CG and I were talking about this while working on erecting the deck in the backyard today.It was one of MANY topics of conversation that came up and the only one that stuck firmly in my sun-fried,wind-chilled brain.
I would assume that most people would classify ‘deviant’ as something that normal people don’t do sexually.But what really defines normal?What you consider normal for your sex life someone else might consider deviant.
But does the world recognize certain sexual orientations/behaviors (i.e. plushies/furres, sadomasochists,etc)as deviant or abberrant?
And then of course you have people like Jeffrey Dahmer(sp) and that German guy who advertised for young hunks to slaughter and meant it. He castrated one guy and then the two of them ate it while being videotaped. I think that would pass for deviant sexual behaviour.
But isn’t pedophilia just another type of sexual behavior that while uncommon isn’t really all that deviant?It might sicken and disgust most of us but there are those out there who really truly do enjoy it. I think that while most children would find it disgusting,there are some who would welcome it given the proper introduction to it.*I think that we as a society are still fairly Puritanistic when it comes to what we view as ‘normal’ sexual behavior.
IDBB
note–I am not advocating pedophilia,or any other deviant behavior.
“Deviant” is whatever society decides it is, and that designation changes drastically over time. A sexual practice may be completely acceptable at one time, and at another, utterly abhorant.
Wow. I’m still reeling from that IDBB. I’m no prude and I understand that some cultures start early, like around 13 give or take a year or so but that doesn’t come close to what sexual activity does to a child that is prepubescent. Let’s not forget that there are plenty of cases where children as young as three have been forcibly sexually assaulted. That goes beyond sickening or disgusting.
Whoa, back up a step. If you’re defining pedophilia as “[not] really all that deviant” I think you need to let us know what your working definition is. Dictionary.com defines it as “Differing from a norm or from the accepted standards of a society” and pedophilia isn’t even in doubt by that one.
To try to answer the question I think you’re asking, I’d draw the line at hurting people, yourself or others. I won’t attack people for role-playing (plushies/furries) however unarousing I might find their fantasies.
To me, a bad deviance is something which takes advantage of another human being without their meaningful consent. So sex with children (defined as paedophilia) is clearly a bad deviance, because a child is not able to give meaningful consent.
Sex with drunk or drugged people is (usually) a bad deviance and may be considered as rape, because a drunk or incapable person cannot give meaningful consent. Howeveer, if you and your partner sing along to “Why don’t we get drunk and screw?”, that’s OK because you agreed up front. Or up the rear… :o
Hurting people is a bad deviance (in my opinion). No, I’m not talking about a little bondage or S&M here, but more acts of violence such as chopping things off, or causing damage that takes more than a couple of days to heal. At some level this gets fuzzy, because I believe that there may be people who are mentally ill who want to have nasty things done to them (the guy in Germany springs to mind); but a mentally ill person cannot give meaningful consent.
I do a fair amount of theater, and am quite comfortable around people of various sexual orientations and persuasions. While some of that is considered “deviant” by society, to me it is a “good deviance” in that it’s a consensual act between adults and I don’t have to watch it!
Aberrant sexual behavior would have to add unhealthy patterns of conduct on top of merely falling outside the norm-- abusiveness, exploitativeness, obsessiveness, addictive behavior, infliction of actual permantent harm on the unconsenting, incapacity to relate to others, etc.
But there are clear cases and there are grey areas. For instance, seeking to get your naughty bits chopped off and eating them … yep, that’s pretty darn bad.
Yet other cases ARE social constructs – in Classical Greece, it was OK for adult men to dally with their young teen epheboi. In today’s America it would be considered either outright criminal or just unethical/immoral, depending on the Age of Consent and legality of sodomy in your state, and on our views of the ethics of sexual contact between unequal partners.
I agree that deviance isn’t necessarily bad, but I think the word has a perjorative connotation. If you use it simply to mean “deviating from the norm” without an implied moral judgment, prepare to be misunderstood.
Whether something is considered sinful, criminal, pathological, normal, trendy or virtuous varies widely among times, places and subcultures. Homosexuality has been considered all of these things, for instance.
I’m not sure what kind of answer the OP is looking for. If it’s a behavior that everyone in the world condemns, I doubt if we can come up with an answer. Certainly pedophilia would be widely recognized as “bad deviance,” although there would be disagreement about appropriate age limits among different cultures. If you mean something condemned in virtually every known society, I think parent-child incest may qualify.
Here is a citation on paraphilias, which are the current definition in psychological terms of sexual deviations.
The major criteria for a paraphilia it is not consentual and must cause distress to the victim.
Sexual obsessions, a sub-set of paraphilias such as a fetish, are only a harmful paraphilia if they cause distress and interpersonal problems for the individual that has it.
But if the person who has a paraphilia, such as a shoe fetish, can form normal relationships with others, it does not cause personal distress and allows positive sexual contact (as defined by the person), then it is not (as psychologists like to say) clinically significant.
Nearly every culture known to ethnology considers nuclear family incest to be taboo. That might be the only universally (for humankind) prohibited behavior.
I would define deviant as doing something that society agreed was wrong. Note that this definition completely ignores people’s natural urges. It is, therefore, only action that makes someone “deviant.” Therefore, someone can be perfectly normal, yet deviant, or someone can be mentally ill, yet not deviant.
For example, finding a physically matured 17 year old attractive is probably perfectly natural. However, if a 35 year old were to engage in sexual relations with the 17 year old (in a society that forbade such relations), the action is deviant.
Another question that may be of interest to the OP, but was not asked might be, “what deviant behaviors are normal?”
Finding a 17 year old attractive is one example. In some societies, women are not supposed to enjoy sex. Therefore, in those societies, women who did enjoy sex would be normal but deviant.
I think when you are balancing whether something is normal or not, you need to ask what percentage of people represent that group. If 70% of men are sexually aroused by breasts, then being aroused by breasts is normal. If 0.01% of men are sexually aroused by torture, then that group is not normal. If 5% of men are sexually aroused by other naked men . . . I personally think that 1 out of 20 represents enough people to be defined as normal, but that’s just me.
Wow.I read that one page on paraphilia and it was more informative than I’d ever want to imagine.
In this day and age,with the examples of sexuality we set for our children(esp the girls!),it seems we are promoting deviancy re:pedophilia. It also seems that we want MORE sexual deviancy than before with the high number of somewhat deviant (to some anyway)videos,magazines and what not that are available to anyone who chooses to read/view them.
And yet…there is this big push to also be prudish.Be sexy but not too sexy…don’t ENJOY it for heaven’s sake.Why are we,as a society,pushing overt deviant sexuality yet still hanging onto a prudish mindset overall?
This thread reminds me of something I read in a philosophy text a while back. The author was explaining the fundamental tenets of skepticism, and their limits. In the end, he said, certain things must be accepted as true. And those are:
1 - We cannot always come up with a rational reason or justification for certain beliefs, no matter how hard we try.
2 - The lack of an independent justification does not automatically invalidate those beliefs.
Number two was rather tricky, but the explanation makes sense, the way he said it. I wish I could remember more, because this is sounding like “some things are just wrong!” I’ll have to revisit this thread.
