Understanding Asexuality

Okay, back to the Viagra joke and a more “cognitive” analysis: On a simple cognitive level, if you did not know that a penis becomes stiff and erect, that an erection is aided by Viagra, and that erections are often grasped (as in manual stimulation by a partner or in masturbation by boys and men themselves), then you would not “get” the joke. Since the man needs to grasp his own penis in this situation, knowledge of (and perhaps particularly the experience of) masturbation is also likely relevant. Now, if something is personally relevant, it is also likely to have some psychic tension associated with it. After all, most people—if not all—are a bit tense about and/or embarrassed by their masturbation experience, or at least were at one time in their lives. This raises an important point about how cognitive and emotional elements of mental processing operate in real life: they typically relate to and reinforce one another. Thus, if one has a cognitive “understanding” of the key elements of this joke (e.g., public masturbation), then one is also likely to have an emotional connection to these same elements.

From an incongruity perspective, understanding this joke needs to go beyond the mechanics of masturbation. Indeed, a rather sophisticated level of cognitive processing needs to occur in order for someone “to get” the joke. For example, a benign-violation humor theorist would likely argue that the Viagra joke is funny because we understand that two contradictory events have co-occurred: first, that grasping an erect penis in public is a violation of an important social code of conduct, and second, that this act in the present instance is only a benign violation, because it has been sanctioned by the dentist, presumably in the service of oral health. Someone who did not understand these two events, or who could not hold them in mind relatively simultaneously, would not “get” the joke.

Now let’s consider an asexual person, who has no sexual attraction for others, and also perhaps no masturbation experience (in fact, no sexual interest whatsoever).{Recall from the discussion of masturbation (chapter 5) that many asexual people do masturbate, but at a lower rate and less frequently than sexual people. If so, this analysis is, of course, most applicable to the non-masturbating asexuals.} Would he or she laugh at the Viagra joke? Let’s consider both emotional-tension and incongruity perspectives on humor.

From a straightforward emotional-tension perspective, I expect that an asexual person would not laugh, or at least would laugh less than an average sexual person. This is so because the asexual person can be assumed to have little or no tension about sexual matters generally, including about masturbation (e.g., no unused sexual arousal floating around, no masturbation guilt); after all, the asexual person has never had sex before and has no interest in it. Thus, there should be no emotional connection to this sexual activity and thus little psychic energy available to be discharged.

From a cognitive (i.e., incongruity) perspective, I expect that the asexual person would also have little self-relevant imagery of grasping an erect penis—either his own (if a man) or a partner’s. So, this information—an image of a man grasping a penis—should not be particularly personally relevant and would not readily come to mind; thus, it is not readily “cognitively accessible.” Of course, the asexual person may have imagined a scene such as this out of mild curiosity, or seen an image before (e.g., on the Internet), but it should be less readily accessible to an asexual person, relative to, say, a sexual man with a fair bit of masturbation experience.

However, using an analysis based on the benign-violation model, an asexual person without masturbation experience may still understand that grasping one’s penis in public is a violation of an important social rule. They would also understand that the dentist has sanctioned it, and hence it is a benign violation. Thus, if knowledge of these two contradictory ideas occurs simultaneously, an asexual person may still appreciate this joke.{If humor that causes laughter is more associated with emotional tension than other forms of humor (e.g., puns and other incongruities), then this joke may elicit only mild appreciation in asexual people. It may evoke a pleasant cognitive shift, a recognition of a strange incongruity being somewhat resolved. Thus, sexual people may laugh; asexual people may just smile?}