What really constitutes 'deviant' sexual behavior,anyway?

[BytopianDream]

*Originally posted by skankweirdall *
**Not bad at all, but why did you have to bring up that shoe thing? **

No reason…
Ohh, look at those pumps!!! :eek:

Negative sexual deviance can also be defined in three dimensions:

1. Statistical occurance of a behavior.
2. Sociological views on the behavior.
3. Personal distress and negative interpersonal effects of the behavior.

If 1 is true, it might not be a big deal.
E.G., I like big noses and I cannot lie. Society doesn’t care, doesn’t cause me harm.

If 2 and 1, society wants to jail/ignore/banish me. E.G. I like GBW (gigantic beautiful women) but society says they are bad and makes me and my GBW outcasts. This can include any type of behavior a society doesn’t approve of, but doesn’t cause me any personal harm.

If 1,2 and 3: Its a sexual deviantion that should be addressed. Here is where most psychological theory says its bad and should be addressed. E.G. I’m a zoonecrophiliac (Sex with dead llamas), I have no friends, no contact with anything but dead llamas.

The number 2 is where the society has its mark. The Sambian boys of New Guinea have exclusively homosexual relations with older boys and ingest semen to become a man. The semen is seen as the father’s milk that takes a boy to a man. At middle adolescence, all boys become exlusively heterosexual and do not practice semen ingestion.

Gender can also be a societal construct: The Zuni of New Mexico considered biological males who dressed and acting feminine as a third gender known as a two-spirit.

(Hehe, my psych profs would be so proud of me.)

[nogginhead]

*Originally posted by Lissa *
**No, not really.This site lists some exceptions. **

Not to quibble, since it seems a bit off the OP by now, but here’s another quote from your link:

[T]he incest taboo … is found among every human group in the world. In no culture is sex between parents and their children, or between brother and sister, the norm.

I take that as a cite in favor of the point I made.

The link is talking about whether such taboos are a sign of instinctual (non-cultural) feelings, and argues that it is not. I have no problem with that. But the fact is that the taboo is universal in all cultures “except for specified members under highly specific situations” (also from your link).

So as far as the OP goes, if IDBB were to marry her brother, every culture in the world (not to say every person) would find it pretty icky.

[H8_2_W8]

BytopianDream - a question for you about voyeurism.

Your definition for a parafilia includes that it must cause distress to the victim, but I would think that in many cases of voyeurism (peeping toms, hidden cameras, etc.) the victim never knows she (or he) has been victimized unless the voyeur is caught in the act. Can all voyeurism then be considered parafilia then or not?

FWIW, voyeurism seems to be going mainstream as a theme in reality TV, movies, music videos, and of course porn, but then it is being criminalized to a greater extent as special laws are created or misdemeanors are made into felonies to protect the victims.

I would research this myself, but I don’t know where to look.

[Lissa]

*Originally posted by nogginhead *
**I take that as a cite in favor of the point I made.

The link is talking about whether such taboos are a sign of instinctual (non-cultural) feelings, and argues that it is not. I have no problem with that. But the fact is that the taboo is universal in all cultures “except for specified members under highly specific situations” (also from your link).

So as far as the OP goes, if IDBB were to marry her brother, every culture in the world (not to say every person) would find it pretty icky. **

Perhaps not.

This page says:

Yet the only universal trait that Contemporary social scientists and historians agree has been found in every known culture is the prohibition of incest. As one standard text puts it, “The taboo on incest within the immediate family is one of the few known cultural universals.” . . . The certainty with which the effective prohibition of incest has been declared leads one to look for the evidence these authors might have for their assertions. Yet such a search soon proves quite fruitless. Most of them cite no evidence at all, or at most refer to a single cross cultural survey by Murdock in his book, Social Structure. Murdock’s study, however, turns out not to be about incest at all, if by incest one means actual sexual relations between family members other than spouses. What Murdock studied was marriage rules. Yet authors continue to assume Murdock proved that a universal prohibition on incest itself exists, not just a prohibition on intra-family marriage.

