"That was the problem with the 'celibate' word because they don't consider for a moment that you'd rather not be, but you just are. I was never a sexual person"
About this Quote
Morrissey is doing what he’s always done best: turning a label into a trap, then slipping the lock with a well-aimed complaint. “Celibate” sounds like a choice, a vow, a performance of purity. His irritation is that the word quietly assigns agency and moral theater to something he frames as temperament and fate. The sting is in “they don’t consider for a moment”: it’s not just misnaming, it’s social incuriosity. People would rather file you under a tidy category than sit with the messier possibility that desire can be absent, muted, or simply not central.
The pivot from “you’d rather not be” to “but you just are” is classic Morrissey melodrama with a practical purpose. He’s insisting on the difference between abstaining and not wanting, between repression and disinterest. That distinction matters because pop culture (especially in his era) treated sexuality as both currency and proof of authenticity: to be desirable, to desire, to confess, to conquer. By saying “I was never a sexual person,” he refuses the expected narrative arc of longing-and-release. It’s a denial that also functions as a provocation, because it challenges listeners to imagine a self not organized around sex.
Contextually, this sits inside the long Morrissey mythology: the aesthetic of outsiderhood, the defensive elegance, the refusal to be “decoded” into a neat orientation or scandal. The subtext isn’t only about sex; it’s about autonomy over one’s story. He’s arguing that language can be coercive, turning private disposition into public argument, and he’s preemptively resenting the crowd for making him explain it at all.
The pivot from “you’d rather not be” to “but you just are” is classic Morrissey melodrama with a practical purpose. He’s insisting on the difference between abstaining and not wanting, between repression and disinterest. That distinction matters because pop culture (especially in his era) treated sexuality as both currency and proof of authenticity: to be desirable, to desire, to confess, to conquer. By saying “I was never a sexual person,” he refuses the expected narrative arc of longing-and-release. It’s a denial that also functions as a provocation, because it challenges listeners to imagine a self not organized around sex.
Contextually, this sits inside the long Morrissey mythology: the aesthetic of outsiderhood, the defensive elegance, the refusal to be “decoded” into a neat orientation or scandal. The subtext isn’t only about sex; it’s about autonomy over one’s story. He’s arguing that language can be coercive, turning private disposition into public argument, and he’s preemptively resenting the crowd for making him explain it at all.
Quote Details
| Topic | Life |
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