“And Now I’m Just Different,but There’s Nothing Actually Wrong With Me”: Asexual Marginalization and Resistance |
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Authors: | Kristina Gupta |
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Institution: | Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA |
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Abstract: | This article explores the relationship between contemporary asexual lives and compulsory sexuality, or the privileging of sexuality and the marginalizing of nonsexuality. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews, I identify four ways the asexually identified individuals in this study saw themselves as affected by compulsory sexuality: pathologization, isolation, unwanted sex and relationship conflict, and the denial of epistemic authority. I also identify five ways these asexually identified individuals disrupted compulsory sexuality: adopting a language of difference and a capacity to describe asexuality; deemphasizing the importance of sexuality in human life; developing new types of nonsexual relationships; constituting asexuality as a sexual orientation or identity; and engaging in community building and outreach. I argue that some of these practices offer only a limited disruption of compulsory sexuality, but some of these practices pose a radical challenge to sexual norms by calling into question the widespread assumption that sexuality is a necessary part of human flourishing. |
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Keywords: | Asexuality compulsory sexuality identity marginalization resistance sexual norms stigma |
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