Gendering asexuality and asexualizing gender: A qualitative study exploring the intersections between gender and asexuality

Gupta, Kristina

doi:10.1177/1363460718790890

Cited by 38 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 23 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Complicating these explanations is the finding that the significant relationships between asexuality and the range of body image variables in Study 2 appeared to be more robust in men compared with women. It may be that greater asexuality in men is associated with difficulties negotiating heteronormative masculinity expectancies that emphasise hypersexuality (Gupta, 2019), which in turn mediates relationships with a wider range of positive body image constructs.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asexuality is inversely associated with positive body image in British adults

Swami

Laughton

Grover

et al. 2019

Heliyon

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Research on positive body image has infrequently considered sexual minority orientations beyond lesbians, gay men, and bisexual persons. Indeed, there is no existing research on the relationships between body image and asexuality, which refers to a lack of sexual attraction to anyone or anything. In two studies, we rectified this by examining associations between asexuality – operationalised as a continuous construct – and indices of positive body image. In Study 1, 188 Britons from the community completed measures of asexuality and body appreciation. Once the effects of self-identified sexual orientation, relationship status, and body mass index (BMI) had been considered, asexuality was found to be significantly and negatively associated with body appreciation in women and men. In Study 2, an online sample of 377 Britons completed measures of asexuality, body appreciation, functionality appreciation, body acceptance from others, and body image flexibility. Beyond the effects of sexual orientation, relationship status, and BMI, asexuality was significantly and negatively associated with all four body image constructs in men, and with body appreciation and functionality appreciation in women. Although asexuality only explained a small proportion of the variance in positive body image (3–11%) and further studies are needed, the relationship appears to be stable.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asexuality is inversely associated with positive body image in British adults

Swami

Laughton

Grover

et al. 2019

Heliyon

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Research on gendered experiences of asexuality is in its infancy, as scholars are only beginning to think about asexuality intersectionally rather than as a single homogenous phenomenon (Cuthbert 2017). Przybylo (2014), Vares (2018), and Gupta (2018) have made great initial strides in exploring gender and asexuality empirically, beginning to unpack how constructions of masculinity and femininity clash with or alternatively cohere with asexual identities and subject positions (Przybylo, Gupta), and how asexual men and asexual women have very different gendered experiences of dating and relationships (Vares). These studies highlight the ways in which asexuality is an inherently gendered phenomenon, as it involves understandings and practices of sexual desire, sexual activity, and agency, all of which are intimately tied to gender.…”

Section: (A)sexuality and Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

“When We Talk about Gender We Talk about Sex”: (A)sexuality and (A)gendered Subjectivities

Cuthbert

2019

Gender & Society

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Gender diversity is seemingly prevalent amongst asexual people. Drawing on qualitative research, and focusing on agender identities in particular (which have received very little sociological or queer scholarly attention), this article explores why this might be the case. I argue that previous explanations which centre 1) biologistic understandings of sexual development, or 2) the liberatory potential of asexuality, or 3) psycho-cognitive conflict, are insufficient. Instead, I offer a sociological perspective in which participants' agender subjectivities can be understood as arising from an embodied meaning-making process where gender was understood to fundamentally be about sexuality. I emphasise the importance of understanding asexuality and agender in the broader structural context, as particular subjectivities were shaped and sometimes necessitated in navigating hetero-patriarchy.However, these entangled understandings of (a)sexuality and (a)gender were sometimes rendered unintelligible within LGBTQ+ discursive communities, where there is often a rigid ontological distinction between gender and sexuality arising from histories of misrecognition and erasure. The article is therefore an attempt to complicate this distinction, as I argue that already-invisible subjectivities may be made even more invisible by this distinction. The article serves as an illustration of the need to empirically explore meanings of the categories 'gender' and 'sexuality', and the relationship between them, rather than siloing them in our methodological and conceptual frameworks.Asexuality, which has been dubbed the "invisible orientation" (Decker 2014) is arguably becoming less so. Not only can we find the existence of some asexual characters in mainstream entertainment (Todd in the Netflix series Bojack Horseman, Liv Flaherty in the UK soap Emmerdale), but these characters are also portrayed as complex and nuanced, rather than one-dimensional stereotypes. The US clothing retailer Hot Topic sell Asexual Pride tshirts (Hot Topic 2019), and asexual terminology such as ace and aromantic were added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2018 (OED 2018). Asexual is increasingly included in official governmental research (e.g. in the findings from the UK government's NationalLGBT survey in 2018) and there are plans to include asexual in the 2021 UK census (ONS 2018). We may well be seeing an asexual 'tipping point'.There has also been a small but growing body of scholarship on asexuality for a decade and a half, ranging from the positivistic, to textual explorations, to the sociological. Not only is asexuality of interest as a social phenomenon in and of itself (especially given the increased visibility demonstrated above), but those working in asexuality studies have pointed out that should be interested in asexuality because of its potential to inform our understandings about society and social organisation more broadlyfor example, about the compulsory nature of sexuality (Gupta 2015); about the possibilities for conducting relationships ...

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“…One respondent, for example, described feelings of being "less of a man because I'm asexual, like it's a weakness or a failure" (MacNeela & Murphy, 2014, p. 807). While men may face greater pressure to conform to norms of sexual dominance, theoretical approaches to the intersections of gender and asexuality have also pointed to inequalities in men and women's sexual autonomy, which has granted men more permission to refuse sex and control their own sexual destinies (Fahs, 2010;Gupta, 2018).…”

Section: What Are Asexual People's Experiences?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The data on race within asexual communities has been inconsistent, and few researchers have begun to explore connections between asexuality and racialized sexual stereotypes that might marginalize asexual people of color (Owen, 2014). Higher proportions of cisgender women and transgender individuals within asexual communities also raise more questions than have been answered (Gupta, 2018;MacNeela & Murphy, 2015;Sumerau et al, 2018). Given the contentious and contradictory relationship that has historically existed between women's sexuality and the feminist movement, asexuality can open new doors to thinking about the relationship between sex and power from a feminist perspective (Cerankowski & Milks, 2010;Fahs, 2010).…”

Section: Directions For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Asexuality and Its Implications for LGBTQ-Parent Families

Carroll

2020

LGBTQ-Parent Families

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Asexuality, most often defined as a lack of sexual attraction, has emerged as a relatively new sexual identity category, and very little research has yet to explore asexual families and parenting. In this chapter, I review the literature on asexuality and its implications for parenting research and LGBTQ-parent families. First, I explain the meanings of asexuality through a review of its competing definitions and the evolving vocabulary of sexual and romantic dispositions within the asexual community. I also examine the methodological issues that have made asexuality especially difficult to research and the growth of asexuality as an identity movement in resistance to pathologizing narratives of sexual dysfunction. Next, I examine intersections between asexuality and gender, race, class, and disability, with critical attention toward the relationship between asexuality and the broader LGBTQ umbrella. I then review existing knowledge of asexual individuals' experiences of parenting, intimate relationships, and marginalization. Practitioners are urged to consider the validity of many types of intimacy as research on asexual parenting can further societal understandings of diverse expressions of love and family formation.

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Gendering asexuality and asexualizing gender: A qualitative study exploring the intersections between gender and asexuality

Cited by 38 publications

References 23 publications

Asexuality is inversely associated with positive body image in British adults

Asexuality is inversely associated with positive body image in British adults

“When We Talk about Gender We Talk about Sex”: (A)sexuality and (A)gendered Subjectivities

Asexuality and Its Implications for LGBTQ-Parent Families

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