Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality

by Ela Przybylo

Challenging what she sees as an obsession with sex and sexuality, Ela Przybylo examines the silence around asexuality in queer, feminist, and lesbian thinking—turning to Audre Lorde’s work on erotics to propose instead an approach she calls  asexual   erotics,  an alternative language for discussing forms of intimacy that are not reducible to sex and sexuality. Beginning with the late 1960s as a time when compulsory sexuality intensified and became increasingly tied to feminist, lesbian, and queer notions of empowerment, politics, and subjectivity, Przybylo looks to feminist political celibacy/asexuality, lesbian bed death, the asexual queer child, and the aging spinster as four figures that are asexually resonant and which benefit from an asexual reading—that is, from being read in an asexually affirming rather than asexually skeptical manner.
 
Through a wide-ranging analysis of pivotal queer, feminist, and anti-racist movements; television and film; art and photography; and fiction, nonfiction, and theoretical texts, each chapter explores asexual erotics and demonstrates how asexuality has been vital to the formulation of intimate ways of knowing and being.  Asexual Erotics  assembles a compendium of asexual possibilities that speaks against the centralization of sex and sexuality, asking that we consider the ways in which compulsory sexuality is detrimental not only to asexual and nonsexual people but to all.
 

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, Sexuality, LGBT, Feminism, Theory, Asexual

210 pages, Hardcover

Published August 19, 2019

Reviews

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as the mother of an asexual daughter to get a better understanding of her world. She is hetero romantic sex repulsed which I believe may be quite challenging for her in future relationships. This book has expressed some of the challenges that my daughter has already experienced such as the non-acceptance by some in the LGBTQ+ community as a member. I thank the author for furthering my insight into my beautiful, wonderful, "not broken" daughter. We are all truly more than who we desire - or not.

[Swankivy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not the book you should pick up to understand asexuality in general. It's very specific and focuses on social, media, and cultural analysis; feminist movements; heteropatriarchy; and how nonsexual perspectives on closeness and relating can be understood in all of these. It's an academic look at a niche subject, not a book for laypeople really.

And as a layperson who doesn't study the academic, analytic, or historical perspectives on asexuality and, more broadly, queer history or queer theory, I would usually not be the audience for something like this. I decided to read it anyway because a) it's related to asexuality, which is a subject I'm attached to; and b) the author examined this subject from an asexual perspective personally, which always adds value to anything she could say on the topic. My notes:

On the introduction:

The author specifies that asexuality is socially understood as a sexual orientation defined by lack of sexual attraction, but that there are many other ways of relating to the definition and even more other ways of understanding asexuality (or at least nonsexuality and abstention) as a political stance. Attaching asexuality's definition and mainstream interpretation to attraction experiences was politically important (agree), but the "attraction" model isn't satisfactory for how and why some aces identify as asexual (even more agree). This is personally relevant for me because I was far more concerned with sexual BEHAVIOR when I first began to identify as ace--for me the orientation was about something I don't DO, rather than the fact that I don't experience sexual attraction even though that's part of WHY I don't--and though I now understand that "abstains from sex" is not a required behavior for people calling themselves asexual, I was so much more focused on how a person cultivates a meaningful life without always being crushed under judgments saying my life, by definition, would not have enough REAL meaning unless it included sex and partnered relationships. I was focusing on this thing I don't do not just because that lack of attraction experience was important to discuss as part of a legitimate, non-pathological sexual identity, but also because I wanted the entirety of my life to have a recognized path to maturity, happiness, fulfillment, and authenticity.

I have always hated how being partnerless, uninterested in sex, and actively preferring being single/living alone is seen as a weird exception that would only be accepted as fulfilling in the rarest of cases--that as soon as I talk about the way my life is and the way I WANT it to be, I expect people to feel awkward and process it as sad, as if there's nothing this could be but lonely and disappointing. Asexuality is so much more than just one experience MISSING from typical lives; it's not a hole where something should be, but because of how society thinks about it, we're forced to navigate our lives as if they ARE like that. It's really important that all of the ramifications for how being asexual affects our living situations and the way others perceive us are part of how we study, discuss, and live our asexuality.

