Masculinity

Femmephobia and Woman as Sex Object: An Intersection of Gender and Asexuality?

So, I really love the way masculinity feels. Since I was a teen, I’ve gravitated toward all things “masculine” as society defines it and as I myself perceive it. The older I’ve become, the more masculine I’ve become in my own gender presentation and tastes. I’m female assigned at birth, but I identify as a nonbinary butch. [This person wrote a really good post that describes how I feel about my gender pretty well.] Whenever I do things or wear clothes that center me in my masculine energy, that’s when I feel the best about myself, so naturally, I avoid whatever makes me feel feminine, which again is largely defined by my culture and how the people around me gender things.

I’m well-aware that the concepts of “masculine” and “feminine” are mass-marketed illusions. They’re social constructs, not naturally occurring objective qualities, which means it’s pretty much all in our heads what is “masculine” vs. “feminine.” I know that my own sense of masculine vs. feminine is a reflection of what my culture has taught me since I was a child who accepted that I ought to like Barbies instead of super hero action figures because I was a girl. I’m inside the Matrix, basically. We all are, some more than others. There is no rational explanation for why we as a species should believe that wearing makeup is feminine and grilling meat for summer BBQs is masculine. We just made this shit up and constantly urge each other to buy it.

I know that this Matrix is constantly telling me, in a million different ways that my brain can’t process all at once and probably doesn’t notice much of the time, that men are better than women, so masculinity is better than femininity. That idea, that masculinity is good and femininity is bad, has been named femmephobia and does not just apply to a “men vs. women” scenario but to “masculine men vs. feminine men” and “masculine women vs. feminine women.” We are presented “the masculine man” and “the feminine woman” as ideals, the most attractive people out there. Those heteronormative gender ideals are closely connected to the narrative of heterosexual romance, so straight women learn to find masculine men most attractive and straight men learn to desire feminine women. Women have more flexibility to vacillate between masculinity and femininity, but men have no room at all to be even a little bit feminine. Why? Femmephobia.

Femmephobia is just as alive in the LGBTQ community as it is in heterosexual society: there are “masculine” gay men who look down on “feminine” gay men and accuse them of making all gay men look bad, and there are “masculine” lesbians, usually radical feminists, who condemn “feminine” lesbians on the grounds that a woman being conventionally feminine constitutes her submission to men and male ideas of what women should be. The bottomline is that masculinity is being promoted, while femininity is discouraged, regardless of one’s actual gender identity or sexuality.

There’s a significant number of asexuals who identify as genderqueer or binary transgender, and a large portion of them are AFAB people who identify as masculine of center, androgynous, or male. Obviously, I’m one of them. Now, maybe this is just a coincidence. Maybe the stats we have available to us are not accurately representative of the whole, worldwide asexual community because plenty of asexuals don’t participate in the online social networking at all and there’s already a skewed ratio of female aces online to male aces (which I think is reflective of broader gender-based trends in online community participation anyway). Maybe if we could poll every asexual on earth, the results would show a more even split between AMAB aces who are femme genderqueers and transwomen and AFAB aces who are masculine genderqueers and transmen. I don’t know. But I do think it’s very interesting that of all the non-cisgender asexuals we can account for online, most of them are AFAB and masculine or androgynous.

I can’t speak for other asexuals, but I do consider the possibility that there is a relationship between my strong desire NOT to be sexually objectified or desired by other people, particularly straight men, because I’m a celibate asexual, and my sense of discomfort with femininity. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that it’s a causal relationship, but I think I have to acknowledge that outside of me and my identity, there’s this gendered dynamic to heterosexual desire that places the man as sexual subject–he who desires–and woman as sexual object–she who is desired. The male has the sexually dominant role, while the female has the sexually submissive role. Furthermore, because we live in a heteronormative society and because heterosexual gender roles cast women as sexual objects, femininity is heavily sexualized. Women are taught to use their femininity to be sexually appealing to men, and it’s often hard to separate a woman’s being feminine from a woman being sexually seductive and attractive. The aesthetic hallmarks of femininity [makeup, high heels, long hair, short skirts, revealing cleavage, etc] are also a woman’s way of being sexually inviting.

And don’t get me wrong, allosexual women–whether straight or queer–can and do sexually objectify others, sexually desire others, and in some cases, find masculinity particularly sexual. I’m not saying that straight men viewing me as a woman are the only ones out there who sexually objectify me, but statistically speaking, I’m most likely to be sexually objectified by a straight man. The world’s crawling with them, they vastly outnumber gay men and gay women, and no matter what I do with my looks or how I identify, they’re going to read me as female. I’ve been hit on and checked out by women who I have to assume were sexually attracted to me, not just aesthetically attracted, but women’s sexual desire feels nonthreatening. I don’t know if that’s because women are a lot less aggressive about sexually pursuing strangers and even acquaintances, or it’s because physically speaking, cis women are a lot less overpowering than cis men. I just know that I would rather be masculine and attractive to queer women on occasion than be feminine and attractive to legions of straight men all the time. (Not that straight men find me unattractive as I am, because somehow, I still get checked out and hit on by some of them. But I’m pretty sure that if I were super femme, it would be ten times worse.)

