Aces High: Reflections on Asexuality

Asexual flag 

I. 

One of the reasons that Nietzsche has a difficult time accepting the idea of aesthetic detachment - he derides the idea as immaculate perception - is because sex is such a crucial aspect of his Dionysian philosophy and the lover, he says, is not only a stronger but more valuable type of human being:

"His whole economy is richer than before, more powerful, more complete than in those who do not love. The lover becomes a squanderer: he is rich enough for it. Now he dares, becomes an adventurer, becomes an ass in magnanimity and innocence [...] this happy idiot grows wings and new capabilities."    

Nietzsche insists that our sexuality reaches into the uppermost summit of our spirit and that beneath all our purest thoughts and high ideals lie unconscious libidinal investments that attest to the fact we are first and foremost creatures of desire. This is not to say that an erotic motive is to be attributed to all human activities, but that an element of sex is never far away.

For Nietzsche, as for so many nineteeth century thinkers, sex is the great clue to being and the truth of ourselves. I suspect he would refuse to conceive of asexuality except in purely negative terms - as evidence of retarded puberty, for example, or a form of degeneracy.


II.

Unfortunately, there are still people today who regard asexual individuals either with suspicion, contempt, or a mixture of both; believing them to be unfeeling and unnatural, almost inhuman in their apparent indifference to sexual pleasure.

Personally, however, I rather admire those individuals who have refused - inasmuch as asexuality does involve behavioural choice - to be amorous subjects and stepped beyond LGBT whilst remaining happily within the uncanny order of Q (much to the annoyance of some within the allosexual community).

What's more, I sometimes think that the reason individuals who pride themselves on their sexual identity and orientation sometimes feel threatened by and hostile towards asexuals is due to the fact that the latter (a) do not find them attractive and (b) refuse to make themselves available for fucking.       


III.

Before going any further with this defence-cum-celebration of asexuality, let's just be clear on a few important points ...

Firstly, asexuality is distinct from abstention and celibacy; i.e., it's not merely an expression of ascetic idealism. Indeed, some religious writers openly condemn asexuality as delusional and immoral. The Jesuit priests David Nantais and Scott Opperman write:

"Asexual people do not exist. Sexuality is a gift from God and thus a fundamental part of our human identity. Those who repress their sexuality are not living as God created them to be: fully alive and well. As such, they're most likely unhappy."

This characterisation amuses me and I have to admit that I'm quite happy to think of asexuality as a form of blasphemous living that refuses consummation. Better that, than attempts to portray it as a medical disorder, a form of sexual dysfunction, or the result of bad conscience concerning the body. 

Finally, it should be noted that some asexuals may in fact engage in erotic activity despite lacking any real desire to do so - perhaps as a matter of courtesy or curiosity - although most prefer romantic relationships that involve non-physical activity (apart from hand-holding and the odd cuddle), friend-focused non-romantic relationships, and/or queer-platonic relationships that invent new ways of associating.

There are, thankfully, no hard and fast rules governing the so-called ace community and there are also plenty of grey areas (of ambiguity) to explore.     


IV.

For me, then, asexuality holds a good deal of interest as something that (potentially) challenges sexual normativity and offers (passive) resistance to the coital imperative to fuck over and over and over again; what one critic refers to as the tyranny of orgasmic pleasure. 

The socially cherished myth that sex is the most basic and universal of instincts - often repressed and thus in need of liberating so that men and women can lead happy, fulfilled lives - is one that Michel Foucault and Judith Butler began to deconstruct decades ago, but it seems that more work still needs to be done convincing people that sexuality is not a natural given, but a historical construct. Essentialism, alas, continues to exert itself - not least in the idiocy of identity politics.

Notes

The black stripe in the asexual pride flag is for those individuals who identify as asexual; the grey stripe represents those who are demi- or semi-sexual; the white stripe is for those who subscribe to or manifest some full form of sexuality; and, finally, the purple stripe is to display solidarity with members of the wider queer community. 