I liked that the book pointed out that aces' inclusion of other types of attraction in their identity (like specifying romantic attraction, sensual attraction, aesthetic attraction) implies that other more typical orientations have those too, and that the book therefore questions whether desire for sex itself is the determining factor in someone's sexual identity.

The introduction lost no time in diving into how what's perceived as "normal" is tied up tightly with whiteness and ability (meaning, living as a non-disabled person). This is all part of a picture painted to reinforce that if you CAN'T have sex, there's no way your relationship can be satisfying or complete, and that it would be horrifying to be "trapped" in a situation with a partner who cannot have sex and such people have no ability to exist in legitimate relationships.

There were some great discussions of how labels are shortcuts, and even though they might work to categorize or explain quickly, almost everyone will have to modify them when explaining how it works for them. I think it is is very true of people outside the ace spectrum too--how we must all simplify using these terms but then it's almost inevitable that we'll elaborate and personalize when we talk specifics.

I love that the book does such a great job explaining why multiple definitions of asexuality are important, and how it's important to resist compulsory sexuality while allowing asexuality to be discussed as a sexuality we can claim, not just the word for an absence.

There was this great discussion of how the "oh, what a waste" reaction is tied a lot more obviously to white women than you might assume. Because the idea of whiteness is very tied to a conqueror/colonial mindset and even if we aren't overtly racist we are often taught to think differently about nice white parents having lots of nice white children than we are taught to think about any brown people having a bunch of kids. That ultimately it's spun as positive to make babies for the white race while it's a theft of resources or contributing to overcrowding or a symptom of low education or poverty if people of color make babies. So when white ace women get told "what a waste," it's clear that our bodies are viewed as resources that should be farmed, while having "too many" babies or perception of "being too sexual" being slapped on people of color makes living as an ace POC much more complicated.

And yes, it really is weird how everyone is brainwashed into thinking "sexuality" is normal in the context of what serves whiteness and capitalism. It's still so weird as to be seen as maladaptive if I, a single woman who loves living alone and doesn't plan to marry or have kids, choose to live my life this way, even though I (the only person who matters in the scenario) am happy with the situation. Why would someone be invested in me forming a societally approved couple with someone and starting a family? Well, you know why.

I liked that there was a good discussion of how asexuality isn't an exception or an exemption to "normal" sexual spectra. It is a natural part of it and it fits in the framework. It's not the X sitting outside the spectrum that we just kinda acknowledge is there and move on with life as if it isn't. It NEEDS to be there because some people will always be described by it, and we might as well cultivate a society that acknowledges it.

The quote "Where there is queerness there is asexuality" is cool because like the book says, the whole point of being queer in some people's minds is to be sexual in a different way. We've been criticized for daring to think we belong in those places because, if I may quote some nastiness I've encountered from detractors on my social media, "Pride is a place FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEX." But that's not true. We also challenge ANY "supposed to" assumptions of this nature.

I really like one comment about how we focus on the gender of the object we desire to help define ourselves. It made me think about how if someone is in a "hetero" marriage and then they later find out their spouse is transgender, they might feel like they have to change whatever word describes them, because if they thought they were straight but it turns out their spouse is their gender, they're not straight. But what fundamentally changed for that person? THEY didn't necessarily change anything at all. It really just shows that while labels are very useful, they sometimes don't help much.

There was a nice little mention of how "asexual" versus "nonsexual" are seen differently as terms--one is used as an understanding of "identity" while the other could be anything that isn't "sexual," whatever that means in context.

It's very true that we aces can be kicked out of queer spaces for many of the same reasons we're kicked out of straight spaces! Some of them are letting heteronormativity tell them what their sex is and should be, and how their identity should work, and letting that speak louder than understanding that we're marginalized by the same vehicles that some of them are.

On the first chapter (The Erotics of the Feminist Revolution):

There's some really great commentary on how the "free love" ideas that defined the sexual revolution of the 1960s did not revolutionize at all by some standards. There was a lot of encouragement for artistic expression and freedom to connect sexuality to art, but for us, it's all about how compulsory sexuality has made us think asexuality is a lack, and that it can't be represented in anything artistic or important except as a representative of failure.

It's true that sexual "liberation" for white women further entrenched compulsory sexuality. You weren't free to have as much sex as you wanted if what you wanted was zero. Wanting none was seen as pathological, as proof of continued repression. "Free love" wasn't freedom or representative of liberation at all if SEX WAS PART OF THE WAY YOU WERE OPPRESSED. It wasn't lack of access to sex that made some people less free. People who were experiencing racism, sexism, and homophobia were not liberated by this.