I realized recently that I’ve always felt the most sexy when I’m dressed up femme, and I associate that feeling of sexiness with being in someone else’s sexual gaze. On the other hand, when I’m dressed masculine and feeling masculine, I love the way I look and I do feel very good-looking, but the “sexiness” factor isn’t there in the same way. The admiring looks of strangers are toned down and less openly lustful, than they are when I’m provocatively femme. Feeling hot in a suit and loafers with next to no make-up on is comfortable. Feeling hot in a form-fitting cocktail dress and pumps and red lipstick is borderline dangerous. It’s the difference between being in control and out of control. Masculine attractiveness gives me the sense that I am in control: of my body, my space, and my accessibility to others. Feminine attractiveness feels like being out of control, of all those things, unless I keep myself at physical and personal distance from others.

All that said, I’ve considered that maybe I use my masculinity and androgyny as a defense mechanism against sexual desire and objectification. Maybe I don’t want to identify as a woman and don’t feel like a woman because I don’t want to feel like someone who can be sexualized or someone who can be placed in sexual situations as the submissive counterpart to a man. If any of that is true, it doesn’t make my gravitation to masculinity or my sense of happiness and comfort in masculinity any less real or legitimate. It doesn’t invalidate my gender identity. But it does mean that there’s a possibility that if I were not asexual or if I lived in a world where femininity wasn’t so sexualized or where women are not sex objects of the straight male gaze, I might feel differently about my gender identity and my gender presentation.

I’m not going to do something that feels uncomfortable to me, like be feminine, just to prove a point or rebel against fucked up cultural doctrine. But I do feel the need to question myself and examine my programming, because I do not want to go through life a mindless product of other people’s expectations. While my gender identity is personal and feels innate to me, I don’t exist in a vacuum any more than anyone else. I can’t pretend or know that the way I feel about gender or the way I want others to perceive me has nothing to do with the broader sociological system in play. I can’t pretend or know that I am untouched by sexism and femmephobia, even though I’m aware of and understand what they are and feel critical of them.

So I have to ask myself: do I like feeling masculine and dislike feeling feminine because I really am–by nature–a masculine person, or have I internalized femmephobia? Do I identify and want to be seen as a masculine person because that’s who I am and who I would be in any universe, or is it because I don’t want to be a feminine sex object?

I don’t know. I may never know. But I hope that by staying in touch with that question and with my feelings, I’ll be able to live as a free and healthy person in tune with who I really am. I want to be a person who sees femininity as equally good and attractive as masculinity, whether I personally express it or not, and I want to be someone who can dress the way I want and present myself in whatever way I feel inspired to on any given day, regardless of other people’s sexual desires that I’m under no obligation to fulfill. Hell, I’d like to be someone who can throw out society’s ideas of “masculinity” and “femininity” out the window altogether, and feel masculine while wearing nail polish or experience feelings like “cool” and “strong” and “powerful” and “badass” through a feminine filter.

Slate Article: When Men Are Raped

Hanna Rosin just wrote an excellent, important article entitled “When Men Are Raped,” the subtitle of which reads “a new study reveals that men are often the victims of sexual assault, and women are often the perpetrators.”

Here are the important facts:

In 2013, the National Crime Victimization Survey found that 38% of sexual assault incidents reported out of a 40,000 household sample were against men. The 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey yielded results in which incidents of nonconsensual sex were basically equal between male and female survivors: 1.27 million women and 1.26 million men. An analysis of recent Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 46% of male victims reported a female perpetrator.

In two different surveys of sexual violence in prisons, jails, and juvenile detention facilities conducted by the BJS, it was found that male inmates were most frequently sexually assaulted by prison guards, many of whom were female, and at the juvenile level, 89% of the minors who reported sexual misconduct were boys who had been abused by female staff members, not males.

The article and these findings are not a surprise to me at all. I’ve been aware of and concerned about male survivors of sexual abuse and rape since I was a high school kid. As bad as the underreporting of sexual violence is amongst female survivors, it’s always been worse among male survivors, largely due to the facts that there is a great stigma against male sexual victimization and very few resources for survivors. (In the mid 2000s, which is when I first started researching this, there were even fewer resources than there are now.)

Obviously, these male survivors, whether they’re raped in childhood or adulthood, by romantic partners or friends/family members/acquaintances/strangers, as free citizens or inmates, most of them are allosexual. Sexual assault and violence is an issue for men in general, regardless of their sexual and/or romantic orientations. But I am especially aware of and concerned about asexual men, for the same reasons I’m concerned about the higher vulnerability of all asexuals to sexual violence: because of their asexual nature and because the vast majority of asexuals are sex-repulsed/sex-averse and therefore will consistently resist having sex in romantic relationships, their chances of being sexually violated, particularly by romantic partners and other intimate companions, are higher than if they were willing to have sex most of the time. Their chances of being coerced, manipulated, bullied, pressured into nonconsensual or dubiously consensual sex are higher. The odds that they will continue to have sex with their abusers after an initial rape, especially if the sex is happening in the context of a romantic relationship or close friendship, are higher in part because of the internalized anti-asexuality and personalized messages of compulsory sexuality these men carry.