For more information on asexuality visit the website of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), founded in 2001 by David Jay. I don't necessarily share or endorse the views expressed here; particularly the reactive attempt to make of asexuality an intrinsic identity or orientation and to present asexuals as people with 'the same emotional needs as everybody else'. How dreary and disappointing if that's the case! I'm hoping, like Ela Przybylo, that asexuality might prove to be a bit more provocative and create spaces of complication. See her essay, 'Crisis and safety: the asexual in sexusociety', in Sexualities, (SAGE, 2011), 14 (4), pp. 444-461. Click here to read online via Academia.edu

Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, (Vintage Books, 1968), 808, pp. 426-27.

David Nantais and Scott Opperman, 'Eight myths about religious life', Vision (Vocation Network, 2002): click here to read online. 

When Jayne Met Sophia

Sophia Loren and Jayne Mansfield at Romanoff's (Beverley Hills) 

Photo by Joe Shere (April 1957)

Paramount had organized a party for me. All of cinema was there, it was incredible. And then in comes Jayne Mansfield, the last one to arrive. She came right for my table. She knew everyone was watching as she sat down. I’m staring at her nipples because I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate. In my face you can see the fear. I’m so frightened that everything in her dress is going to blow—BOOM!—and spill all over the table. 

 - Sophia Loren speaking in 2014 to Entertainment Weekly

The famous photo of Italian beauty Sophia Loren checking out all-American bombshell Jayne Mansfield with a sideways glance full of snooty disapproval mixed with anger at being upstaged by the blonder, bustier woman at a Hollywood dinner party held in her honour, tells us something interesting about European notions of sex appeal, femininity and decorum in contrast to those of the New World.

But, in a sense, these two women belong not merely to different cultures, but to entirely different worlds, different times. Loren, so elegant and sophisticated, suddenly seems the product of a traditional era of slow-cooking and spaghetti. Mansfield, on the other hand, in all her spectacular obscenity, is a hypermodern incarnation of sex and speed; she lived fast and died young, whilst Sophia simply grew old.

Both left their distinctive mark on cinematic history; indeed, in 1999 Loren was awarded legendary status by the American Film Institute and she is currently the only living actress on the list. But it's Mansfield whose star continues to shine the brightest within the popular and pornographic imagination and who seems so much more our contemporary.

Indeed, one can imagine going for a drink with the always smiling former beauty queen, nude art model and popcorn seller from Pennsylvania with an IQ of 163 and an hourglass figure that measured 40-21-35 and having a really fun time. But sadly, not so with Sophia: in fact, I suspect she would subject me to the same kind of withering look over the dinner table as she gave to Miss Mansfield's dangerous bosom.        

Notes

Those interested in reading Sophia Loren's full recollection of this incident in Entertainment Weekly (Nov 3, 2014), click here. 

Those interested in a sister post to this one - When Jayne Met Anton LaVey - should click here.

Pan Comes to Hampstead: Reflections on D. H. Lawrence's 'The Last Laugh'

Pan - by Thalia Took on deviantart.com

Written in 1924, 'The Last Laugh' imagines an appearance of the goat-footed Greek god Pan in Hampstead on a snowy winter's night and the tragic consequences of this. I'm not quite sure what genre it belongs to, but we might best describe it as an example of sardonic paganism; a mocking and malevolent form of queer gothic fiction directed towards a dark god who is always coming, but who never quite arrives or reveals himself.

By setting the story in a leafy north London suburb, Lawrence relates his onto-theological vision to everyday experience, whilst, at the same time, demonstrating how the latter unfolds within a wider, inhuman context that is resistant to any kind of moral-rational codification. He thereby attempts to loosen the aura of necessity surrounding categories of the present and restore a little primordial wonder to NW3.

How successful he is in achieving this, I'll leave for readers to decide; the following is essentially just a summary of the nightmarish and at times surreal tale for those who are unfamiliar with it, rather than a detailed critical analysis (although there is some degree of commentary) ...

Never one to pass up the chance to exploit cliché - if, as here, for comic rather than dramatic effect - Lawrence opens his tale at midnight, the church clock having just struck the magical hour when, for a short period, there's an opening between our electrically-luminous civilization and the world that lies outside the gate; that unexplored realm of dangerous knowledge where things go bump in the night.  

