Several friends contacted me over the weekend with news that Wesleyan University has taken the ever-expanding list of initials used to refer to sexual identities to new heights of absurdity or sensitivity, depending on one’s perspective. We are now apparently up to fifteen letters: LGBTTQQFAGPBDSM.
It is easy to laugh at such gibberish on the grounds that it is as absurd as it is self-regarding. Yet that would be a mistake. First, there is the long-established inability of such groups to laugh at themselves. Indeed, the new libertinism often makes the old Puritanism look comparatively self-effacing and gently playful. Those who publicly roll their eyes at this latest lunacy can no doubt expect to be buried under a deluge of the moralizing in which the ethical guardians of contemporary sexual ethics routinely engage. These days one must first count the social media cost before putting one’s hand to the sardonic plow.
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