Unwrapping an enigma

This was cross-posted on The Asexual Agenda.

In Psychology & Sexuality‘s special issue on asexuality, there was an article called A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma, which was basically an interview with several of the article authors.  A few people have complained that this article revealed that “many of the researchers seem wildly out of touch with actual ace communities and discourses.”

Therefore, it might be an interesting exercise to see how people actively involved in ace communities would respond to the same questions.  I’m going to answer the questions, and I invite you to answer one or more of them in the comments or on your blogs.


What motivated your initial engagement with asexuality research?

I initially started reading (a)sexuality research during the time that I was questioning the extent of my asexuality.  What I really wanted to know: how does science break down attraction into components?  AVEN had one way of breaking it down (and since this was four years ago, it was not the quite same way it’s broken down now), but I wanted a second opinion.  I didn’t get much of an answer from academic research, and perhaps it was foolish to expect one.  But I continue to be interested in academic research as a second opinion on asexual issues.

Are there issues particular to asexuality research which differentiates it from other forms of sexualities research?

I think the main difference is the community structure.  Because the community is very centralized, a lot of asexuals will have more or less the same conceptual understandings.  Because it is primarily internet-based, we transcend national boundaries (but language boundaries not so much).  Because asexual awareness is very low, there is a huge population of “potential asexuals”, people who do not identify as asexual, but who might identify under the right circumstances.  All of this has a big influence on what kind of research is feasible.

Unlike Bishop, I don’t really have a problem with classifying asexuality as sexualities research.  I wouldn’t usually use “PC” in a pejorative sense, but I think this is a case of being excessively PC.

How can researchers disentangle asexuality from diagnostic entities such as ‘hypoactive sexual desire disorder?’

There are probably some clear-cut cases, such as the happy asexual, or the person who suddenly loses their libido and is very distressed about it.  But there are always going to be some ambiguous cases.  How do we tell between lifelong HSDD, and a potential asexual who is distressed about not fitting into the norm?  I’m not convinced that there is in fact a difference, and I suspect it’s really a moral question about the best way to respond to such people.

In ambiguous cases, I would like clinicians offering the possibility of asexuality to their patients, and seeing how they react.  And I would like to see research evaluating the results of such an approach.

In a recent review article, C.J. Chasin raises several provocative questions. First, do you think asexuality should be categorised as a sexual orientation or as a meta-category akin to sexual? Second, how might asexual men and women rationalize or justify engaging in sexual activity and what are the potential consequences of doing so?

I’m with Hinderliter, in that I can’t think of any empirical difference between asexuality being a sexual orientation, and being a meta-category.  I don’t think it’s a scientific question at all.  It’s a political question.  Is it more politically beneficial to consider asexuality an orientation or as a meta-category?  I think it is better to think of it as an orientation, because: a) the parallel to LGB is educationally useful, and b) conceptualizing gray-A as half of a sexual orientation is needlessly confusing.

I think the second question is loaded.  Asking how asexual people “rationalize” engaging in sexual activity suggests that asexuals who have sex are necessarily disempowered, and they only have sex for the “wrong” reasons.  According to Aicken et al. (2013), most potential asexuals who are having sex enjoy it, suggesting that it isn’t always a kind of disempowerment.  The researchers had several good answers for why asexuals might have sex (satisfying partners, expressing intimacy, desire to reproduce), but I would add that some asexuals may also have sex for pleasure.  It would be cool to see research on the relative prevalance of these different motivations.

How is the negativity directed toward asexual individuals similar to/different from the negativity directed at other sexual minorities (e.g., gay men, lesbian women, etc.)?

There are a lot of different ways in which individuals and society express homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and ace-hate.  It’s hard to compare the different categories when each category is so varied!

There are some notable differences in the canonical forms of negativity directed at different groups.  Asexuals experience erasure and denial, whereas gay men experience bullying, and trans women experience serious violence.  These canonical forms of negativity partly reflect reality, but they also reflect back-and-forth political framing.  Bisexual erasure doesn’t get much attention, nor does the fact that bisexuals have higher rates of suicide than gay and lesbian folk.  There’s also a tendency to see these as being problems for white men, when usually minorities and women are disproportionately affected (eg).  Research is what helps us tangle out the details.

What directions do you expect asexuality research to take over the next decade?

