#10: Asses

Nipples, yawn. Thighs, so last year. We as a culture have grown tired of the same body parts airbrushed and repackaged back to us magazine after countless magazine. America is in need of a new body part to fetishize, and the mainstream is finally hopping on the right caboose, to unveil the wonders of a body part that bisexuals have been adoring for years: The Ass.

“The qualities that make the ass ‘beautiful’ and ‘well-formed’ are not fixed, as sexual aesthetics of the buttocks vary considerably from culture to culture, from one period of fashion to another” says Wikipedia. And as Salon.com and Gisele Bundchen have taught us – The Ass is the new Crack (#1).

It’s no great secret that bisexuals love them some ass. Let’s take a look at the obvious, shall we? While other erogenous parts are hopelessly gendered, the ass remains neutral, and the qualities that make it arousing can be applied to anyone with hind quarters. And, aside from having the second highest concentration of nerve endings (the first being the genitals, obvs.), the asshole is also the equal opportunity orifice; it evens the playing field of sexual conquest and exploits the heteronormative dichotomy of penetrator/penetratee.

“The derriere isn’t a body part as much as an embodiment of personality,” claims the June issue of Elle magazine in its six-page spread devoted to the visible posterior. Of course, they were trying to hock their new butt-hottening regimen, which includes creams, waxing, tanning and massages that “facilitate lymphatic drainage, causing the skin to plump, making dimpling less noticeable.” Nothing turns me on like talk of lymphatic drainage.

Despite Elle’s general ass-hattery, they do have a point. The term “ass” can be applied to many situations and characteristics of someone’s personality. A short list: a “tight ass” (stingy) “pain in the ass” (annoying), “hard ass” (difficult), “haul ass” (urgency), “kick one’s ass” or “open a can of whoop ass” (to beat to a pulp), “get some ass” (sex) or “asshole” (jerk). If you extend the slang terms of ass more broadly, you can create a whole lexical stew of meaning and association – caboose, rump, tail, booty, backside, anal, tush, and my favorite, bottom, which connotes everything from Shakespeare to sexual proclivities.

Let’s explore this tunnel a little further (zing!). The verb to spank is the only one specifically meant for physical discipline of a specific part of the body. The ass is THE target for punishment, as a child’s reprimand yes, but more widely as a form of sexual pleasure. To be spanked adds a psychological component to pleasure and few masochists are wont to turn down a good paddling, as it provides some much needed humiliation, and also sexual healing.

Lastly, you didn’t think you’d get away without a reference to the bis (or should I say bi-peds?) of the animal kingdom (#5), did you? In addition to allowing primates the ability to sit upright without difficulty, the ass plays a necessary role for female baboons in attracting their mates. They have red buttocks that “blush” in order to signal their scandalous intentions, which brings new meaning to the term booty call.

#5: Talking about bisexuality in animals to validate our identities

You’ve probably heard about Roy and Silo, the two male penguins from the Central Park Zoo in New York, whose gay canoodling caused quite a stir, a book deal (that was soon to be black listed), and an uproar on Fox News, who instituted a Code Orange: Terrorist Armageddon alert on the evening news. A few years later, however, Roy and Silo became Ex-Gays. They, thankfully, underwent Heterosexual Reconditioning at the Church of Latter-Day Penguins. At least that’s the reason noted on the press release. Word on the street is that Roy left Silo because he never replaced the toilet paper, and even when he did, he let the dangling square unroll from the bottom, which is definitely on our list of “Reasons to Stop Fucking Someone.”

In reality, Roy and Silo were not gay, but part of the 1,500 species of wild and captive animals that have been observed engaging in bisexual activity. As Scientific American Mind recently noted, “Many species seem to have ingrained homosexual tendencies that are a regular part of their society. That is, there are probably no strictly gay critters, just bisexual ones.”

“Animals don’t do sexual identity. They just do sex,” says sociologist Eric Anderson of the University of Bath in England. But you know who does do sexual identity, Eric? The writers of this blog! Since bisexuality is so often invalidated as a legitimate sexual identity, one of the ways we counter this silly argument is with the help of Mother Nature, who makes an incredible spinach quiche, by the way. You’ll often be able to spot the bisexual at dinner parties as the one cornering someone at the dip table with a lecture on the bonobo chimp or the mating habits of black swans.

“Did you know that bisexuality in animals serves as a peace keeping strategy? I was reading Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape at the gym recently and it is just amazing what bisexuality can do to ease social tensions…much like this awkward exchange we’re having now!”

Playing the bisexuality-in-animals card allows us the indulgence of using scientific evidence to sanction our self-esteem. It also makes us seem nerdy-smart, which we think will score us points with the strapping young lad or lady in the argyle sweater-vest. Plus, bisexuality is so common in the animal kingdom, we think talking about it frequently will confer the evolutionary advantages to people who think bisexuality doesn’t exist or that it’s a cop-out. Though, we’re not sure if comparing our sexuality to fruit flies or whiptail lizards is really going to spark the intellectual discussion we so desperately seek. But until it does, we will continue the important crusade of outing animals like Roy and Silo, who, while championed as gay heroes, were actually just a couple of sluts. I mean, bisexuals.