Psychology & Sexuality, 2013

Vol. 4, No. 2, 179192, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2013.774166

Asexuality: from pathology to identity and beyond

Randi Gressgrd*
Centre for Womens and Gender Research (SKOK), University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
(Received July 2011; final version received January 2012)
This article draws attention to the constitutive mechanisms of asexual identity. It identifies a shift in expert discourse: a move away from pathology towards recognition of
asexual identity. While this discursive shift, propelled by recent research in psychology
and sexology, could pave the way for the inclusion of asexuals in public culture, it also
reaffirms dominant terms and formations pertaining to sexuality and intimacy. The article argues that the discursive formation of a new asexual identity takes place through a
process of objectification and subjectification/subjection at the interface between expert
disciplines and activism. The recognition of identity is constitutive of subjects that are
particularly suitable for self-regulation within the parameters of (neo)liberal citizenship. Yet, at the same time, the discursive shift also makes room for critical intervention
akin to queer critique of naturalised gender and sexuality norms. The recognition of
asexual identity could serve to destabilise the sexual regime (of truth) that privileges
sexual relationships against other affiliations and grants sexual-biological relationships
a status as primary in the formation of family and kinship relations. The article concludes that asexual identity encourages us to imagine other pathways of affiliation and
other concepts of personhood, beyond the tenets of liberal humanism gesturing instead
towards new configurations of the human and new meanings of sexual citizenship.
Keywords: asexual identity; psychology and sexology; power/knowledge; subject
formation; queer intervention; citizenship

From pathology to identity

In the past few years, an asexual movement has developed on the Internet. The first and
most popular online page, Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN, 2012), was
founded in 2001 by David Jay. Ten years later, AVEN has thousands of members from all
over the world, with satellite communities in various languages. The movements area of
impact, however, seems to be mainly in western liberal democracies, which, in the wake
of the sexual revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century, have established a set
of sexual citizenship rights aimed at the inclusion of sexual minorities in public culture.
Accordingly, AVEN has formulated two distinct goals for its activities: (1) creating public
acceptance and discussion of asexuality and (2) facilitating the growth of an asexual community. The name of the network signals, perhaps more than anything else, the importance
of visibility and consciousness-raising with regard to recognition of asexual identity.1
More recently, asexuality has also become the object of research in disciplines such
as psychology and sexology.2 Most of these studies, although still very few, use AVEN as
*Email: Randi.Gressgard@skok.uib.no
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a channel of information; in return, researchers contribute to AVENs resource archive.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that most academic studies on asexuality converge with
AVENs overall objective: to move away from the pathologisation of asexuality towards
a recognition of asexuality as a distinct sexual identity. For instance, Nicole Prause and
Cynthia A. Graham (2007) take issue with the common clinical view that asexuality should
be psychiatrically diagnosed.3 If personal distress is primarily due to conflict with social
expectations or worry that a physical problem exists, they argue, then a psychiatric diagnosis implying abnormality may exacerbate concerns in an asexual individual (Prause &
Graham, 2007, p. 353).
As I argue in what follows, however, the discursive formation of a new asexual identity
implies sedimentation of social norms and thus serves an important consolidating function
in society. The recognition of identity is constitutive of subjects that are particularly suitable for self-regulation within the parameters of (neo)liberal citizenship. Yet, at the same
time, asexual identity has the potential to revitalise queer critique of naturalised gender
and sexuality norms in so far as it destabilises the sexual regime (of truth) that privileges
sexual relationships vis--vis other affiliations and grants sexual-biological relationships a
status as primary in the formation of family and kinship relations. In conclusion, I argue
that asexuality gestures towards new configurations of the human and new meanings of
sexual citizenship, beyond the tenets of liberal humanism.
Knowledge production and identity formation
According to AVEN, an asexual is someone who does not experience sexual attraction:
Unlike celibacy, which people choose, asexuality is an intrinsic part of who we are.4
This definition underscores AVENs view that asexuality is a distinct, authentic sexual
orientation or identity. Coming from gender and queer studies in the social sciences and
humanities, my perspective on sexual identity, asexual identity in particular, is somewhat
different. I take as my point of departure the feminist and queer critique of the psychological distinction between gender, as referring to self-conception and behaviour, and sex,
as referring to anatomy and physiology. The distinction between sex and gender, which
was characteristic of so-called second-wave feminism from the 1970s and 1980s, tends to
cast biology as destiny. As Judith Butler and other critics have pointed out, the sex/gender
divide might disavow biological determinism, but it inevitably perpetuates a biological
essentialist view on sexed bodies. In her groundbreaking book Gender Trouble, Butler
(1999/1990) calls into question the underlying distinction between nature and culture
on which this theorising hinges. She writes: Originally intended to dispute the biologyis-destiny formulation, the distinction between sex and gender serves the argument that
whatever biological intractability sex appears to have, gender is culturally constructed:
hence, gender is neither the causal result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex (Butler,
1999/1990, pp. 910). But what if the construct called sex established as pre-discursive
is as culturally constructed as gender? In Bodies That Matter, Butler (1993, p. 10) highlights the materialising effect of social norms, arguing that there is no reference to a pure
body that is not at the same time a further formation of that body. But her disavowal of
biological essentialism should not be taken to imply that anatomy and physiology do not
matter. Butlers critical remark is of an altogether different character; it suggests that there
is no easy way to distinguish between what is materially true and what is culturally true
about a sexed body (cf. Butler, 2004, p. 87). My intention is thus not to provide a more adequate definition of asexual identity and contribute to the accumulation of expert knowledge
on asexual reality. Rather, I intend to show how asexuality is constituted as a true or real

