Autistic Reading of “What Is Sex?” by Alenka Zupancic

The Premise

The first challenge Zupančič presents in her book What Is Sex? is our understanding of what essentially amounts to Yin and Yang. This concept is not directly related to sex but can fundamentally change how we perceive everything described as such. So, let’s break this down first. I’m going to use my own example here.

Take light and shadow. We have two separate words to describe this Yin and Yang polarity, but if you think about it carefully, the fact that we have a word for “shadow” is misleading. “Light” is defined by the presence of photons, but “shadow” can only be described in terms of the lack of photons. (For the sake of simplicity, let’s ignore the fact that a signifier does not point to a signified in Lacan’s view, only to another signifier.) Much like the number “0,” the word “shadow” doesn’t actually point to anything. However, when we give it a name, we start to act as if there is some sort of substance it points to, perhaps something similar to photons but black. This “bewitchment,” as Wittgenstein liked to call it, of language has numerous consequences because it is, after all, a deception. We see “shadows” because of shapes, but the shapes are defined by the absence of photons. There is no substance within the shadow we can study with a microscope.

With the assumption of binary opposition, we imagine “male” and “female” to be a spectrum akin to two-color gradient, like blue gradually turning into red. Or, not even a gradient, just blue next to red. But this is not how sexuality manifests at birth, despite the physical differences. Infant boys and girls have the same exact sex drive without the concept of the other. They do not know where their selves begin and end, so they would pull their own hair and cry from the pain.

Thus, the word “shadow” has a peculiar existence. Unlike words like “chair,” “apple,” or “water,” it signifies nonexistence. We are supposed to have a word because something exists, but the word “shadow” contradicts this premise. It’s as if the word is a reminder of the inconsistent nature of language, an exception to how language works. Since there is nothing it can point to, the word shouldn’t even exist.

This is what Lacan meant when he made the infamous pronouncement: “Woman does not exist.” Let’s now break this down.

Freud noticed that infants do not have male or female sexuality. They both have “libido,” which drives them to masturbate simply because it feels good. While playing with their erogenous zones, boys do not imagine naked baby girls in their minds, nor vice versa. Libido is gender-neutral; both boys and girls have it. To understand this better, we can equate libido with photons. The biological differences, like the penis and vagina, have nothing to do with sexuality at this stage.

Lacan’s other famous pronouncement, “There is no such thing as a sexual relationship,” can be understood in this light. At the level of the material world, light and shadow cannot have a relationship because the only substance that exists is photons. How could a photon have a relationship with the lack of it? Likewise, libido cannot have a relationship with the lack of libido. There are no separate types of libido like masculine libido and feminine libido. Since both men and women have the same libido, technically speaking, men and women cannot have the relationship that we presuppose from the existence of those words.

Sixteen years ago, I read the controversial book The Essential Difference by Simon Baron-Cohen, an expert in autism. I began reading it, thinking I would agree with everything he said, but I found myself fundamentally disagreeing. I saw numerous holes in his definition of “feminine,” yet when I tried to define it in my critique of the book, I realized I couldn’t do it well either. Back then, I did not have the Lacanian vocabulary of sexuation. I concluded by noting that even though I agree that autism is an extreme form of the male brain, it is impossible to define how the extreme form of the female brain would manifest. What would such a person be like? I described it as “Zen-like,” where she transcends dualism. Since language presupposes dualism, such a person is impossible to describe or even notice. This is what Zupančič is essentially saying as well. “Woman,” if she existed, would transcend the Symbolic. She would exist in the Real, which is self-contradictory because the Lacanian Real is a realm of non-being beyond ontological discourse. Or, it would be on a different level of ontological space.

Even though there is no such thing as a sexual relationship, our dualistic mind requires the binary pair of male and female, just as we invented the word “shadow” and the numerical concept “0”. This is when the whole mess was created because it’s a lie or a flawed model at best.

Many feminists criticize Lacan’s idea “woman does not exist” as sexist. What Lacan’s statement implies is that man exists, but he is not real. Just because what brings “light” into existence is the presence of photons, it does not mean that photons belong to the concept of “light.” Photons are essential for defining both “light” and “shadow.” For “light” to exist, we have to assume the existence of “shadow.” Technically speaking, “light” doesn’t exist either because “shadow” doesn’t. This binary pair exists purely for our minds. 