I am thankful to Rosin for the following excerpt from her article:

“We might assume, for example, that if a man has an erection he must want sex, especially because we assume men are sexually insatiable. But imagine if the same were said about women. The mere presence of physiological symptoms associated with arousal does not in fact indicate actual arousal, much less willing participation. And the high degree of depression and dysfunction among male victims of sexual abuse backs this up.”

I’ve talked about involuntary arousal and orgasm during rape and physically intimate encounters before on this blog, and it is so important for asexuals of all genders, particularly for cis men who are usually more easily and more obviously aroused than cis women. So many people out there ignorantly assume that an erection is always and automatically a sign that a man wants to have sex, is sexually attracted to the other person present, and is enjoying whatever physical stimulation he’s experiencing. This is categorically false. Both men and women can become genitally aroused in situations where they don’t want to have sex, where they are not sexually attracted to their partner/friend/acquaintance, because arousal is an involuntary physiological response no different than sweating and shivering and crying. There are a million reasons why a cis man might get an erection that have nothing to do with sexual desire or sexual attraction, and the world needs to know this because people who rape men cannot feel excused just because their victims got hard and/or had an orgasm during the rape, molestation, or dubiously consensual sex. (The same obviously goes for female victims who experience arousal and/or orgasm during their assaults.)

Rape is a men’s issue as much as it is a women’s issue. Asexual men can be raped. Asexual men have been raped, by men and by women. Women can be rapists, not just of asexual men but of all men. No matter what their sexual orientation or the gender of their rapist, male survivors of sexual violence need help, support, compassion, and effective resources to facilitate their healing.

Asexuality and Race

This is going to be a brief post more about bringing the subject up to hopefully start the asexual community thinking and talking, rather than a post where I have a cohesive, fully fleshed out train of thought about the subject.

As the asexual community continues to grow and develop and the types of discussions we have amongst ourselves evolve in more sophisticated and complex directions, the intersection of asexuality and racial identities should and hopefully will attract deeper, intelligent thought. The intersection of racial politics with queer politics is tremendously important in several ways, as any queer person of color can tell you, and I think that race is no less relevant if you’re an asexual, whatever your romantic orientation or relationship style.

There is this assumption amongst anti-asexual bigots who deny the legitimacy of asexuality as an orientation and an identity: that the only people claiming to be asexual are young, white, and female. Maybe that assumption has something to do with the high concentration of young, white females in social spaces online, but I believe that the more insidious logic is the result of both the historical desexualization of white women and the corresponding sexualization of women/people of color.

The image of white women as sexless beings picked up steam in Victorian England and America during the 1800s. White women were supposed to lack sexual desire and the capacity for sexual pleasure, even while they submitted to sex with their husbands out of spousal and motherly duty. When Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in the 1950s, the popularity and praise he previously enjoyed in response to the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male suddenly evaporated; people were outraged to read that women masturbated, that they had sexual encounters with each other that excluded men, etc. Everyone was ready and willing to accept that men had sex, enjoyed sex, were driven by sex, engaged in a wide variety of sexual behavior, etc—but while they knew that women obviously had sex in marriage and to produce children, the general public was still attached to the belief or the illusion that the sex women had was primarily done to please men, not women themselves.

(Fun fact: The Kinsey Scale included asexuality as a category of sexual orientation in the 1950s. He classified asexuals as “Group X.”)

Here we are in 2013, some decades after the sexual revolution, in what is an increasingly sexualized culture and sex-fixated society, but there’s still plenty of that old rhetoric floating around that women are universally less sexual than men, that they don’t really want or enjoy sex, that they have sex out of ulterior motives like a desire for romance or marriage than because of a genuine desire for sexual pleasure. It comes out in glib comments about sexless marriages, usually from older straight men. It also feels like an undercurrent in the straight male hunt for sex that starts in adolescence and continues into old age: a sense that women have to be tricked into sex, convinced, cajoled, charmed, persuaded into it because they never truly want it.

Here’s the thing, gentlemen: most women experience sexual attraction and desire. There are women who love sex more than some men. There are women who love casual sex, who love group sex, who love having more than one sexual partner at a time. There are polyamorous women who love the sex with multiple partners as much or more than the romance with multiple partners. Women orgasm. Some women love orgasms. Some women like to orgasm every day. Some women would have sex 4-5 times a week if they could. Some women can have multiple orgasms. Some women can ejaculate. Some women have sex not because they want a romantic relationship but because they want the sex.

So this myth that women are born less sexual than men is just that: a myth.

There are two major problems with assuming that only a White Female could be asexual: the desexualization of all white women because of their femaleness and the consequent sexualization of women of color because of their race.

There’s a long history, too, of women of color being sexually objectified because of their race, their bodies exotified because of their skin color or their ethnicity, their race causing white people to view them as dangerously sexual, too sexual, uncontrollably sexual.

When someone assumes that all asexuals are young, white females because asexuality isn’t real and these young, white, females just haven’t been fucked into discovering how awesome sex is or haven’t had their libidos kick in, what the bigot is implying is that there’s no way in hell that a person or a woman of color could be disinterested in sex—because being a racial minority means it’s in your nature to be sex-crazed.

