Hey folks, it's swankivy, and I'm here to bring you another episode of Letters to an
Asexual.
This is number 47.
Um, and, I'm, uh, not feeling super good these days and, you know, as a result of that, I
am making a video without having put a lot of thought or preparation or energy into what
I'm gonna say, so I hope you'll forgive me for making this a kinda sloppy video.
Uh, but I'm not really gonna have another time when it's convenient to record this and
I still wanna bring something out this month so um, I'm just gonna take a less prepared
crack at this.
Uh, my topic today that I would like to discuss is asexuality and religion.
And your perspective on your orientation if you're an asexual person, uh, may be affected
by your religion.
You may have different perspectives even within the same religion, just based on who you are
and how your religion figures into your life if you have one, and then also how people
in your life who maybe, like, religious family members or religious significant others, or
just, um, people in general looking at asexuality from the--from a religious perspective.
Uh, it will vary hugely among different religions and different people within those religions,
and it will also be influenced somewhat by whether they consider asexuality to be, like,
an "alternative sexuality," so to speak, or whether they consider it to be basically the
same as being straight by default, like some people do even though that's not really accurate.
So um, again, because I am doing this kinda off the cuff, I hope that you'll forgive me
for also fumbling around using my own book to help me, 'cause I've written about this
before, and so I'm just gonna look at the religion chapter while I do this so that I
don't leave something out that I wanted to talk about.
Um, so, gonna talk about that, but, uh, first I would like to say that, um, there are some
religions that actually mention something that could be interpreted as, um, a position
on asexuality, and one of them, believe it or not, is mainstream Christianity that uses
the New Testament as its Bible, so um, I think I wanna start there, lemme see if I can find,
uh, the religion section in my book here so that I can read a quote to you.
Um, all right.
Religious stuff.
Um.
So when I first started talking about the intersection of, like, religious perspectives
and asexuality for my book, um, I did, I started with, uh, Christian perspectives just because
that was so commonly discussed in my community, about um, whether it was just gonna be assumed
that, uh, asexual people are people who stay virgins and that isn't that a good thing in
a lot of religious communities, that they want you to remain a virgin and that it makes
you "pure."
And I mean, that kinda has its own, uh, problematic aspects, the idea of "purity" being associated
with sex, and morality, but um, the problem is there's a flip side of that, which is that
there's commandments associated with getting married, and they suggest that when you are
in a marriage, that you're supposed to have sex, and that it's, uh, wrong to "deny" your
partner sexual union in the hopes of having children, and you know, that has so many problems
with it, partly because some people want to be married and not have sex, and also because
it suggests that marriage is, uh, something that should necessarily be formed for the
purpose of producing children, and some people can't have children, um, or they shouldn't
because of health reasons or other reasons, so reserving marriage for the production of
children has all kinds of problems with it, but in the New Testament, there is a--there's
a quote from, uh, from Corinthians 7:8-9, in the New International Version, I'm reading,
I'm looking that up, um, where I guess it was Paul said, this is a quote, "Now to the
unmarried and the widows, I say, it is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do, but if
they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn
with passion."
And he also continues by saying, "I say this as a concession, not as a command.
I wish that all of you were as I am.
But each of you has your own gift from God.
One has this gift, another has that."
And he's suggesting there that if you--if you wanna have sex and you can't control yourself,
it's better to marry the person that you wanna have sex with so that that won't be a "sinful"
union, and if you have beliefs associated with how marriage should figure into your
religion, ya know, you may be able to use that in--you know, if you are a Christian
person and you're asexual, and your community or your parents or somebody in your--in your
circle is giving you issues about how this is against God, you can quote Paul, and say
"ya know, look, he, he says this straight out that asexual people exist, or at least
people that don't desire sex," um, you know, it's oversimplified and problematic in its
own way, but this is a straight-up acknowledgment that some people who don't have that desire
exist in the world.
But unfortunately it seems like it's, you know, staying unmarried and not having sex,
those are two things that are lumped together and that marriage is always for being in a
union with someone and having sex with them, so you know, it'll--it'll have limited usefulness,
I guess, if you're using Biblical support to defend your orientation for somebody who
may find that to be important, um, but it is there, I mean, that's a--that's a straight-up
quote.
And it's in a couple different places.
So um, I uh, I also wanna say that chastity is prized in a lot of, uh, dialogues that
are in religious communities.
But at the same time, they seem to have it centered around waiting the right person.
The assumption is generally that you're either going to find someone and eventually give
yourself to them in a sexual union, presumably for the purpose of having children, or you're
going to remain celibate and you're gonna be doing that in a religious context.
And um, that you're gonna be doing it to devote yourself to God, or you know, they say "become
a nun!"