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sexual orientation a distinct sexual identity in contemporary psychology and sexology

research. I take this expert knowledge to be constitutive of subjectivity and identity insofar
as professional know-how does not simply describe and explain reality, but constructs representations of subjects and objects in their definitions of problems and in their ordering
of things and persons under certain labels, such as the identity category asexuality (see,
e.g., Rose, 1999a).5
Sexual orientation as subjective sexual attraction
In his paper Toward a Conceptual Understanding of Asexuality, Anthony Bogaert (2006,
p. 244) contests clinical discourses that equate asexuality and mental disorders. Drawing a
parallel with gays and lesbians, he points out that homosexuals may have elevated health
concerns and distress about their sexual inclinations, without the implication that homosexuality in general is viewed as pathological from a modern medical or psychological
perspective. Thus, even if an elevated level of distress or other mental health issues occurs
in asexual people, this should not be used to pathologize all asexual people or asexuality
in general (Bogaert, 2006, pp. 247248). Referring to AVEN, Bogaert suggests instead
that the academic and clinical communities need to be sensitive to people who choose to
identify with the term asexuality, seeing it as a powerful part of self-expression (Bogaert,
2006, p. 247; see also Brotto et al., 2008; Brotto & Yule, 2011). Apparently, this statement
signals a shift in discourse from pathology to identity, which could work to gain recognition and facilitate the inclusion of asexuality in public culture. However, as I demonstrate
below, the new discourse seems to rest on an essentialist/constructionist bifurcation that
echoes the sex/gender divide.
Bogaert poses the question whether it is useful to categorise people with a lifelong lack
of sexual attraction as having a unique (asexual) sexual orientation. As long as there is
no eroticism towards anyone or anything, he argues, then a unique sexual orientation category asexuality is required for these individuals (Bogaert, 2006, p. 245). In defining
sexual orientation as ones subjective sexual attraction to the sex of others, he depicts subjective sexual attraction as the psychological core of sexual orientation (i.e. whether one has
eroticism and/or sexual fantasy directed towards others) (Bogaert, 2006, p. 242). Bogaert
makes clear that this is a rather narrow definition of sexual orientation.6 Nevertheless, he is
of the opinion that subjective sexual attraction best captures the psychology of sexual orientation (e.g., the study of the mind, including perceptions), maintaining that a subjective
definition of sexual orientation may be more linked to actual sexual behaviour than physiological arousal/attraction (Bogaert, 2006, p. 244). For that reason, Bogaert takes issue with
biological determinism: [A]assuming that many cases of asexuality have an inherently
developed sexual attraction system (e.g. low testosterone; high inhibition) is problematic.
We simply do not know enough about either low desire issues or sexual orientation development to draw these conclusions (Bogaert, 2006, p. 246). Even if an essentialist position
is correct, he goes on to argue, a biological predisposition is not the same as an actual
sexual orientation (Bogaert, 2006, pp. 247248).
Clearly, Bogaert thinks there is more to sexual orientation than biology, and, yet, his
argument in favour of a distinct asexual identity complements and somehow softens
biological determinism rather than profoundly questioning its essentialist assumptions.
The new discourse seems to perpetuate an essentialist view in the same way as physiological sex is cast as an objective fact to which subjective gender identity can be
added. Moreover, Bogaert configures physiological sexual attraction (arousal) and subjective sexual attraction (desire) as discrete categories that can be analysed separately

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and additively unified within a system or a totality. In this respect, his methodology
aimed at discovering the truth of (a)sexuality invokes a naturalist-objectivist notion of
knowledge. For instance, his statement that we simply do not know enough about either
low desire issues or sexual orientation development to draw these conclusions suggests
that researchers are capable of discovering the truth of sexual orientation, provided that
their analytical models and tools are adequately developed. It is, it seems, by not compromising the naturalist-objectivist scientific paradigm that Bogaert manages to establish
subjective sexual attraction as a discrete, psychological category and to endow asexuality
with a status as an actual sexual orientation an important part of peoples self-expression
(to which the academic and clinical communities need to be sensitive). Other studies are
even more explicit when it comes to consolidating the bifurcation of biological essentialism
and constructionism, unifying the two within a composite approach to asexuality.

Expert knowledge and the truth of asexuality

One recent contribution to asexuality research that advocates a composite approach is the
paper Patterns of Asexuality in the United States by Dudley L. Poston Jr. and Amanda K.
Baumle (2010). The authors study asexuality in terms of three features of sexuality ones
behaviour, ones desire and ones self-identification categorising persons as asexual on
the basis of any combination of these three dimensions. In their logistic regression analysis which focuses on asexuals and sexuals defined separately on the basis of identification,
attraction and behaviour Poston Jr. and Baumle (2010, p. 526) observe that the characteristics of asexuals versus sexuals differ depending on the asexuality dimension used.7 In
conclusion, they note that this observation provides a more encompassing understanding
of the prevalence of asexuality, and it emphasizes the importance of a social constructionist approach (Poston Jr. & Baumle, 2010, p. 527). Like Bogaert, they are sceptical of
a biological essentialist view on sexuality:
Founded in biology, the essentialist view holds that with regard to gay men and lesbians, for
example, there is an essential characteristic common to all gay people that is distinct and separate from heterosexual people. This common feature or essence is thought to be a biological
or psychological trait that establishes a persons inclusion into one of the two categories of gay
or heterosexual . . . the essentialist view thus assumes the existence of a binary categorization
of humans. (Poston Jr. & Baumle, 2010, p. 511)

The authors make a distinction between essentialism and social contructionism, referring
for example to Michel Foucaults (1990) constructionist view on sexuality. Contrary to biological essentialism, they argue, a social constructionist view defies the notion of binary
categories; from a constructionist perspective, sexual orientation exists along a continuum, with varying degrees of homosexuality/heterosexuality. Poston Jr. and Baumle (2010,
pp. 511512) also make it clear that concepts, definitions and practices of sexuality vary
across contexts and cultures. They hold that these constructionist arguments are just as
applicable to studies of asexuality as the biological view, maintaining that a combination
of the two positions is both possible and necessary to understand and explain asexuality.
When we take a closer look at their deployment of the concept of constructionism, however, it becomes evident that it has acquired a specific psychological meaning. The scope
of constructionism is limited to the analysis of the subjective dimension of asexuality
that is, asexuality as self-identification whereas the other two dimensions, behaviour and
desire/attraction, are configured as objective categories that do not warrant constructionist

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scrutiny. Like Bogaert, Poston Jr. and Baumle seem to invoke a notion of exhaustive
knowledge in their approach to sexuality, as indicated by their assertion that a composite
approach provides a more encompassing understanding of the prevalence of asexuality
(2010, p. 527). What they seem to be saying is that a composite methodology is suitable for
mapping the complex truth of asexuality. Given this proposition, the attendant statement
that [t]his emphasises the importance of a social constructionist approach (Poston Jr. &
Baumle, 2010, p. 527) should be understood within a naturalist-objectivist paradigm, which
is incompatible with Foucaults approach to sexuality (despite the researchers endorsement of his view when explaining constructionism). In order to substantiate the latter
argument and clarify my analytical approach to sexual identity formation, I shall proceed to
elaborate on the relation between modern subject formation and sexual identity formation,
based on Foucaults concepts of objectification and subjectification/subjection.
Objectification and subjectification/subjectivation
In the three-volume genealogical study The History of Sexuality, Foucault is concerned
with the complex mechanisms that engendered and continue to foster what he terms the
secular prescription: there [in sex] is where the truth is; go see if you can uncover it . . .
this great chase after the truth of sex, the truth in sex (1990, p. 79). One of Foucaults
basic assumptions is that subject formation, sexual identity formation in particular, is inextricably linked to games of truth (defined by their own, peculiar rules of true and false
statements). He takes the question of the relationship between the subject and truth as the
guiding thread for his analyses, focusing on various games of truth in which the subject is
posited as an object of possible knowledge. He explains: it is a matter not of ascertaining
how a psychological knowledge was constituted in the course of history but of discovering how various truth games were formed through which the subject became an object of
knowledge (2000/1984, p. 460).
Within the same general project the history of subjectivity Foucault draws attention to the constitution of the subject as an object for herself or himself. Analytically, this
dynamic can be grasped in terms of objectification or objectivation of individuals on
the one hand, and subjectification (assujettissement) or subjectivation (subjectivation)
of individuals on the other (see, e.g., Foucault, 1991, 1992, 2000/1984). According to Alan
Rosenberg and Alan Milchman (2009), subjectification and subjectivation can be perceived
as two related but different modes of subject formation. While subjectification refers to the
way in which people are governed by others (e.g. researchers, therapists, etc.) into subjects
through apparatuses of power/knowledge through the power of truth subjectivation
refers to the ways that people govern themselves into subjects on the basis of knowledge
what they take to be the truth. Foucault makes clear that the theme of a history of sexuality is a matter of analysing sexuality as a historically singular mode of experience in
which the subject is objectified for himself [sic] and for others . . . (2000/1984, p. 463).
It is important to note, as do Rosenberg and Milchman (2009), that whereas the process
of subjectification is based on objectification/objectivation8 of people in accordance with
prevailing power/knowledge apparatuses, the process of subjectivation might involve selfobjectification but could also be based on resistance to established truth/knowledge. The
latter observation suggests that knowledge is neither exhaustive nor deterministic.
How can this conceptual repertoire of objectification and subjectification/
subjectivation shed light on the interchange of expert knowledge and asexual identify formation? We have seen how contemporary research in psychology and sexology is oriented
towards the truth of asexuality, and we have seen that there is a corresponding will among