This isn’t only about women of color, though. The same extends to men of color, particularly black men and Latino men. Like black women and Latino women, the men are supposed to have ravenous sexual appetites. All men—absolutely all of them, regardless of race—are expected to be highly sexual, their masculinity defined by their sexual performance and their insatiable desire for sex. While white men are not, in any universe, thought to err on the asexual end of the sexuality spectrum, they do get to enjoy society’s perception of their sexuality as benign: natural, civilized, powerful but controllable. Black men and Latino men, on the other hand, are perceived as too sexual—as in, if you don’t watch out, one of them might rape you or your female partner because men of color are more prone to being rapists than white men.

There’s the history of black men’s sexuality perceived as dangerous to white women. There’s the history of black women being sexually irresistible to white men, in part because they are so much more ready and willing to have sex than the white women that the white men have to be married to. There’s that running gag that black men have the biggest dicks, and they make the best lovers.

Latino men and women, in particular, as supposed to have a natural sensuality and romantic instinct, more passionate personalities. It’s that stereotype of the hot-blooded Spanish-speaking Don Juan who swoops in with a rose in his teeth and rattles off a romantic poem in his sexy-sounding language, sweeps his woman into an impromptu tango across the dance floor, and then fucks her all night long and does such a good job, she can no longer live without him. It’s the stereotype of the super sensuous, seductive, effortlessly sexy Latina woman with the long dark hair and the D-cup tits and the mysterious brown eyes who has a fiery passion for romantic love burning inside her that she can barely contain, and every move she makes with her body is suggestive. The way she eats, cooks, dances, walks, dresses, talks, even argues with her man oozes sex and sex appeal. She wants it all the time.

All of it’s bullshit, of course. It’s the white person’s exotic idea of what Latino people are like. It’s the white person’s exotic idea of what black people are like.

And then, you have Asians, whose stereotype is just the opposite: they’re supposed to be, by nature, less sex-driven. Asian women, when they aren’t in straight white men’s porn with their breast implants and schoolgirl skirts, are seen as essentially nonsexual human beings. Asian men are the butt of small penis jokes, and otherwise, they’re not perceived in American society as highly sexual or sexually desirable, in comparison to their white, black, and Latino peers. (Strangely enough, within their own culture, there’s been a recent backlash in Japan against young men who are “less sexual” or less interested in romantic relationships. The straight women nicknamed them “herbivore men.”)

So, obviously there’s undeniable overlap of gender and race politics as both interact with asexuality. What it means to be a black asexual woman or black asexual man or an asexual Latino or an asexual Latina or an asexual Asian woman or an asexual Asian man is going to vary a lot, and I’m interested in how the world at large would perceive asexuality in each of these racial minorities vs. how the racial minority itself would perceive one of its members’ asexuality.

Asexuality (and its frequent corresponding celibacy) is going to clash with a man of color’s masculinity, whether he’s black or Latino and his disinterest in sex emasculates him or whether he’s Asian and his asexuality further reinforces his image as a less masculine male. Asexuality in women of color contradicts their stereotypes as highly sexual women and it may also come into conflict with their community’s idea of what a Woman is, of what a Feminine Woman is. Asexuality in women of color is contrary to what white society, white heterosexual men particularly, want to believe about WoC. The existence of asexual PoC knocks the idea of asexuality as the White Woman’s sexual dysfunction flat on its face.

Some specifics I’ve wondered about:

Can an asexual black man or an asexual Latino man ever have the respect of his fellow men? Can he ever be seen as equally masculine as his male peers who are sexual? Or even have his asexuality believed, by his own race and by others?
What are the unique consequences to an Asian woman who’s asexual and already assumed to be a nonsexual being because of her race?
How is an asexual black woman perceived and treated by her own racial community? By people outside her race?
What if you’re a Latina woman who does have a lot of that stereotypical sensuality attributed to your race but you’re asexual? Without a libido? Even aromantic?
Does the asexual identity have the potential to dismantle some of the harmful stereotypes attached to people of color’s racial identities?

These are the kinds of questions I hope the asexual community starts to chew on and openly discuss. I also hope that every ace of color ultimately finds a way to reconcile their asexuality and their racial identity, to a point that achieves inner harmony.

I’m also hoping that when we start to see openly asexual characters in mainstream media–in books, movies, TV shows–that a fair portion of those characters are people of color, not just white people and sure as hell not just white women. Newsflash! Men can be asexual. Newsflash! People of color can be asexual.

Resources:

If you’re an asexual PoC, check out the Ace PoC Tumblr here.

Back in 2011, there was a Carnival of Aces series of posts about asexuality and race/culture/ethnicity. Read up here.

For a comprehensive list of resources on asexuality and race, please consult this amazing list.

