Pfau Effinger Politicized Religions
Edited by Carolyn M. Elliott
6 Body, Femininity and Nationalism
Girls in the German Youth 15 Child Abuse, Gender and Society
Movement 1900–1934 Jackie Turton
Marion E. P. de Ras
16 Gendering Global Transformations
7 Women and the Labour-Market Gender, Culture, Race, and
Self-employment as a Route to Identity
Economic Independence Edited by Chima J Korieh and
Vani Borooah and Mark Hart Philomina Ihejirika-Okeke

8 Victoria’s Daughters 17 Gender, Race and National

The Schooling of Girls in Britain Identity
and Ireland 1850–1914 Nations of Flesh and Blood
Jane McDermid and Paula Jackie Hogan
Coonerty
18 Intimate Citizenships
9 Homosexuality, Law and Gender, Sexualities, Politics
Resistance Elżbieta H. Oleksy
Derek McGhee
19 A Philosophical Investigation
10 Sex Differences in Labor Markets of Rape
David Neumark The Making and Unmaking of the
Feminine Self
11 Women, Activism and Social Louise du Toit
Change
Edited by Maja Mikula 20 Migrant Men
Critical Studies of Masculinities
12 The Gender of Democracy and the Migration Experience
Citizenship and Gendered Edited by Mike Donaldson,
Subjectivity Raymond Hibbins, Richard
Maro Pantelidou Maloutas Howson and Bob Pease
21 Theorizing Sexual Violence 31 Feminist Solidarity at the
Edited by Renée J. Heberle and Crossroads
Victoria Grace Intersectional Women’s Studies
for Transracial Alliance
22 Inclusive Masculinity Edited by Kim Marie Vaz and
The Changing Nature of Gary L. Lemons
Masculinities
Eric Anderson 32 Victims, Gender and Jouissance
Victoria Grace
23 Understanding Non-Monogamies
Edited by Meg Barker and 33 Gender, Development and
Darren Langdridge Environmental Governance
Theorizing Connections
24 Transgender Identities Seema Arora-Jonsson
Towards a Social Analysis of
Gender Diversity 34 Street Sex Workers’ Discourse
Edited by Sally Hines and Realizing Material Change
Tam Sanger Through Agential Choice
Jill McCracken
25 The Cultural Politics of Female
Sexuality in South Africa 35 Gender, Ethnicity, and Political
Henriette Gunkel Agency
South Asian Women Organizing
26 Migration, Domestic Work and Shaminder Takhar
Affect
A Decolonial Approach on Value 36 Ecofeminism and Systems
and the Feminization of Labor Thinking
Encarnación Gutiérrez-Rodríguez Anne Stephens

27 Overcoming Objectification 37 Queer Women in Urban China

A Carnal Ethics An Ethnography
Ann J. Cahill Elisabeth L. Engebretsen

28 Intimate Partner Violence in 38 Gender and Rural Migration

LGBTQ Lives Realities, Conflict and Change
Edited by Janice L. Ristock Edited by Glenda Tibe Bonifacio

29 Contesting the Politics of 39 Gender and Neoliberalism

Genocidal Rape The All India Democratic
Affirming the Dignity of the Women’s Association and
Vulnerable Body Globalization Politics
Debra B. Bergoffen Elisabeth Armstrong

30 Transnational Migration, Media 40 Asexualities

and Identity of Asian Women Feminist and Queer Perspectives
Diasporic Daughters Edited by Karli June Cerankowski
Youna Kim and Megan Milks
This page intentionally left blank
Asexualities
Feminist and Queer Perspectives

Edited by Karli June Cerankowski and

Megan Milks

NEW YORK LONDON

First published 2014
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
The right of Karli June Cerankowski and Megan Milks to be identified as
the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Asexualities : feminist and queer perspectives / edited by Karli June
Cerankowski and Megan Milks.
pages cm. — (Routledge research in gender and society ; 40)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Sex. 2. Sexual attraction. 3. Sexual orientation. 4. Sexual
desire disorders. 5. Feminist theory. 6. Queer theory. I. Cerankowski,
Karli June. II. Milks, Megan.
HQ21.A779 2014
306.7—dc23
2013042199
ISBN13: 978-0-415-71442-6 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-1-315-88267-3 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by IBT Global.