Asexuality as political celibacy to disrupt men's sexual access to women was interesting. It's not "asexuality" but it could have easily dovetailed with it and I'm sure it did in many ways. There was a lot of discussion in this chapter on how these movements encouraged women to intentionally use the energy they'd devoted to all things surrounding sex/erotic activity with men toward other women instead. But it was not necessarily a "lesbian" situation--in many cases it was explicitly not that, suggesting this sisterhood was something else, and there were even discouragements of lesbianism in some of these movements.

In the feminist revolution, sex as a natural and needed central aspect of life and self was questioned as a tool of patriarchy. Plenty of nonsexual people are healthy, for instance, and we don't "shrivel up" the way we're portrayed as doing. It's so often included as literally vital to life, on the foundation of Maslow's Hierarchy, and I used to always look at that with one eyebrow raised wondering how they'd gotten that idea.

Cell 16 and The Feminists weren't lesbian, according to this chapter. They were sometimes criticized for making sex between women seem to serve the same purpose as sex given to men, but despite that they weren't ACTIVELY AGAINST lesbianism. The celibacy they practiced laid the groundwork for abstinence to be acceptable, though.

Elevating lesbian status as not being just about sex or sexuality made it "more respectable" and able to be used as political. "Feeling good with sisters" didn't have to be about sex. It laid the groundwork for celibate and asexual activism, but to avoid being lesbophobic it has to walk a thin line.

I REALLY liked the bit about taking orgasm out of the equation as a "Goal" made feeling good with someone else more about the experience.

Some of the folks in these movements apparently wanted to abstain because sex in general kept them "in their place" and they didn't want to be used for that anymore.

On the second chapter (Lesbian Bed Death):

I wasn't familiar with much about this concept. Lesbian bed death is feared because sex is understood to mean the relationship is flourishing. But there was this running understanding that "women are passive" and that if you have two women who are passive in the relationship, neither will initiate the way a man would and therefore your relationship will fizzle. But how sex and sexual satisfaction are defined is ignored when saying lesbians "are less sexual," and also if they ARE asexual they can still have a loving relationship without fearing that lack of sex dooms a relationship.

I love how it's explained that some thought lesbian bed death must be staved off to make sure the lesbian couple is legitimized, and how despite being a non-normative couple they are still A COUPLE, with that fact being the center of their position in society, with other forms of relating diminished. They still have to serve capitalism, after all.

If you're asexual, you fail as a lesbian and that makes you sad, you see. You should fear asexuality because it would delegitimize your orientation as a lesbian! Well, that's oppressive.

On the third chapter (The Queer Erotics of Childhood):

I didn't have that much to say about this chapter because I was not sure I understood some of it. I thought it was really interesting how kids are "desexualized" through forcing "purity" on them. So they aren't allowed to hear or use knowledge or language about sex, pleasure, or genitals, and they will be punished if they do something that adults perceive as sexual, etc.

I liked the way this chapter looked at how queerness applies here too. Children (well, white children) have to "remain pure" and the mere existence of queer people or queerness is always lumped in with "adult aka sexual" topics and considered corruption for children, and anything children might be curious about or want to witness as normal will be scarily isolated as dangerous and off limits (increasing the likelihood that they will grow up and think sex is dirty), with all of this going double or triple if any queerness is involved. The author sharing some personal perspectives on relating to a child relative was interesting because as a queer person she is perceived as suspect and anything she says or does could be inappropriately sexual in front of a kid, ya know, if she acts like body parts exist or acknowledges human sexuality.

On the fourth chapter (Erotics of Excess and the Aging Spinster):

Very interesting for me as a 40+ woman who is never-married, no children, unpartnered, and happy. Some perspectives on the spinster as a "figure of excess" had never really occurred to me since mostly the idea that this is a type of freedom and revelry is so heavily overshadowed by the idea that I am pathetic.

There are discussions here of how sex in old age is perceived to ward off perceptions of being unworthy or disposable, and how this is oppressive to asexuality because we don't want to have to FORCE sex on ourselves to be seen as worth living into old age.

