Bangor University’s Debating and Political Society has gone viral following a post promoting a debate on whether ‘pegging’ is deemed gay or not, which amassed over 37.3k shares, 612 comments, 917 reposts, and 205k shares.
The debate took place on Tuesday, December 16th, in Bangor University’s Greek Room and concluded that pegging is not actually gay.
Comments on the post ranged from intellectual debate to humorous GIFs, with one reading: “flying cars they said…”, and another joking: “Does the bear shit in the woods ahh question”.
Some comments were more serious, such as one asking: “How is this even a debate still? If there are two partners and one is a guy and another one is a girl, it isn’t gay, same way lesbians aren’t straight if they use strap-ons or dildos. Patriarchy is so rooted in everything that a man can’t be into a sexual act with a woman that doesn’t have him be the dominant and/or top, and suddenly he’s labelled gay.”
Daniel Reed, a member of the society, told The Cardiff Tab: “I enjoyed the debate. I was arguing for the, um, I don’t believe it is gay. I’m gay myself.”
He continued: “I don’t think that it was too on the nose or anything, or too argumentative. It was really, you know, everyone either came in with a really jokey perspective or came in with a really kind of clear but not threatening view about what they actually believed, and actually were able to come to different conclusions and discussions.”
In an exclusive interview with The Cardiff Tab, the society’s Pro-Vice-President and Secretary Amalia Dunnett explained the reasoning and response behind this controversial extra-curricular.
View this post on Instagram
Why did you decide to debate the pegging issue?
“Thursday before last, now, we had what was meant to be our actual final debate of the semester. It’s just our formal debate, we’re all kitted out in robes and whatnot. At the social after, this topic that kept coming up from our members, as a sort of pet topic to discuss, came up again.
“We decided we’re gonna do a sort of Christmas social thing on the Tuesday, and we thought, “F- why not just do a debate on pegging instead?” And finally settle this sort of ongoing dispute once and for all. I put a post up last minute, and we weren’t expecting very many people to turn up for it, to get much traction. And it did, which was… interesting from our perspective.”
How do you decide where the line is between provocative debate topics and outright clickbait?
“In this case, because it was only advertised to members until the day of, and quite obviously a joke, we thought we weren’t super fussed or super concerned about people coming in and having actual serious offensive views on the matter. And no one did come in. It was only members who attended the actual debate, despite the many requests in the comments.”
When you first posted the debate motion online, did you expect this level of response?
“No. I mean, a lot of our strategy is sort of posting more meme-like content. But I literally whacked the post out in about two minutes. As I said, it’s not what we do as a society. We’re not gonna be hosting lots of debates of this kind of thing in future, but it was amusing to see.”
What was your reaction to the response on social media? Did you expect it to go as crazy as it did, or were you used to high view counts from your Instagram reels?
“I’m fairly used to high view counts and being bombarded with notifications. I wasn’t expecting the sheer amount of comments on it.
“I think I’ve had just about every view on the planet about whether pegging is gay or not by now.”
Do you think that the post has incited homophobic responses, even if not intended?
“It’s an Instagram comment section. It’s not our members that are posting on it. I don’t think it’s that significant. I don’t think parliament’s going to be bringing this as a topic to debate any time soon.”
View this post on Instagram
As one of the oldest student societies in Wales, do you feel a responsibility to uphold a certain image, and does virality like this challenge that?
“Yeah, I mean, I’m not sure what the 1849 founders of the society would be thinking about a pegging debate. But I’m sure they’d appreciate the humour of it.
“We do a lot of serious work as a society. We’ve just successfully campaigned to open the new student-run library at the university. We’ve got a whole sub-unit, the Centre for Student Democracy, which lobbies the university and the SU for actual causes. So it’s amusing that this post of all went viral, but we’ve got actual serious work as well.”
Do you see this motion as part of a long tradition of debating taboo or uncomfortable questions, or was it more rooted in internet humour?
“I think it’s very easy for us to get distracted with what the internet thinks about things.
“At the end of the day, our job as a committee is to do stuff that the members are interested in. And so this was, as I say, like a pet topic of our socials, seemingly discussed every week. If another such topic comes up, we’ll probably do it. But we’re not likely to be serving the users of Instagram.”
I guess the million-dollar question is, is there a recording of it? Did you guys film it?
“No. And there will not be a recording of it. We have pondered recording some of our debates. But I think for the most part, the preference of members is that they can speak without being worried about being judged by the internet. And so, I’m afraid that we’ll continue not to be recorded.”
For more of the latest news, guides, gossip and memes, follow The Cardiff Tab on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
Featured image via Instagram @bangorpolitics
