In his music video "Tip Drill," Nelly uses a credit card to demonstrate the act of a man scraping his penis on a woman's butt crack. And some time ago, "Sex in the City" featured a jogger who has a fetish of putting his tongue on that same general region.
Indeed, the condom is no longer a barrier but an enabler-freely dispensed for "health" reasons. Duke's "Healthy Devils" brandish them on the Plaza because apparently the group thinks that the only reason to avoid something sexual is to avoid something that is physically "unhealthy."
And, it is often said these days that each of us must express an "inner identity" or a "true self" through conscious action to be unique. Accordingly, people declare that the quest for sexual individuality justifies exposure to sex in its crudest forms.
As Duke's LGBT Center Web site explains, "As an individual lets go of their heterosexual identity, they may experience a sense of isolation, of no longer fitting into the heterosexual world around them." It adds, "The more comfortable you feel in college, the better you will do, and the more enjoyable your college years will be."
I found this unsurprising.
The LGBT Center believes that the heterosexual identity dominates all outlets of sexual expression. Non-heterosexuals therefore require the Center to feel comfortable in such a world. Understandable-up to a point.
But what does the LGBT Center actually do? It offers a place for people to feel comfortable in their own sexual identities. Because heterosexuals have ample room to craft an identity, others need a space to do the same.
But the public heterosexual "identity" (like Nelly and the jogger would have it) is misbehavior. It is sex under the public encouragement of all kinds of fantasy activity. This "identity" belittles shame-the healthiest sexual emotion-in favor of lustful exploration.
Nonetheless, the Center wants people to be able to feel comfortable in their sexuality. Bisexuals are supposed to feel comfortable as bisexuals. But I think that tacitly condoning the "bisexual identity" encourages the same misconduct found in the public outlets of the "heterosexual identity."
Bisexuality is the expression of sexual urges for both sexes; in other words, simultaneous homosexuality and heterosexuality. For a person to be truly bisexual he or she must be able to have similar relations with either sex.
A damaging myth in our culture supports public searches for the bisexual identity. Everyone supposedly has a "true self" which must be found. Experimental sexual behavior thus becomes necessary for self expression.
Creating an identity for its own sake involves simply doing whatever you want. Supporting the search for an identity tells people that whatever they want to do is good no matter what, so long as it is an individual decision.
But this amounts to a slavish devotion to all of one's sexual urges and appetites. Sexual identity becomes merely the execution of one's urges.
Case in point: Tila Tequila embodies a sexual identity. She enacts public sex fantasies with literally anybody. In creating her identity she is concerned more with establishing her sexual desires for both sexes rather than a private commitment to loving behavior.
For instance, there is a sense, I am told, in which drunken girl-on-girl... ahem, "CPR" is not true bisexuality. It is claimed that either lust for men or mere boorishness has substituted for the true bisexuality. Yet both indifferently view physical contact with others as a worthy object for its own sake. Sexual urges displace the search for love with another human.
The public obsession with identity has forced the bisexual to act on his or her urges. As in heterosexuals, this is a form of deviancy because lust threatens sex's role in entering relationships of love.
The bisexual, to conform to the public identity, must express urges for both sexes. Yet some things are in fact best left unexplored.
Perhaps the bisexual should consider reverting to heterosexuality with the understanding that sexual expression is slavishness to the ideology of identity rather than something truly beneficial.
It is important to understand that the bisexual identity is a creation of people intent on supporting the discussion of identity, not encouraging love. Suppressing urges out of shame and decency facilitates love; expressing desires for the sake of identity does not.
I do not expect many to agree with me. I only point out the situation in the hopes of showing to a few of our more prude peers that their suppressions (whether voluntary or not) of sexual desires for both sexes are more healthy than the brazen applications of rubbers and jellies in the name of health, progress and identity could ever be.
Wheeler Frost is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every other Monday.
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