Three figures emerge from a handsome Georgian house: "A girl in a dark blue coat and fur turban, very erect: a fellow with a little dispatch-case, slouching: a thin man with a red beard, bareheaded, peering out of the gateway down the hill that swung in a curve downwards towards London."

The light covering of snow on the ground has created the impression of a new world; but it takes more than a few flakes to really change things, as we'll discover. The man with the beard, Lorenzo, says goodnight to the couple and goes back inside. Now the slouching man in a bowler hat, Mr. Marchbanks, and the erect, sharp girl who was somewhat deaf, Miss James, were all alone in the street; "save for the policeman at the corner."

She looks at her companion: with his "thick black brows sardonically arched, and his rather hooked nose" he seemed to her "like a satanic young priest" - or a "sort of faun on the Cross, with all the malice of the complication". As they walk together, past the trees and the loneliness of the Heath, toward the local Tube station, he hears somebody laughing. Turning on her Marconi made listening machine, Miss James lifts her "deaf nymph's face", but hears nothing until, that is, he suddenly "gave the weirdest, slightly neighing laugh, uncovering his strong, spaced teeth, and arching his black brows, and watching her with queer, gleaming, goat-like eyes".

Marchbanks is - seemingly without his knowing it - possessed by the Pan-spirit. Looking at the girl in an almost diabolical manner, his face gleaming and "wreathed with a startling, peculiar smile", he again gave "the most extraordinary laugh ... like an animal laughing".

This attracts the attention of the tall, clean-shaven young policeman who comes over to see what's occurring. The Pan-possessed man glared at the bobby and asked if he could hear the laughter that came out of him but didn't belong to him. At the sound of this diabolical laughter, "something roused in the blood of the girl and of the policeman" and they edged closer to one another, their bodies touching:

"Having held herself all her life intensely aloof from physical contact, and never having let any man touch her, she now, with a certain nymph-like voluptuousness, allowed the large hand of the young policeman to support her ... And she could feel the presence of the young policeman, through all the thickness of his dark-blue uniform, as something young and alert and bright."

Was that his truncheon, or was he equally happy to be pressing up against her ...?

The religious mania spreads: Miss James thinks she can see someone hiding among the holly bushes. This makes the Pan-possessed man in the bowler hat get even more excited and, "with curious delight", he broke into laughter again, stamping his feet on the snow covered ground, dancing, before running off like a madman.

When he finally comes to a halt, Marchbanks finds himself at the house of a beautiful Jewish woman whom Lawrence encourages us to believe is a prostitute. She has dark hair and large dark eyes. She is standing in her open doorway, believing that somebody knocked (as a working girl, she is, of course, always anticipating a knock at her door).

Asked if it was he who knocked, Marchbanks says no. But then he admits that perhaps it was him after all - but without his knowing it. He asks her if can come in and she agrees. So he enters the house, trailing after the woman "like a hound" that follows a bitch on heat, tail wagging and tongue lolling.

Meanwhile, Miss James and the policeman had arrived on the scene, just in time to see the man in the bowler hat enter the house with the woman in high heels. The girl decides there's no point waiting about and so sets off back down the hill, burning with thoughts of murder and strange superhuman power:

"Her feet felt lighter, her legs felt long and strong. She glanced over her shoulder again. The young policeman was following her, and she laughed to herself. Her limbs felt so lithe and so strong, if she wished she could easily run faster than he. If she wished she could easily kill him, even with her hands.
      So it seemed to her. But why kill him? He was a decent young fellow. She had in front of her eyes the dark face among the holly bushes, with the brilliant, mocking eyes. Her breast felt full of power, and her legs felt long and strong and wild. She was surprised herself at the strong, bright, throbbing sensation beneath her breasts, a sensation of triumph and rosy anger. Her hands felt keen on her wrists. She who had always declared she had not a muscle in her body! Even now, it was not muscle, it was a sort of flame."