I love the discussion of spinsterhood and how it should be allowed to define itself outside an understanding of hetero and coupled maturity. Spinsterhood is a way to ward off the disposability of age without being forced to reclaim relevance through sex.

On the fifth chapter (Tyrannical Celibacy):

Some great discussion here of the incel movement and how it's bound up with whiteness and heteropatriarchy. Yes, if incels didn't feel sex was their RIGHT to receive from women, they wouldn't behave like they're wounded through not receiving it.

The audience for this book is niche, but I'm glad I read it.

[HG · Rating 4 out of 5]

I skimmed through this book because it is very academic and dense, but I would recommend this to someone wanting to go into a much deeper look on asexuality after already being thoroughly learned on the topic. It talks about how medicine and the DSM have a history of pathologizing asexuality into a diagnosis. In the most recent version of the DSM, the DSM-5, asexuality has been labeled as “female sexual interest/arousal disorder” and “male hypoactive sexual desire disorder.” The labeling of asexuality in this way has specifically caused medical professionals to see asexuality in women as a problem or diagnosis when, in reality, it is a sexuality.
Lori Brotto, David Jay, and Andrew Hinderliter influenced the choice for the DSM-5 to add an exception for asexuality under these diagnoses of low sexual desire. This is great news because asexual people will not be misdiagnosed and will be taken more seriously by medical professionals.

[Aaron Thomas]

I'm mostly unconvinced by Przybyło's arguments here. It's not that I can't conceive of what she means by asexual erotics – it's a smart concept – it's just that once we have that concept, I'm not sure that Przybyło takes us anywhere with it. Near the end of the book, in discussion of the way biopolitics desexualizes ageing adults, we cover a large amount of familiar material, and then it just isn't clear how thinking about asexuality as a possibility helps us to combat what Przybyło herself admits is a persistent problem related to ageism, ableism, and racism. Desexualization of older people is ableist, ageist, racist, and sexist. Indeed, but we also need to acknowledge that some older people have grown into asexuality and a different kind of erotics? Here, too, I must agree, but then those erotic possibilities fail to be enumerated or even really championed in Asexual Erotics. For me the conclusion is the most difficult. Przybyło addresses the question of incel killers (and incels more generally) very, very briefly. She (again very briefly) argues that asexuality is precisely the opposite of the violence of the so-called involuntarily celibate. No disagreement there, but what might the concept of asexual erotics offer the incel? Or how might a different way of thinking about erotics and sexuality – the Asexual Erotics position – help us rethink incels, masculinity, the promises of whiteness, and sexual entitlement as complexly interwoven with one another and with compulsory sexuality? For me, the book isn't quite ambitious or imaginative enough to do what I wanted it to do.

[Julie Decker · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this unusual examination of eroticism from an asexual perspective, author Ela Przybylo takes a nice nuanced deep dive into historical movements, age-based expectations, the role of patriarchy and whiteness on sexual interpretations, and queer studies. Despite that it does extensively examine rather niche fields, enough context is given for people who don't specialize in this knowledge to pick up at least an overview that can be built on, and it was refreshing to see a text that doesn't shy away from acknowledging how gray some areas can be between unwanted, delegitimizing desexualization and affirming, encouraging expressions of nonsexuality/asexuality. I found it very informative to learn more about some feminist movements from before I was born and to see some media I was unfamiliar with analyzed in depth from a perspective that celebrates alternate forms of pleasurable physicality while remaining decidedly aware of how sexuality is used and perceived in different cultures and across different genders.

[Loni · Rating 2 out of 5]

I waffled back and forth on whether or not to just leave this one unrated since, as we all know, the goodreads rating system is horribly broken and you have to choose between giving harsh ratings to less well known books or taking the hit when it comes to your recommendations. I had to go and do some quick math to make sure that my rating wasn't going to tank this book's reviews.

In all honesty, I just didn't like it. This was extremely disappointing to me since, as an ace woman myself, the subject matter sounded super interesting to me. However, I could tell within the first 30 or so pages that this was not going to be the book for me. The introduction is, frankly, a mess. It's deeply unorganized when compared to the rest of the book, and severely limited my expectations for the rest of the work.