The, uh, suggestion that I should become a nun for some reason, because of not having
sex has, I mean, I've heard that so many times, it's ridiculous.
And I'm like, "Well, wouldn't the fact that I'm not Catholic have something to do with
why I shouldn't do that?"
But no, they associated it so strongly with celibacy that they think that's, like, the
primary focus.
I mean, I know it's a joke and all, but anyway, uh.
So, I actually know someone that wanted to become a nun when they were younger, um, and
they said that they were thinking about taking the first steps to become a nun, and they
were told by somebody who was a nun that they should not do it.
Because, um, the abstention from sex is supposed to be a sacrifice, so if it's not a sacrifice
for you, if it's just a natural part of what you would be doing anyway, then they say this
particular nun said to them, to my friend, that that makes you ill-suited for being a
nun.
So I mean, there's an example of someone in the church rejecting someone for their asexuality.
Or at least for their lack of sex drive.
It gets very mixed up because we're not real clear on what exact part of it they're rejecting
or that they have problems with.
Uhh.
So, um, so I have also had contact with people who, you know, as they move into the age where
they're "supposed to be" settling down with a marriage partner, their families will get
aggressive about trying to do matchmaking with them for someone that they think is a
good match, and uh, they'll start to create a hostile atmosphere in the home or in the
family unit, to uh, encourage that person to accept, uh, these, um, aggressive situations
where they're trying to make them date them or make them get married when they may not
want to.
And um, someone I had direct contact with was saying that they were gonna, they--they.
their family was threatening to uh, kick them out of the house if they didn't obey what
the parent wanted, um, in this specific thing, they were treated like they were a, uh, spoiled
child who was refusing to honor their parents' wishes.
And uh, this was offered in a religious context as well.
So in that case, you hear people say asexual people don't have enough in common with, you
know, LGBT folks to be joining these communities because they don't face the possibility of
violence or rejection from inside of their family, but I've heard stories like that a
bunch of times.
I also heard from somebody who said that um, they tried to come out to their parents, and
their dad was so angry about it, um, that they had to pretend it was a joke until a
couple of months down the road their dad finally, like, calmed down and stopped harassing them
about it, um, and you know, they were threatening to kick them out of the house because they
said this, and they had to pretend it was a joke.
Um, so.
Huh.
Long story short, um, there are plenty of accounts I've heard from people in my community
who have had a religious perspective informing aggression, hostility, rejection within mostly
traditional families, you know, where they think the person is, they're rejecting their
culture or they're not adhering to commandments.
And um, you know, now I'm gonna go on to a related religion on that note.
Um.
I come from a Jewish background and the Jewish side of my family, which you know, is my dad's
side, um, my mom converted before I was born so, because it was, as it's told to me it
was important to my dad's side to have Jewish children, so I was raised Jewish, and I didn't
really hear perspectives like this, I guess because they weren't incredibly religious,
but you know, my grandfather was a cantor, it's kind of, it's like a religious singer,
if you don't know what that is, in the temple, so I mean, he was basically clergy.
Um, and so there was some of this perspective in my background, but I never heard anything
about perspectives on, like, marriage or anything like that but it's a very, um, there's a very
specific commandment for Jewish people that, you know they're supposed to get married and
replace themselves and their spouse.
They're supposed to try to have a boy and a girl, and then they've fulfilled this.
Um.
It's raining here.
Sorry.
Florida has, um, it's summer right now as I'm making this, June, and Florida has afternoon
thunderstorms almost every day.
Nice little trivia for you about Florida weather.
It's really weird.
Anyway.
Um, let me see.
Um, in my book I wrote um, "in traditional Judaism propagation of the people is of primary
importance, and some doctrines even say celibacy breaks religious law since it constitutes
failure to fulfill the divine command to have children."
Which I footnoted and the quote is "Every man is obligated to marry a woman in order
to reproduce.
Anyone who is not having children is as if they were killers."
So um, and of course also the "Be fruitful and multiply," that's from the Old Testament,
so that's uh, a perspective that comes out of the Jewish religion is um, you're supposed
to do everything that you can to put more of your group onto the planet.
And uh, regardless of whether you have children, um, you know, asexuality is linked in a lot
of people's minds to childlessness, and um, it's almost like it's, uh, across many many
cultures there's this almost humorously framed idea of parents flipping out over their children
NOT GIVING THEM GRANDCHILDREN, HOW DARE YOU.
But you know, it's a real thing that even though they kinda make a joke out if it, you
can, you can really get harassed by your parents and taught that you're selfish if you don't
have kids.
So um, I mean that has its roots in a lot of different religions.
