YOU DON’T HAVE TO HAVE SEX: COUNSELLING FIELDS AND MANDATORY SEXUALITY

Abstract

Asexuality, and by extension people’s right to not have sex, is contentious ground. Psychology’s conception of asexuality perpetuates a system of oppression called mandatory sexuality. Mandatory sexuality operates in white settler colonial nation-state interests by decreeing that normative sexual activity occurs frequently, in the context of marriage or marriage-like monogamous relationships, with the goal of decreasing undesirable populations while increasing economically productive settler populations. Mandatory sexuality is perpetuated in psychology via microaggressions, including clinicians presuming that clients want to and do have sex regularly, or with pathologizing assessments that call for investigation when people do not want to have sex. In the present study, three feminist, sex positive, and trauma informed therapy practitioners discussed mandatory sexuality in semi-structured online interviews. Mandatory sexuality is a colonially instituted form of violence that leads to interrupted relational development, interfering with clients’ ability to have interdependent, grounded relationships with themselves and others.