The Freedom Not To Be Sexual

Why sex positive frameworks need asexuality

Does sex positivity enable the freedom not to be sexual?

In my latest research, which was recently published in the Journal of Positive Sexuality, I argue that sex positive frameworks have not adequately considered this question.

This undertheorization poses serious issues for sex positive frameworks. Namely, neglecting asexuality can lead sex positive researchers and activists to inadvertently lean into sex negative ideas such as compulsory sexuality (or the idea that everyone does and should experience sexual attraction).

One of the core missions of sex positivity is to undo the shame associated with sex and sexuality. Shame, sex positive researchers and activists argue, plays a crucial role in sexual oppression.

A crux of my argument is that sex positive frameworks focus on resisting shame for the types of desire we do experience, but they don’t adequately consider shame for the types of desire we don’t experience.

In my recent article, I try to address this by drawing on interviews with 17 asexual individuals from conservative Christian upbringings. These interviews highlight how sexuality can be compelled—not just repressed—within sex-negative “purity culture.”

Is Sexuality Repressed or Compelled?

We need to talk about a false binary that has animated a great deal of scholarship on sexual oppression and sexual freedom. This false binary is the question of whether oppression stems from sexuality being repressed or compelled.

The repression/compulsion debate is visible in various academic debates, including the so-called feminist “sex wars” and the mountain of scholarship informed by Foucault’s rejection of the “repressive hypothesis.” The feminist sex wars, dating to the late 1970s and early 1980s, refers to a collection of arguments over lesbian sex, pornography, erotica, sex work, BDSM, and other arguments broadly related to sex and sexuality. Although they focus on a range of topics, these arguments often focus on whether sexuality is repressed or compelled.

Foucault’s highly influential History of Sexuality Vol. 1 also engages in this debate. Foucault’s argument is often misinterpreted as a wholesale rejection of the idea that modern sexual oppression is fueled by repression of sexuality. Although Foucault certainly rejects the argument that repression is the cause of modern sexual oppression, Foucault is more productively read as adding a complementary explanation. Foucault argues that we are compelled to “confess” our sexual feelings and actions, and that this is an underappreciated cornerstone of sexual oppression.

I see Foucault’s argument as resonating with my own: that sexual oppression does not solely operate through repression, but instead through repressive and compulsory pressures.

Purity Culture Represses… But It Also Compels

Focusing on the experiences of asexual people in Christian purity culture reveals the repressed/compelled binary as misleading.

“Purity culture” is defined by the expectation that sex should only occur within the confines of procreative, heterosexual marriage. The so-called “purity movement” is often associated with conservative, evangelical Christianity, and it claims to encourage a “biblical” approach to sexuality.

Most scholarship and public discourse about purity culture and the purity movement emphasize the repressive elements of this regulatory sexual framework and do not consider how purity culture not only represses sexuality but also compels it.

This is a dynamic I’ve written about before on Bluesky, Twitter, and Substack. It’s easy to assume that because purity culture pushes sexual abstinence, it shouldn’t pose much of a problem for asexual people. Yet, my research on asexuality has shown this simply isn’t true. Purity culture poses major problems for asexual people.

Although we often focus on the ways purity culture represses sexuality, it’s easy to miss that purity culture compels sexuality too.

One way of thinking about this is that within purity culture, sex outside of heterosexual, procreation-oriented marriage is repressed. But at the same time purity culture pressures people to eventually enter heterosexual, procreation-oriented marriages.

Claire, one of the asexual people I interviewed for this study, explained:

For a while, everything felt fine. I honestly felt confused why everyone around me was struggling so much to resist “temptation,” because for me it was no big deal. Like, ‘good for me!,’ I guess. But as I got a little older, my lack of interest in sex and romance became a problem. The pressure to partner up, get married, and have more Christian babies just kept increasing. (Claire, 31, White, cisgender woman, Texas)

It’s also worth noting that the compulsory sexuality operating within purity culture is highly gendered. Many of my respondents specifically spoke about the “obligation” wives have to provide sex to their husbands. Sylvie explained this particularly vividly:

The 72-hour rule refers to the idea that men must cum every 72 hours, and it’s a wife’s responsibility to make sure that happens. (Sylvie, 34, cisgender woman, Florida)

Compulsory sexuality operates in two ways here: first, the “72-hour rule” frames men as inherently sexual. Second, this “rule” frames one of married women’s essential roles as fulfilling their husband’s “need” to orgasm. There is no reciprocal emphasis that women either experience sexual desire nor that husbands owe sex (or orgasm) to their wives. In addition to compulsory sexuality, the cultural scaffolding of rape culture is on stark display: women are situated as sexual servants rather than as autonomous and agentic sexual actors.

In short, even sexual realms that are remarkably repressive, like purity culture, do not rely exclusively on repression to structure expected sexual norms. Compulsory sexuality is an equally important element of purity culture.

Marriage and procreative sex are core elements of purity culture. (Screenshot from christianfamilymarriage.com)

To read purity culture as simply about abstinence is misleading. As much as sex negative frameworks like purity culture repress sex that they see as “bad,” they also mandate sex that they see as “good” (read: heterosexual, monogamous, within a Christian marriage, and procreation-oriented).

Sex positive frameworks must pay more attention to how both sexual repression and compulsory sexuality fuel sexual shame and sex negativity. Otherwise, sex positive scholars and advocates risk inadvertently drawing on the sex negative framework of compulsory sexuality.

Can Asexuality and Sex Positivity Be Reconciled?

Sex positive frameworks have, as a whole, done such a poor job of theorizing around asexuality that some asexuality studies scholars see such frameworks as deeply inadequate or even wholly unredeemable.

I don’t entirely agree. I see asexuality as offering necessary nuance to sex positivity. Nonetheless, I agree with critics that sex positive frameworks often omit, invalidate , and misrepresent asexuality.

These shortcomings of sex positive frameworks undermine the core goals of sex positivity in two main ways: 1) by disempowering and marginalizing a sexual minority group (asexuals) and 2) by reproducing sex negative pressures associated with compulsory sexuality.

To be clear, although sex positive approaches often marginalize asexual people by reproducing compulsory sexuality, this appears to usually be indirect, unintentional, and done through omission of asexuality rather than explicit exclusion. However, as Mosher (2017, 493) notes, the “omission of the sexual experiences of … asexual people from the discussion of sexuality is incongruent with a sex-positive paradigm.” If recognition is indeed crucial to enacting freedom, and freedom is indeed a tenet of sex positivity, then the recognition of asexuality is an urgent problem for sex positive researchers and activists.

Compulsory sexuality is not inherent to sex positive frameworks, even if it commonly emerges within them. Too often, however, the celebration of positive sex can dip into compulsory pressures that everyone should have and desire sex.

Centering asexual perspectives and lived experiences helps us correct this by making visible and naming compulsory sexuality. It is important to remember, though, that although compulsory sexuality perhaps more obviously (or severely) harms asexual people, compulsory sexuality is harmful well beyond asexual communities, particularly as part of the scaffolding of rape culture.

Sex positive frameworks will be strengthened by focusing on the freedom both to have/desire sex and to not have/desire sex. From this perspective, it is not enough to say that asexuality and sex positivity can be reconciled. Instead, they must be reconciled.

You can read the full article, “The Freedom Not to be Sexual: Asexuality, Compulsory Sexuality, and Sex Positivity” at this link.

Canton Winer is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Northern Illinois University. His research focuses on the relationships between gender and sexuality, with specific focus on the experiences and perspectives of people on the asexuality spectrum. You can keep up with his research on Bluesky.

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