The Upside of Asexuality

I grew up an asexual in an oversexed (and horrifically conflicted) culture. Maybe this was because of some undiagnosed medical abnormality, maybe this was because I spent too many years under my Puritanical mother's hawkish eyes, or maybe this was because ever since the very beginning I found watching people mess up their lives was far more amusing then participating in personal catastrophe. In any event I am at a point in my life where I wouldn't change this outcome for anything. I am still enjoying watching the people around me flit through their lives like little psychotic chickadees, safe from the sidelines.

It's been noted that our divorce rate in the good old US of A is approximately the same divorce rate that chickens have after the end of each breeding season. That's right, hens are monogamous creatures, but if the rooster across the barnyard is ruffling prettier feathers she will leave her first mate about 50% of the time. This immense distractibility seems uncannily similar to our own species and I don't think it testifies much to our intelligence as a "superior" life form. In any event, it's the least scandalous bit of knowledge I have collected pertaining to our collectively psychotic ADD nature.

Our religious leaders and government officials would like us to think we're all monogamous and that our purpose in life is to find the perfect someone, of the opposite sex, with which to settle down and have many well-rounded children with. This is called the Nuclear Family and I have a shocking announcement to make. Functional nuclear families are not the norm of our society, they are the abnormal standard we think we all want. They are indeed the freaks. Who could possibly stand waking up to the same person day after day after day for fifty some odd years? Talk about monotony! No wonder why these marriages never work. We as a species are addicted to sex and to novelty, two things which normally wither and die within the confines of marriage.

To prove my point I will enter into evidence the English language and the psychiatric profession. We as a species are so obsessed with sex that we have, as a society, written down all that is "normal" and "healthy" and given everything else a clinical name, like a disease. Sex addiction, nymphomania, Inhibited Sexual Desire Disorder, Sexual Aversion Disorder, Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder, paraphilia, necrophilia, etc. Of course for everyone enjoying sex to it's extreme there are at least as many others who are petrified of it, as expressed through this colorful array of phobias: erotophobia, genophobia, heterophobia, homophobia, paraphobia, gynophobia, hominophobia, venustraphobia, etc.

It appears we've put a lot of thought into the subject. To put this in perspective how many synonyms for water can you think of? One? Two? My point exactly. So if sex is something we are so enthralled by then how on earth are we supposed to be content with just one partner for the rest of our natural lives? Only profoundly boring people could possibly be content with that. All the better for me, as I get to watch you all crumble under impossible expectations.

Don't think for a second however that we as a species even have a norm of any sort, to believe this would be to disillusion yourself. The only constant we seem to have is a slew of inconsistencies, and a fondness of novelty. We're a perverse species. Take for example our love of secretly collecting body parts to put into jars. It's a somewhat obscure fact hidden by history that someone stole King Tut's mummified penis sometime after they dug the poor boy up. It's still at large. I won't even dare ask if the person who felt possessed to commit such a strange robbery was a necrophyle or just some morbidly curious observer. What on earth does one do with a mummified penis? Wouldn't someone notice if you had one wafting around your little city apartment? "What's the dog got in his mouth?" "Nothing dear, nothing at all!"

I wish I could say that was the only such robbery I heard of (off the History Channel) but the truth is people have been pulling these bizarre stunts for centuries. Many a great leader's package has been lost to thieves. I kid you not. I have stopped asking, "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" because in my heart I know pretty much everyone harbors some horrifically bizarre sexual secret, perhaps a fondness for plether, pinky toes... or mummified penises. This is probably why we're all so uncomfortable with the idea of talking to each other about sex and sexual issues. To be frank with eachother would horrify us all.

It's fun watching you all implode, trying so very hard to keep up the status quo. There's so many dominoes that could fall in so many different directions. It may be cynical but I like hold little bets with myself on certain people, certain couples, on which one will break down first. To do this I must look at the nature of the sexes.

In the beginning God made man and woman and He in all his infinite wisdom decided to pit them against each other from the dawn of existence. Its true. Was Eve the evil temptress that gave Adam the apple like a poisoned love note or was Adam bugging the shit out of Eve until she caved and fed it to him out of spite? I don't know, it could have been either. The point of the story is we were never meant to coexist peacefully with each other but rather we have been created to snipe and bicker.