I expect a lot of it to rehash what most people within the asexuality community already know.  Maybe years down the line they’ll “discover” gray-As and demis.  The queer and feminist theorists will “discover” that asexuals have the potential to break down romantic/non-romantic boundaries. Etc. etc.  There will probably also be a lot of research on HSDD.  And that’s all important research.

Although, what I’d like to see is more information that would be news to me.  Academic research can give us knowledge that we in the community would otherwise not have access to.  In particular, we don’t know much about potential asexuals, since by definition we don’t hang out much.  And we know very little about the relative prevalence of different experiences.

The fallacious slippery slope

I find that the best way to talk about fallacies and biases is to wait for a good example to come around.  Recent discussion of same-sex marriage offers some excellent examples of slippery slope arguments.  Chris Hallquist recently highlighted an example:

By turning marriage into a socially constructed reality that doesn’t have a nature, marriage can then be whatever you want it to be. Not just the union of a man and another man, but also even two men and a woman–three partners in marriage. Or it could be a man and a child. Or maybe even a man and his dog, if he feels close enough to his pet to want to marry it.

--William Lane Craig

(In context, William Lane Craig is arguing that long-term relationships are so uncommon among gay men, that they couldn't really be fighting for marriage for its own sake.  Instead, their real goal must be to "deconstruct marriage".  But I will ignore this context to focus on the slippery slope only.)

I remember learning about logical fallacies in grade school English, and they would always include the "slippery slope fallacy" among others.  I think this is wrong.  A slippery slope argument is not necessarily fallacious.  It depends on how it's used.  Therefore, I call this a fallacious slippery slope argument to distinguish from those slippery slope arguments which are not fallacious.

First, I wish to divide slippery slope arguments into two categories (which are my own creation):

1. The slippery slope of reasoning
2. The slippery slope of consequences

Example of a slippery slope of reasoning: Suppose I claimed that all the best things are green.  You could counter, "But if you follow that slippery slope, you must also believe that cats (which are not green) are not among the best things!  Clearly this is absurd."

Another example: "If you believe that same-sex marriage should be legal, then you should also believe that man-dog marriage should be legal.  This is clearly absurd."

This kind of slippery slope argument is no different from an argument ad absurdum.  In a mathematical argument, we'd call it proof by contradiction.  It's a logically valid argument, it's just that it's often unsound (ie the conclusions follow from the premises, it's just that the premises are wrong).  In the green example, the person forgot to show that it is absurd to believe that cats are not the best things.  In the example of same-sex marriage, the person forgot to show that if same-sex marriage is legal, then man-dog marriage should be legal.  But if we granted the premises, the conclusions would follow.

William Lane Craig uses a slippery slope of consequences.  He does not say that if we support same-sex marriage, we must logically also support man-dog marriage.  Rather, he says that if same-sex marriage is legal, this would lead people to also legalize man-dog marriage in the future.  The argument is not about what people should conclude from prior beliefs, it's about what people will do, how people will behave.

It's basically a moral argument.  Lane Craig doesn't want people to marry dogs, so from his perspective it's worth taking actions to avoid this.

But there's something rather strange about this argument.  We are free agents.  We can either choose to allow man-dog marriage or not.  We will choose according to our preferences.  If we prefer to allow man-dog marriage, why should we prevent getting what we prefer?  If we prefer not to allow man-dog marriage, then why would we choose to allow man-dog marriage?

Mind you, the slippery slope of consequences still isn't necessarily fallacious.  There are some situations where we might worry that our future selves will be irrational.  Or that other people will be irrational.  Or that we'll have different preferences in the future.  And there are game-theoretic situations where it's better to have fewer options (I've recently been reading about decision theory).

But none of those situations are relevant here.  Making laws is a very deliberative process, not something that's decided on the spot on an irrational whim.  And it's hard to imagine a non-trivial game-theoretic situation.  Usually there are people who want a law, and people who don't, and that's that.

So despite the slippery slope argument being an acceptable argument in general, William Lane Craig manages to use a form that is completely fallacious.

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On a related note, my boyfriend pointed out a slippery slope argument made by Supreme Court Justice Scalia, when he argued in favor of anti-sodomy laws in 2003:

"Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is 'no legitimate state interest' for purposes of proscribing that conduct; and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense of neutrality), '[w]hen sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring,' what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising '[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution'?"

-Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 605-06 (2003) (Scalia, J., dissenting) (internal citations omitted).

I'm sure by now Scalia has thought of a few justifications for denying same-sex marriage that do not rely on anti-sodomy laws.