It's precisely this kind of writing that Lawrence's critics object to, finding it fatuous and bombastic; a dubious mix of lurid sexual fantasy and sulphurous theology. But for those of us who love him, it's his idiosyncratic narrative style which most appeals. Of course it risks becoming ludicrous, or sometimes losing its way in a semantic fog; for it's not easy to articulate unconscious thoughts and feelings, or describe those things which lie outside conventional language. But that's why speculative and experimental writers and thinkers, like Lawrence, who attempt this should, I think, be praised for their courage.

Anyway, let us return to the story ...

It begins to snow heavily and, despite her deafness, Miss James hears voices all around her. She knows that he's come back, although the god who has returned remains nameless in the tale. The snowstorm intensifies; there are flashes of lightning and she laughs at the young policeman whose state of nervous panic made him look "like a frightened dog that sees something uncanny".

They come to a church with its doors flung wide open, allowing the wind and the voices to enter and whirl about, howling and calling. Now, for the first time, she too hears the "strange, naked sound" of laughter. The policeman was silent and fearful. He stood cowed, "with his tail between his legs, listening to the strange noises in the church".

The demonic forces that have been set loose wreck the interior of the church and amidst all the chaos of snow, wind, and laughter, there is the gay sound of pipes playing and the marvellous scent of almond blossom, like that of a Mediterranean spring.

Finally, the girl and the policeman arrive at her house. He is frightened and cold, so asks if he may come in and warm himself. She agrees, telling him he may make up a fire in the sitting-room, but to kindly not disturb her in her bedroom.

Upon waking the next morning, Miss James, an artist, inspects her own paintings and laughs at their absurd, almost grotesque character. Miraculously, she can now hear the birds singing without the need of her mechanical hearing-device. But the poor policeman, however, is distraught, having become mysteriously lame overnight. Not that the girl seems overly concerned with his condition, preferring to sit down before her window, in the sun, and to reflect on the fact that the world had now been genuinely transformed:

"Suddenly the world had become quite different: as if some skin or integument had broken, as if the old, mouldering London sky had crackled and rolled back, like an old skin, shrivelled, leaving an absolutely new blue heaven."

She also reflects, as Lawrentian heroines are wont to do, on love and sex and decides that she doesn't want either. For modern men, she decides - at least those of her acquaintance - are all a bit doggy and infra dig; either messing around with prostitutes, like Marchbanks, or incapable of acting with any real courage and authority - despite wearing a policeman's uniform - when confronted by life (and proud womanhood) in all its savage splendour.

She vaguely wishes that the laughing god had ravished her as he had ravaged the church, so that she might have emerged "new and tender out of the old, hard skin". But at least she had her hearing restored, so she couldn't complain.

At this point, Marchbanks arrives, as it was his habit "to come and take breakfast with her each morning." He asks her about the young policeman and she interrogates him about the Jewish-looking woman. They are friends, not lovers, she and he, but clearly intimate and concerned with one another's affairs.

When they eventually, decide to check on the young policeman downstairs they find him understandably upset because of his sudden lameness. Slowly pulling off his sock, he reveals "his white left foot curiously clubbed, like the weird paw of some animal". Looking at it makes him cry: "And as he sobbed, the girl heard again the low, exulting laughter."

As if the situation weren't already disturbing enough, Marchbanks now lets out a strange, yelping cry, like a wounded animal: "His white face was drawn, distorted in a curious grin, that was chiefly agony but partly [the] wild recognition ... of a man who realises he had made a final, and this time fatal, fool of himself."

And then, "with a queer shuddering laugh he pitched forward on the carpet and lay writhing for a moment on the floor", before lying completely still "in a weird, distorted position, like a man struck by lightening." Miss James stares at the body in a somewhat nonplussed manner and enquires of the policeman if her friend Mr. Marchbanks is dead. The officer, however, was trembling with such terror and his teeth chattering so violently, that it took him some moments to finally stammer that it certainly looked that way.

A faint smell of almond blossom once more filled the air - sweeter, certainly, than the foul stench of sulphur, but just as infernal in nature it seems ...


See: D. H. Lawrence, 'The Last Laugh', in The Woman Who Rode Away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995). 

Note: thanks to the University of Adelaide, the story can also be read online: click here.

This post is dedicated to Catherine Brown: may she always have the last laugh ...

SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave