Harvard dinner: state your sexual orientation
anecdote · personal/autobiographical ·
retold in 7 talks
At a Harvard dinner, the moderating professor asks each guest to state their sexual orientation. Žižek initially finds it offensive but then uses it to compare American Protestant disclosure culture with European toplessness: both are ways to set distance rather than open up.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“The very fact of saying it publicly means, but I keep my intimacy to myself, it's of no concern to you.”
“wouldn't it be much nicer and intimate and unpleasant to ask for that each one should say how much you earn per year”
“can each of us just briefly state your profession... and your sexual orientation like are you gay are you this are you that”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Gore Vidal3Jimmy Swaggart2Golda Meir2Marshall McLuhan2Catherine Breillat2Wilhelm Reich2Erica Jong1Huey Long1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
At a Harvard dinner, the moderating professor asks each guest to state their sexual orientation. Žižek initially finds it offensive but then uses it to compare American Protestant disclosure culture with European toplessness: both are ways to set distance rather than open up., illustrating sexuality and ideology,cultural difference,permissive cynical fetishism
At a Harvard faculty dinner, the host asked each person to introduce themselves including their sexual orientation. Žižek found this more intrusive than being asked salary, but analyzes it as actually desexualizing the situation by making orientation explicit, paradoxically functioning as a form of discretion., illustrating politeness and ideology,explicit vs implicit rules,liberalism-political-correctness
At a Harvard dinner, the host asked everyone to state not only their field but also their sexual orientation. Žižek and Mladen Dolar were shocked by this American norm of public intimacy while American beaches prohibit toplessness, illustrating culturally variable positioning of what counts as public or private., illustrating the Big Other,culturally variable limits,sexuality and social rules
At a Harvard dinner each guest is asked to state sexual orientation; Žižek proposes swapping it for financial status, they happily say 'I was gay, now I'm bi' but recoil at stating their salary, which is the true intimacy., illustrating the true intimacy is financial status
At a Harvard dinner, each guest is asked to state their name, affiliation, and sexual orientation; Žižek contrasts this with the Slovenian Adriatic beach where women go topless unnoticed, arguing neither culture is more liberated, each has different zones of jouissance where the neighbor's excess is feared., illustrating fear of the neighbor,jouissance,inherent transgression
At a Harvard academic dinner, participants are asked to state their sexual orientation alongside name and field. Žižek contrasts this with his European (specifically Slovenian beach) norm of toplessness unremarked upon, illustrating how the bar of public/private discretion is culturally variable., illustrating unknown knowns,meta-rule,ideology