Um, by the way, while I was researching for this book, you know, I talked to a bunch of
people in the community when I was trying to figure out what perspectives I may not
have considered that I should consider, and one of the most contributed-to sections was
this section on religion, where people from different backgrounds that um, I was not a
part of had given me thoughts on it.
And one of those was, um, some of my Muslim readers had given me some perspectives.
And um, one of the quotes that was offered to me was regarding how um, Islam says um,
my book says, "though marriage is emphasized as expected, there's still room for celibacy,
but similarly it's recommended only for those who don't marry."
And the quote there is "If one's healthful condition, integrity of heart, and peace of
soul reside in celibacy, then that is better for him, since these are things that are desired
of marriage.
If one can reach these without marriage, then celibacy causes no harm."
Um, and I can, I can quote these and their sources in the info of this video if you'd
like.
Um, so, then there was some talk about, um, what is essentially like, atheistic religions,
um, many forms of, like, Buddhism are more like philosophy, I guess, they're practiced
that way at least, they're not focused on a, a deity, um, and, uh, you can kinda go
back and forth on that, it's--there's lots of different kinds of Buddhism, so um, some
of the ones that have been popularized in the West are not necessarily, they might not
even be recognizable to people who actually practice them in the East, but um, I have
a uh, a reference in the book about um, how uh, this is something that I actually heard
from someone who claimed to be Buddhist, who said, um, that a--a very similar to my friend
who said that they were not uh, permitted to become a nun because of this, um, cleansing
oneself of sexual desire is you know, part of what you do to try to make yourself have
fewer desires and wants, and therefore more peace.
Um, and if that part comes to you naturally, then it's, it's not something that you learned.
It's not a lesson that you undertook and purged from yourself.
Um, so it--it may be perceived as being "too easy," and therefore not valid.
So um, anyway um, what's really bizarre to me is that there are some people who are accepting
of same-sex marriage and queer relationships and sometimes even trans folks, they're accepting
of that but they're not accepting of asexuality.
And that's weird to me, when they're like that, but usually what will happen is if you
try to invoke, like, "You wouldn't say that to a gay person!"
"You wouldn't deny a gay person--" usually yeah they would.
Usually those things go hand in hand.
Not all the time, but most of the time, if you dig around for the person's perspectives,
you'll find that they actually are transphobic.
They actually are homophobic.
Um, you know, or they, they may be accepting and claim that because they don't "hate" those
groups then therefore they're accepting, but actually they still believe that we all have
a disorder because everything that does not contribute to reproduction is by definition
a biological disorder.
And I've heard that so many times too, and more often than not, it comes from pseudo-scientific
people.
People who think that they're spouting biological perspectives when you know, a lot of the people
who actually study sexuality that I've had contact with, they have no such perspective.
But um, you would kind of think that these things would come more often out of religious
perspectives, but they don't.
They're much more often offered by wannabe scientists who don't really understand science
either but think that they're objective or think that they're very rational.
And a lot of times they're really not.
Let's see, what else do I have here.
Um, I'm gonna give you a quote from, uh, one of the other asexual activists who--whose
writings I like.
Um, here's a quote about chastity in association with asexuality and morality.
Quote, "If asexuals are chaste, it's not usually because they hold it up as a virtue.
It's because they would rather be chaste, regardless of whether or not they happen to
think it is a virtue.
I certainly do not regard chastity as a virtue.
Furthermore, like many other asexuals, I am not chaste.
I find it really offensive to stuff these values into my mouth and pretend that's what
I asked for."
And that leads me to another perspective, is that so many people will uh, assume that
you're religious, that you're subscribing to some kind of chastity vow if you say that
you're asexual, they'll associate that with not having--not being sexually active, and
also thinking that you're pure, and also thinking that you're better than other people.
I hope you can still see me in the camera, 'cause now I'm laying down.
I'm feeling like crap, sorry.
Um, so let's see what else do I have, um.
Oh yeah.
I should probably talk about mine.
Um, so it's hard for me to really nail down a, uh, specific "religion" that I would say
I belong to, um, but I identify as like an atheistic Pagan.
And so, Paganism is definitely something that I, um, relate to and, uh, I don't know if
I would say it's a practice for me anymore, um, I have explored some practices of sort
of a--an eclectic take on Paganism, but um, I think it's just more of a philosophy for
me, that I like the idea of being connected to the past and being connected to the Earth.
And so some of the holiday celebrations that I do will just be mostly about redecorating
my house to reflect the seasons and acknowledging the cycle and the spiral of the year.
I like to bake things that are seasonal.
Uh, but I don't worship anything.
