As a part of my module for my third year of university (Undergraduate degree, 2014), I was asked to conduct an interview with an expert relevant to my chosen dissertation topic, which is asexuality and Living Dolls. I was lucky enough to secure an interview with Dr Mark Carrigan, a well known and respected researcher within the field of asexual studies.

Transcript – Interview with Mark Carrigan on Asexuality

HA – Hannah Albone

MC – Mark Carrigan

JP – Josh Price

HA: First of all I’d just like to thank you for agreeing to this interview. I’m also joined by one of my tutors Dr Mafalda Stasi, and my colleague Joshua Price. I will be conducting the interview though.

MC: Yes that’s okay.

HA: So my first question to you is: asexuality could be thought of as a challenge to the hetero/homo binary and the westernised ideologies surrounding sexualisation. Do you believe this contributes to the creation and constraints of asexual visibility?

MC: I think there are two separate issues there because the extent to which asexuality is intrinsically counter-heteronormative I think is actually of the question. So if you look at the biographical experiences of asexual people, in many cases the extent to which they do fall under the LGBT umbrella is not clear, and so in asexual tumblr communities, there’s a lot of debate about whether and to what extent asexuality can be understood as queer. But in terms of sexualisation of culture, it’s hugely significant, because I think the very possibility of asexuality, and the visibility of that possibility, poses all sorts of questions in relation to how we assume sex is so central, and I think that assumption is a key aspect of sexualisation. Could you clarify by what you mean about the constraints on visibility?

HA: Well obviously when you’re discussing asexuality, it’s not the most visible in terms of it as a sexual rights movement, I feel asexuality is only just becoming visible in the last 5 to 10 years, since you’ve had the rise of AVEN and the work of it’s founder. I remember reading recently that they had their first float in the gay pride parade in San Francisco. That’s leading up to a visibility but I feel like in terms of the general media it is not nearly as publicised as much as LGBT, and it’s constrained because it’s this idea that, like you go back to the Western centric surrounding this idea that sex is central to the Western ideology, and this idea that because asexuality is ‘against’ the norm it’s constrained because in quotation marks ‘not normal’.

MC: I think there’s a lot of truth to that. I think there’s a risk of overstatement though. I’m very interested in the historical dimensions of this. So as you say, contemporary visibility activism only really came into being with AVEN, and yet there are obvious historical predecessors to an asexual identity. So if you go back to various points in North America, it is more common that it is here, as I understand it. You have the identities of celibate and political identities of celibate. So it’s important to disentangle the social identity of asexual in it’s contemporary form, from the experiences which lead people to seek out that identity, that allows that identity to do some work for some emotionally and psychologically. I think if you see it in that historical perspective, the claim about the inherently Western nature of sexualisation, it’s not that it’s wrong, but I think it’s more complicated than that, especially within Western societies, it has changed a lot.

HA: No I definitely agree that it’s not necessarily a stereotyped view but it’s a dominating view that we adhere to more than we should. This idea that sex is central to Western society.

MC: I think so, I think maybe, I guess I’m more inclined to phrase it in terms of capitalism, which obviously is tied up with Western ideology.

HA: Well yes, of course, everything comes back to capitalism in Western ideology. If you’re alright I’d like to move on to the next question?

MC: Yeah sure.

HA: So we’re talking about that asexuality has typically been feminised. How do you think this affects asexuality as an inhabitable identity category for all genders.

MC: This is one of the ones that I wasn’t sure how helpful I’d could be because I went into my (practical?) research expecting gender to be a salient thing , and was surprised that is wasn’t, and it’s possible that how I constructed my questionnaires and how I conducted interviews by having an advertently marginalised gender as a variable. But leaving that possibility aside, it didn’t seem as important to the experiences of asexual people as I had expected it to be. I think there’s something very interesting about intersectionality in relation to asexual and trans identities, so there’s a lot of evidence anecdotally and from the AVEN census that there’s a degree of intersection, far beyond that in other groups within other areas of the social world. I think that demands explanation. CJ Jason once suggested in a conversation with me suggested that that could be because of…there’s both aspects to someone’s identity leading to a relavitization of identity categories. So people who begin to realise that sexual categories don’t apply to them are more likely to be sceptical of gender based identity categories, and vice versa.

HA: That’s a very interesting take on that point.

MC: As I say, it’s CJ’s, not mine, but I think it is a very interesting argument, a hypothesis for future investigation.

HA: So moving on to, I mentioned briefly that my dissertation topic is regarding a woman named Valeria Lukyanova. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with her, but she’s a Living Doll who’s modified her body to resemble the classic Barbie doll.

MC: Was there an exhibition in the Herbert?

HA: There was an exhibition regarding the art of the doll, I don’t know if she was directly involved in it or represented, but it would have been close to what she does in terms of a representation.

MC: Yeah it was really interesting.

HA: Now she has defined herself as asexual, despite her appearance as Barbie as such. Do you think this could be seen as a commodification of asexuality?

MC: I think it could be seen as a commodification of asexuality, I’m not sure if that’s how I’d see it. I think there’s an inherent value particularly given the relative lack of visibility, cultural explorations of asexuality and related idea are politically and socially valuable.

HA: Even if it could possibly be construed as a commodification, it’s still valuable in the sense that it’s raising awareness?

