Introduction: The Symptom and Its Misreadings

The phenomenon of male sexual aversion—a reported disgust or phobic refusal to engage the female genital field—is frequently misread. Empirical explanations frame it as an adaptive mechanism (e.g., pathogen avoidance) or a socio-cultural artifact. These accounts fail to explain the structural anxiety and existential horror that often accompany the aversion, a response disproportionate to a mere empirical object. This analysis posits that the aversion is not a reaction to an anatomical object but a defense against what that object represents within a subject’s psycho-structural economy. We advance a new, integrated thesis: aversion is a subject’s chosen economic strategy for managing an unmanageable psychic surplus. This “surplus” is not monolithic; it presents differently at three distinct structural levels. We will analyze this economy using three complementary frameworks:

1. Kristeva’s “Abjection”: A pre-symbolic horror of the semiotic, material remainder.
2. Lacan’s “Lack”: A symbolic anxiety before the surplus-jouissance (plus-de-jouir) that reveals the “not-all” (pas-tout) of the phallic function.
3. Deleuze & Guattari’s “Flow”: A molar panic before the productive overflow of desiring-production.

The strategy a subject employs to manage this surplus—be it expulsion, negation, blockage, or instrumentalization—defines the type of aversion they manifest.

Conceptual Preliminaries: A Five-Type Model of Aversion

To proceed with rigor, we must abandon a monolithic definition of “aversion” and adopt a heterogeneous clinical typology.

• Type I (Empirical Aversion): This is disgust-coded and aligns with evolutionary psychology (Hlay et al., 2021). It maps to the pathogen disgust dimension (Crosby et al., 2020) and is not the subject of this analysis.
• Type II (Abject Aversion): This is a pre-symbolic, visceral horror. It is a defense against the maternal-semiotic (Kristeva), a “not-me” that threatens the subject’s “clean and proper” bodily boundary. It is a failure of primary separation.
• Type III (Neurotic/Symbolic Aversion): This is castration-coded (Lacan) and appears in obsessive or narcissistic structures. It is a defense against the Symbolic dissolution threatened by the pas-tout.
• Type IV (Deterritorialization Panic): This is a libidinal panic (Deleuze-Guattari). It is the subject’s “anti-production” mechanism to prevent a catastrophic loss of molar ego-organization in the face of molecular flow.
• Type V (Perverse Aversion/Control): This is a disavowal of castration/dissolution. The subject does not flee the void/flow but instrumentalizes it. The aversion is replaced by a rigid control (e.g., sadism, fetishism) that stages the encounter as the very condition of their jouissance.

Framework 1: Kristeva and Abject Aversion (Type II)

Before the subject enters Lacan’s Symbolic order, they must first establish a “clean and proper” body. In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva (1982) posits that this occurs through “abjection”—a violent casting out of the “not-me” that is inextricably tied to the maternal body and the “semiotic chora” (the pre-symbolic flow of drives). The abject is what “disturbs identity, system, order… the in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.”

Type II Aversion is the subject’s failed abjection. The female genital field is cathected not as a symbolic lack (Lacan) but as the material abject. It is the site of the primal “not-me,” the boundary-less maternal, the horror of fusion, of bodily fluids, of life that “swarms” beyond the border of the self. This is not symbolic castration anxiety; it is a pre-symbolic border panic. The aversion is a visceral, physical recoil from that which threatens to pull the subject back into the un-separated, pre-Oedipal “swamp” of the semiotic. It is the cry of “I am not that.”

Framework 2: Lacan and Neurotic Aversion (Type III)

Once the subject is stabilized (however precariously) in the Symbolic Order, the threat shifts from the maternal-semiotic (Kristeva) to the paternal-phallic (Lacan). As established in the v2 draft, the neurotic male subject is structured by the phallic function (∀xΦx). The feminine position, as “not-all” (¬∀xΦx), reveals the existence of a supplementary jouissance “beyond the phallus” (Seminar XX). Type III Aversion is the defense against this symbolic threat. The vulvar field is cathected as the signifier of this pas-tout. The encounter proceeds through three registers:

1. Imaginary: The anatomical field is looked at.
2. Symbolic: This look activates the scopic drive, which confronts the site as the location of the exception to the phallic universal.
3. Real: The subject is not just looking; they are seen by the Real of lack (objet petit a).

The Type III aversion is a phobic defense against this chain. It is a refusal to look, to prevent the gaze of the Real from activating the anxiety of symbolic castration—the traumatic realization that the Phallus is not universal and his symbolic consistency is a sham.

Framework 3: Deleuze-Guattari and Panic Aversion (Type IV)

Deleuze and Guattari (1983) offer a third, libidinal framework. Desire is not lack, but positive production. The “molar” (stratified, Oedipal) subject is a machine of “anti-production” that territorializes this “molecular” flow. Type IV Aversion is a deterritorialization panic. The female genital field is coded in the subject’s desiring-assemblage as a “line of flight” (1987). It is a “smooth space” of pure flow that threatens the subject’s “striated,” organized, molar identity. D&G warn that too-rapid deterritorialization leads to catastrophic dissolution (“a black hole”). The aversion is the subjective expression of this panic. It is the “celibate machine” (Anti-Oedipus) engaging in active anti-production to block the flow. It is the subject’s defense of their organism against their own Body without Organs (BwO), which is the horizon of this dissolution. It is the terror of: “If I go there, I dissolve.”