Male Asexuality and Its Challenge to Masculinity

An asexual man, particularly a celibate and/or sex-averse asexual man, is a bit like a symbol of religion in a fiercely atheistic society: some will dismiss him as a fantastical impossibility, while others will react with varying levels of animosity, out of the sense that he is an intrusion threatening the validity of their own worldview. In one corner, we’ve got the anti-asexual haters who don’t acknowledge that asexual men even exist, which is necessary to their general dismissal of asexuality as not a real orientation but simply a new way to label an exclusively female tendency toward disinterest in sex or sexual inexperience or repression. In another corner, we’ve got the anti-asexual haters who accuse asexual men of: being too emasculated by exposure to feminism and feminist women to express their sexuality, being closeted homosexuals, being too socially inept or unattractive to obtain sex, etc. While many ignorant sexual people with little to no knowledge of asexuality often make the assumption that only women identify as asexual (which is in itself a roundabout expression of buying into the misogynistic stereotyping of women as naturally less sexual beings than men), others are downright angry at the idea of men identifying as asexual, and they’re especially angry at the idea of men having an enthusiastic aversion to sexual participation. I’ve noticed that the sexual people who feel anger toward male asexuality are usually other men.

The reason? Male asexuality is a powerful challenge to mainstream masculinity, which hasn’t changed its attitudes toward male sexuality at all, even after three waves of feminism. No matter what else has changed about how we view men and women, masculinity and femininity, no matter how men have changed since the 1960s, one thing remains utterly the same: successful masculinity depends heavily upon the male’s active sexuality.

The role of sex in masculinity performance is connected to other important markers of successful masculinity: power, money, dominance, and the approval of other men. All one has to do is pay attention to mainstream media to see that we collectively associate sex with power and money, regardless of gender but especially for men. The more money a man has, the more powerful he is, the more sexually desirable he is. The more sex he has and the more sexual partners he has, the more masculine he is, which wins the approval not only of women but of other men. Sex is also a part of male dominance: over women, naturally, but also over other men, even when the man in question is heterosexual. In male society, men can have a sense of where they rank next to each other, based on these elements of masculinity. Sexual promiscuity is something to be proud of, if you’re a man, while sexual inactivity is shameful. Men respect other men for their sexual accomplishments and disrespect men who don’t measure up to a certain sexual standard. Men compete with each other sexually: who can rack up the higher number of sex partners, who can build the best reputation as a skilled lover, who’s had sex with the most desirable women (or men), etc. They dominate one another with their sexual performance according to these parameters.

21^st century America views the male as a hypersexual being: he is supposed to value sex above almost everything, he is supposed to have sex at every given opportunity, and we sexualize all of his emotional attachments, regardless of the gender of the other person and the male’s own identity, with the exception of his love for his children. We cannot, as a culture, conceive of a man experiencing intense or passionate love for another person in a completely nonsexual manner. If a man loves someone with emotional intensity, romantic undertones or overtones, the only possible explanation the public sees is sexual desire for the loved one.

It’s worth contemplating the possibility that one reason for this modern view of men is that unconsciously, we are only comfortable with a man’s intense or tender emotion for others if sex coexists with that emotion as a buffer against the “femininity” of the emotion. A man who loves his friend too deeply or too passionately without wanting sex from that friend is being too emotional or sentimental, which is counter-masculine. But if a man loves someone deeply because he desires them sexually, now all of a sudden, we’re more comfortable with his emotion because his sexual desire is the dominant, masculine energy behind his pursuit and attachment to the beloved. (Of course, we as a society no longer conceive of passionate or intense love independent of sex, regardless of the gender of the people in question, but this inability to separate love from sex is particularly relevant to men because of the way it connects to masculinity. Women have always had a bit more room for intense nonsexual attachment, simply because women haven’t been construed as hypersexual beings in the same way as men, and their feminine image does not depend upon sexual performance. Women are perceived as more emotional than men anyway, which is an assumption unfair to both genders.)

One interesting observation I’ve made is the way that certain sex-positive feminists, who adopt their own feminism-disguised attitude of compulsory sexuality, actually (unintentionally) encourage and bolster the very patriarchal conceptualization of masculinity that includes compulsory sexuality and sexual performance among its defining features. Men don’t have the same shame attached to their sexuality that women have, thus compulsory sexuality means something different for men than it does for women. Sex-positive feminists who pursue the idea of women having a lot of sex as the ultimate expression of their empowerment, freedom, and rebellion against misogynistic control of female sexuality, without giving due respect to voluntary celibacy, fail to realize that not only are they creating a new, unhealthy paradigm of sexuality for women–one that ironically circles back around to feed into rape culture–but that they are also affirming mainstream masculinity’s compulsory sexuality tenet that plays a part in men’s misogynistic treatment of women. The kind of compulsory sexuality that feminists recognize as overtly anti-woman is the kind that demands women be sexually available to all men, at all times, for the sake of pleasing the men. The kind of compulsory sexuality sprouting from popular sex-positive feminism is actually more along the lines of masculinity’s compulsory sexuality: creating shame around not having sex, rather than having sex.