<snip>

Indeed, rather than examining the actual occurrence of incest in either historical or contemporary groups, the voluminous literature on the subject instead speculates on why incest supposedly doesn’t occur. Many explanations have been proposed: the biological impairments attendant upon inbreeding, the utility of social alliances, the collapse of the family if sexual rivalry is allowed, even boredom with family members. When exceptions have been acknowledged-royal incest in dozens of societies,(10) sibling incest among the general population in others,(11) widespread pederasty in still others,(12) - discussion has continued to focus on why incest is supposedly rare, not on whether it really is.

<snip>

Childhood in much of India begins with the young child being regularly masturbated by the mother, “high caste or low caste, the girl ‘to make her sleep well,’ the boy 'to make him manly…”’ . . . . The extent to which Indian parents go beyond this and overtly have sex with the child cannot be determined. . . Boys as well as girls are reported as being masturbated and raped by the men in the family, including fathers, older brothers, uncles and cousins.(96) By the time children are four or five, they are usually taken to bed at night by others in the extended household. . . . So acceptable is sex between close relatives in India that uncle-niece and cross-cousin marriages were preferred among certain Indian groups.(100) As the old Indian proverb has it, “For a girl to be a virgin at ten years old, she must have neither brothers nor cousin nor father.” . . .

<snip>

In some endogamous Indian groups, such as the Baiga, actual incestuous marriage is practiced between men and their daughters, between women and their sons, between siblings, and even between grandparents and their grandchildren.

<snip>

One of the most endogenous societies in the world, Japan has approved of incestuous marriages in court circles even in historical times.(152) Preferred sibling, cousin, uncle-niece and aunt-nephew marriages have been so extensive that genetics experts have discovered that the inbreeding has affected their size and health.(153) How often this incestuous marriage system occurred in traditional Japan is still largely unexplored. One indication of what is likely to be found is a 1959 study by Kubo showing that there were still rural areas in Japan where fathers married their daughters when the mother had died or was incapacitated, "in accordance with feudal family traditions.

[Avalonian]

To my mind, there is no such thing as “deviant” sexual behavior. Or to put it another way, either all sexual behavior is deviant, or none of it is.

Because by the time one tries to nail down the definitions of words like society, culture, normal, and accepted, then the definition of deviance itself has changed. There is no permanent, universally-accepted definition of this concept, even within a given “culture” or “society.”

In a word, it’s meaningless.

[SuaSponte]

Digging bad boys.

:d&r:

[BytopianDream]

*Originally posted by H8_2_W8 *
**BytopianDream - a question for you about voyeurism.

Your definition for a parafilia includes that it must cause distress to the victim, but I would think that in many cases of voyeurism (peeping toms, hidden cameras, etc.) the victim never knows she (or he) has been victimized unless the voyeur is caught in the act. Can all voyeurism then be considered parafilia then or not?

FWIW, voyeurism seems to be going mainstream as a theme in reality TV, movies, music videos, and of course porn, but then it is being criminalized to a greater extent as special laws are created or misdemeanors are made into felonies to protect the victims.

I would research this myself, but I don’t know where to look. **

Not necessarily distress to the victim (which is included) but also distress and interpersonal relationship problems for the perpetrator. Plus, the voyeuristic act is not consentual to the victim (which usually means paraphilia). Voyuerism is considered a paraphilia because of its non-consentual nature.

Now, if society ends up not regarding voyuerism as a big deal (and say decriminilizes it), it still remains (under psychological definitions) a paraphilia.

The main criteria for a paraphilia is:

1. Non consent for a victim.
2. Personal distress and interpersonal difficulties for the paraphilic.

A shoe fetish (there I go again!! ) is defined as a paraphilia if and only if it causes number 2 above. If I can function normally, it doesn’t cause me distress and any significant other doesn’t mind, then it is a “deviant behavior” and not a paraphilia.

A voyuer satisfies number 1. If the voyuer cannot have a normal relationship and his voyuerness causes his psychological stress, it satisfies number 2. TADA- paraphilia.

(For general info, information taken from Human Sexuality, Fourth Edition by DeVault, Sayad, Strong and Yarber. 2002, McGraw-Hill.) [I’d get out the 4000 level Human Sexuality book, but its in the attic.]

[Geek_Mecha]

A 4000 level textbook! Is that for your PhD classes?

