Asexual...and Promiscuous?

Hat tip to my mother for telling me about a radio show on asexuality, and for making me laugh: "Compared to these people, you gals are practically promiscuous!" she quipped.

Actually, reading this piece did make me wonder...

Now, I've nothing against asexuals, but why do they get a "free pass" nowadays, when the more sexually conservative women take all the heat? I'm not suggesting that people should start smirking at asexuals too, but the difference in treatment is revealing.

We've talked about how modesty is prudery's true opposite, right? Reserving sexuality for the sake of protecting its power, and so forth and so on. Well, lately I've been thinking that maybe promiscuity could really be related to asexuality--since without integrating the emotions, sex tends to be "no big deal."  We've certainly all seen examples of exhibitionism being perfectly consistent with a low sex drive.

So now for Exhibit B: I was recently catching up on my Booker Rising reading--specifically, a debate about our Taylor Moore's last blog.  Booker Rising has some great discussions, and at the end of this particular comments section, a man named "Aaron" castigates "Nina" for believing in premarital absinence, then ends by saying that sex, after all, is no biggie:

Stop worrying about sex and start concentrating on the important things in life my conservative sister.

So sex is really not that important, after all?

Interesting.

What do you make of this?

Comments

[Alexandra Foley]

Yes, I have to thank Paris Hilton for so beautifully illustrating that point. Paris is known for seductively posing for any camera pointed in her direction and her style is, well, minimalist. But I have a new admiration of Paris for being honest in telling reporters: "I’m sexual in pictures and the way I dress and my whole image. But at home I’m really not like that. All of my ex-boyfriends… would be like, ‘What’s the matter with you? You’re so not sexual."

If you're shocked I don't think you should be. I’d think by now we’d have figured out that the more we make ourselves a sexual object to the whole world the less sexuality we reserve for the one we love. It is no surprise to me that someone who exudes sex to everyone in her path would be all used up by the time she gets alone with her boyfriend. This is the great blessing and irony of modesty. We aren’t modest so as to quell any sexiness but instead we reserve our sexuality for the right time and person.

What we are talking about is the channeling, and hence augmenting, of our sexuality to the right place and the right time. For me, as a married woman, the right time is at home when I am with my husband. But when I was a teenager it meant putting off all that sexiness business for a later date. The more we flaunt our sexuality to the whole world, the less we reserve for the proper person.

It is particularly sad to me when I hear so many people complain about a lack of sexual passion in their marriages. You may think that dressing sexy for the world will make you feel sexy when you get home to your bedroom, but it isn’t the case. When you are courting the whole world with your immodesty, you tend not to be very satisfied by the attention of just one person.

[anon]

That Booker Rising link says there are '0' comments, but when you click on the comments you see like 70 of them. I was confused, so just wanted to tell people that. Must be a quirk with their software.

[Eve]

There is a myth in our culture that if a woman looks "sexy" then it means she enthusiastically enjoys a vigorous sex life. Actually, it's difficult for many women to experience their own sexual desire if they are focusing exclusively on how to look sexy to other people. At the same time, men who are overexposed to pornography end up with decreased sex drives. None of this sounds very fun....

I wonder if this is why those groups of women who educate other women about sexual desire have popped up around the country. Have you heard about these groups? Women get together and discuss how to get in touch with sexual desire and they buy sex toys, etc.. It's an almost sweet, touchy-feely idea, but I wonder if their popularity stems from an oversexed culture that ironically represses women's sexual desires. Maybe not. Maybe someone knows more about these groups and can explain.

[wendy]

These are really fascinating points. No, Eve, I hadn't heard of these groups but I definitely believe that we are very repressed nowadays. Just in different ways than in ages past.

(BTW, Eve, I finally found that Havelock Ellis quote I was looking for, in reference to your "Nude or Naked' blog. It was just posted, in case you're dying to read what the sexperts of 1899 had to say about your topic :-)

Alexandra, you put it all very well, esp. Paris Hilton's "minimalist" style.

[Greg Feirman]

I think the idea that promiscuity can be connected to low sex drive is very interesting.

One thing I've noticed is that alot of women dress sexy simply because that is how women are supposed to dress nowadays. I think alot of times they are promiscious for the same reason: not because they want to but simply because that's how it is done nowadays.

