| |
| author |
Emma-Li Downer
| | title |
'Who's Sexy to Me?': Exploring Asexuality and Recovering Asexual Meanings
| | abstract |
This thesis aims to discuss asexuality, an undervalued concept that has the potential to
complicate current conceptions of sexuality, identity, desire, and intimacy. Asexuality is defined
by the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) as referring to an individual who is
not sexually attracted to others. Influenced by AVEN, contemporary texts like Julia Sondra
Decker's The Invisible Orientation and Alice Oseman's Loveless engage in important work of
making asexuality more visible to the public and educating their readers about asexuality.
However, their efforts also perpetuate an essentialist conception of sexuality that presents
asexuality as an innate, natural essence or core. While essentialism can help advocate for
asexuality, it portrays sexuality in a simplistic and potentially harmful light. Instead, this thesis
argues that sexuality should be viewed as socio-historical construction, as Michel Foucault
defends, where sexuality is part of and shaped by discourse. This conception of sexuality leads to
a more nuanced understanding of asexuality and to acknowledging the existence of compulsory
sexuality—or the assumption that everyone is and must be sexual. Resisting compulsory
sexuality, which underlies compulsory heterosexuality, results in recovering asexual possibilities,
traces, and meanings that have been erased, ignored, or forgotten. One way to achieve this is
through a reparative, asexual reading practice and by identifying asexual resonances. Nick Adler
does this in presenting an asexual analysis of Henry James's "Beast in the Jungle," which Eve
Kosofsky Sedgwick reads through a homosexual lens but erases the possibility for asexuality.
Importantly, Adler presents his analysis as an alternative that can co-exist with, and not
necessarily replace, the reading provided in Sedgwick's "Beast in the Closet." To demonstrate
the ways that an asexual reading practice can uncover alternative identities and meanings, this
thesis analyzes three films and their leading female characters through a reparative lens.
Specifically, Cynthia Darrington from Christopher Strong (1933), Sylvie Foster from
Housekeeping (1987), and Polly Vandersma from I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987) can
be seen as exemplifying how characters can resist compulsory sexuality and lead meaningful
lives that are not defined by or centered around sex. These female characters are not lacking in
anything as they relate to others and find fulfillment in non-sexual ways. Asexuality has the
potential to question assumptions like compulsory sexuality, complicate current notions of
sexuality and identity, and act as a new lens through which literary works, films, and other media
can be analyzed to recover asexual possibilities and meanings.
| | school |
The College of Liberal Arts, Drew University
| | degree |
B.A. (2023)
|
| advisor |
Dr. Sandra Jamieson
|
| full text | EDowner.pdf |
| |