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self-identified asexuals (affiliated with AVEN) to become experts of themselves by way

of discovering the truth about themselves the truth of ones asexual identity (cf. Rose,
2008, p. 215). The former process can be designated as subjectification, while the latter
signifies subjectivation in terms of self-objectification. However, in defying the possibility
of exhaustive knowledge, my approach to sexual identity also suggests that asexual subject formation could involve subjectivation in terms of critical intervention. I shall discuss
the critical potential of asexual identity towards the end of the article, but in order to provide a broader analytical framework for addressing the shift from pathology to identity
and beyond, I shall first draw attention to the power/knowledge nexus that gave rise to the
manufacturing of pathological subjectivity in the history of sexuality, including the frigid
wife and the impotent husband.
Pathological asexuals in the history of sexuality
In Volume One of The History of Sexuality, Foucault (1990) carries out a critical examination of the modern knowledge regime of sexuality, under the eloquent subtitle The
Will to Knowledge. From the eighteenth century onwards, Foucault contends, western
societies created and deployed a new apparatus whose reason for being was not in its
own reproduction by means of rules/laws defining the licit and the illicit but, rather, in
proliferating, innovating, annexing, creating, and penetrating bodies in an increasingly
detailed way, and in controlling populations in an increasingly comprehensive way (1990,
p. 107). To emphasise this shift from predominantly juridical power to normalising power,
Foucault draws a distinction between what he designates as deployment of alliance and
deployment of sexuality. While the deployment of alliance denotes a system of marriage,
fixation and development of kinship ties through law-governed and economically motivated
reproduction of relations (and wealth), the deployment of sexuality is concerned with the
sensation of the body, the quality of pleasures and the nature of impressions (Foucault,
1990, p. 106). The deployment of sexuality did not completely supplant the deployment
of alliance, however, owing to the fact that the conjugal family became the link between
sexuality and alliance: In the family, parents and relatives became the chief agents of
a deployment of sexuality which drew its outside support from doctors, educators, and
later psychiatrists, and which began by competing with the relations of alliance but soon
psychologized or psychiatrized the latter (Foucault, 1990, p. 110).
The new sexual regime which saturated the family with sexual desire manufactured a number of psychologised personages, such as the frigid wife and the impotent
husband. According to Foucault (1990, p. 110), these pathological identities were the
combined figures of an alliance gone bad and an abnormal sexuality. Creating and caring for ones own sexuality associated with strength, vigour, health and life became
obligatory in a society in which sex was the new blood (see ibid., pp. 124125). This
was of course a compulsory heterosexuality, but above all, it was a compulsory sexuality
prompted by the new psy disciplines and anchored in the family, which, according to
Nikolas Rose (2008, p. 208), was to be instrumentalised as a social machine, implanting
the techniques of responsible citizenship under the tutelage of experts (see also Foucault,
1990, p. 208).
The divide between sexual and non-sexual relationships (on which the various sexual
classifications hinge) was firmly established by the deployment of sexuality and permanently supported by the family.9 Inasmuch as any human relation and any situation were
compartmentalised as either sexual or non-sexual, lack of sexual desire and sexual practice constituted a destabilising element in the social fabric.10 However, as long as expert

