I’m not the first to say it, but I’m still going to dedicate some of my precious word count to make a point. We live in a time when technology is drastically changing our social landscape.
This is particularly observable thanks to the microcosm of dating apps converging into our social sphere like a digital asteroid. By using apps like OkCupid, Tinder and Grindr, we are bound to come across people we may not necessarily want to think of as individuals with personal lives or even — dare I say it — sex lives. Peers, classmates, coworkers — yes, they’re all out there on the hunt, too.
These apps were not custom-designed for exclusively you and complete strangers.
Encountering other people who, like you, are pursuing some shape or size of relations comes with the ?territory. That’s because the distinction between private and public is becoming blurry, and personal is occupying that diverging space.
Now that so much is shared through all of the technological extensions of ourselves drifting around, little is ?actually private. What you do with your bodies and other bodies is included in that gray area. It is so easy now for private to drift into personal, and then public from there.
I mean, at the rate that our youngsters are sexting these days, in the near future the genitals of a generous handful of public figures will be common knowledge.
But who cares?
You do. The thought that other people have a personal life is icky to you. It’s like an implicit public display of ?affection. It makes you writhe. Seeing someone with a visible hickey or a professor insinuating intimacy with a spouse are more real-life instances that make people squirm.
You can partially blame how visual our culture is and, consequentially, how rapidly the mind’s eye will flip on the unwanted mental projector and cast these thoughts on the walls of your cortex.
But these people are entitled to live their lives as much as you are.
IU is home to the Kinsey Institute, a monolithic reminder that sex exists — in case the manifestation of you and all people you know as living, breathing organisms didn’t already drive that point home. Furthermore, Kinsey is proof that sex is something we can talk about even in elevated places like establishments for higher learning.
So when you pass that person with a hickey or sit through your professor’s raunchy ranting, instead ask yourself, “Do I think the recent activity wasn’t ?consensual?”
If not, proceed to thought number two: “Good for you. You’re one of the millions of normal human ?beings who have desires.”
“But, Mr. Leeds,” you may say to your screen or printed copy of the paper, “It still makes me uncomfortable.”
First, Mr. Leeds is my father. I insist that you call me “Griffin.” Second, unless someone’s breach from the truly private into the public can be legally considered indecent exposure, your discomfort is a “you” thing, not an everybody thing.
Just swipe left and return to your regularly scheduled public personal life.
gmleeds@indiana.edu
