The word of the day is "absexual"
Back in the middle 1970s I got back in touch with a friend I hadn't seen for years. She had always been a cosmopolitan North Jersey girl (not as big a contradiction as it sounds) and literally awe-inspiringly cynical in a world where the trend towards new wave and punk was cornicing higher and higher but had not yet avalanched into the culture of irony and ennui. She'd become part of one of the earliest phone-sex operations, adoring the way she could sit on her couch fully dressed and with very little effort on her part get paid to listen to men rawly confirm her less-than-zero opinions of humanity in general and men in particular.
She said her most interesting regular customer was a man who called long-distance (in those freakishly expensive pre-AT&T-breakup days) and then, on top of that, pay her service several dollars a minute to... lecture and rant on the evils of phone sex.
And I bring it up in part because of a brought-me-up-short line in Diane Walsh's interview with Betty Dodson in Vancouver's Xtra.ca.
DW: According to the Urban Dictionary the term "queer" has a wide definition including persons who are gay or lesbian, and/or transgendered; and/or are persons who engage in unconventional sex, bondage, bisexuality, or some form of crossdressing. Does this broad definition of queerness promote a more sex-positive society, do you think?
BD: Absolutely! I love the term "queer." I agree that this broader definition is far more inclusive. Otherwise I'd have to say I'm a "heterosexual-bisexual-lesbian-SM-leather dyke-professional career masturbator." Phew! That's a mouthful. Some day I hope we will all just be "sexual."
DW: Does this definition not make everyone queer?
BD: Absolutely! Queer includes heterosexuals who are kink-seeking or poly or into role playing and we can't leave out the absexuals: Folks who get off complaining about sex and trying to censor porn. [emphasis mine --fl]
"Absexuals" huh? Suddenly my old friend's big-ticket Swedish client's motivations makes sense!
I'm not necessarily buying the concept, but I'm definitely going to look hard at it.
I'm leery not least because, Freud not withstanding, not everything is about sex and so it's not appropriate to go annexing that which is not. (Consider Scott Adam's rejoinder that "Atheism is a religion only in the sense that not collecting stamps is a hobby.") But, Freud *withstanding,* when people go beyond ordinary lengths to resist something it's interesting to inquire as to the nature of their (possibly non-sexual gratification.)
So anyway, at least for today, the word of the day is "absexuals."
[Hat tip to MsNaughty. Thanks, MN. --fl]
It's an interesting word, isn't it? I guess the "ab" is a nod towards "abnormal" - a word we're not supposed to use in regards to sex anymore. But I do believe that the kind of unhealthy obsession with sex that leads to censorship and fundamentalism is abnormal.
[I don't know how Dodson intended it but I'm construing her prefix "ab" in it's Latin meaning of "direction away from." You "ab"duct someone by taking them away from their home. You're "ab"normal when you're moving away from normal. The abductor muscles in our legs pull them away from the centerline. And so absexuals pull away from sex. Think that works? Thanks, MN. --fl]
Perhaps. I am also leery of labelling this sexual, though I could see if you're repressed enough about your own sexuality you might "get off" on castigating others for lack of any other way to entertain yourself.
I don't think you can get much more unhealthy than "absexuals", anyway
[As I might have just hinted, a lot of the people I'd label "absexuals" probably have some damage in their pasts that kind of rules out being able to enjoy sex. For instance a few generations ago parents agressively, and I mean aggressively monitored their children for any hint of masturbation. And, since it was believed to lead to insanity and a very early death, they came down very harshly at the first hint. You can see how that might have repercussions throughout adulthood, eh? And for some minority of those people the outlet involves ramping on other people's sex lives. I'd tend to call people with that reaction, and maybe only those, "absexuals." Thanks, Dana. --fl]
Eugh. Being taught masturbation is dirty and punished if caught is a fantastic way to screw people up :(
[Yup, just one of, um... several! I'm sorry to say. Thank you, Dana. --fl]