Indexed by
Clive Pyne Book Indexing Services
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FAX (613) 482-7064
Contents

List of Figures and Tables xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction: Why Asexuality? Why Now? 1

MEGAN MILKS AND KARLI JUNE CERANKOWSKI

PART I
Theorizing Asexuality: New Orientations

1 Mismeasures of Asexual Desires 17

JACINTHE FLORE

2 Inhibition, Lack of Excitation, or Suppression: fMRI Pilot of

Asexuality 35
NICOLE PRAUSE AND CARLA HARENSKI

3 “There’s No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship”:

Asexuality’s Sinthomatics 55
KRISTIAN KAHN

PART II
The Politics of Asexuality

4 Radical Identity Politics: Asexuality and Contemporary

Articulations of Identity 79
ERICA CHU
viii Contents
5 Stunted Growth: Asexual Politics and the Rhetoric of
Sexual Liberation 100
MEGAN MILKS

6 On the Racialization of Asexuality 119

IANNA HAWKINS OWEN

PART III
Visualizing Asexuality in Media Culture

7 Spectacular Asexuals: Media Visibility and Cultural Fetish 139

KARLI JUNE CERANKOWSKI

8 Aliens and Asexuality: Media Representation, Queerness, and

Asexual Visibility 162
SARAH E.S. SINWELL

9 Compulsory Sexuality and Asexual/Crip Resistance in

John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus 174
CYNTHIA BAROUNIS

PART IV
Asexuality and Masculinity

10 “Why Didn’t You Tell Me That I Love You?”:

Asexuality, Polymorphous Perversity, and the Liberation
of the Cinematic Clown 199
ANDREW GROSSMAN

11 Masculine Doubt and Sexual Wonder: Asexually-Identified Men

Talk About Their (A)sexualites 225
ELA PRZYBYLO

PART V
Health, Disability, and Medicalization

12 Asexualities and Disabilities in Constructing Sexual Normalcy 249

EUNJUNG KIM
 Contents ix
13 Asexuality and Disability: Mutual Negation in Adams v. Rice
and New Directions for Coalition Building 283
KRISTINA GUPTA

14 Deferred Desire: The Asexuality of Chronic Genital Pain 302

CHRISTINE LABUSKI

PART VI
Reading Asexually: Asexual Literary Theory

15 “What to Call That Sport, the Neuter Human . . . ”:

Asexual Subjectivity in Keri Hulme’s The Bone People 329
JANA FEDTKE

16 Toward an Asexual Narrative Structure 344

ELIZABETH HANNA HANSON

Contributors 375
Index 377
This page intentionally left blank
Figures and Tables

FIGURES

2.1 Model for possible processes disruptions in asexuality. 36

2.2 Protocol (in seconds). 45
7.1 In a freeze frame, two “characters” from the film are named
and located: “Elizabeth and her partner, Brian. Austin, TX.” 151
7.2 Poster and fi lm cover for (A)sexual. 152
9.1 A blackout plunges New York City into darkness following
Sofia’s failed attempt at orgasm. 185
9.2 Severin watches the orgy. 193
10.1 Ask Father: Harold Lloyd as an upwardly mobile Sisyphus,
disguised in drag. 213
10.2 Mon Oncle: The clown, a suspicious outsider, becomes the
object of bourgeois surveillance. 217

