Celibacy serves to characterise the essence of man's solitary mode of jouissance, which is expressed through his attachment to technological objects in a clear abandonment of the "principle of hierarchical complementarity between sexes".¹ If men devote so much interest to these objects, it is because they capture something of the jouissance of the body, the model of which is the jouissance of the organ. The jouissance of the organ constitutes the very negation of the relation to the Other. As the satisfaction of the drive, jouissance is the embodiment of non-relation: jouissance is autistic.² To say that it is autistic is to say that because it is not a relation, jouissance is a substance.³ From this point of view, the model of bodily jouissance is organ jouissance in the sense of the mouth kissing itself―and therefore not copulating.

There is an aspect of these modern technological objects that connects them to the object a, conceived as the driving force of the fetishistic form characteristic of masculine sexuality. In this attachment to technological objects, the object manifests by means of a plus-of-jouissance, since the goal is not only to obtain the use of the product, but the jouissance that accompanies it as well, and the fact that it can repeat itself once more. The assumption that addiction is at the root of the use of these technological objects is sufficient to consider them as necessary organs for today's celibate in dictating new functions and imposing themselves as prostheses, capable of nullifying the celibate's singular relationship with desire. The question that arises from the strength of this libidinal attachment to these objects goes far beyond the problem of the increase in celibacy in modernity. In fact, it expresses as a question about what Other is there, as well as who is the partner of these subjects.

It is Lacan who formulates that the celibate erects, for himself, an ethical dimension, in view of the audacity of his action in responding to the non-relation with regard to the Other, especially when he is content to take such a relationship literally.⁴ To take this relationship with the Other literally is to consider it according to the true face in which it presents itself to the sexual being, namely, the Other sex. Therefore, the celibate avoids romantic encounters with sexual partners through an ethic that promotes a short circuit in the relation with the Other, or, more precisely, is someone who does not consent to any possibility of establishing an intimate and lasting communion with a woman.

^[1] Alberti, C. "Sexuality since Lacan," Mōndo, 2025, available online: mondodispatch.
^[2] Cf. Miller, J.-A., "Drive is Parole," The Symptom, 2001, trans. J. Ayerza, available online: lacan.com.
^[3] Ibid.
^[4] Lacan, J., Television, trans. Hollier, Krauss & Michelson, New York/London, W.W. Norton & Co., 1999, p. 42.