Ela
PRZYBYLO

SCIENTIFIC PROJECT

"At The Ends and Edges of Sex : Rethinking Gender and the Normate Bodymind with Asexuality Studies"

Asexuality is a queer sexual orientation characterized by low to no sexual attraction to others. In the last decade, the efforts of asexuality awareness and activism have resulted in growing legibility of the sexual orientation and the nascence of affirmative representations of asexuality in both queer and mainstream cultures. The goal of this project is to reflect on the last decade of cultural representations of asexuality, with specific attention to gender, romantic orientation, disability, and neurodivergence, to better understand how the normate bodymind is sutured to normative levels of desire and attraction. In revealing how ace representations, especially those generated by youth cultures, are working to develop an “ace gaze” – or an asexual subject position and way of looking at a compulsorily sexual culture – this project assesses that neurotypical ableism rests on the capacity to desire both sex and romance toward producing a narrow range of capacities of relating.

BIOGRAPHY

Ela Przybyło is Associate Professor in English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Illinois State University. She is the author of Asexual Erotics: Intimate Readings of Compulsory Sexuality (2019) and Ungendering Menstruation (2025).