•Since so few are homosexual as compared with the prevalence of homosexuality in the population at large, maybe we can announce from this statistic that temporal lobe disease protects against sexual aberration.
Male Transsexualism
The most extreme form of femininity in anatomically intact males is transsexualism, a condition that manifests itself from the earliest years of life with the boy wishing he were a girl, even to having his sex reversed (which he then tries to accomplish later in life). This rare state— and only this condition, which does not include most of those people these days who request “sex change” (139) —is not the result of a lifelong, lived-out fantasy of reparation and revenge as in perversion but is, rather, the result of parental attitudes, which create an all-too-con-flict-free nontraumatic atmosphere in which the femininity originates. (We shall look more closely at transsexualism in chapter 8.)
This, then, is another case in which the force producing the aberrant behavior is not one of fantasy that corrects a traumatic past but more simply one of the nonpainful, nondangerous shaping of the subject’s personality by dynamics constantly present in the family.
(Note: Only male transsexuals are considered here because I think the etiology in female transsexualism has more traumatic elements and is not just a variant.)
Cultural Variants
The forms that masculinity and femininity take in a culture vary from era to era (in heated-up times, from year to year) and can differ from culture to culture. It would be unwise for an observer from outside the culture (separated either by generations—even centuries— or by distance) to decide what is an aberration, much less whether what is observed is a perversion. What is aberrant between cultures may not be aberrant within a culture. In the same way, styles of erotic performance can change owing to historical and social circumstances, and one should be careful not to judge perversion (or lack of it) from a superficial glance.
A nice example—especially because it is used polemically so often these days—is the matter of homosexuality in ancient Greece. Different commentators have read the facts differently. Opinions range from the belief that this homosexuality was not a perversion because it was accepted by the whole culture to a belief that the whole culture was perverted. The version I prefer is that of Vanggaard (150). He describes the acceptable homosexuality in these Greeks as being restricted to the highest class, to men, and accepted by these men as the most honorable form of relationship. It did not displace heterosexuality. Its function was to transmit the finest ethical standards of the society. A man would bind himself to a boy, teaching him honor, strength, fidelity, and selflessness; each sexual act was an offering—in one’s behavior and literally in the contribution of semen—of the precepts and the substance of manliness. Effeminacy played no part; only the man who could not do other than love men was considered homosexual in today’s derogatory sense. When the young man who had been honored by his older partner’s erotic behavior was well into adolescence, the relationship ended, and the young man was then expected not to persist in homosexuality —except that in time he was to treat a young man as he had been treated. The ritualized homosexuality did not displace heterosexuality but rather only the capacity equally to honor women of one’s own standing.
In other words, the dynamics of this form of homosexuality were different from the standard expressed today. Hostility between the partners was not a dominant motivation (as it also occasionally is not in respecting and tender homosexual relationships today).
Vanggaard describes other cultures where similar transmission of masculinity is the main purpose of institutionalized homosexuality, which is consciously built into the culture’s mystique—not the case of our culture’s present-day male homosexuality (though some of these dynamics, for example, power received through incorporated semen, may be among many other dynamic forces).
This is not to say that perversion could not hide within cultural norms; if there were a custom somewhere that all men had to dress in women’s clothes for a religious ceremony, there would always be a few who secretly performed the ceremony because it was sexually exciting, not because it was religiously sublime. But the rule would be the same as above: the definition of perversion would be made on the basis of what the act meant to the person.
Faute de Mieux
When, for lack of what one prefers, one settles for substitutes, the act will be aberrant but need not be perverse. Bestiality is an example. Although it is always listed as a perversion in the compendia, it may often not be so. Unless the person having intercourse with the animal does so because of a preference for animals, the motivation may not be generated by fantasy as in perversion. With sheepherders, for instance, intercourse with their Bock is usually presumed to be for lack of something better, not because sheep are their favorite objects. (The only exception I know of appears in a Woody Allen movie.) If the latter is the case, look for a more complicated dynamic. In the case of the pornography in which women are seen having intercourse with animals, the chances are great that the perversion (which is not bestiality) is in the man who buys the photographs; the woman posing may be motivated by simpler needs (money) or may be a mentally defective or psychotic victim of the pornographer.
One cannot judge by an external view of the act but rather by what goes on in the performer’s mind. Masturbation is an example. It is certainly normative. Its use increases when preferred objects are missing. But we
would be inaccurate to generalize that therefore masturbation is not perverse. Most often, even when masturbation is fault de mttux, the pornography used (either public pornography or private pornography, that is, daydreams) will have perverse elements. In this situation, the fantasy is used because it satisfies what cannot be satisfied in an actual sex act with another. In that case, masturbation is not just a substitute but a truly distinctive sexual act with its own specific motives and energies. So also with the use of prostitutes. A man may have to turn to prostitutes because he cannot do better: he is a Yukon gold miner and the only available women are whores. But what if he is a stockbroker in New York who is impotent except with an officially degraded woman?
The issue of fault dt mttux, therefore, is not always clear-cut. Often, even under circumstances of deprivation, the fantasy used reveals the act to be a mixture of the lack of something better plus the opportunity for using perverse fantasy, in daydream or pornography.
The Animal Argument:
An Alleged Category
In asking that we talk of variants or deviations rather than perversions, sex experts today, allied with others fighting for sexual civil rights, use observations of animal behavior. As was seen in chapter a, the argument goes that although one finds innumerable examples of sexual aberrance in them, animals cannot be accused of willful, obstinate, wicked behavior. Humans are linked to other animals by similar brain structures, physiological mechanisms, and behavior. Therefore perversion does not exist in us, for the roots for aberration are phylogenetic. But when one makes a male rat attempt intercourse with a male cat by giving the rat a substance that damages brain function, it is not proved either that rats as a species have an unconscious desire to rape cats or that, at