Why House is Wrong About Asexuality

I love the show House. Fox has two of the best shows on TV and one of them is House starring Hugh Laurie. It’s Sherlock Holmes in a hospital. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s engaging and for the most part it is well written. It has a pretty remarkable reputation, in my mind, of being high quality. But this past weeks episode, better half, has tarnished that spotless reputation.

House is, like I said, a Sherlock Holmes type story where the doctor replaces the detective. He is a drug addict. He’s miserable and lonely and in pain. He is snide and cruel and harsh and I love everything about him. He’s hyper aware and incredible smart… or at least he was. From now on, I think, I’ll see him as a hapless bigot who jumps to conclusions despite the evidence at hand.

I have a friend who is asexual. This orientation is a bit odd to me. I can’t imagine not feeling sexual attraction. I just can’t fathom it. The closest I can come to is imagining living on an island without ever having seen people of my preferred gender. But, even that isn’t the same because I would still imagine and create the type of person I am attracted to in my mind. 

But I’m learning. And trying. She’s a bright young woman, a sexologist, a juggalo, a theatre geek, and a lot of other things. Asexual is just one of these aspects. Since she has dedicated herself to sexuality education, I’m guessing it’s a big part, but still, just part. 

She isn’t faking and she isn’t sick.

What House did, what was so wrong was simple. It set up and dismissed 1% of the population. 1%. That’s math that even I can do. That’s 3,070,065 in this country (USA). That is a lot of people. And that is just the people who identify as asexual. We’re completely missing the numbers on people who are unaware of such an identity and are currently chasing after doctors trying to find the cure for who they are.

This is how the episode of House went, first, Dr. Wilson was seeing a patient who had a urinary tract infection. He wanted to do a pregnancy test and she sort of slowly explained that she can’t be pregnant because her and her husband, who she loves and is in a perfectly healthy relationship with, are asexual. They don’t have sex.