TABLES

2.1 Brain Regions Showing Differential Activity during Viewing

a Sexual Film Compared to Viewing a Neutral Film 46
2.2 Brain Regions Showing Differential Activity When Trying to
Regulate Sexual Arousal or Not While Viewing a Sexual Film 46
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all of our contributors for their luminous insights,
rigorous work, and continual patience during what turned out to be a long
journey to publication. We are also grateful to the many peer reviewers
who gave their time to carefully read these chapters and provide the authors
with feedback; this book is that much stronger because of their generosity.
We would also like to thank the editorial board at Feminist Studies for
soliciting and publishing the initial commentary that would evolve into this
book project; Michael Kimmel and Suzanna Walters, whose feedback on
an earlier prospectus was invaluable; and our editorial team: Jennifer Mor-
row, who patiently fielded our questions and managed logistics, and our
editor Max Novick, whose patience and flexibility got us to the fi nish line.
Megan would like to thank Judith Gardiner, who supported this project
throughout its development; and the graduate students and faculty of the
English and Gender and Women’s Studies Departments at the University
of Illinois in Chicago, particularly my great friend and colleague Cynthia
Barounis and the Queer Theory Reading Group. I am also grateful, tremen-
dously, to my co-editor Karli Cerankowski, with whom collaboration has
been both wildly generative and wonderfully smooth.
Karli would like to thank Benjamin Kahan, who contributed insight and
inspiration as this project began; Heather Love, who believed in this project
and was supportive from the start; Andrea Lunsford, who gave useful tips
along the way; Celine Parreñas Shimizu, who saw groundbreaking poten-
tial in this work from its earliest stages; Stephen Sohn, whose mentorship
and advice every step of the way were invaluable to this book’s existence;
and all my friends and colleagues at Stanford University and beyond. End-
less thanks go, of course, to Megan Milks, who has been a superb collabo-
rator from the moment we met years ago; our work together is some kind
of magic.
This page intentionally left blank
 Introduction
Why Asexuality? Why Now?
Megan Milks and Karli June Cerankowski

In 1984, Gayle Rubin famously wrote, “The time has come to think about
sex.”1 Indeed, that time has come, and it seems to have never left. Rubin was
responding to the feminist sex wars and what she identified as an incapac-
ity of feminist theory and politics to adequately understand and challenge
sexual oppression. Since—and partially in reaction to—the publication of
this essay, feminist and queer scholars and activists have thought a great
deal about sex, so much that whole fields have emerged (e.g., sexuality
studies, lesbian and gay studies, and queer theory). These fields have pro-
duced expansive and expanding bodies of knowledge on sex, sexuality, and
the intersections of both with multiple political and identity categories—
conversations that are robust and ongoing. To think about sex remains
undoubtedly important. But now the time has come, we suggest, to also
think about asexuality.
“Asexuality” as an articulated and named identity has a fairly short his-
tory that reaches back just over a decade. The asexual movement emerged
in the early 2000s with the political goal of establishing asexuality as a
legitimate sexual identity. The solidification of this movement is largely due
to the efforts of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN).
Since its launch in 2001, the online community has grown exponentially.
AVEN, hosted at asexuality.org, defines “asexuality” as a sexual orienta-
tion describing people who do not experience sexual attraction. Through
this web presence and local activism, AVEN has primarily focused on
divorcing asexuality from presumptive pathology and legitimizing it as an
orientation. By promoting a platform for asexual politics and inciting asex-
uality education and discussion, AVEN has provided a centralized base for
the international asexual community. However, this community exceeds
AVEN, and its politics are not monolithic. Numerous other groups devoted
to asexuality, both on- and offl ine, have grown and exist alongside AVEN,
some with different understandings of what it means to be asexual.
With the expansion of the meaning of “asexual” comes an expansion
of the historiography of asexuality. As several of the chapters in this vol-
ume suggest, asexuality has a history beyond the establishment of AVEN:
whereas it has a more contemporary history in online forums, such as
2 Megan Milks and Karli June Cerankowski
Haven for the Human Amoeba, which discussed the issue before the inven-
tion of AVEN, 2 it also stretches further back in time in different iterations,
from the categories of early sexology, as explained in this volume by Eun-
jung Kim, to its racialization in the era of American slavery, as explored in
this volume by Ianna Hawkins Owen. A fuller understanding of asexuality
demands a sense of historical context and the multiple iterations of sexual
non-practice and non-desire that have come before.
Although the historical record reveals few references to “asexuality,”
the concept of a person not experiencing sexual attraction, or desiring to
not have sex for various reasons is certainly not anything new. What is
relatively “new” is the formation of communities around the common lan-
guage of asexuality as it is understood today—communities in which new
categories exist around the concept of asexuality or “being ace,” where
people can discuss romantic or aromantic orientations in relation to or
apart from sexual desires or non-desires. This culture grew out of recent
trends in (a)sexual movements within the past decade. The time to think
about asexuality is, in fact, long overdue.