I don't, like, I think of, like, Gods and Goddesses and whatnot as sort of a celebration
of humanity's tendency to personalize and humanize things, um, and uh, anyway, in a
lot of uh, Pagan circles, you will find open and accepting groups and practices uh, for
a lot of diverse sexualities.
Um, you don't find a whole lot of homophobic-by-nature uh, like, Wiccan groups or Pagan groups.
Occasionally you will find some homophobia and transphobia in, uh, maybe something that
would be certain stripes of Dianic Witchcraft and whatnot because, like, they might be focused
on Goddess worship and assume that you have to have been born with a vagina to be "really
a woman," and there's a lot of focus in certain very traditional types of witchcraft and certain
kinds of Paganism on male/female polarity, like that there's a Goddess and a God, and
therefore all of nature is masculine or feminine, and while I can appreciate some of that as
uh, symbolism, I think it can be dangerous to divide everything like that, especially
with people.
And associating reproduction with sexual reproduction, not all reproduction IS sexual in nature.
So ya know, not supporting same-sex or uh, not supporting nonbinary people um, and any
relationships that they might have, uh, I don't think that there's much of an excuse
for that, um, using a nature religion to justify it.
But in any case, um, a lot of times you'll be able to find nature religions that are
accepting of asexuality, but because there is this focus on sexual celebrations, like
there's, there's sometimes symbolic or even literal sex in certain rituals depending on
the type of group that you go to.
There's a lot of, you know, um, a lot of symbolism that is very sexual, and uh, sometimes they
will look at you if you're asexual or you're chaste, um, they will look at you as if you're,
"Oh, you're a prude."
And that you're not in touch with whatever uh, natural inclinations that they think you
should have.
Um, so sometimes you can find, um, outright hostility in certain kinds of Pagan groups,
and again I'm NOT saying all.
Just like I'm not saying all with Christian groups and other more traditional religious
groups, you're not gonna find it everywhere.
You're always gonna be able to find uh, examples of more accepting, more tolerant religious
groups.
But um, I have heard of some people having a hard time in a group when they've joined
and they found everything was pretty cool until they disclosed that they were asexual
and then people treated them like, "Oh, you must not be in touch with your real sexual
self, your spiritual self, your Earthly self, you need to get past that, and you need to
have sex, because it's natural."
Um, so I mean you do sometimes see that and even if you don't see direct pressure to have
sex yourself, sometimes these communities can be very sexualized.
And um, you know, they'll treat you like your failure to participate or you being squicked
by it in any way is you know, judgment of them or, ya know, it can just be hard for
an asexual person to be in a very sexualized space of any kind.
And ya know, come to think of it, that has been a complaint among ya know, not just asexual
people, but people in general who wanna participate in queer activism.
Sometimes spaces are--have become very sexualized in response to not being allowed to have that,
not being allowed to be proud of it, or not being allowed to express it in other places
where it's either not safe or you're just treated like you're gross.
Um, so these spaces sometimes become very sexualized, and then they may not be friendly
for certain people who may be sexual assault survivors, people who may be from backgrounds
that they find that very distasteful, people who are asexual, people who you know, may
have a problem with it for some other reason.
You know, it's just, there are all kinds of ways that you can end up encountering that
in queer spaces that uh, can be kinda similar to what I'm talking about with Pagan spaces
being very sexualized.
And they're doing that for a different reason, they're doing it to celebrate, but sometimes
they can make it unfriendly to people like us.
Um, you know, if you happen to be one of the people that is uh, not comfortable with that.
And I'm, I'm kind of one of those people, that I'm comfortable with it theory but I
don't personally actually wanna be involved or probably don't wanna see too much of it.
So you know, I would be, I'd be more of the, um, perspective that I should remove myself
from those types of groups if I don't like what they're doing.
Um, but sometimes if that's the only thing available for--and it's serving other needs
that you have, sometimes it can be hard to have that kind of stuff going on in your--in
your space and you, you uh, are uncomfortable with it or something.
So um, let's see, um, well I'm sure that there are uh, perspectives in um, re--both religions
that I haven't covered and uh, perspectives in religions that I HAVE covered that I haven't
covered that particular perspective, but I think I've run out of juice here, and I've
probably been talking for a while so I think I'm gonna end the video here, and you can
feel free to talk in my comments if you have stuff that you wanna talk about, about uh,
maybe your own experiences with religion and asexuality, and um, I hope that um, you've
been okay with, uh, watching me kinda fumble my way through this video.
Uh, because I know that it's not very good quality and that I'm really just not in too
good a shape to be doing it right now, so I hope you've been able to bear with me here
and um, hopefully next time I make a video I'll be feeling better.
So.
I'll see y'all next time.
Bye!
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