A man is never supposed to NOT be in the mood for sex. It doesn’t matter if he’s straight, gay, or bi. It also doesn’t necessarily matter who the potential sex partner is. If someone offers a man sex, he’s expected to enthusiastically want it. The idea of a man saying “no” to sex and meaning it is so unbelievable to us, as a society, that male rape victims are still often viewed as a myth. This is one of the more extreme consequences of the compulsory sexuality aspect of masculinity. A man can’t say no, without failing at masculinity in the moment. For women, the issue of saying “no” is tied into the misogyny, compulsory heterosexuality, and rape culture of our society; it is more an issue of a woman’s “no” not meaning anything or having power, when she says it. For a man, “no” isn’t even supposed to be in his vocabulary, when it comes to sex. We have men tied up in a situation where he’s supposed to want sex constantly, having sex makes him more of a man, and he’s also supposed to be incapable of emotional passion and intimacy outside of a sexual context. Saying “no” to sex, if you’re a man, is a rejection of masculinity, love, and intimacy–not just a “no” to the sex. Arguably, when women say “no” to sex, their femininity isn’t in jeopardy. We encourage women to say “no” more, because saying “no” and having that respected is something we’ve had to learn that women are entitled to do. But no one’s encouraging men to say “no” to sex when they aren’t truly enthusiastic about it, are they? No one’s even imagining that men want to say “no,” ever.

So along comes the asexual male. Maybe he’s bored by sex and apathetic. Maybe he’s repulsed by sex. He doesn’t care about it. He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t particularly want it. Maybe he really doesn’t want sex. Maybe he’s the sort of asexual that, if put into a sexual situation, he panics to some degree—repulsed. He’s a man that considers sex, this all-powerful entity that brings society to its knees, that gives men everywhere status and respect, that is both the cause and effect of successful masculinity in society’s eyes, and says, “No, thanks.”

Think of what a radical challenge to masculinity that is! If an asexual man is to have his masculinity considered valid, that forces us to recognize that masculinity is not innately dependent upon sexual performance. We remove the power of sex within masculinity, and we remove masculinity’s power to compel sex. Stripping sex of its role in masculinity would demand a truly major reconstruction, maybe even a permanent deconstruction, of masculinity as something distinct from femininity. That’s why male asexuality pisses some people off. Those people feel their own conceptualization of masculinity threatened, perhaps their own masculinity threatened. That’s also why others fail to even imagine that an asexual could be male, because not wanting sex is so anti-masculine to our sensibilities.

If the asexual man is romantic or if he’s an aromantic that still wants and likes emotional/physical intimacy, if he just wants to hold hands and cuddle and be life partners with someone (or many someones)…. what sort of image does that give him? Even the most ardent, progressively thinking feminist must admit that the idea of a man having hardcore, powerful sex compared to the idea of a man cuddling his partner fully clothed in a nonsexual situation evokes very different responses to each man’s masculinity. Who would you say is more masculine?

Sex is power, aggression, dominance, activity, energy, and sometimes even violence. We might say that sex is masculine, if we’re making our associations based on traditional definitions of masculinity and femininity. On the other hand, romantic gestures and nongenital physical affection (like hugging, cuddling, holding hands, etc) is sweet, soft, sentimental, passive, vulnerable, etc. In other words, feminine. Sexual men may do the latter without being seen as feminine but only because they’re doing it in correspondence with the more masculine act of sex. Asexual men who don’t have sex but engage in romance, romantic behavior, or physical affection are behaving in the “feminine” ways without the “masculine” act of sex to diminish the femininity of those other behaviors.

Another thing to think about is the challenge to our gendered view of rape that asexual men pose. As I said before, because we view men as hypersexed beings and view their masculinity through a lens of compulsory sexuality, we have a major tendency to dismiss or fail to notice that men can be raped and are raped. Asexual men, particularly sex-averse ace men, force us to acknowledge that men can be raped and can be raped by both men and women. That’s a thought that makes everybody uncomfortable, from the sexist men who support the hypersexualized view of their own gender to feminist women who believe that women can only be the victims of rape and men, the perpetrators.

The interdependence between sex and masculinity is an issue that must be dealt with as asexual visibility continues to rise, because men who are effectively asexual (or demisexual or gray-asexual) and especially men who fall somewhere on the sex-averse side of the spectrum can face a tremendous challenge with identifying as asexual. For a man to merely admit to himself that he doesn’t want to have sex is sort of a big deal. Simply accepting the fact that they can be asexual and that it’s a legitimate thing for them to be, will force them to confront this masculinity problem. Coming out as asexual is a whole other can of worms for men because then, they’ll be opening themselves up to the public’s criticism not just of asexuality as an orientation but of their masculinity. Furthermore, these men who, deep down, don’t really want to have sex, need to learn that they can still experience intimacy and love and romance and primary partnership while being celibate and that their desire for any or all of those things still makes sense, even though they’re asexual.

How do we conceive of an asexual man’s masculinity? Can he ever be as masculine as sexual males? How can broader society reconfigure our idea of masculinity to include asexuality and sex-aversion? What breakthroughs might result from masculinity becoming ace-friendly?

Men, Masculinity, Asexuality, and Rape

[written in Fall 2011]

I recently wrote a story that dealt with the attempted corrective rape of an asexual male by a female. I’ve never done that before—but I’m definitely writing about it again at some point in my career because it raises several significant issues. I wasn’t thinking of those issues consciously when I wrote that story but since writing it, I’ve been thinking about it as it applies to real life. I don’t want to make this a post that focuses primarily on the problem; I strive to be solution-oriented in all aspects of my life, including my personal activism.