FEMINIST AND QUEER APPROACHES TO ASEXUALITY

In 2010, we co-authored an essay in which we suggested a field called “asexu-

ality studies” might come to exist soon enough.3 Indeed, since the publication
of that essay, the body of scholarship on asexuality has grown significantly.
Initially the scholarly field emerged with a focus on social psychology and the
development of physiological explanations for asexuality, but the discourse
has since expanded into the realms of literary studies, disability studies, cul-
tural studies, legal studies, and more.4 In our 2010 commentary, we urged
scholars in the humanities to take the study of asexuality more seriously and
additionally chided the slow approach in feminist and queer academic circles
to acknowledge asexuality as a scholarly object. Although feminist and queer
scholars have more recently entered the dialogue on asexuality, the gaps in
scholarly literature produced on the subject remain palpable. This collection,
which brings together scholars across many fields, from the social sciences to
the humanities, is the first book-length project to explicitly focus on feminist
and queer approaches to understanding asexuality.
With increasing scholarly interest as well as activist momentum, the
moment for thinking about asexuality is here now—but that does not sim-
ply mean not thinking about sex. Without feminism, the sexual revolu-
tion, and the LGBT and queer movements, or the academic disciplines that
emerged in relation to them, we would never have the tools we have now to
think about why asexuality matters so much today in Western society. Fol-
lowing the legacy of the feminist sex wars of the 1970s and 1980s to the rise
of a lesbian and gay movement in the 1990s to the burgeoning movements
around transgender rights and radical queer activism today, the twenty-fi rst
 Introduction 3
century ushers in a new era of queer theorizing built on the backbones
of feminist and LGBT rhetorics. We undoubtedly view this project as a
queer one: making sense of the social marginalization and pathologization
of bodies based on the preference to not have sex, along with exploring
new possibilities in intimacy, desire, and kinship structures—how could
that not be queer? But this project is equally feminist in its attention to
structures of power and oppression, specifically around gender, as well as
sexual object choice (or non-choice as it may be). This project recognizes
and takes up the ways in which (a)sexuality has been co-constructed with
femininity, has been gendered through the figure of the “frigid woman,” as
discussed in this volume by Kim, and has been implicated in debates about
what constitutes radical feminist praxis, which Milks analyzes in this vol-
ume. We could not imagine a book on asexualities as anything other than
a feminist and queer project.
As the archive of cultural production and media coverage on the topic of
asexuality grows, the topic of asexuality has become paradoxically “sexy.”
This book asks big questions that are shaped by queer and feminist theories
and politics, and that promise to reshape the fields of feminist and queer
studies in turn. These fields have largely operated with a universal sexual
assumption that ignores the possibility of asexuality as a viable lived experi-
ence. The recognition of asexuality in such a context can have explosive,
widely generative effects, necessitating the addition of an “A” in the sexuality
studies field, in courses on gender and sexuality, in activist movements, and
in discussions of minority representation and visibility. Acknowledging asex-
uality from both theoretical and phenomenological perspectives challenges
strands of sexualized politics within feminist and queer circles, and requires
us to think anew about what is so radical (or not) about having sex (or not).

GETTING PERSONAL

As with many so-called “identity-based” studies, the production of scholar-

ship on asexuality necessarily provokes questions about privilege and posi-
tionality. Who can talk about asexuality? When and why must one address
one’s own affinities and identifications? Understandably, members of a
community express a certain anxiety around becoming objects of scholarly
scrutiny by those outside the community. In asexual communities, we have
seen this anxiety expressed in the concerning phrase “sexuals talking about
asexuals,” and have met with our fair share of questions regarding our own
positionality in regards to asexuality.
The anonymous blogger of “An Asexual Space” wrote this about our
2010 commentary:

It was just . . . sexuals talking to sexuals about asexuality. I admit

I’m assuming that the writers are sexual. I feel like they would have
4 Megan Milks and Karli June Cerankowski
mentioned being asexual. And at one point one of them talks about
attending the Pride parade in San Fran and walking with the AVEN
group, and didn’t make it sound like she was “one of us,” so to speak.