While I found the post-introduction organization to be far better, I felt that despite the author's claims, the book's focus was more on erotics beyond the sexual rather than asexual erotics. You can accuse me of arguing semantics on this one and you'd be right; the author and I clearly have differing opinions on how to corral and classify the myriad of feelings and experiences that make up the highly amorphous identity of asexuality, and I don't feel that the author did enough to explain how exactly their point of view was reached before they began extrapolating on it. We are instead asked tasked to agree with the author's understanding of asexuality blindly as we move throughout the work.

Ultimately, some really intriguing connections were made, and I specifically found the author's examination of political celibacy/asexuality to be very interesting and well researched. However, when it comes to tying it all together under a unifying theme, for me it just kind of fell flat. I guess in the end I was hoping to see something of myself in the work - as I have come across very little in the way of positive scholarship on asexuality - and was unfortunately left wanting in this regard.

[MCZ Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Asexual Erotics presents a new definition of erotics, drawing on Audre Lorde’s work to uncouple the erotic from the sexual. Each chapter of the book explores a different subject of feminist and queer theory and explains how our understanding can be deepened by acknowledging the existence of asexuality and the potential for erotic desire to be fulfilled in non-sexual ways.

I’ve read very little queer theory, so I felt at times that certain concepts were over my head. That is my fault and not the author’s. I did feel that concepts I’d been struggling with clicked in the penultimate chapter about spinsterhood, which resolved questions I had after the chapter on lesbian bed death. But each chapter built upon information presented in previous chapters while introducing a new level of insight, so again, the author’s approach is solid.

I recommend this book to anyone looking to expand their understanding of asexuality and how its inclusion can benefit our understanding of the LGBT+ community.

[Kj · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impressive work of queer theory, bringing an asexual lens to cultural conceptions of relating, sex, aging, and more, while also working to introduce and articulate what a lens of asexuality might mean in the first place.

In some ways, the questions expressed here are more helpful than the responses offered, but that may be due to the specificity of where those questions are taken. Most chapters rely on examinations of visual art or film, which, while intriguing, are not always easy to track when images or narratives can't fully be provided.

The strongest aspects here are how Przybylo addresses the interdependence of white supremacy, compulsory sexuality, and misogyny within systemic injustice and erasure. Challenging frameworks of whiteness is important for asexual discourse, queer theory, and conversations on sexuality in general, and Przybylo clearly took that duty seriously. And her challenges to queer discourse (and popular perceptions) that conflate "desexualization" with "asexuality" and perpetuate assumptions of compulsory sexuality were excellent.

Hopefully more queer theorists will continue to explore the vital possibilities introduced by an asexual lens.

[Sashe · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book suffers from a conflict of definition. It defines asexuality as nothing at all hence why 60/70s political lesbianism, celibacy, and stoneness (as part of lesbian/butch identity) are all included as examples of asexuality. Of course asexuality is much complex than not experiencing sexual attraction. For sure, some stone butches consider themselves asexual, and they are well within their right to do so as asexuality has space for such variety of experiences. But to try to legitimise a 60s/70s strand of bio-essentialist white feminist celibacy as asexual resistance?

I was optimistic about what I’d find in the essays when it mentioned gay, lesbian, and transgender asexual experiences . I thought it would show unique connections asexuality has to lesbian, queer, and feminist communities and cultures. But the direction the essays ended up going in were self-contradictory, confusing, or weakly supported in the way dense academic essays can be. For example, what does this sentence even mean:

"Both series (of pictures) also form a sense of community through a consistent and repeating framing of the bed and bedroom, respectively, that creates linkages and connections between lesbians and their beds.”

How pictures “form a sense of community” is never quite explained - just academic word fluff that doesn’t make sense if you scrutinize it too long. Similarly, there was also inclusion of perspectives that undermined the main argument in different essays, but somehow the essays stick to their initial thesis. For example, in the essay on political celibacy, there were acknowledgments of the fact that the people and schools of thought propounding political celibacy were transphobic, bio essentialist, racist, white middle class then a “but…” as if people's dismissal of this political strategy must necessarily have been asexphobia and not any of its other glaring issues. Not to mention, the anecdote of the author making a joke on their toddler niece's bum was extremely odd. It was at this point I stopped reading. What an odd thing to say.