The Economic Synthesis: Aversion as Surplus Management

These three frameworks, far from conflicting, describe a unified economy of surplus management. Kristeva, Lacan, and D&G are all theorists of an “unmanageable remainder.” The type of aversion manifested is the subject’s chosen strategy for handling this surplus. Kristeva’s Surplus: The Abject (the un-symbolizable material remainder of the semiotic). Lacan’s Surplus: The plus-de-jouir (the surplus-enjoyment produced by the symbolic operation, which returns as the “not-all”). D&G’s Surplus: Desiring-Production (the immanent, positive overflow of the molecular).

The aversion is the economic defense against this surplus:

Type II (Abject) Strategy: Expulsion. The surplus is violently cast out as “disgusting” to maintain a clean border. Type III (Neurotic) Strategy: Symbolic Negation. The surplus (of feminine jouissance) is coded as a “lack” (castration), which is then phobically avoided to protect the Symbolic order. Type IV (Panic) Strategy: Productive Blockage. The surplus (molecular flow) is met with “anti-production” (the celibate machine) to protect the Molar organism.

The Perverse Solution: Instrumentalizing the Void (Type V)

This economic model reveals a fourth, non-aversive (yet related) solution. The Type V (Perverse) Subject does not expel, negate, or block the surplus. Instead, they instrumentalize it. The perverse structure is defined by disavowal (Freud’s Verleugnung). The subject knows (that there is a void, a flow, an abject) but acts as if it doesn’t pose a threat. They do not flee; they master. In this structure, the encounter with the void/flow/abject is staged as the very condition of their own jouissance. The aversion is transformed into a rigid, controlling apparatus (e.g., sadism, scopophilia, fetishism). They do not fear the boundaryless “swamp” (Kristeva) or the “void” (Lacan); they become the master of it, stabilizing their own structure by controlling and dominating the “other” who embodies it.

Competing Explanations & Objections

Empirical Accounts: As defined, Type I aversion (Hlay et al., 2021) is adequately modeled by evolutionary accounts of pathogen disgust (Crosby et al., 2020). Our thesis is that these models are insufficient for Types II-V, which map more closely to sexual-moralized disgust and structural anxiety. Feminist Objections: The critiques (Irigaray, Braidotti, Howie, 2008) that these frameworks (K, L, D&G) reify phallocentrism or abstract female embodiment (Daniel, 2009) remain valid. For this analysis, we bracket the political claim to stress the genesis of the psychic structure, arguing that these theorists are describing a pathology of phallocentrism, not endorsing it.

Clinical and Cultural Implications

The heterogeneity of this 5-type model demands differentiated interventions.

• Type I (Empirical): Responds to CBT and exposure therapy aimed at reframing pathogen disgust (Crosby & Meston, 2019).
• Type II (Abject): Resistant to simple exposure. Requires pre-Oedipal structural work on boundaries, separation, and the maternal.
• Type III (Neurotic): Requires psychoanalytic work to increase the subject’s tolerance for symbolic castration and the non-totalizable nature of jouissance.
• Type IV (Panic): Requires a Deleuzian “controlled intensification”—helping the subject map their lines of flight and engage in “becoming” without catastrophic dissolution.
• Type V (Perverse): Highly resistant to change, as the subject’s jouissance depends on their controlling solution. The therapeutic goal is rarely “cure” but managing the expression of the structure.

Culturally, this model suggests that aversion is a multi-layered symptom of a social field that demands a “clean and proper” (Kristeva) and “phallic, molar” (Lacan/D&G) male subjectivity, producing these varied anxieties as its predictable remainders.

End Matter

Assumptions (Explicit) Sexual aversion is overdetermined, symbolic, and heterogeneous. The subject must manage a pre-symbolic “abject” (Kristeva). The male subject is structured within a phallocentric field (Lacan) or by an Oedipal molar machine (D&G). Feminine jouissance is at least partially non-phallic (pas-tout). Deterritorialization (D&G) can be phenomenologically threatening. Limits (Explicit) No intersectional analysis (race, class, religion) of how sexual disgust is coded. No neurobiological mapping (e.g., insula, ACC) of these distinct types. Does not differentiate comorbidity (e.g., a subject with Type II abject horror and Type III symbolic anxiety). No differentiation by pornography exposure or sexual script internalization. Testable Predictions (Explicit) P1: Scores on sexual-disgust subscales (Crosby et al., 2020) will correlate more strongly with measures of symbolic rigidity (e.g., RWA, sexual shame) than with general pathogen disgust sensitivity. P2: Measures of boundary-anxiety or fear of engulfment (correlating to Type II abjection) will mediate the relationship between symbolic rigidity and aversion. P3: Interventions modeling plural sexual “becomings” (Type IV) will reduce aversion only in those with lower anxiety about ego-dissolution. P4: Subjects with high aversion plus high scores on control/dominance scales (correlating to Type V) will show lower subjective anxiety during the encounter than Type II/III/IV subjects, as their structure is stable and productive of jouissance.

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