All asexuals currently experience erasure in society, whether it be in every day life or in (the lack of) media portrayals, etc. But I’m going to suggest that if you were to subdivide asexuals, asexual males experience a particularly strong level of erasure because of their maleness. Or, if not stronger than erasure experienced by female asexuals, it is an erasure much more intertwined with their gender.

In Western Civilization, to be human is to be sexual. Furthermore, to be male is to be sexual. Femininity has undergone radical evolution throughout the 20th century and now into the 21st. Masculinity has been evolving too but not anywhere near as emphatically; sexual prowess and promiscuity remains two of the qualifying factors of successful masculinity regardless of orientation. As far as mainstream America is concerned, if you’re a male virgin, you’re a loser. You’re not good enough to get any. You’ve failed at masculinity.

If you take a gander at what very few portrayals of sexually inactive males have appeared in American media within the last 10 years, you’ll notice that the stereotype is rather specific: the virgin male is socially inept or awkward, physically unattractive, often stupid or oblivious, the story’s comic relief, and generally unsuccessful or at least unremarkable in all areas of his life. More importantly, he is often not a virgin because he WANTS to be; he’s a virgin or sexually inexperienced because he’s too much of a loser for anyone to feel attracted to him. If there were openly asexual male characters on TV or in movies, I reckon they would be painted in much the same way (although to be asexual and to be a virgin are not the same thing and do not always correspond). This male character only reaches salvation when he has sex and is subsequently reborn into a new, improved man.

This is one of the primary reasons why asexual men appear to be in hiding, so to speak. There has been an ongoing discussion over at AVEN about whether there are less asexual males than females and the general consensus seems to be that the numbers are most likely within range of each other…. but there are fewer males openly identifying themselves as asexual and discussing it online and in real life too. Why? Because there is far more pressure on males—thousands and thousands of years worth of cross-cultural pressure—to be highly sexed beings, to demonstrate, earn, and prove their masculinity through sexual performance. Traditional patriarchal masculinity may be considered outdated by Western civilization and yet the “New Man” is no less required to be highly sexual than his rejected patriarchal predecessor.

I think what’s important to remember is that if a man is asexual, he is no less obliged or unconcerned with the rules of masculinity his culture has set for him than sexual men are. An asexual man is not magically insensitive to society’s judgment of his masculinity and manhood just because he is asexual. Therefore, if and when a man comes to the conclusion that he is an asexual, he has far more reason to hide that identity than to reveal it. Asexual women deal with various forms of rejection and denial of their identity when they come out, and they don’t have to worry about their womanhood being attacked for it with nearly the same aggression or motivation as men face. A man is subject to humiliation and rejection by his male friends, his family members, his co-workers, and any potential romantic partners he might seek out if those romantic partners happen to be sexual people. No one will ever tell me—a female-bodied person who allows the world to see me as female—that I’m not “a real woman” for being disinterested and unwilling to participate in sex. But if I were a man? You can be sure that the whole world would jump on the chance to make fun of me, criticize me, pathologize me, etc…. not just in the context of being an asexual PERSON but more specifically, in the context of being an asexual MAN.

Recently, with this heated fight going on over the appropriateness of asexuals identifying as queer, the realities of real-world asexual oppression have been brought up over and over and that did have something to do with me writing my story. Corrective rape is a subject that has been only a little discussed in asexual online circles and I would actually rather avoid reading about it or getting too involved because it’s an uncomfortable thought for me. But it happens. That must be acknowledged. It happens and it is no less unacceptable when it happens to an asexual person than when it happens to an LGBTQ person.

I have not yet heard testimony from an asexual man who has been victimized this way—I hope I never do, although I won’t be surprised if eventually some of them come out of the woodwork—but now that I’ve written that story, I realize it is more than possible for this crime to happen to a man. Are women more likely to experience it? General rape statistics say yes. But I happen to have an amateur history of studying and following men’s issues and rape was one thing I opened my eyes to back in high school. I believe that the current stat we have on record in America is 1 million male victims of sexual assault a year. That may or may not be accurate, based on the fact that men are even less likely than women to report being sexually victimized, once again because of issues connected with masculinity.

I acknowledge that most men who are raped have a male assailant, based on the information we have. However, it IS possible for a man to be raped by a woman, regardless of his sexual orientation. In my story, the asexual male character is attacked by a woman and that, I felt, was a creative choice I had to make because when you begin to add the element of asexuality into your consideration of sexual assault, a victim being male rather than female becomes more plausible.

