ABSTRACT
In a portrayal of asexuality on Fox network’s medical drama House originally aired on January 23, 2012, a couple enter the doctor’s office. They are white, young, attractive, presumably able-bodied, heterosexual, and married. They also both identify as asexual. Getting caught in the orbit of Dr. Greg House (played by Hugh Laurie) and his team of doctors due to a simple bladder infection, the wife and her husband become promptly suspect in their asexuality and subject to a series of medical tests. As the episode unfolds, and Dr. House persists in his disbelief of asexuality, asexuality becomes undermined, erased, and misrepresented on two fronts. While the husband is found to have a brain tumor that “caused” his asexuality, his partner is found to be lying about her asexuality so as to make her husband happy. Together and asexual for ten years, House teaches its audience that the couple’s asexuality is impossible. In the words of Dr. House, we learn only that sex is “the fundamental drive of our species, sex is healthy” and that “the only people who don’t want it are either sick, dead, or lying” (House, 2012).