[Baylee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Puoi trovare questa recensione anche sul mio blog, La siepe di more

Asexual Erotics è forse il libro più interessante che mi è capitato di leggere sull’asessualità: avendo ormai superato la fase che-cos’è-l’asessualità-oddio-ma-parla-di-me! sento il bisogno di letture che vadano oltre le definizioni e si inoltrino lungo i sentieri dello sguardo asessuale sul mondo. Cosa può dirci il punto di vista asessuale sulla nostra società?

Ela Przybyło (che il suo sito mi informa si pronuncia Pshy-by-wo) mi ha dato un assaggio delle potenzialità che l’asessualità ha nel dare una nuova definizione di intimità ed erotismo, togliendo il sesso da quella posizione di centralità e privilegio che ha permesso a una sessualità compulsiva di essere un’arma per ribadire e rafforzare posizioni razziste, sessiste, abiliste e omofobiche.

Przybyło analizza in maniera accademica e rigorosa storture che incontri vivendo una vita da asessuale, ma che non tuttз sono in grado di identificare con certezza e organizzare in un pensiero strutturato (io no di sicuro, sono una frana nel teorizzare gli eventi): per esempio, il fatto che il sesso sia al centro dell’intimità implica che ci sia uno standard al quale adeguarsi affinché la relazione sia sana. Troppo poco, o addirittura niente sesso, è sicuramente indice di qualcosa che non va nella relazione: analizzando la cosiddetta morte del letto lesbico, però, Przybyło dimostra che a non andare era più il fatto di aver preso come standard le dinamiche delle coppie eterosessuali.

Per questo non consiglio questo libro a meno che non abbiate una buona padronanza delle temetiche che girano intorno all’asessualità e alle modalità con le quali il femminismo queer indaga i vari fenomeni sociali. Però, una volta che ci avrete preso confidenza, prendete in considerazione questo libriccino, che è davvero prezioso, spero che sia il primo di tanti altri.

[Francesco Iorianni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book during the Asexual awareness week and was pretty happy about my choice. Przybylo expands on different fields like art, media and literature to explore asexual perspectives on different subjects. Starting with a history chapter about the women's movement in the US, continuing with the 'myth' of the Lesbian Bed Death and talking also about sexualitiy in younger and older age ranges, Przybylo argues against a allonormativ vision, that assumes all people experience sexual and/or romantic attraction. I especially liked the introduction of this book: it made me think how I want to speak about my belongings without. :)

[Adri]

Incrível, apesar de curto é um livro bastante denso ! É mesmo importante que existam livros que falem de assexualidade como uma expressão de sexualidade expansiva e com potencial como lente de análise queer

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Academisch boek waarbij ik oprecht veel geleerd heb, en was heel handig voor mijn essay. Niet alles was even interessant, maar sommige stukken waren weer echt heel nice.

[Justin Goodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I more or less agree with Aaron Thomas' uncertainty about how Asexual Erotics makes use of its core conceit. The idea of decoupling the erotic from the sexual a la Lorde is savvy, but without a clear historical-material subject being critiqued it becomes bogged down in a semi-vague mush of cultural criticism. Which, to be clear, is valuable in itself for laying a groundwork for the idea.

Which is where I see Przybylo's book settling in as. It formulates a language for seeing certain phenomenon through - given the last chapter's focus on the "desexualization" of aged bodies, one could examine how New York recently facilitated the deaths of thousands of elderly people by hiding the mortality rate of nursing homes - but it doesn't take the extra step to get there. The epilogue's attempt to apply it to incels is like an appetizer that comes just after a dense carby dinner. And it's there that I think Aaron is rightly unsure about how to appraise its value.

I actually think it might be better to engage with the secondary literature as you go through the book, because I found reading Ianna Hawkins' Owens writing, Benjamin Kahan's "The Other Harlem Renaissance," and Beryl Satter's "Marcus Garvey, Father Divine and the Gender Politics of Race Difference and Race Neutrality" gave concrete and fascinating applications of an Asexual Erotics (or "celibate economics" as Satter and Kahan dub Father Divine's program).

[Darcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25

[Nessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Asexual Erotics is another text to expand the library of asexual thinking, reading, and existence that is, in this case, a cultural analysis of asexuality. Think, a media and discourse studies text that draws in media, art, symbology, literary text, discourse, and socio-historical events to frame and understand the nuances of an asexual politics. It is the first text I've read that looks at asexuality as a framework (not that it doesn't exist I just haven't gotten there yet), by threading existing frameworks such as compulsory sexuality (Adrienne Rich) and uses of the erotics, or erotics as power, by Black feminist, poet-author Audre Lorde, to create asexual erotics.

Far from being an oxymoron, the author insists that belying compulsory sexuality can be accomplished by envisioning sensuality and asexual resonances in art, text, discourse, and symbology where we may not have thought to examine as desire, intimacy or pleasure that can exist in a realm where sex does not have to be present. Readers may enjoy the contemplation of things like, lesbian bed death, aging and the figure of "spinster", activism and feminist movement celibacy, parenting, and also poses a rejection of the collapsing of incel/misogyny into asexual movement, showing clear distinctions and the importance of a clear frame for asexual movement and organizing.

Its quite an expansive text, for such a short book. With mind to it being an academic text, its strength and detraction is that it gets caught in the weeds, however this is both necessary and important. I enjoyed another reading of asexuality that is validating, reminiscent (historicizing asexuality as always existing), expansive (seeing it as multiplicitous and as a framework), and critical - underlying how asexuality has also been politically and socially imposed as a form of marginalization when it comes to Queer, Black, Indigenous and People of Colour, folx with disabilities, and the elderly. Not shying away from the politics of sexuality, compulsory sexuality as a power structure embedded in settler-colonialism, is a strength of the text. A note for those asexual folks looking for a book to be an aid to self-discovery, or situate themselves in a work that can provide some support in their journey, this mayyy not be the first book I'd look to, and would suggest starting with Ace by Alice Chen first perhaps just because the bulk of this books looks at a birds eye view of asexuality in its broader social, political, and discursive influences and connections.

[Rachel Nevada Wood]

Like many others reviewing this text, I come to Asexual Erotics not as an academic but as a layperson interested in queerness and sexuality. In fact I ordered the book because I found the excerpt in Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex to be fascinating and I was looking for more of that. (In retrospect, because the bulk of that particular excerpt is from Cameron Awkward-Rich's “A Prude’s Manifesto” I probably would have been better off reading one of his poetry collections instead or just really reveling in the YouTube video of him reading it over and over again).

Asexual Erotics is a slim (but theoretically dense) volume of queer theory that attempts to 1) “explore erotic represenations of asexuality” (typically in art, literature, and film) and to 2) “use asexual perspectives to further examine sexuality” especially compulsory sexuality and desexualization. Much of the introduction is spent laying necessary theoretical groundwork for these two goals.

[more complete review to come (probably)]

[Aren Eldwyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ela Pryzbylo has written an extraordinarily impressive work of scholarship, charting a course through historic and present understandings of asexualities and other nonsexualities, centering erotics as Audre Lorde conceived of the term. Asexual Erotics untangles webs of feminist writing and activity, lesbian representation and politic, and understandings of the aging body and panic around the queer child, and ties up the narrative with an epilogue on involuntary celibacy and all of its distinguishing features and violences. Pryzbylo’s work is uniquely thoughtful in situating these narratives and writings within larger conversations around trans-inclusive feminism, and showcases a consistent refusal to gloss over the ways in which trans people and people of color have been foundational to feminist and queer movements, and their voices minimized in mainstream feminist scholarship (this awareness is a feature of this book, rather than a footnote). This text is absolutely unique, and an academic reading first and foremost. If, however, you are looking to see a part of yourself reflected within a timeline that asexual people are seldom acknowledged within, and to have an asexual author and researcher take you on a journey of asexual intimacies and the vast world of queer joy that we have always been creating around us, then this book might speak to you. I’m very grateful it exists.

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the New England Aces book club I finally convinced people to read an academic theory, so we’ll see if anyone actually does read the whole thing except me (and perhaps more relevantly, if anyone but me actually liked reading it). There is basically only one ace book that fits in this category, Ela Przybylo’s Asexual Erotics (although it does cite a number of other interesting books on related subjects, such as singledom, that I now want to read).

Asexual Erotics builds on the work of Audre Lourde (who I have not read but really should) and her theory of the erotic as a motivating creative force that is not the same thing as sexuality, rescuing the word’s original Greek from the totalizing one-track-mindedness of Freudian psychoanalytics. The book is split into several different sections that analyze a grab bag of topics that are not explicitly about asexuality, but which the author sees as adjacent to them in a way that would benefit from an asexual reading.

