“The Blood Is the Life” — Vampires and the Asexual Perspective
On November 13, 2020, the rock band Palaye Royale released a music video for their song, “Tonight Is the Night I Die.” In the video, the members of the band are vampires who attend a masquerade ball in 1853 per the title card. They feed on the unsuspecting female guests, stalking them throughout the mansion.
Needless to say, I loved it. Vampires are my favorite supernatural creature. And no vampire is more popular than Dracula.
From Bela Lugosi to Gary Oldman to Gerald Butler, the Prince of Darkness has been reincarnated into many versions. Some terrifying. Others comical. But all with the same lust for blood.
I’m always eager to read or watch a new take on the ancient bloodsucker. In fact, I’m currently writing my own vampire story.
When I came out as asexual, I looked at my love of vampires in a different light. It didn’t change the way I feel about them. It did give me a good laugh, though. Why? Because vampires — in most paranormal studies — are considered the most sexual of night stalkers.
The ritualistic taking of blood is directly related to the act of sex. Female virgins bleed the first time they have sex, and since vampires are historically known to prey on virginal women, the connection makes sense.
The allure of vampires lies in their appearance. They’re often described as beautiful, charming, and seductive. They can tempt even the most modest and conservative woman to expose her, ahem, neck.
Look at Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula for example. For the sake of those who’ve never seen the film, here’s a brief rundown:
Gary Oldman plays Dracula, who travels to London after Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) visits him to complete a real estate transaction. Harker’s betrothed, Mina (Winona Ryder) bears a striking resemblance to Dracula’s lost love. After trapping Harker with his three vampiric brides, Dracula goes in pursuit of Mina. Though still in love with Jonathan, Mina cannot fight her strange attraction to Dracula, ultimately letting him bite and turn her into a vampire. In the film’s climax, Dracula is fatally wounded and releases the darkness from Mina, turning her human again. There’s a lot more that happens, but that’s the gist.
Dracula, depending on the adaption, is often portrayed as a charming, albeit ruthless killer. He kills men and transforms women into vampires. He’s toxic masculinity at its finest. The type of man you know is bad, but is irresistible. He often has hypnotic powers that he uses to trick women into exposing their necks to him.
Mina is different. Dracula doesn’t trick her. Though his true love, he’s conflicted about turning her, not wanting the darkness that’s consumed him to do the same to her. This conflict is at the heart of most vampire tales involving romance.
Rewatching the film following my coming out, I relate to Mina’s struggles more than I used to. She embodies purity and innocence but is also resourceful. Stoker wrote her as such because he needed her to be strong enough to resist Dracula’s advances.
Though she is eventually bitten, Mina uses her slow transformation to lead Harker, Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins), and the other men to Dracula so they can kill him. Scholars and critics dub her “the ultimate Victorian woman.” Her decisions serve the men around her. She is everything her friend Lucy isn’t.
Could Mina be asexual? Yes, she’s in a relationship with Harker — as many asexuals are in committed relationships — but she doesn’t talk about or express much interest in sex. Whereas Lucy parades around, teasing men, and discusses sex openly.
Mina’s most sexualized moment is when she and Van Helsing are holed up, waiting for the others en route to Dracula’s castle. Temporarily succumbing to the transformation, she seduces Van Helsing until he presses a cross to her forehead.
Let’s look at it another way.
Mina is asexual and happy in her relationship with Jonathan. She doesn’t need to overt her sexuality like Lucy. Along comes Dracula, who, for the sake of this analogy, is society. He represents our sexualized culture and the trap it sets for women. We’re meant to be chaste, but not prudish. We’re meant to be pretty, but not slutty. Seen, not heard.
Dracula is able to seduce Lucy quickly because she is overtly flirtatious and sexual. Mina’s seduction takes longer. Because Mina is more headstrong and set in her ways, society’s pressure doesn’t ensnare her as fast.
Asexuals are often told our orientation is not real. We’re told if we just have sex, we’ll realize what we’re missing. There are plenty of aces in sexual relationships. We’re not all sexually averse. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, this is a complex orientation. The right person doesn’t automatically make us sexual beings. A simple bite on the neck won’t make us want sex any more than our allo (a non-asexual person) friends.
In his book, Understanding Asexuality, Professor Anthony Bogaert writes, “Our very sexualized society often places pressure on asexual people to have sex, perhaps causing tension in some asexual people, if not outright resentment of sexual people.”
Julie Sondra Decker goes one step further in her book, The Invisible Orientation: An Introduction to Asexuality, when she says,
“The message asexual people get from society is that they do not exist and/or that they should get help to change themselves.”
When Dracula meets Mina, he introduces her to a world of passion and sex. His love is more thrilling than Jonathan’s. The downside is she has to give up her values. In other words, society needs to suck our blood and remove asexuality from it because once we get a taste for sex, we’ll be like everyone else.
But we don’t need charming vampires seducing us to the other side. Like Mina, we are true to ourselves and don’t care if society doesn’t understand us. We’d like them to and that’s why I write about asexuality.
Awareness breeds acceptance, whereas ignorance breeds intolerance. Ace liberation is on the rise but slow going.
You may even link asexuals to vampires themselves. Misunderstood creatures, doing what we have to do to survive. Sometimes that means hiding our true natures, concealing ourselves in the shadows, or keeping ourselves distant from people who threaten us.
My asexuality hasn’t made me love vampires any less. In fact, it’s made watching films/shows and reading books about them even more exciting. What would happen if a vampire came across an asexual? What if their hypnotic powers didn’t work against us? Would the image be shattered? Would society have to hold a mirror up to itself and finally accept there is more to life than what they believe?
Palaye Royale’s music video paints their vampires in the same realm as Dracula or Anne Rice’s Louis. They’re beautiful. Hungry, lustful killers. Yet conflicted.
History has proven time and again that being anything outside of “normal” is not acceptable. Conversion therapy, emotional manipulation, and straight-up beatings until people conform continue to take place today. All to make others in the image society demands they be.
To be brave enough to stand up to a society that, for the most part, doesn’t accept anything different is the ultimate courageous act. We sometimes let society think it has us in its grasp, only to use its very rhetoric against it.
It isn’t always easy and we’re still in the thick of the fight, but slow progress is better than no progress. Whether we’re Mina or Dracula, it will take more than a charming face to lure us away from who we truly are.
