Talking about phenomenology, we defined it as the way a person experiences something. We talked about how our bodies impact the way we experience things, how our upbringings and class and race and sex and gender all play a part in how we experience phenomena. But what happens when your experience is a lack thereof?

            For some reason, modern culture is obsessed with sex. Half-naked bodies are plastered on billboards wherever you turn. A lot of the “fashionable” clothing is scant and at this point is so small it serves essentially no purpose. It can be hard to find an adult TV show without a sex scene somewhere. And sometimes, with all of this stuff going on, with all of this sex everywhere, I feel like an island.

            I dislike sex. Borderline to the point I hate it in a way. I don’t hate the concept, I believe what happens between consenting adults is their business. But I hate the way everyone talks about it. After years of being conditioned (with good intentions) that sex is a bad thing and should be kept very secretive, I am made so violently uncomfortable by the whole concept that I often leave completely when a sex scene comes on TV. I get depressed because many shows that I thought were promising end up completely ruined because they’re saturated with it.

            Outside of the general disdain and disgust, I also just can’t relate. Whenever I looked at bodies that most people would want to have sex with, the only thing I could ever feel was wanting to be them. Because my lack of interest made me think I was broken, I ended up getting myself into a bad situation which just added to my disdain for sex. But when that didn’t magically cure me, I went to college to do it again because clearly there was something wrong. Eventually I found out about asexuality and that it wasn’t entirely unheard of to just not be interested in sex. That was nice, and I stopped having to make stupid decisions to try to fix myself. I ended up settling down with another person who also dislikes how our culture is saturated with sex. And with him, I experience so many phenomena: walking around the inner harbor holding hands, just listening to the sounds and feeling the smells and the way the air tastes. We go to synagogues and I get to experience the strange phenomena of the altered sense of reality on Yom Kippur. I get to experience and reflect on all of these things, never having to experience the phenomena of sexual interaction or attraction or anything that involves naked bodies.

            In this class, I’m sure at some point, people will end up discussing phenomenology and sex. And it is at those points where I sit, stare into space, and phenomenologically analyze the experience of zoning out in class.