This critical autoethnography explores experiences as an asexual cismale and the inherent tensions and struggles experienced in the dialectic between societal expectations of sexual desire as a man and the lack of sex drive characteristic of an asexual orientation. It explores the exclusion asexuals experience, as they occupy a third space between straightness and queerness, leaving them nowhere in either the gender or sexuality roles spectrums to truly call home. As asexuals exist in a space not often considered by heterosexual and queer individuals and asexual men exist between the tension of sexual expectation and orientation, music is utilized as a means of common language. This essay offers this connection through a series of autoethnographic glimpses, each set to a different song or lyric, as a soundtrack to give voice to the silenced experiences of asexuals.
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Fall 2021
Research Article|
October 01 2021
The Silent A: A Critical Soundtrack of Asexuality
Adam Key
Adam Key
Adam Key (PhD, Texas A&M University) is a scholar concerned with the discourses that produce some members of society as deviants and exclude them from meaningful participation. His work centers on exposing taken-for-granted ideas that facilitate oppression. He would like to thank Brontë Pearson, Erin Clement, Jodi Henley, River Dowdy, and Ashley Newman for their invaluable assistance, love, and support during this project. This work would have not been possible without them
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Journal of Autoethnography (2021) 2 (4): 446–465.
Citation
Adam Key; The Silent A: A Critical Soundtrack of Asexuality. Journal of Autoethnography 1 October 2021; 2 (4): 446–465. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/joae.2021.2.4.446
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