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knowledge served to pathologise the subjects who did not fit with the norms of sexuality, the abnormal personages could be treated as disturbed rather than really disturbing
elements in society. The negative identity formation by way of objectification and subjectification served a regulating function that rendered the non-normative subjects inferior and,
in a sense, less than human.
As already mentioned, this kind of clinical pathologisation of asexual subjects has
eventually given way to expert knowledge that (re)configures asexuality in accord with
liberal-humanist values. The power of truth is no less important for subject formation
than it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but the rules regarding true and
false statements have changed. The contemporary humanisation of asexuals can be
regarded as a process of subjectification whereby asexual subjectivity becomes eligible
for recognition. Seen from this vantage point, it could be argued that recognition of identity implies sedimentation of social norms and thus serves an important consolidating
function in society. This is not merely a formal-technical argument, which suggests that
recognition be it sexual, cultural or other requires incorporation into a social body.
My argument is more substantial, suggesting that the politics of recognition is constitutive of subjects whose combination of freedom to self-realisation (in accordance with
notions of truth/authenticity) and self-determination (in accordance with notions of personal autonomy) makes them particularly suitable for self-regulation within the parameters
of (neo)liberal citizenship.
In contrast to historical forms of disciplinary and normalising power relations,
which gave rise to the manufacture of pathological subjectivities, todays liberaldemocratic power/knowledge apparatuses do not manufacture subjects according to
a normal/abnormal binary division, but promote instead liberal freedom and liberalhumanist tolerance of identitarian difference. Wendy Brown (2006, p. 27) remarks that
tolerance aims at managing a dangerous, foreign, toxic, or threatening difference from an
entity that also demands to be incorporated, and the limits of tolerance are determined
by how much of this toxicity can be accommodated without destroying the object, value,
claim, or body (p. 27). The crux of the matter is that identitarian difference, in order to be
eligible for tolerance, must be converted into privatised choice so as to be made compatible
with personal autonomy (see Brown, 2006, pp. 152, 154, 171).
In todays liberal-democratic societies, there exists a set of contradictory but compatible concepts of freedom pertaining to identity. On the one hand, identity is associated
with freedom to express oneself in accordance with notions of truth or essence, while on
the other, identity is associated with self-determination in accordance with notions of personal autonomy. For instance, AVENs definition of sexual identity as an intrinsic part
of who we are conjures up notions of truth or essence, while at the same time signalling
an identity-political investment in the right to self-determination, a freedom to act without restraint. In many ways, this juxtaposition of self-expression and self-determination is
related to the subjectivity-constitutive combinations of biological essentialism and psychological constructionism, sex and gender, etc., which are operative in contemporary research
on asexuality.
It would perhaps be misleading to suggest that expert knowledge aims to convert
biologically defined sexual orientation into subjective choice (in order to make the difference eligible for tolerance). But sexual identity is certainly made compatible with
individual autonomy when, for one thing, biology is made less deterministic and, secondly,
when a subjective identity dimension is added to the biological nexus of physiology and
anatomy. Asexuals are shaped as free to exercise self-determination on the basis of what
they take to be the truth of their sexuality. Recalling the above argument, this is of course

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an obligatory, regulated freedom, which in its composite character secures the selfregulating capacities of subjects. Individuals are, in the words of Rose, expected to fulfil
themselves within a variety of micro-moral domains or communities families, workplaces, schools, leisure associations, neighbourhoods . . . outside the formal control of the
public powers (2008, p. 214; cf. Rose, 1999b). However, insofar as knowledge is neither exhaustive nor deterministic, subjection might also involve practices of resistance that,
instead of asking who am I?, allow subjects to question self-governing power/knowledge.
This could be perceived as a critical intervention in terms of de-subjectification and, in a
certain sense, de-humanisation by way of reconfigurations of the human.
Recognition of identity and queer intervention
The focus on asexual intervention is in line with Kristin Scherrers (2008, p. 621) point
that individuals who identify themselves as asexual challenge the notion of an ubiquitous
human sexuality the alleged universal experience of sexual attraction and sexual desire.
It also resonates with the argument put forward by Karli J. Cerankowski and Megan Milks
(2010, p. 656) that asexuality challenges many current assumptions about gender and sexuality, such as pro-sex feminists privileging of transgressive female sexualities against
repressive or anti-sex sexualities. In posing the question Is asexuality queer? they allude
to the contingency of the term queer, suggesting that the queer category may include
asexual identity (Cerankowski & Milks, 2010, p. 660; cf. Butler, 1993, p. 230). Still, they
raise some doubts about the happy reception of asexuals within the sexualised queer movement to which the asexual seems almost to pose a threat. As they see it, the question arises
as to whether the asexual movement as a visible political entity requires that the queer
movement rethink its equivalence of radical sex with radical politics or, even more, its
definition of what constitutes radical sex (Cerankowski & Milks, 2010, p. 662). In conclusion, Cerankowski and Milks (2010) remark that they more so raise questions here than
provide answers.
To follow up on these questions about the contact points between asexuality and
queer, I would argue that rather than magnifying the disjuncture between the two, it might
prove more prudent to propose that asexuality could potentially revitalise queer critique of
naturalised gender and sexual identities and hetero-normativity. Notwithstanding its consolidating effects, asexuals struggle for recognition has the potential to foreground the
underlying assumptions about human sexuality on which compulsory heterosexuality as
well as queer identities hinge. Asexual identity claims could destabilise both the heterosexual matrix and the idea of a ubiquitous human sexuality simultaneously. In this regard,
asexuality might take queer critique one step further so as to rethink sexuality for its positivist assumptions, to borrow a phrase from David Eng, Judith Halberstam and Jos Muos
(2005, p. 3).
In Gender Trouble, Butler (1999/1990) sets out to question the normative continuity
of sex, gender and desire the coherence or unity that makes gender intelligible within
the regime of sexuality. At the same time, there seems to be a conceptual slippage between
desire, sexual experience and sexual practice in Butlers own work, which allows little
room for desire beyond sexual attraction. While being critical of the anthropological universalist conceit that there might be a truth of sex, her denaturalisation of heterosexual
norms seems unwittingly to invoke the truth of pervasive sexual desire, leaving the notion
of innate human sexuality largely unchallenged.11 It can be argued that the sexual register could be expanded to include an infinite variety of sexual desires and affiliations, but
as long as such theorising rests on the basic distinction between sexual and non-sexual, it
seems to disclose the possibility of asexual sexual orientation. The same probably applies