I was once in love with an asexual man. We were in a long-distance romantic relationship. He was a virgin when we started talking, happily a virgin, and to make a long story short, he ended up being coerced into sex by a close female friend of his multiple times. The first time may have been rape. He never used that word when telling me about it, but the way he described it sure sounds like rape to me, regardless of the fact that he didn’t physically push her away. The way he described it, the woman initiated the sexual contact and he was in so much shock, he couldn’t do much of anything except sit there and let her have her way. The times after that were not rape, per se, but they could probably qualify as being situations of dubious consent, certainly coercion. He allowed it to happen because he cared about the woman and valued her friendship and feared that rejecting her sexual advances would mean losing her as a friend. They never had a conversation where they agreed to have sex. She assumed he was heterosexual because he hadn’t come out to her and because they were close at the time and he demonstrated affection for her. (/consequences of asexual erasure) Eventually, he sat his friend down and explained to her that he did not want to have sex with her (because he’s an asexual and also, at the time, he was in a romantic relationship with me). She was offended, predictably, and ultimately the friendship faded.

I remember once, I mentioned this whole story—my relationship with the man and this sexual scenario he found himself in—to another male. The boy I told this to is heterosexual and when I described it to him, he basically said to me: “Are you SURE your friend didn’t want it? Are you SURE he’s asexual?”

Now, you have to admit: if my asexual friend were female, that kind of reaction would’ve been a lot less likely. Why? Because if a woman says she was raped, regardless of her orientation, she is far more likely to be believed because our society accepts that the rape of women is real, that women can say “no” to sex and MEAN it.

But the concept of a MAN not wanting sex—furthermore, the concept of a man not wanting sex with a WOMAN—is something that many people out there are unwilling to buy. Our cultural views of men are so skewed that we unconsciously believe them to be so hyper-sexed that they’ll say yes to anyone, at any time, regardless of the circumstances. And if they say “no,” they don’t mean it. If they say “no” to a woman, they must be gay. If they say “no,” they’re losers.

Furthermore, male rape victims pose some kind of a twisted threat to institutionalized masculinity. I’m not clear on how or why that is, but it’s the only explanation I can come up with for why a male rape victim would experience ridicule, denial, or aggression when coming forward with his story, rather than compassion.

If a man says he was raped by a woman, we laugh it off and say it’s impossible because how could a real man NOT want to have sex with a woman? And if he REALLY didn’t want to do it, why didn’t he just physically stop her or walk away? We’re really supposed to believe that a full-grown man let a WOMAN physically overpower him? He must be one weak, pathetic “man,” then.

If a man says he was raped by another man, we’ll believe him but that doesn’t make it any better, considering how taboo it is. A male raped by another male has been emasculated in the eyes of his society twice over: first for succumbing to the physical force of another man, second for being forced into the homosexual act of bottoming.

No matter the gender of his rapist, there is this disgusting misconception out there that if a man gets an erection, that means he wants the sex. Let me make myself real fucking clear right now: an erection can sometimes happen as an involuntary physical response to physical stimulation and NOT have anything to do with a man’s sexual desire or attraction to the other person. Some male rape victims had erections during their assaults. Some even had orgasms. That does not mean they consented to the sex. That does not magically make that assault something other than rape. It isn’t the male victim’s fault if he had an erection or an orgasm; he cannot control the physical responses of his body, no matter if his mental responses are contradictory.

I look back on the reaction of that straight guy and marvel at how his mind-blowing insensitivity and fucked up point of view somehow escaped me at the time. It’s real damn clear now—and that’s why I wanted to share it with you.

Having sex doesn’t make you less asexual. Getting raped sure as hell doesn’t change your asexuality. And if a MAN says he doesn’t want to have sex, then I think it fucking means he doesn’t want to have sex. He isn’t bluffing or teasing or flirting or being coy or joking—and if you force yourself on him, you’re a rapist. Male or female, you’re a rapist. If the man if straight, gay, bi, pan, or asexual, you’re a rapist. Period.

As for masculinity: asexual men exist and they are not less masculine because of their asexuality and/or their virginity. They’re also not all the Hollywood image of a sexually inexperienced/disinterested man: they’re just as likely to be intelligent, successful, attractive, and socially graceful individuals as their sexual fellows are. They don’t need to be pitied or guided into sexual salvation. They haven’t failed at masculinity. And they aren’t going to be magically converted into Western civilization’s ideal Hyper-Sexed Man by having consensual sex or getting raped.

Being a man and successful at masculinity has nothing to do with your sex life. You’re a man because you say you are one. You don’t have anything to prove. Whether you’re a good one or a bad one is a different matter. But ultimately, your masculinity is not a thing to be won or lost. It just is. No matter what kind of a man you are and certainly regardless of your sex life.

So what do we need?

We need positive portrayals of asexual men and virgin men and celibate men in mainstream media.

We need to accept that masculinity is completely and totally separate from a male’s sexuality.

We need to acknowledge that all males, sexual or asexual, have the right and the capability to say “No” to sex at any time.

We need to show men respect regardless of their sexuality and their sex lives, in real life AND in the media.

We need to acknowledge that men can be victims of sexual assault and we need to take it seriously.

We need to accept asexual men as being the equals of sexual men.

We need, as a society, to acknowledge and accept that men deserve love/respect/companionship regardless of their sexuality and their sexual activity. Asexual men deserve love just as much as sexual men do.

We need to respect virginity, celibacy, and abstinence as valid choices that men can make for whatever reasons they see fit and know that those choices have no impact whatsoever on their masculinity.