The closest humanity has ever gotten to a period of sustained world peace was not the Congress of Vienna in 1815, nor the formation of the United Nations in 1945, but a high-octane debate held right here at Cornell University on Feb. 10, tackling the ultimate Ivy League question: “Is pegging gay?”
Hosted by Big Red Moon Club, campus’ unofficial queer society and definitely not a cult, the event featured Linda Fu ’27 and Hayden Watkins ’27 arguing ‘No,’ and Max Troiano ’28 arguing ‘Yes’ alongside another Cornellian who asked to remain anonymous. Contrary to the original advertisement, no other clubs or organizations were involved.
The vulgar slang noun “pegging” refers to sexual activity in which a person penetrates the anus of their sexual partner via a strap-on appendage. This definition is not necessarily gender-specific, though that notion appeared to be subjective to the master debaters. I was startled to see the venue of Goldwin Smith Hall G64 filled beyond the brim with spectators, maximizing room capacity past the 150 available seats. Even more surprising, perhaps, was the seemingly even gender split of the audience; no matter which side you stand with, inherently queer-coded discussions like this tend to attract a homogenous crowd. It is evident that Big Red Moon Club's devotion to inclusivity, comedy and truth have proven that all conversations are worth having.
Troiano and his partner opened with a poignant pathos: The Westernized view of the word “gay” often subconsciously treats it as a contaminating device that annuls queer experiences and values. For this reason, they stressed that no adjective one attributes to an act like pegging invalidates the sexual identities of those involved. Even if this were the case, it is not “gay” to explore one's own body and sexual preferences and experience whimsy.
“If you say pegging is gay,” they asserted, “you might have some unresolved internal homophobia. ... Pegging accelerates the dialectic in order to hasten the ends of history and the destruction of the very systems that oppress us.”
They had me in the first half, but something in this logic felt awry. One question I had, but was admittedly too nervous to ask in front of someone as charismatic as Troiano, was if we were only having this conversation on account of the anatomic location of the male G-spot, a.k.a. P-spot. Hear me out: If we lived in some Bizarro universe in which the P-spot was external biology, would it not be obvious that its stimulation by a woman is heterosexual?
In opposition, Fu and Watkins led with similar rhetoric to my internal dilemma: If pegging between two lesbians is not considered “straight,” then why would it be considered “gay” between a man and a woman? I appreciated their anecdotal evidence and strong appeals to logic; however, I was disappointed that there was no detailed demonstration prepared to help visualize their points. Thankfully, the master debaters eventually took questions from audience members, sometimes consensually. When the girl sitting right next to me got cold-called, however, I almost pissed myself.
The connective tissue between the two arguments I witnessed that night is that the stigmas around pegging parallel many of those around being homosexual. The positive shift in Western society’s view of gay people is among the fastest and most profound social transformations in recent history, up there with society’s tolerance of Benson Boone’s music. Formerly associated with mental illness, these things have evolved beyond their connotations, arguably for the better.
The debate concluded with an audience vote deciding the winners of the debate; after a lot of cheering, crying and laughing it was determined that Troiano and his partner were victorious — pegging is, in fact, gay.
All in all, I still believe that pegging is not an inherently homosexual activity, but not even I could ignore the strength and validity of their argument. Pegging is good and therefore gay. I left feeling stimulated intellectually, and in other ways that I probably shouldn’t write about on a public platform.
Do you agree with the final verdict? Was this deserving of a 697-word Sun article? Can I get Troiano’s phone number? All of these questions and more remain relevant even today.
Marc Staiano is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at mcs382@cornell.edu.
