Carl Linnaeus is one of the most revered scientists of the past three hundred years not because of what he discovered, but because of what he did: he named things. In hindsight it seems obvious: how can we talk about something if we aren’t sure we’re all talking about the same thing? In the world of the physical sciences—botany and zoology, for example—this means giving specific enough names to specimens so that scientists don’t have to waste their time trying to figure out if they are all talking about the same plant or snail. In the world of the social sciences, this means giving behaviors a name so that social scientists can begin to understand which behaviors are usual, and which are deviant.
For a layperson such as myself, knowing that certain deviant behaviors are well known enough to be named has been both comforting and dismaying. Take “stealthing,” for example. When I first found out that the practice of surreptitiously removing a condom during intercourse had its own name there was a certain amount of relief that came with the knowledge that this practice was common enough to be studied. Not relief that is was happening, but relief that I wasn’t the only one who found this behavior to be deviant (and abhorrent).
Which brings me to the point of this column: dick-nosing. Dick-nosing is the practice of wearing one’s mask loosely slung underneath one’s nose, in the same way that someone might wear their underwear loosely slung underneath their dick. It is a practice that renders both items of apparel useless, foolish, and provocative (although, in the case of underwear, the wearer is—hopefully— trying to provoke a different reaction from their viewers than those who are doing it with their mask.)
I’d like to believe that I’m not the first person to come up with this name; that on the contrary people all over the world are looking at people with their very visible breathing apparatus hanging outside of a piece of material that has no other purpose than to cover up breathing apparatuses and thinking to themselves “ what a dick-noser.” In fact, I hope they’re shouting it at them from across the room, “Hey, dick-nose: put it away. We’ve all got one; no one’s impressed.”
Better yet, I hope that the fact that there is now a name for this phenomenon—this childishly stupid flouting of the rules, this “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you” nonsense—means that we are also that much closer to putting an end to it. Or at least to stigmatizing and legislating it away.
Before stealthing had a name it was much easier to pretend that the times it happened were accidents: “user errors” made by inexperienced partners. Once it was recognized as purposefully deviant behavior, however, it became impossible to call it anything but what it actually is: assault. (Sex without consent is assault, and if a person consents to sex only with the stipulation that a condom is used then it can easily be inferred that they are not consenting to sex without one.)
In much the same way it is my hope that by having a name for the practice of putting on a mask and then slipping out of it at the first opportunity we can stop pretending that the people who are doing it are just confused, or inept. (“Whoops! Oh darn, my mandatory mask slipped.”) We can, just like with the people who slip off a condom during sex, call them what they are. Selfish. Dangerous. Deviant. Criminal.
In other words: real dick-nosers.
(Edit—a quick search of the Urban Dictionary right before publishing this piece shows me as of last week “dick-nose” has been added. Carl Linnaeus would be so proud.)