The Lacanian Real is what our language fails to capture, and in that sense, it doesn’t “exist,” but the indications of its existence can show through the patterns of how language fails to capture. This is like how “shadow” cannot be defined by black photons but by certain shapes we recognize. While “shadow” does not have a counterpart to photons, it shows itself in an entirely different dimension as a recognizable pattern.

In the same way, a man has to believe in the existence of a woman in order to overcome his existential insecurity, which is why Lacan says all men are “imposters.” He also differentiates “penis” from “phallus,” where the penis is the biological feature of men, and the phallus is the word that points to a nonexistent substance, like “woman” or “shadow,” that allows them to believe in their own existence as men. Since a woman is a phallus, she does not need to be an imposter.

Just as a dog is happy humping a human leg, there is no natural or normal object that we should be having sex with, but from the point of view of civilization, this would be too chaotic. We had to have an organizing principle around sex, so we invented “man” and “woman” based on biological differences, even though there is only one type of libido that drives us to have sex.

There are many other examples of Yin and Yang we could analyze in this fashion, but the pseudo-binary opposition of male and female is foundational, the mother of all binary pairs, because sex is the question of our very existence. If we were to ask any existential question, we have to ask why we exist in the first place: because our parents had sex. This question is particularly urgent for children. “How did I come to be here? How did my little sister suddenly come home one day? Where did she come from?” Without knowing the answer to this question, the question itself wouldn’t even arise because the person asking the question wouldn’t even exist. Sex, therefore, is a primordial question of existence. But even if the children learn the word “sex,” they would still have no idea what exactly it is because it cannot even be talked about without the false dualism between male and female.

The Implications

Now that we have established that sexual differences do not exist at birth, let’s consider how they emerge. A helpful way to start might be to imagine if these differences did not emerge at all. For that, look no further than your typical nerds, particularly autistic nerds. Autism is sometimes described as a profound disinterest in people. Autistic toddlers might not differentiate people from inanimate objects in a room. In contrast, neurotypical kids are naturally drawn to other humans, which is why most magazine covers feature human faces. Only autistic individuals might be more interested in a cover featuring the latest iPhone. (Note: I’ll be making gross generalizations about autism to simplify this complex concept.) As you can probably imagine, if you weren’t particularly interested in people, you wouldn’t bother learning to be a man or woman.

Although autistic men have similar levels of libido as neurotypical men, they are often perceived as asexual or neutered. Autistic women are perceived as manly because they do not bother learning how to present themselves as women. For instance, they might forgo makeup and prioritize comfort over looks in fashion. Ultimately, they are neither manly nor womanly; they simply do not learn to play the socially expected roles.

There is a scene in Fast Times at Ridgemont High that illustrates what happens to these nerds when they hit puberty and become horny like anyone else. Mark, a “wuss, part wimp and part pussy,” falls in love with a girl at school but doesn’t know what to do, so he asks his manly friend Mike, who explains that it’s all about “the attitude.” We can imagine that men like Mike have always been keenly interested in people, particularly women, and thought about how to seduce them. They didn’t learn it overnight. However, later in the film, we discover that Mike’s “attitude” has no substance; he is not as experienced with women as he pretends to be.

Both characters demonstrate how masculinity is learned. Neither was born with it. So, a world where sexual differences are not taught would be filled with nerdy men like Mark. In a way, autistic men and women are true rebels who refuse to conform to societal expectations, unlike Hollywood rebels who merely adopt the masculine trappings of rebellion. They have their own priorities and standards.

Zupančič explains that men and women learn how to be masculine and feminine to cover up the fact that there is a fundamental void, an abyss, a “negative 1,” like a black hole in a sexual relationship, just as “light” and “shadow” have no basis to be a binary pair. We scramble to fill that void because it’s unnerving. This is the basis of primal repression, the mother of all repressions. From this perspective, we could say that autistic people have no repression because they didn’t bother repressing the primary one. Their tendency to blurt out what they are thinking without any “filters” is one symptom. (Although this is a matter of degree.)