Enter the scene, the modern woman. The modern woman is one of the only mammals dumb enough to gussy up to try and attract males, who obviously need no coaxing. Put a good looking chick in a potato sack and the fellas will still be tripping over their own feet for her. Men don't dress up. They're not birds, or reptiles, or tropical fish. They see no need. They know some chick dumb enough will come along and screw them either way. It's the theory of low expectations at work, a unity of laziness, an obscenity sent to Mother Nature herself.

Enter the scene other modern women. Let's be honest. Women dress up pretty much to keep other woman from bitching about them behind their backs, telling everyone they meet what a fugly thing you are. Yes, indeed, they gussy up and hike up their boobs, wear skanky clothing and then bitch that men don't take them seriously, or can't stop staring at their chest. Common sense died a long time ago.

Women are not only irritatingly stupid at points, they are also uncannily foolish. Women know very well the nature of man, their seemingly insatiable drive (particularly earlier on in life) for sex and variety, but for some unknown reason the vast majority of them think they can change their man into... well, a chick. Not just any chick, a spineless chick, one that mutters only supportive comments and fills every emotional need. They want a pussified man who'll laugh and cry with them at their every whim. The nature of men cannot be changed, neither can be the nature of women. It's no small coincidence that societies that segregate the sexes often form intimate bonds with people of the same sex and often only resorting to sex with their spouses for procreation and sex for sex's sake, not for intimacy or emotional bonding. It's God's little joke. The Ancient Greeks and Romans, the Samurai of ages past, the tight female cliques of the Victorian age. It's all there plain to see. The cards are stacking up against modern couples.

So in any situation I like to look at both individuals. Will the woman's foolish manipulative nature be the couple's ruin or will it be the boy's wanderin' eye? Or perhaps it'll be the woman who will cheat first, seeking emotional comfort with another when her husband distances himself too much. Likely this will be with another man, another man who will eventually grow in her eyes to be the same kind of emotional cripple her husband is. Sometimes it's really hard to tell, as both are so phenomenally dysfunctional. Add a child into the mix and you got a powder keg ready to explode.

So what about successful marriages you say? They're not a bed of roses of either. So often I find that behind each successful marriage is a workaholic father who escapes to the office to keep his sanity and a stay at home mom ready to explode from the pressures of life. "All I do is change dirty diapers and clean!" the wife whines. "I can't stand my wife's bitching and the kids screaming so I come to work everyday for 16 hours," mutters the husband beneath his breath. How romantic! And they stay together for the sake of the children... who in the long run grow up just as dysfunctional as they did one generation ago, repeating the same obvious mistakes.

All my life I have had people approach me, feeling sorry for me, who have asked a slew of questions. "Aren't you lonely all by yourself?" Perhaps sometimes but to me it's worth the peace and quiet, the soundness of mind. "But wouldn't your life have more meaning with a spouse and children?" No, you can keep the snot-nosed little germ factories. I'm not fond of them. "You think all relationships are bound to fail?" No, not all, just a good majority. In all my life I have only seen two genuinely happy marriages between extreme pacifists. They never interested me much. I considered them a regretfully sad footnote on my studies on mankind.

So what are the upsides of being asexual? Emotional stability would be a good start, a profound lack of neuroses, a sublime sense of amusement watching you all, and oh yes, since I consider sex in and of itself to be odd in all its forms I'm usually not horrified by any secret confessions. You're all perverse little creatures in one way or another. Anyone who doesn't admit to that is a liar. Even I am a perverse character. I probably shouldn't gain enjoyment from cataloguing horrifically cynical viewpoints on sociology and psychology, but I do. I can't help that, it's who I am, and I accept it as a fact of life.

In life there are performers and there is an audience. Most of us take both roles at some point or another but as for myself, I'm contented watching the freak show from a distance.

If this surly article made you crack a smile or intrigued you please feel free to check out my other asexual ramblings:

A Misanthropic Asexual's Views on Dating

More Frank Observations by an Acrimonious Asexual

Not Everyone Wants Kids

An Open Letter to Asexual Teenagers