The same kind of thing, I think, applies to guys. Guys nowadays alot of times pose as "pimps", "players", etc... It's more act than authentic feeling because that's what we see on MTV. It is what's expected, if you are cool i.e. "Down with OPP".

Building on what Alexandra said, if you are so concerned with projecting this image of sexiness or studliness to everybody else, your external focus might disconnect you from, and therefore decrease, your sexual desire.

[L.B.]

It seems to me that asexuals get more of a "free pass" than sexually conservative women (and men) as you say, Wendy, since in the mainstream modern worldview we are the anomaly. An asexual doesn't want sex, and doesn't have it...or, worse, as the article describes, an asexual person goes out and has sex solely because of pressure from peers and society to do so and not out of any real desire.

The sexually conservative, on the other hand...well, we're denying ourselves something that we want, and are sometimes unhappy or conflicted about it. That is just incomprehensible to the modern secular worldview.

(People who are chaste but not religious, like myself, are even more incomprehensible.)

[R.B.]

I was celibate until my senior year of college, and nobody I knew seemed to care. (Not many of my acquaintances knew about my sex life in the first place -- I didn't see much reason to go around blabbing about it.) I imagine people would have been much harsher with me if I'd made sweeping judgments about how they should conduct their own sex lives, and I imagine they would have been justified. What kind of peer pressure have the rest of you encountered?

Eve: "There is a myth in our culture that if a woman looks "sexy" then it means she enthusiastically enjoys a vigorous sex life. Actually, it's difficult for many women to experience their own sexual desire if they are focusing exclusively on how to look sexy to other people."

Yes! Especially since the stereotypical "sexy" look requires considerable discomfort and inconvenience on the woman's part. (The high heels, the makeup, the thong underwear, the Brazilian waxing, the leg waxing, the eyebrow plucking, the tight clothes, the breast implants, the hymenoplasty... ugh.)

[wendy]

R.B., what year did you graduate college (if you don't mind my asking?) just so I have a point of reference.

[Eve]

Peer pressure can be extremely subtle. Most kids absorb the general message that it's time to be sexual even if no one is directly telling them to do so. In the end, kids pressure themselves even though the messages are coming from the outside. I believe that sexual peer pressure is a nuanced and complicated process.

[R.B.]

Oh jeez Wendy, now everyone's going to know how young and stupid I am. I graduated from college in spring 2002.

I think the sexual pressures were roughly as follows:
1) I wanted boys to like me, both in general and in a few particular cases.
2) I thought (falsely, as it turns out) that in order to make boys like me romantically, I would have to stop being aggressive and "unfeminine", which I was unwilling to do.
3) I wanted not to have any sexual/romantic relationships, since I was afraid it would distract me from studying.
4) I was generally so full of hormones that it's a wonder my head didn't explode.
5) I had numerous crushes on my teachers.
6) I had absolutely no intention of having sex with my teachers (nor did they, to their fairly minimal credit, have any intention of having sex with me).

There were boys and men who expected me to have sex with them, but they were people I didn't know or didn't know well, and who were obviously trying to use sex as a method of bullying. Attempts at sexual bullying didn't make me feel the least bit inclined to have sex with the bullies; you'd have to have Stockholm Syndrome to feel differently. Weirdly enough, I never reported this to anyone, even though some of the perpetrators were university students. What was I thinking?

It didn't really occur to me that having sex with boys was a way to make them like you. I thought that in order to be liked girls were supposed to look "sexy", act weak and stupid, and do a few fairly mild sexual things (like tongue kissing and groping). They definitely weren't supposed to have intercourse, or oral sex, unless they wanted cruel things said about them behind their backs.

[Wendy]

Sorry, I keep meaning to get back to this point but I haven't had a chance:

"Not many of my acquaintances knew about my sex life in the first place -- I didn't see much reason to go around blabbing about it."

I agree with this point (of R.B.'s) that there's a lot to be said for simple privacy (especially today, in an era when everything seems to be political).

However, the fact remains: one's friends' views on things often don't come out unless they hear about lifestyle choices that are different from their own.

For example, I often hear from college women that when they confide in their friends, that's when their "friends" let them know that there is something wrong with them--because of their lack of experience--and when their true views on the subject come out. And also their lack of tolerance.... Then the question is raised: is this person really a true friend?

So yes, it's perfectly legitimate to keep your cards close to your chest so to speak, but on the other hand, if you do that, it does become tricky to assess what other people's views really are.