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to Foucaults analytical framework. This does not mean, however, that neither Foucaults
nor Butlers perspective is inappropriate for analysing asexual identity formation. In the
previous sections I have used Foucaults conceptual repertoire to shed light on asexual
identity formation at the juncture of activism and expert knowledge, and in the following I
will offer a reading of Butler against Butler, as it were, arguing that the humanist notion of
personhood is called into question by the recent emergence of asexual identities in public
culture:
Inasmuch as identity is assured through the stabilizing concepts of sex, gender, and sexuality,
the very notion of the person is called into question by the cultural emergence of those
incoherent or discontinuous gendered beings who appear to be persons but who fail to
conform to the gendered norms of cultural intelligibility by which persons are defined. (Butler,
1999/1990, p. 23)

In keeping with Butlers line of argument, the call for recognition of asexual identity could
be conceived as a political struggle aimed at positing new figures of the intelligibly human
so as to envision personhood anew:
If we struggle for rights, we are not simply struggling for rights that attach to my person, but
we are struggling to be conceived as persons. And there is a difference between the former
and the latter. If we are struggling for rights that attach, or should attach, to my personhood,
then we assume that personhood is already constituted. But if we are struggling not only to be
conceived as persons, but to create a social transformation of the very meaning of personhood,
then the assertion of rights becomes a way of intervening into the social and political process
by which the human is articulated. (Butler, 2004, pp. 3233)

To the extent that the emergence of asexual beings intervenes into the social and political
processes by which universal human sexuality is articulated, it might forge a social transformation of the meaning of personhood. However, such transformation does not come about
by criticising the validity, the explanatory force and/or the efficiency of a regime of truth
(in order to improve it). Commenting on Foucaults (2007) lecture What Is Critique?,
Butler (2000a, p. 5) holds that critique will be that perspective on established and ordering ways of knowing which is not immediately assimilated into that ordering function.
In line with Foucault, she conceives of critique as a practice that exposes the limits of the
epistemological horizon, positing that the relation will be critical in the sense that it will
not comply with a given category, but rather constitute an interrogatory relation to the field
of categorization itself (Butler, 2000a, p. 7).
Given that power/knowledge apparatuses are constitutive of subjectivity, the subject
who questions the established and ordering ways of knowing risks suspending ones own
ontological ground, not simply by losing the freedom to self-determination and selfexpression within the system but, more profoundly, by risking ones very formation as
a subject as a person. Contrary to being degraded to less than human within the established system of knowledge, the subject who practises critique interrogates the limits to
what it can be and, concomitantly, follows the systems breaking points (see Butler,
2000a, pp. 1415). According to Butler, de-subjectivation emerges at the moment in which
the regime of truth exposes its limits, and allows one to pose the question anew: who will
be a subject here, and who will count as a person (2000a, p. 20)? As for asexuality, I would
argue that the prevailing notion of the human as an innate sexual being is, in the struggle
for recognition of asexual identity, inhumanly disrupted and this disruption opens up
the possibility for re-imagining the human in queer theory and politics.

