Understanding Asexuality

People think that our attitudes are rationally formed, the result of well-thought-out arguments and an astute and sensitive scaling of the pros and cons of the issues, along with, of course, accumulated wisdom from years of experience. Yet our attitudes are frequently governed by irrational, emotional states including—yes, you guessed it!—sexual desires. An example: One of the reasons that heterosexual men have negative attitudes toward male homosexuality but not female homosexuality is sexual in nature. Heterosexual men are often turned on by lesbian sex (Louderback & Whitley, 1997), and if one takes this arousal away, heterosexual men’s positive attitude toward lesbianism no longer exists. So, a little sexual desire/arousal toward lesbianism, and presto: positive (or at least neutral) attitudes toward it! After all, how could lesbian sex be wrong, immoral, and disgusting, if I am turned on by it? Impossible!

Ever flown into a jealous rage—just “lost it”—over a partner’s flirtation or outright sexual indiscretion with another? Most adults have experienced sexual jealousy, along with the torturous effects this emotion has on one’s thoughts and plans, even if the emotion itself doesn’t disintegrate into extreme behavior. But sometimes it does: sexual jealousy is considered one of the main motives in killings that occur in domestic disputes within the United States (Daly & Wilson, 1988; Daly, Wilson, & Weghorst, 1982). When a jealous rage does descend into violence, the resulting act is sometimes called a crime of passion. In civil courts in the United States, crimes of passion can be defensible if one pleads “temporary insanity,” making the defendant (at least theoretically) no longer criminally liable. Similarly, in nineteenth-century France, a crime passionnel (or crime of passion), including murder, was defensible in the same way. The fact that the courts in various societies at various time periods recognize that sex, at least under certain circumstances, causes “insanity” illustrates my main point: sex, in many manifestations, and perhaps even at its core, is mad.

When liberal-minded observers hear about the sex scandal of a celebrity (e.g., David Letterman) or a sports personality (e.g., Tiger Woods) or a politician (e.g., Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dominique Strauss-Kahn), they typically do not decry what might be perceived by more conservative observers to be the shocking immorality of the acts, but rather the shocking stupidity of the perpetrator’s behavior in getting caught. And it is clear that there is at times an almost wanton disregard for any kind of careful planning or thoughtful execution in relation to behaviors that, if discovered, could do serious damage to their reputations and careers. Even more telling is that many of the people caught in such scandals are incredibly bright, savvy, and highly functioning in the social sphere.

One might argue that this wanton behavior has less to do with the maddening effects of sex, and more to do with a sense of entitlement and disregard for others that seems to go hand in hand with power, status, and narcissism. Partly true, I expect, but this is likely not the whole story. For example, it does not explain the often careful and thoughtful behavior these men routinely display in other areas of their lives. If behavior in these other domains were chosen carelessly, it could be almost as damaging to their careers as an awkwardly planned sexual liaison. In addition, if one prefers a “power explanation” over a “sex explanation” to account for this wanton behavior of men of celebrity and status, one would still have to account for the tricky interplay of power and sex, particularly in men. For example, there is a surge of testosterone (potentially affecting both sex drive and feelings of power) in men after they win at competitions (Carré, Putnam, & McCormick, 2009). In short, it is very difficult to disentangle power from many men’s sexual motives (and vice versa). It is also hard to argue that sex is not at least partly the culprit underlying the seeming irrationality of the behavior leading to these scandals.

There is an antidrug ad showing an egg sizzling in a frying pan. The caption reads, “This is your brain on drugs.” Perhaps an equivalent one should be reserved for sex (“This is your brain on sex”), since brains on sex, including the brains of celebrities, politicians, and sports figures, do irrational things.