[BytopianDream]

*Originally posted by Avalonian *
**To my mind, there is no such thing as “deviant” sexual behavior. Or to put it another way, either all sexual behavior is deviant, or none of it is.

Because by the time one tries to nail down the definitions of words like society, culture, normal, and accepted, then the definition of deviance itself has changed. There is no permanent, universally-accepted definition of this concept, even within a given “culture” or “society.”

In a word, it’s meaningless. **

True, then the word changes definition over time, which does not make it meaningless.

Not so long ago, homosexuality was in the DSM (The Big Psychopathology Book) as a deviance/paraphilia. Now, its considered normal and healthy. Society changes and the disorder changed with it.

Even rape, necrophilia and zoophilia have probably been seen by some cultures, at some point, as just dandy. Our culture (I’m speaking for USA) says that is not okay. So we define it as bad or strange.

I think I’ll clear up something:
Paraphilia- a sexual deviation that is harmful (to another or self).
Deviance- a sexual behavior that only a very small portion of the population ingages in, which is not harmful to self or others.

BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism) = Deviance, not that many people in the population engage in it, but the people involved don’t get harmed by it.

BDSM with an unwilling partner = paraphilia, causes harm to partner.

Perhaps not.

**Lissa ** is completely right, which refers to Avalonian’s point. Incest taboo’s have not been universially upheld through time. Is it a deviance? According to how the USA feels, yes. According to how the APA (The American Psychological Association) thinks, yes.
According to the examples Lissa refeered to, no.

[Lizard]

*Originally posted by Avalonian *
**To my mind, there is no such thing as “deviant” sexual behavior. Or to put it another way, either all sexual behavior is deviant, or none of it is.

Because by the time one tries to nail down the definitions of words like society, culture, normal, and accepted, then the definition of deviance itself has changed. There is no permanent, universally-accepted definition of this concept, even within a given “culture” or “society.”

In a word, it’s meaningless. **

Just because a word has no universal meaning does not make it meaningless. If a party ascribes meaning to something, than that meaning is valid within the framework they operate in, even if it directly contradicts the meaning elsewhere. That framework can be a whole society, a region, my family, or just the inside of my own head. Regardless, it’s still valid.

[H8_2_W8]

One more quickie, Bytop -

Would statisticphilia involve standard deviations?

[BytopianDream]

*Originally posted by H8_2_W8 *
**One more quickie, Bytop -

Would statisticphilia involve standard deviations? **

Vegephilia- sex with vegetables…

[game show announcer]
Thats right folks, you too can make your own sexual paraphilia but putting any word infront of “philia.” Try our tasty new cocophilia!
[/game show announcer]

And SDs are an advance case of statisticphilia. It starts off with getting off on modes. :dubious:

[greck]

Deviant simply means that most people don’t do it that way.

Now, froteurism, all the good paraphilias, those are disorders becuase they cause impairment in a person’s functioning.

The fact that pedophelia is sick and wrong is separate from it’s being deviant.

There are (arguably) plenty of mainstream practices that are sick and wrong but aren’t deviant. I would say smoking is one example.

[RTFirefly]

*Originally posted by Avalonian *
To my mind, there is no such thing as “deviant” sexual behavior. Or to put it another way, either all sexual behavior is deviant, or none of it is.

Dammit, Avalonian, don’t normalize my deviance! You’re gonna take all the fun out of being a perv.

[nogginhead]

Fascinating stuff, Lissa. I have no personal interest in being right on this point, and I can’t imagine you do either. I am curious, though.

I’m not sure where the burden of proof ought to lie, but you have provided a cite that incestuous sex (if not marriage) is common in at least one area of the world. Let’s examine your snips from article.

Indeed, rather than examining the actual occurrence of incest in either historical or contemporary groups, the voluminous literature on the subject instead speculates on why incest supposedly doesn’t occur. Many explanations have been proposed: the biological impairments attendant upon inbreeding, the utility of social alliances, the collapse of the family if sexual rivalry is allowed, even boredom with family members. When exceptions have been acknowledged-royal incest in dozens of societies,(10) sibling incest among the general population in others,(11) widespread pederasty in still others,(12) - discussion has continued to focus on why incest is supposedly rare, not on whether it really is.