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There is an urgent need for radicalising queer epistemologies at a time when queer
sexualities and politics are becoming increasingly instrumentalised and commodified in
accord with (neo)liberal values (cf. Duggan, 2003; Eng, 2010; Halberstam, 2005; Puar,
2008). Inasmuch as asexuality brings about re-articulations of the relation between sex
and politics as well as queer conceptions of (what constitutes radical) sex, asexuality
could possibly install something new a productive heterogeneity in the representational
system of sexuality. But this does not happen automatically. Asexual critical intervention would require putting theoretical and political effort into undermining, among other
things, the privileged status of sexual and biological relationships in the formation of family and kinship (cf. Chambers & Carver, 2008, p. 142). As long as asexuals, in processes
of (de-)subjectivation, reactivate the boundaries between sexual and non-sexual, thereby
interrogating the limits to what it can be, then the emergence of an asexual identity could
indeed work to disclose the potential for different constructions.
My argument suggests that the articulation of asexual orientation as a matter for public
concern is a disturbing element in the fabric of society. The real disturbance, however,
has less to do with the substantive content of asexual identity claims than with the fact
that the articulation of asexual identity confronts you with something you want to know
but are afraid to ask, to paraphrase Woody Allen: how to firmly draw the line between
physical affection and sexual interaction; sexual and non-sexual intimacy; sexual and nonsexual desires; friends and lovers/beloved; primary and secondary relationships, etc.?12 If
asexuality is queer, it is not by virtue of being yet another transgressive, radical sexuality
but by decentring the human from sexuality and, in effect, breaking with idealised notions
of intimacy, family and kinship (cf. Eng, 2010, pp. 30, 36). Asexuality is queer insofar as it
serves to destabilise the sexual regime (of truth) that privileges sexual relationships against
other affiliations. By way of conclusion, I would argue that asexual identity encourages us
to imagine other pathways of affiliation and other conceptions of personhood, beyond the
tenets of liberal humanism gesturing instead towards new configurations of the human
and new meanings of sexual citizenship.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Tone Hellesund for inspiring conversations and for collaborating on two paper
presentations on asexuality in 2009 and 2010.

Notes
1. Ten years after the launch of AVEN, in January 2011, one of its headlines announces what many
asexuals would regard as a breakthrough in policy recognition in the US: Vermont State grants
protection to asexuals: Vermont States Human Rights Commission has included asexuals as a
protected category: hrc.vermont.gov/.../gender_sex_sexual_orientation_definitions.pdf.
2. The term expert knowledge refers in this article to research that is characterised by claims to
an objective truth and a will to knowledge a will to pursue objectivist goals. The goals are
to be pursued by means of intellectual technologies that provide facts and figures rendering
the reality calculable and governable. Expert research is typically oriented around phenomena
that can be acted upon in order to be changed. Professional know-how thus comprises a set of
power/knowledge techniques that works to interconnect theoretical representations, problem
definitions and practical interventions/measures (making the defined problems amenable to
diagnosis, prescription and cure) (see, e.g., Rose, 1999a, 1999b, 2008).
3. Clinicians might diagnose asexuality as either hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) or
sexual aversion disorder (SAD).
4. See http://www.asexuality.org/home/overview.html; see also, e.g., Acebook (http://www.acebook.net/); Asexual Pals (http://www.asexualpals.com/about.html); Asexual Explorations

Psychology & Sexuality

5.

6.

7.

8.
9.

10.
11.

189

(http://www.asexualexplorations.net/home/about.html); Apositive (http://www.apositive.org);

Asexy Beast (http://theonepercentclub.blogspot.com/); Swankivy.com (http://swankivy.com/
writing/essays/philosophy/asexual.html); NewFriends4U.com (http://www.newfriends4u.
com/guide/asexual.html); Asexualitic.com (http://www.asexualitic.com/searchmatch.php?txt
gender=M&txtlookgender=M&txtlookagestart=16&txtlookageend=86); Asexual Lesbians
(http://z4.invisionfree.com/Asexual_Lesbians/index.php).
In most studies of asexuality within psychology and sexology, facts and figures provide the
basis for discussion, centred on conceptual clarifications and methods for data gathering. The
studies are based on pre-existing census data and various demographic material from the US
and UK (see, e.g., Bogaert, 2004, 2006; Conaglen & Evans, 2006; Poston Jr. & Baumle, 2010),
sometimes in combination with qualitative interviews with self-defined asexuals (see, e.g.,
Brotto et al. 2008; Prause & Graham, 2007), although the qualitative data are typically quantified in the process of analysis (i.e. reduced to abstract quantities with a view to comparability).
Some of the studies include laboratory experiments (i.e. audiovisual testing) (see, e.g., Brotto
& Yule, 2011), in accordance with accepted scientific standards. The various contributions
seem to be predicated on a common view that the more knowledge one gains from empirical
research based on a composite methodology, the closer one gets to the truth of asexuality (in
terms of discovering, uncovering, mapping, etc.).
For one, sexual orientation refers only to the sex or gender of ones preferred partner(s): gender of object choice; second, it concentrates only on sexual attraction and not other elements
of sexuality and romantic bonding towards others; and third, it refers to only the subjective
element of attraction (and not necessarily physical attraction/arousal) (Bogaert, 2006, p. 244).
With regard to sexual orientation and gender of object choice, Scherrer (2008, p. 636) notes,
by reference to Eve Sedgwick (1990), that the phrase sexual orientation generally comes to
mean gender of object choice, despite the many meanings that sexuality could have, such
as an interest in romance. Even though gender remains an aspect of many asexual individuals identities, Scherrer argues, asexuality detracts from gender object choice as the axis for
describing ones sexuality (2008, p. 636). Like other marginalised sexualities, she goes on to
argue such as BDSM and polyamorous identities asexuality includes other dimensions of
ones sexuality that may be equally or more important than gender of object choice (Scherrer,
2008).
Poston Jr. and Baumle (2010, p. 526) find that asexual behaviour is the most prevalent
dimension among female respondents, while the next highest level of asexuality is indicated when only self-identification is used, followed by the combination of behaviour and
self-identification.
Rosenberg and Milchman (2009) do not distinguish between objectification and
objectivation.
The division between sexual and non-sexual relations is secured by the family institution,
notably the prohibition of incest. According to Foucault (1990), this prohibition was universalised by the West as a generalised taboo at a time when sexuality threatened to escape the
grand and ancient system of alliance. In order to secure the laws and juridical form of alliance
within the sexual regime, supported by the new psy disciplines, the old laws had to be recoded
within the new mechanisms of power (ibid., pp. 109, 128129). See, e.g., Butler (2000b)
and Eng (2010) for critical discussions of the cultural incest taboo and the attendant Oedipus
complex, which work to secure heterosexual family and kinship norms in contemporary western societies. See, e.g., Bartkowski (2008) for a critical discussion of the culturally defined
boundaries between human and non-human kinship.
It could be argued that in the modern sexual regime, as opposed to the alliance regime of
inheritance, asexuality posed a threat because it menaced heredity (see Foucault, 1990, p. 124).
According to Linda Zerilli (2005), Butlers Gender Trouble ultimately reflects the problem
it purports to address with respect to truth. As Zerilli sees it, Butlers denaturalisation of
gender and sexuality categories involves questioning the reality of such representations by raising sceptical doubt about their truth value. Such sceptical doubt does not, however, challenge
the truth orientation per se and the objectivist distinction between truth and false, real and
unreal, etc. Rather, it challenges specific truth claims. My critique of Butlers reassertion of the
truth of sexuality comes from a different angle. Although I subscribe to Zerillis assertion that
Butlers book ultimately reflects the problem it purports to address, I do not fully agree with
her argument about sceptical doubt. My objection concerns the way in which Gender Trouble

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12.

R. Gressgrd
casts sexual desire as a ubiquitous human experience, which should not be taken to mean that
Butler reasserts an objectivist view on reality.
It should be noted that the contestation of boundaries between sexual and non-sexual relations
is not completely new in an academic context. From a position partly external to the sexual
regime and partly within its borders, Adriane Rich (2003/1980) was among the first feminist
scholars to take issue with compulsory heterosexuality, criticising the general invisibility in
feminist theory and history of both lesbian sexual relations and of non-sexual arrangements
among women, such as passionate comrades. In her view, the category erotic should be
expanded to include a variety of arrangements that cannot be coded as conventionally sexual. One decade after Rich put forward her critique, Ester Rothblum and Kathleen Brehony
(1993a) edited Boston Marriages, drawing attention to non-sexual romantic relationships
among women. When an intimate relationship lacks the presence of genital sex, Rothblum and
Brehony (1993b, p. 6) argue, it becomes difficult to define the components of such relationship. Like Rich, they take issue with the confinement of the erotic implied in sexual categories,
including the way in which female friendships have been excluded from the category lesbian.
Similarly, Lillian Faderman (1993) argues for an extension of the category lesbian to include a
variety of relationships that are regarded as non-sexual (i.e. non-genital). Marny Hall (1993),
for her part, suggests that we re-conceptualise the category sex so as to blur its boundaries.
More recently, scholars who study polyamory have come to a similar conclusion (see, e.g.,
Klesse, 2007; Ritchie & Barker, 2006). In a Scandinavian context, Tone Hellesund (2003) has
juxtaposed the historical category spinster and the contemporary category lesbian, suggesting
that the distinction between sexual and non-sexual relationship is far from obvious.

Notes on contributor
Randi Gressgrd is Associate Professor at Centre for Womens and Gender Research (SKOK),
University of Bergen. She is also affiliated with the research unit International Migration and Ethnic
Relations (IMER). Her most recent book is Multicultural Dialogue: Dilemmas, Paradoxes, Conflicts
(New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010/2012).

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