Arguably, there is no touch more intense than that which is abstracted, or ghosts immediate contact. Think: fingernails gently tracing skin, the soft breathy pleasure of a whisper…and making eye contact with hot GB staff. For some bodies, more forceful or direct forms of intimacy can provoke discomfort, and so alternative outlets must be found. One such outlet, floating ambiguously in the realm of sensuality, is ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) which employs sonic and visual elements to induce a physical response in the viewer, or so its devotees would claim. Of course, I refer to the famous “tingles”. Importantly, the sexual subtext that ASMR carries is absolutely dispensable – I’m by no means implying that your favourite soap-cutting videos are masturbatory. Nonetheless, the slime-sisterhood has been co-opted by the queer community, and when we examine why that is, sexuality simply cannot be ignored.
In particular, this pertains to the wlw (women-loving-women) and trans communities, for whom ASMR can play into existing passion-practices, or more comfortably support desire. Yet again, I must stress that this desire need not be explicitly sexual, and may instead simulate closeness or comfort. For instance, a common trope in the ‘ASMR-verse’ sees the artist interacting with the microphone or camera setup as if these were the viewer’s anatomy. They might act out brushing the viewer’s hair, applying make-up, or confiding in them about a scandalous slice of gossip. Suddenly, you’re transported back to an evening spent getting ready for a night out with your will-they-won’t-they homoerotic friendship which will inevitably conclude with you both staring at each other’s lips and then snogging men. There is something sapphically appealing, however, about what the scholar Amy Andersen has termed “distant intimacy”. That is, erogenousness and half-touch are often vital to female sexual experience, such that actual proximity is not always necessary or even productive. This is especially true for those who struggle with penetration, as in the case of vaginismus.
In her 2019 lesbian cinematic masterpiece A Portrait of a Lady on Fire, CĂ©line Sciamma coyly blurs the meaning of what constitutes sex, and endeavours to stretch the bounds of our erotic imaginations; a turned page or stroked armpit are transformed into sites of arousal. It is interesting to consider how dynamics between Sciamma’s lovers, the painter and muse, mimic the dynamics of ASMR-tist and viewer; there is distant intimacy between the canvas and the body, the image and the eye. A paintbrush may even elicit the “tingles” of myth and legend. Generally speaking, this approach also does not cater to the conventionally pornographic. It evades capture by an industry dominated by a distinctly male consumer. ASMR, with its prioritisation of sound over picture, does just this. German scholar Johannes D. Kaminski writes of audio-erotics that “The indeterminate nature of a stimulus, it appears, is the natural ally of the erotic, which Roland Barthes identified as “appearance-as-disappearance”: rather than representing an identifiable moment of presence, it is marked by flashes of perception.” The “identifiable moment of presence” that marks a traditional pornographic transaction is utterly transgressed by ASMR’s indeterminacy.
In many cases, distant intimacy can be engaging for those who feel displaced within their physical forms, whether as a result of trauma, dysmorphia, or dysphoria. It can be a sort of void in which to pleasurably dissipate without requiring the harsh and unforgiving light of embodiment. Therefore the ASMR community welcomes those who exist outside of cisgender binaries. Naturally, there is some overlap between wlw and trans identity which can involve discomfort in directly receiving pleasure (this is a safe space for stone tops <3). Attempting to exist sexually in a body that feels alien may induce shame, unease, and emotional torment to the point of celibacy. In any case, radical bodies warrant radical forms of intimacy, which may be as simple as remedial or therapeutic closeness. In the same vein as ASMR, indie video game design has been adopted as a markedly queer connective space, exemplified in the oeuvre of transgender new-media artist Porpentine. These two forums collided in 2017, when Jess Marcotte and Dietrich Squinkifer, video-game designers, partnered to create the ASMR dating simulator Rustle Your Leaves To Me Softly which removes the anxieties of person-to-person intimacy altogether by facilitating companionship between plants and human beings. Users are encouraged to interact with their houseplants with the goal of generating a “sensual soundscape”.
Queerness is, in many ways, future-facing. It is inextricably wired to technology and innovation. New ways must always be found to exist, to live, to give love and to receive it. There is an ever-shifting tender nebulousness to be navigated. Michael J. Faris of Texas Tech University has described the work of queer invention as “reparative making”, which is really making room, perhaps making distance, that is intimate. It is perhaps unsurprising then, that the newfangled art of ASMR would be queered.
