Both of the films (A)Sexual and Married to the Eiffel tower aim to bring to light two non-traditional (those people are less likely to have heard of) queer identities. Asexuality has become more accepted over time but the documentary itself seemed to focus on the roots of the community forming. Seeing how essentially one man realized there wasn’t a community for people who identify this way and thus forming Aven made for an interesting history. Before Aven was formed most people weren’t sure what to identify as. While labels are often restrictive they apply to the idea of strategic essentialism discussed in class. By labeling themselves as “Asexuals” they are able to form a community under one “roof”.
In Married to the Eiffel Tower, object sexuality has less of a formalized community and thus tends to have less of a cohesive label. While many of those who identified as objectsexual in the film seems to know each other there didn’t seem to be as cohesive of a community, perhaps because it is even more of a minority.
What was interesting was how the LGBTQ community acted around Asexuals in that film. While many were open to being accepting some were very against their identity in a similar way that heterosexuals are often (or at least used to) speaking about LGBTQ people. What I’d be curious to see is how this community would react to the idea of object sexuality. I imagine it would likely go two ways. Either they’d be harsher than they were to the asexual community or they would be more accepting because it still dealt with a form of “sex”. What first came to my mind when watching Married to the Eiffel Tower was the flawed argument that people would make when LGBTQ rights were being established. That being “if two men can get married, what’s stopping people from marrying a toaster” to which the average person would say, “that’s ridiculous who would marry a toaster”. But there are people out that there may want that.
I think this raises an interesting idea of “where do we draw the line”. It might make the most sense to ask two questions, “is what the community doing hurting anyone?” and “is it consensual?”. The first in these cases would have to be answered no. Nothing these communities do affects what anyone else is doing in a negative way. In the case of consent, when it comes to asexuality there is less of a concern of crossing the line since sex is not involved. While relationships still can be formed and need to involved various levels of consent we can answer that question with a yes. It gets blurrier with objectsexuals. How can an object, like the Eiffel tower, consent? Does it need to because it is just an object? But it’s not just an object to them. It’s a question that probably needs to be answered on a personal level.