Once we assume that we fabricated sexual differences to cover up the void, the Lacanian theory of men being imposters and women being masquerades makes a lot more sense. I’ll provide some examples to convince you of it.

When men try to be manly, they hide the fact that they do. “The attitude” Mike described is not to be revealed to women. When men dye their hair or put on a toupee, it is kept secret because an essential aspect of masculinity is authenticity. Such attempts are seen as feminine. This is why men are imposters. They want to completely deceive others. They cover up the void with what Lacan calls the “phallus” and act as though it’s real. Being criticized or exposed as imposters poses an existential threat to men. Mike came close to being exposed as a fraud when he actually had sex with Stacy in Fast Times.

In contrast, women wear masks, and we all know they do. The fact that they wear makeup is no secret. So, even if someone were to say, “That’s not real. You are wearing makeup!” her response would be, “And, what?” Because they do not rely on the phallus for their sense of existence, they cannot be existentially threatened.

Both men and women are playing the charade of sexual differences as imposed by our society, but men have a lot more to lose. Note that in our culture, girls often have sleepover parties and even sleep on the same bed, but boys do not. Women can wear men’s clothes, but men cannot wear skirts to a business meeting. Women can hold hands in public, but men cannot. “Man up” is a common expression, but “woman up” is not. Men are often asked, “Are you man enough to handle it?” But we don’t hear, “Are you woman enough to handle it?” Someone being “man enough” simply means that he is so good at being an imposter that he is confident that his fraud will never be exposed. Even if homophobia and the stigma of being gay were to completely disappear from our society, heterosexual men are not likely to hold hands in public because the fear of being exposed as imposters will persist. All men are doomed to suffer imposter syndrome to varying degrees.

In one study, women were asked to place their hands with spread fingers in an ice-cold water bath for three minutes. They found that the women, who were then allowed to hug their romantic partners, reduced cortisol release measurably. However, the same effect could not be observed for men. Given the Lacanian theory above, these results make sense. This test wasn’t a test of their womanliness for women but a test of manliness for men. Men had something to lose; women didn’t. In other words, it had a symbolic dimension for men. Being comforted by women is a threat to their manliness.

There is also a scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding that demonstrates how the phallus functions. Toula wants to work for her aunt’s travel agency but needs Gus’ (her father) approval. Aunt Voula and Maria (her mother) manipulate Gus into thinking that he came up with a solution to Voula’s business woe, which involved Toula working for her travel agency. They succeed and praise Gus. He then points his finger at his temple and says, “You see. A man!” Ironically, women in more traditional or even “backward” societies know how the phallus works intuitively, not intellectually, so they let men keep up the fraud.

Because challenging the phallus poses an existential threat to men, they can become aggressive, hostile, or even violent in response. The challenge does not have to be direct. If men perceive women to be performing men’s jobs, they can feel threatened. (Here is an example.) The masculine psyche is quite fragile because it’s a mirage.

It should be noted, however, that men do not necessarily want to be imposters. Both men and women are essentially forced to play this charade in order to cover up the fundamental lack of a sexual relationship, the void. Again, if we all refused to play it, the world would be a chaotic mess filled with nerds with lots of libido, unable to figure out what to do with it. So, even some nerds eventually learn to “man up.”

This is why Zupančič is not sympathetic to the ever-expanding list of gender categories. Adding more genders cannot resolve these contradictions created by the fundamental void. Feminists who attack men as the source of sexual antagonisms are misguided in the sense that they are being completely fooled by imposters. They think the phallus is as real as the pyramid and feel it needs to be dismantled. Alternatively, they erect their own phallus. Erecting more genders can lead to women needing to not only wear masks but also be imposters themselves. This is analogous to the different types of marriage our society has today. Adding more types, like marrying oneself, a dog, a sex doll, or a manga character, would not erase the fundamental antagonism of the sexes. What Zupančič suggests is akin to questioning the very idea of marriage as a state institution.