The post generated comments that mostly took a similar line, lamenting
how “they” (we, the authors) represented “us” (the asexual community).
Commenters also speculated about our identities, and chastised us for
not engaging asexual people or speaking to an asexual audience. When
we wrote that essay, we were writing for an audience of Feminist Stud-
ies readers, who we presumed would have given little, if any, thought to
asexuality, especially as a worthwhile object for understanding theories
of sex, gender, sexuality, and their attendant politics. Our goal with the
commentary was to rouse feminist and queer scholars to a topic they may
have never considered before; we wanted to call out these shortcomings
while making suggestions for how we might begin to fi ll the gaps. Because
we were providing an overview of the state of the field, we did not feel
it necessary or prudent to divulge our own identifications, affi nities, and
personal investments.
However, the essay (happily) reached a wider audience; while we might
not have expected it to do so, we would have preferred a more positive
reception when it did. We acknowledge the discomfort our commentary
produced for these readers, who felt that their voices were not repre-
sented. At the same time, the presumptions made about our identities
make us uncomfortable. On the one hand, this volume and the chapters
we have chosen to include in it are designed to stretch the limits of exist-
ing asexual discourse and push back against precisely these kinds of in-
group and out-group defi nitions and rhetoric around asexuality. On the
other hand, encountering this kind of rejection of our work from one of
the communities with which it hopes to engage has taught us a necessary
lesson about the importance of disclosure, and we are only doing our due
diligence in sharing our personal investments in understanding asexuali-
ties. After all, in true feminist fashion, we are called upon to remember
that not only is the personal political, but the scholarly is also personal
(as well as political). So for the curious, for the suspicious, for our com-
munities, here are our stories.
We fi rst met in 2008, at a graduate student conference where we
each happened to give papers about asexuality on the same panel,
before either of us was aware of the other’s work. Over lunch, we both
lamented the paucity of scholarship, particularly gender and sexuality
scholarship, on asexuality, and discussed the idea of putting together a
journal issue or volume of essays on asexuality from a feminist/queer
perspective. Interestingly, neither of us brought up the topic of our own
identifi cations until a year or two into this project. We each, perhaps,
presumed the other was asexual-identified. We also, likely due to our
mutual adherence to queer conceptions of identity, shared a suspicion
 Introduction 5
of identity categories that seemed to render the matter of identifi cation
irrelevant. We did eventually enter into a conversation about our identi-
fi cations, and discovered that our respective relationships to (a)sexuality
and (a)sexual identity and politics are both rather complicated.
We are going to individuate now and share with our readers a bit of our
personal investments in and relationships to asexuality:

Megan
For many years, I might have described myself as asexual—had I been
exposed to any kind of positive understanding of asexuality. Unaware that
an asexual movement existed, I did not use the language of asexuality
to describe myself but words like “repressed,” “cold,” “weird,” “wrong.”
But these were words I used privately, not publicly or even with friends.
In fact, I was so mortifi ed about being disinterested in having sex in a
culture that so intensely vaunts it, I increasingly made up (hetero)sexual
experiences to fit in—masquerading not only as heterofeminine, but also
as normatively sexual. I am not proud of these deceits.
When I shifted into a queer identifi cation, the shift was initially cultural
and political, as opposed to sexual. I was oriented toward queer aesthet-
ics, culture, and community—toward camp, artifi ce, and the grotesque,
toward people who lived gender with intention and political critique—if
not toward queer sex. Within queer communities as within straight ones,
I found myself alienated by the emphasis placed on sex and the pursuit of
sex, especially as a single person whose nonsexual intimacies continually
got trumped and displaced by my friends’ sexual ones. While I have since
moved into a more sexual (as opposed to asexual) queer identity, largely
as my gender identity/presentation has shifted from nervously feminine
to a more comfortable androgyny, my relationship to sex is never uncom-
plicated and I do not feel it would be accurate to call myself either sexual
or asexual.
One interpretation of my sexual history might suggest that queerness,
or genderqueerness, “cured” my asexuality; I resist that reading because
it presumes the existence of a stable, essential sexuality that was always
there, just needed excavation. Such a reading assumes that the periods
of asexuality I experienced were false, inauthentic, or pathological, when
in fact they were real, genuine, and (except for the anxiety derived from
assuming something was wrong with me) contenting; and second, that my
current identity, because it is more sexual, is the endpoint. I am comfort-
ably non-asexual, perhaps; but not comfortably sexual, as such a positive
orientation towards sex does not effectively describe my grayish experience
of sexuality. “Gray-A,” maybe, or “demisexual”—I prefer the fl exibility of
“queer.” My own interest in asexuality research, then, stems largely from
having experienced some of the marginalizations experienced by many
people who identify as asexual, particularly the pressures of compulsory
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