ABSTRACT
Sexual voracity is core to constructing hegemonic and normative masculinities. As a result, identifying as asexual may pose problems for men, perhaps even existing as a threat to their masculinity. How do asexual men respond to this challenge? Do they conceal their asexuality? Do they critique the gender ideologies that oppress them? Do they seek to rework their identities to retain their claim to gendered power and privilege? This chapter explores these questions through discursive analyses of two major online gathering spaces for asexual people. Asexuality itself can present as a masculinity threat—in which an individual's status as a man is called into question—to which asexual men react in five main ways: (1) critiquing masculinity itself; (2) distancing oneself from heterosexual men; (3) framing oneself as unaffected and exceptional vis-à-vis gender/masculinity pressures; (4) concealing asexuality; and (5) critiquing women for asexual erasure. Despite these different responses, claiming a subject position as both asexual and masculine entails a challenge to normative hetero-masculinity by destabilizing the coupling of masculinity with sexual voracity, compulsory sexuality, and amatonormativity.