<snip>
Childhood in much of India begins with the young child being regularly masturbated by the mother, “high caste or low caste, the girl ‘to make her sleep well,’ the boy 'to make him manly…”’ . . . . The extent to which Indian parents go beyond this and overtly have sex with the child cannot be determined. . . Boys as well as girls are reported as being masturbated and raped by the men in the family, including fathers, older brothers, uncles and cousins.(96) By the time children are four or five, they are usually taken to bed at night by others in the extended household. . . . So acceptable is sex between close relatives in India that uncle-niece and cross-cousin marriages were preferred among certain Indian groups.(100) As the old Indian proverb has it, “For a girl to be a virgin at ten years old, she must have neither brothers nor cousin nor father.” . . .

<snip>

In some endogamous Indian groups, such as the Baiga, actual incestuous marriage is practiced between men and their daughters, between women and their sons, between siblings, and even between grandparents and their grandchildren.

<snip>

One of the most endogenous societies in the world, Japan has approved of incestuous marriages in court circles even in historical times.(152) Preferred sibling, cousin, uncle-niece and aunt-nephew marriages have been so extensive that genetics experts have discovered that the inbreeding has affected their size and health.(153) How often this incestuous marriage system occurred in traditional Japan is still largely unexplored. One indication of what is likely to be found is a 1959 study by Kubo showing that there were still rural areas in Japan where fathers married their daughters when the mother had died or was incapacitated, "in accordance with feudal family traditions.

The Japanese stuff is again about court practices, which are irrelevant with respect to the common cultural perception of the behavior, of which we take IDBB marrying her brother as an example.
Much of the article is not cited, which may be obscured by the may cites. For example, the claims about the Baiga and the ‘sayings’ in India are not cited at all. The cite (100) about uncle-neice and cross-cousin marriages is irrelevant to notions about nuclear family incest.

So the only relevant cited facts are 96 (about India) and 11 (about common sibling incest).

Let’s check these cites:

11. J. R. Fox, “Sibling Incest.” British Journal of Sociology 13(1962): 128-150.

96 R. E. L. Masters, Patterns of Incest: A Psycho-Social Study of Incest Based on Clinical and Historic data. New York: Ace Books, 1970 p 4647

I don’t know about you, but neither of these is terribly compelling, being at least 30 years out of date (and Masters is a summary text that may refer even further back). Masters is a book, probably not peer-reviewed.

I’d be interested in reading the Fox article and seeing if it supports the claim in the linked article. Based on how strongly the argument there depends on uncited information, it would not surprise me if there was some misreading going on.

Also, since the author claims there is voluminous literature on the subject, why are the cites so weak in the above two cases?

The other comments in the text refer to rape, more or less. I’m not sure where that lies here… some have claimed it is common and therefore not deviant. I would guess that it’s not taboo, either, if practiced commonly enough. But it would be a pretty twisted argument, IMO, to claim that incest is not taboo because incestual rape occurs often.

Nog

[Duke_of_Rat]

*Originally posted by Avalonian *
**To my mind, there is no such thing as “deviant” sexual behavior. Or to put it another way, either all sexual behavior is deviant, or none of it is.

**

Damn, you mean jacking off to the Victorias Secret catalog is just like necrophilia??

[nogginhead]

*Originally posted by RTFirefly *
**Dammit, Avalonian, don’t normalize my deviance! You’re gonna take all the fun out of being a perv. **

Don’t be so mean! He’s not that skewed. He just like to violate the central limits sometimes.

Yeah, the lowest form of humor. Sue me.

[RTFirefly]

He’s probably into bivariate distributions, too.

[Lissa]

** Nog, **

I’m not sure what you meant about the Japanese incest practices being limited to the court. The study done in 1959 was on “commoners,” not court officials. Also, if genetic consequences have been experienced by the Japanese people as a whole, I don’t think that incest limited to the relatively small number of members of the court could be the cause. The practice would have to be more widespread to impact the population as a whole.

As to the R.E.L Master’s cite, he appears to have at least some respect.

As for the Indian quote, I have seen it cited in sociology texts and women’s studies. I will try to track down a reference. I wasn’t immediately able to track down the Fox article, but I might be able to find it somewhere in one of my books. I’ll let you know.

