Free College Sex - Philosophy for Everyone: Philosophers With Benefits by Fritz Allhoff, Michael Bruce Page A

and lesbian com- munities.
    The strong emphasis on identity formation once played a dominant role in coming to think of oneself as straight, gay, or lesbian. At some point, same-sex sexual behavior became not merely what one does but what one is . However, globally and historically speaking, this is not how same-sex sex- ual relations have been thought of or understood. The predominantly Western (but now global) preoccupation with sexual identity among col- lege-aged (or any other age) groups is still rather new. Whether or not this is the best method to understand human sexuality or seek social equality for sexual minorities remains a hotly debated topic. The emphasis on per- sonal sexual identity, and by extension hyper-individualism, is much over- emphasized, especially in mainstream American society.
    Same-sex and opposite-sex experimentation is possible in the absence of identity talk or boundary blurring queer sensibilities. There are ways to preserve sexual selfhood without clinging to exclusionary selves. Such questions have ramifications for personal identity theory in general and not just personal sexual identity. There are schools of thought that have traditionally rejected the notion of identity altogether. Most denomina- tions of Buddhism maintain that there is no fixed, unchanging, persistent self that exists through time (the view is sometimes referred to as anat- man ); thus, any association with a persistent, fixed self that exists through time is entirely contrary to Buddhist teachings.The influence of this view has also surfaced in mainstream Western philosophy, particularly in the Scottish philosopher David Hume’s theory of personal identity (some- times called the “bundle theory”). If these ideas have any merit, they
    ought to at least invite us to rethink our obsession with identity, sexual or otherwise. At least this much is vindicated by both same-sex and oppo- site-sex experiments.

    Toward Alternative Notions of Sexual Experimentation

    Despite countless social advances and increased openness toward sexual experimentation, there is much in our midst that continues to baffle us. Opposite-sex encounters invite us to consider a new social world and its accompanying generation, perpetually mesmerized by the allure of sex- ual experimentation. Kinsey’s oeuvre entertained the possibility that human sexuality was partly fixed and partly fluid, contingent upon and determined by a variety of circumstantial factors – ideas still influential in our own times. Kinsey himself did not impose restrictions against slid- ing from one numeric slot into another, because behavioral frequency largely determined sexual identity. A Kinsey “one” may jump to a “two,” provided that a few additional same-sex experiments were to take place. However, he and others before him did not envision alternative types of college sex experimentation that may tip the scale.We have moved beyond the sex scale age, and must further open ourselves to possibilities that college sex experiments take on, ones which may not even involve gen- der-based forms of experimentation at all.
    Pervasive obsession with static identities and queer theory’s historic preoccupation with their annihilation are both equally problematic dis- positions; part of the solution to the quandary must lie somewhere within the two possibilities and perhaps outside of them. A new generation of experimentation portrays a disaffected population. Applying sweeping generalizations about human sexuality is risky business, because sexual- ity seems to be that type of thing, partly fluid and partly fixed, an incon- spicuous, ambiguous matter, as diverse as human nature itself.

    NOTES

See Cyd Zeigler, Jr., “The Gay Side of Hazing,” Outsports , available online at www.outspor ts.com/campus/2006/0524hazing (accessed June 20, 2009).
I’m indebted to two drafts of Carol Quinn’s unpublished manuscript, entitled “On My Reluctance to Defend a Queer Point of