Divinity is a Mouth Unkissed

2. Loveless While some of us do choose to reject the pursuit of romantic love, or emotionally remove ourselves from long-term monogamous relationships until our thirties, I think that most of us are interested in it to some degree, but have become well-versed in performing our indifference. There would be many reasons for this, but I think it feeds into a bigger narrative about Gen Z’s particularly ironic mode of narrative and self-expression, which is perhaps amplified in a university setting like our own.

i. Poker Face In the year 1996, when our first fellow Gen Z’s were being born, author David Foster Wallace wrote, “What passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human [...] is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and gooprone and generally pathetic.” For me, this encapsulates why so many of us fear emotional intimacy, or avoid it until we feel we can no longer put it off. Though two decades have passed, in an internet culture of and for watching, it is even easier for our peers and strangers to criticise our characters and personal choices.

Our hyper-awareness of ourselves and how we are being perceived is suffocating: we self-deprecate to get ahead of the jokes we will otherwise be the butt of, we bookend our words with disclaimers about our flaws and hypocrisies. Our preference to discuss the physicality of love rather than the more complex, tender desires that drive sexual interactions is indicative of a culture that fears ridicule, mockery, and rejection.

With a diminishing barrier between our view of self and our digital life, we have learned how to control the way our bodies, personhoods, and relationships are reflected in mass media. This accelerating obsession with identity management is translated to our everyday interactions as well. We fear being knocked as a real person so we build walls around ourselves.

ii. The College Microcosm Though I can’t speak for the colleges I haven’t lived at, and I’m grateful for the culture at mine, I believe it’s inevitable for our self-consciousness to be heightened in these very proximate spaces.

In a residential hall, sexuality can be one of the currencies that earn you social capital. This is important as, at least for me, my hall is my foundational social network and instrumental to the sense of belonging I feel within ANU. Just as we might choose to perform economic status depending on what is most acceptable; the roleplay is delicate. We belong to social ecosystems with unspoken but daunting markers of what is desirable behaviour, certain things are valued to ascend the hierarchy. A hierarchy is not necessarily a bad thing; it is important for creating a cohesive code of conduct, but becomes an issue in this context when we value detachment and inauthenticity in relationships.

Physical desire and intimacy should be an avenue to express emotional needs, not cut ourselves off from them. Yet we do so because we fear rejection. But if we could normalise speaking transparently with our friends and peers about our needs and wants with the tenderness I hope we are showing each other in private, then perhaps we would have a more supportive and truthful world. Because our words don’t hide or dress up reality; they make it.

I’d like to think that the afterwaves of the #MeToo movement are generating a more authentic and sincere kind of intimacy, normalising open conversations about consent and boundaries.* But ultimately, the way we feign apathy towards love and fear sappiness and sentimentality does not honour our desire or worthiness for love, or contribute to a less-taboo sex culture. I think we could be braver in the way we show up to the world, stop performing the pantomime of how we think we should love, and just come as we are.

*In light of August 1st, I acknowledge that the ANU has a particularly long way to go in establishing a culture of sexual safety for students on campus.