I did like the first section best, which discussed the history of what has often been dismissed as “sex-negative” feminism in modern discourse--revolutionary feminist projects that practiced political celibacy as a way of encouraging their members to spend their time and energy on stuff other than trying to land a man. This line of thought has an especially bad rap in modern circles for a handful of reasons. One reason is, of course, that the handful of people who are still practicing stuff like “political lesbianism” in the year of our gourd 2021 actually are bitter weirdos who have driven themselves into a reactionary tizzy by refusing to learn anything at all about how humans work in the past 50 years (this is why they’re all fucking TERFs, too). I do think another reason is just that many people who know it’s in their self-interest to be feminists still don’t know very much about ‘60s and ‘70s era feminist history and have very little idea how completely bananas the environment people were working in at the time was. Political celibacy, the expanded and politicized--and yes, desexualized--conception of lesbianism, and the now hopelessly dated concept of the “woman-identified woman” all, frankly, made total sense in the contexts they were developed in--a sexual “revolution” without reliable birth control, a postwar economics of deliberately engineered financial dependency, liberation movements dominated by men with unexamined ideas about what having their masculinity respected means. This section and the second section, unpacking the cultural specter of “lesbian bed death,” do a good job of examining the weird double bind lesbianism finds itself in, of having to deal with opposing dueling stereotypes--one of the hypersexualization of queer people, and the other of the desexualization of lesbians specifically due to ideas about women’s passivity and their status as sexual objects but not agents.

The third section, “The Asexual Queer Child,” is not actually about ace children as opposed to children of other identities. What it is is an examination of competing mainstream ideas about childhood and sexuality, mainly the opposition between mainstream Western ideals of childhood as being “pure” and the necessity of protecting children from learning anything at all whatsoever about the fact that sexuality exists (even while--or perhaps, specifically in order to naturalize--subjecting children to heterosexual expectations starting sometime several months before they are even born), and the more Freudian view that’s dominated a lot of queer theory, where everything everybody does for any reason at any life stage is sexual and this is supposed to be liberatory somehow. Obviously I hate both of these views so I was happy to see them both picked apart a bit. The fourth section of the book is on the figure of the spinster, both as an object of mainstream ridicule and of feminist reclamation, and analyzes her as a figure of excess rather than a figure of lack. This section also picks apart our culture’s rather muddled approach to desexualization and aging, and the ways compulsory sexuality is mixed up in youth-centrism.

I did not find this book to be particularly dense as far as academic writing goes, it just discusses niche subjects in detail, which academic writing is supposed to do. If you are looking for an Ace 101 book I can recommend a few but some of us have read those already. The intro in particular lays out the landscape of various perspectives on Ace 101 and how they play out in different realms of public discourse, which I found valuable for articulating what sometimes bugs me about different types of ace discourse.

I am really looking forward to discussing this one in book club! I hope other people actually read it and show up.

Originally posted at The second book in a row I've read that hates on Freud.

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got to page 100 and this book stopped making any sense. The beginning was great and I loved the fluidity of the explanations and how the book questioned what academia has offered called fact, but the stars are lowered, because a book does in fact have to be coherent all the way through

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short text that leaves me with much to consider about my own research.

[Siobhan Hypatia · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful exploration of what an expansive erotics would look like. A detailed deconstruction of compulsory sexuality.

[Jadey Holcomb · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5! Interesting but so academic even for a little gender nerd like me.

[Zanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

it lost me a few times but hey, frances ha section

[Ailsa]

I liked it and will return to parts of it again. I don't think I found everything in it that I hoped, but that may just be the aromantic in me slowly dying from starvation. Worth reading

[James Rayman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Przybylo chose the title Asexual Erotics for a good reason (explained in the introduction), but I think "Nonsexual Love" better describes the book to those who haven't yet read it (so if you are looking for a book on "asexual identity," look elsewhere!). Anyway, though very academic, I was still able to get through it without much difficulty, and I appreciate (but don't necessarily agree with) the perspectives that Przybylo puts forth. The first and fourth chapters were the most thought-provoking for me.