What does this mean moving forward? I would not suggest that we all stop the charade and become nerds—not that there is anything wrong with that. Recognizing that we are all playing it can help ease the antagonism. For instance, when someone is “mansplaining,” as a woman, you can be a bit sympathetic. He is simply playing the phallus, just as you are wearing a mask. Of course, if the topic is important to you, you do not need to listen to him and unleash what you have to offer, even if that destroys his phallus. Remember, if you want to have a sexual relationship (where there is actually none), both sides have to play the charade. This is true even if you are homosexual or bisexual. Without some form of charade, you’d have no sexual relationship.

The idea that men are from Mars and women are from Venus is flawed in that at birth, no sexual differences that can be described in terms of “masculine” and “feminine” existed. This does not mean that men and women are equal in every respect. Men, on average, are taller and stronger. Men tend to be more systematic thinkers, and women more empathetic. However, these qualities are not inherently sexual. A tall, muscular man can grow up to be a nerd. Being physically stronger is associated with masculinity, but association is not the same as origination. In a way, describing physical strength as “masculine” is a tautology. We defined “masculine” as “physically strong,” so when we observe physical strength, we think “masculine.” It is like the question of whether “1+1=2″ is a premise or proof of the validity of mathematics. If we have two Play-Doh balls combined to make one larger ball, we end up with 1+1=1. We can have a system based on this premise. In this vein, saying men are masculine because they are physically strong doesn’t prove anything. It’s neither here nor there.

The origin of all political antagonisms lies in the nonexistent sexual differences. Because sex is how we all come to exist, sexual antagonism takes primacy over all others. Understanding how we all play the charade allows us to be more compassionate with one another. Unawareness of the phallus as a mirage turns us into Don Quixote, fighting a simulacrum. Liberals fight conservatives as if the ideological phallus is real, and vice versa. A complete eradication of conservatives does not yield a utopia. It is the dialectic and the contradictions between man and woman, as well as liberals and conservatives, that allow us to enjoy the infinite possibilities of life. Otherwise, there would be only one correct way to be, like in mathematics. We would all be Stormtroopers in Star Wars, exact clones of each other.

One More Thing

I had this additional thouoght while discussing this essay with someone online. What if an autistic subject is where the split is so complete that he is the mask itself? Autistics often complain about having to wear masks but what if it’s the other way around? What if they do not want to be anything other than the mask? They do not understand why neurotypical people have divided selves. “Masking” for autistics isn’t actually putting on a mask but pretending as if they, too, are divided. If so, you can imagine how much of a burden it is to act like a divided subject when you feel you are not. Perhaps, this is why autistics tend to act like robots or Vulcans. Many of them, in fact, like the idea of being robots.

Here is an example to illustrate my point. Neurotypical people put on a “mask” to cover up the irrational self. For instance, this irrational (“true self”) might want to eat the entire cake himself but he puts on the rational mask and takes only a slice like a civilized person. In contrast, an autistic person consists only of the rational self, so if he sees someone who is taking two slices of the cake, he just blurts out, “You are so selfish and greedy. Put that slice back!” Because of this bluntness, he is perceived as not having any “filters” or “masks” but it’s actually the other way around. He is what neurotypicals consider as the mask.

Referring to the illustration above, neurotypicals identify more strongly with the party guy on the left. Feelings, in general, belong to the left. Autistic people identify more strongly with the right guy, which is why Temple Grandin said autistic people’s allegiance is with reason. So, when the guy on the right ignores the feelings of the guy on the left, the former is criticized for his lack of empathy, that he has no “filters.” But for the guy on the right to act like the guy on the left is a lot of work. It does not come naturally. That’s why the left side feels like a “mask” to an autistic person.

But an autistic subject is not actually undivided. They are divided, but they are disavowing from the other side. They’ve fully identified with the big Other, and they find neurotypicals annoying because they wouldn’t let go of their subjectivity. Whereas neurotypical people cherish subjective differences, autistic people despise them. But autistics still suffer the consequences of the divide, so they are still neurotic.

We could think of autistic subjects as the opposite of perverts. Instead of disavowing castration, autistics exalt it. They cross over to the Symbolic entirely (or at least overshoot the typical border). Whereas perverts act as if they are undivided, autistics act as if they have been completely divided, so complete that they act as if they are undivided as purely Symbolic subjects.