MC: Yes exactly, and I guess that the consequence would be what sort of awareness does it have for awareness. So if it promotes…if it entrenches widespread misunderstanding about what asexuality is, then that would be negative. Without being more intimately familiar with her work, I’m not in a position to judge whether that’s the case. But from what I do know, I suspect it could promote interesting dialogues, and if not the most important contribution to asexuality ever, nonetheless has some value to that end.

HA: Just flowing off the topic of celebrities promoting asexuality, what do you think about the increasingly number of celebrities who are now identifying as asexual, in the media that are now visible?

MC: To be completely frank, I wasn’t aware of that, so who are you talking about?

HA: Would you mind if my colleague Joshua Price jumped in here, because he’s more familiar with this topic than I am?

MC: Yeah sure.

JP: Stephen Fry recently, Mike Skinner from The Streets as well.

MC: Really? Sorry who was the first one?

JP: Stephen Fry.

MC: Really I had no idea about that.

JP: He claims celibacy so, in a way, it ties into an asexual identity. In recent years he’s moved towards an asexual identity.

MC: That’s really interesting. I’ve stopped really working actively so I’m reading a lot less. I think particularly if you’ve made that transition via a celibate identity, it indicate the sense in which an asexual discourse can be a way of expressing dissatisfaction with sexual normativity. So it’s not strictly speaking a case of identifying oneself in terms of an essentialistic conception of asexuality, but a more expressive notion of identity. It’s a way of saying I don’t quite fit into these narrow sexual categories.

HA: That’s all really interesting points, and it’s interesting, I mean I didn’t know about the Stephen Fry point either, but like you say it’s interesting to see that he’s moving away from this idea of a centralised sexuality binary as such.

MC: It sounds like quite a queer using of the category, and I think that’s quite interesting, given it’s central contribution to the discourse of asexuality.

HA: Yes. So if it’s alright I’d like to move on to another question. In your 2011 paper, you were analysing the AVEN community to a certain extent. Do you feel that an analysis of the offline embodied asexual community would yield different results to this online community analysis?

MC: I think potentially, and I doubt it’s a case of divergent findings leading to a completely different picture as much as offline works, helping flesh out arguments that have been overly informed and overly reliant on online spaces. Conceptually I don’t really buy the idea that online and offline are distinct spheres. I think that it’s the shorthand we use, but equally, there are clearly…AVEN is not just a virtual community, and because of the methodological ease in relying on AVEN to recruit participants, and because of some of the questionable assumptions social scientists make about the internet, there’s been a tendency to assume that the asexual community stops with AVEN, and stops with virtual spaces, and I think that’s the problem. There’s a paper written by an anthropologist in the US, Mark Smith, and I’m not sure if it’s ever been published, I read an unpublished draft of it, and that as far as I know is the first ethnography of asexual community spaces based around, if I remember correctly, participation in a pride rally, and that was really interesting, and I think it could importantly flesh out how we understand the community, because there is some evidence that these people who turn up to offline meetings, who don’t turn up to online spaces. This is recognising how difficult it is to not use the terms online and offline.

HA: Yeah, no I completely understand that. No that’s really interesting point actually, I’ll have to see if the paper’s been published yet, because it would be very beneficial to my research. My last question is that obviously you aren’t working actively in asexual studies any more, but what work do you feel remains to be done in the discipline of asexual studies?

MC: International work and historical work. If I ever do go back to the subject in an active way, I’d really like to look at the historical emergence of what I’d call sexual assumption. So could we be more precise about when and how this centrality of sex to notions of the good life came into being, and I suspect you could track that by looking at academic media and also popular media over the 20th century. I think there’s still not enough sense of historical context, especially about asexuality, and it’s kind of a parallel point in that there’s not enough international context as well. There’s some interesting papers coming out about asexuality in China, at some point in Sexualities in the next year or two, some of which are publishing. I reviewed it and said it was great and I didn’t hear anything contrary so I’m guessing it will be published. And I think more things like that, and particularly if we separate, or at least distinguish, asexuality as an identity category that emerged in a particular time and place, from social experiences which we have reason to assume are probably in variant. There have probably been people who don’t experience enough sexual attraction with enough ‘relative to socially mandated standards’ in every society. If that is the case, then there’s a lot of historical work to be done, trying to trace out the connections between contemporary asexual identity and other kinds of identity that we can find in history.

HA: No that’s all really interesting actually. Well thank you very much for your time, it’s really appreciated that you took the time out to do this interview with us.

MC: No, no problem at all. So what was the project that you’re working on?

HA: This is for my dissertation, like I mentioned I’m working on this woman Valeria Lukyanova, who’s known as the human Barbie. I’m looking at the doll asexual and asexual femininity. I’m still in the stages of planning it at the moment, but if you’d like to have a look at the research you’re more than welcome to see what I have so far.

MC: Yeah I’d really like to, I want to find out more about her work as well. I hadn’t seen the connection and it sounds really interesting.

HA: Well if you like I’ll formalise something for you and I’ll send it over to you via email. I know you’re going on holiday so no rush.

MC: No that’s really interesting thanks. I’ll get back to you on that.

HA: No problem, thanks very much for your time.

MC: No problem at all.

END.