I did some more research on the Internet, and searched my sociology texts. (I came across some very * strange * sites while researching incest, let me tell you!) Basically, what I found was several citations involving small populations which practiced incestual marriage, and/or limited sexual contact with family members. (I can’t find it again at the moment but one atricle discussed a culture in which fathers ritually took the virginity of their daughters on the girls’ wedding nights.)

The issue with these groups seems to be the definition of “incest.” Some groups deny that the father has any blood relationship to his children, and thus having sex with him, or with any of his children by another woman is not incest. Other groups say that the mother has no blood link to her children: she is just the vessel in which the child develops. In groups in which believe only a tentative link (if any) exists between sex and reproduction the least incest taboos are found. All groups have at least some restriction-- some sexual union which they deem taboo.

Since the results of incest (deformed children) are not always readily apparent in one generation, some groups may fail to draw the conculsion that matings between blood kin were the cause.

No large, widespread modern culture accepts incest, but quite a few smaller, more isolated cultures do. It seems to be dissapearing in some cases due to more contact with outsiders. In ancient times, however, larger cultures, such as the Romans, accepted incestual marriage.

The Egyptian culture is more tricky to understand. It was common in ancient Egypt to refer to one’s wife as “sister,” just as a husband was called “brother.” Upon seeing these citations, some have lept to the conclusion that brother-sister marriage was widespread among the common people in Egypt. Others say that it’s more likely attributable to their religion, and to semi-imitation of the royal family, and that the terms brother and sister were used almost generically as affectionate terms.

[nogginhead]

*Originally posted by Lissa *
**** Nog, **

I’m not sure what you meant about the Japanese incest practices being limited to the court. The study done in 1959 was on “commoners,” not court officials. Also, if genetic consequences have been experienced by the Japanese people as a whole, I don’t think that incest limited to the relatively small number of members of the court could be the cause. The practice would have to be more widespread to impact the population as a whole.
**

There are two cites about the Japanese. One is about court incest, the other is about non-nuclear family incest. The court incest is irrelevant because it seems to apply to the special group. The other I didn’t mention because it is not about nuclear families.

As to the R.E.L Master’s cite, he appears to have at least some respect.

Umm, a site I write about myself doesn’t mean too much about how others perceive me. Some of the quotes from the bottom of the page are from people who probably are respectable, but others are from people one might describe as fruitcakes. In any event, the quotes themselves are not cited; who knows if they are accurate? In any event, I note that there is an e-mail address for him at the bottom of the page. I’ll drop a note asking about the matter.

As for the Indian quote, I have seen it cited in sociology texts and women’s studies. I will try to track down a reference. I wasn’t immediately able to track down the Fox article, but I might be able to find it somewhere in one of my books. I’ll let you know.

Looking forward to it.

I did some more research on the Internet, and searched my sociology texts. (I came across some very * strange * sites while researching incest, let me tell you!)

I hope no one is watching your internet usage!

Basically, what I found was several citations involving small populations which practiced incestual marriage, and/or limited sexual contact with family members. (I can’t find it again at the moment but one atricle discussed a culture in which fathers ritually took the virginity of their daughters on the girls’ wedding nights.)

Yick. Hope the citations turn up again.

The issue with these groups seems to be the definition of “incest.” Some groups deny that the father has any blood relationship to his children, and thus having sex with him, or with any of his children by another woman is not incest. Other groups say that the mother has no blood link to her children: she is just the vessel in which the child develops. In groups in which believe only a tentative link (if any) exists between sex and reproduction the least incest taboos are found. All groups have at least some restriction-- some sexual union which they deem taboo.

The claims about not associating the parents by blood sound plausible, but it’s probably best to be skeptical until some form of checkable fact is presented.

Since the results of incest (deformed children) are not always readily apparent in one generation, some groups may fail to draw the conculsion that matings between blood kin were the cause.

No large, widespread modern culture accepts incest, but quite a few smaller, more isolated cultures do. It seems to be dissapearing in some cases due to more contact with outsiders. In ancient times, however, larger cultures, such as the Romans, accepted incestual marriage.

Look, the goal here is to fight ignorance. Is there any reason to believe any of the claims made about ‘smaller, more isolated cultures’? Can you name one culture? With a cite? Or cite the claim, at least?