Havelock
Mayor
“You are a sexual deviant. A pervert, through and through.” So begins Jesse Bering's latest book, Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us. Yes, he means you – and you too – but don't fret. Bering isn't necessarily accusing anyone of being a degenerate monster. No, he he simply wants us all to acknowledge that at one time or another in our lives we have sexual thoughts and desires that fall outside our culture's definition of “proper” and “normal”; thoughts that we'd just as soon others not know about.
I've written about Bering and linked to various of his works several times here and elsewhere. Fair warning: I'm a Bering fan. That being the case, it's probably impossible for me not to inject some of my own thinking into Bering's words. Thus, if you read the book, you may come away with some different impressions that I did. I offer that in the interest of full disclosure.
Back to the book. It's hard to argue with Bering's opening claim about our private sexual lives, for most of us anyway. In any case, one of the key points that Bering wants to make in Perv is that the line that separates any of us from the weird and deviant others that lurk in society's shadows is finer and less fixed than most of us would prefer to think. Moreover, Bering points out, the latest research suggest that there may be more “deviants” among us than many might have guessed. I think all of that is true, but then the question is, what if anything should we do with this information?
Bering's answer to that question involves asking us – all of us – to reconsider our reflexive judgments. Bering believes we ought to do this for good ethical reasons. First, he observes that we continue to see individuals who are punished and have their lives ruined to one degree or another for “crimes” that don't actually hurt anyone. Second, as he points out, we've learned from the gay rights movement that life “in the closet” can be brutally stressful, damaging, and limiting. Now that we know that, Bering says, it's simply wrong to subject anyone to such an existence needlessly. (And, as a gay man himself, he notes that gays and lesbians haven't been as sensitive to these issues in connection with other sexual minorities as they could and should have been. Bering neglects, or declines, to mention that it was not always so and that the gay rights movement has become strikingly more narrowly focused as it has gained ground, but maybe that's another book.) Past that, he argues, society is changing in myriad ways that are making it harder, and perhaps one day in the not too distant future virtually impossible, for a person to conceal his or her predilections. As a practical matter, Bering suggests, we as a society are going to be forced to respond one way or another as that day approaches. We'll all be better off if we respond deliberately and rationally, he says.
Bering suggests early on in Perv that our first instinct when it comes to judging whether or not any given sexual behavior is ethical is usually strongly influenced either consciously or unconsciously by disgust. That's normal, he says, and easily explainable in terms of evolutionary psychology. But that yardstick doesn't always measure true because our disgust reactions tend to be learned, hence culturally specific, and not necessarily well suited to a modern society in which we are required to make judgments about people we don't know personally. In other words, judgments based primarily on disgust are apt to be inconsistent, irrational, and hence unjust. Thus, Bering says, we'd do better to judge by evaluating harm. And, he makes tolerably clear, “harm” ought to mean physical or psychological harm to the individuals involved; “harm” shouldn't include nebulous notions of social outrage or violated traditions.
Okay, so far, so good...
Bering doesn't talk much in this book about evaluating “harm” apart from pointing out, reasonably enough, that sometimes harm is objective and sometimes it's quite subjective. Neither does he suggest much about how we ought to calibrate our responses or quantify “harm.” I guess those issues were beyond the scope of what he wanted to discuss. That's fine, but I think his book would make a stronger statement if he acknowledged its limits a bit more explicitly and pointed toward further discussion a bit more than he does. But it's pretty clear that Bering didn't mean for Perv to be a detailed prescriptive treatise on sexual ethics and morals; he's no moral philosopher in this book. Fair enough.
In Perv Beringdoesincorporate and discuss a fair amount of carefully-footnoted literature, but his book clearly isn't meant to be a meticulous survey of scientific thinking relating to variant human sexuality any more that it's meant to be a comprehensive primer on sexual morality. Perv is a serious book, but it's not a weighty academic tome by any means. Bering's goal is to be a chronicler, a popularizer, and a pretty good storyteller at least much as to be an advocate. His style is characteristically light and conversational, chock full of descriptive passages that only very rarely cross the line from flowery to florid. He brings a light touch to a touchy subject and for the most part it serves him well. The tone throughout is informative but not didactic. It's a book written for a general audience, mercifully free of jargon and technical argot.
In part because of its tone, Perv is a fairly quick read at just under 250 pages of text. Even so, Bering covers a lot of ground in those pages. His book is in part a history of sexual psychology, in part a light survey of current thinking in the fields of evolutionary biology and psychology regarding sexual variation, in part an introduction to breadth and range of human sexuality across cultures both now and throughout our history (and prehistory, for that matter), as well as in part a plea and a recommendation for greater understanding and rationality.
Although Bering doesn't say so, the structure of his book is, I suspect, a bit of an homage to some of the classic sexology texts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that Bering quotes. Like those books, Perv contains a compendium of case studies that serve as a springboard for discussion and observation. Unlike most of those older works, this book uses the results of quite a few scientific studies to inform and bolster the discussion. Also unlike most of those older works, Bering is much less interested in comprehensively categorizing deviation than he is in telling a story and drawing his readers along with him.
And draw us along he does. The ride isn't always pleasant, as Bering necessarily touches upon some difficult and disturbing topics. But it is unfailingly interesting and is chock full of information. Bering is quite candid in detailing what we don't know about how our sexual identities are formed – and we don't know a lot – but he highlights what we do know and what we think might be true in an engaging manner.
(Part 2 continues below)
I've written about Bering and linked to various of his works several times here and elsewhere. Fair warning: I'm a Bering fan. That being the case, it's probably impossible for me not to inject some of my own thinking into Bering's words. Thus, if you read the book, you may come away with some different impressions that I did. I offer that in the interest of full disclosure.
Back to the book. It's hard to argue with Bering's opening claim about our private sexual lives, for most of us anyway. In any case, one of the key points that Bering wants to make in Perv is that the line that separates any of us from the weird and deviant others that lurk in society's shadows is finer and less fixed than most of us would prefer to think. Moreover, Bering points out, the latest research suggest that there may be more “deviants” among us than many might have guessed. I think all of that is true, but then the question is, what if anything should we do with this information?
Bering's answer to that question involves asking us – all of us – to reconsider our reflexive judgments. Bering believes we ought to do this for good ethical reasons. First, he observes that we continue to see individuals who are punished and have their lives ruined to one degree or another for “crimes” that don't actually hurt anyone. Second, as he points out, we've learned from the gay rights movement that life “in the closet” can be brutally stressful, damaging, and limiting. Now that we know that, Bering says, it's simply wrong to subject anyone to such an existence needlessly. (And, as a gay man himself, he notes that gays and lesbians haven't been as sensitive to these issues in connection with other sexual minorities as they could and should have been. Bering neglects, or declines, to mention that it was not always so and that the gay rights movement has become strikingly more narrowly focused as it has gained ground, but maybe that's another book.) Past that, he argues, society is changing in myriad ways that are making it harder, and perhaps one day in the not too distant future virtually impossible, for a person to conceal his or her predilections. As a practical matter, Bering suggests, we as a society are going to be forced to respond one way or another as that day approaches. We'll all be better off if we respond deliberately and rationally, he says.
Bering suggests early on in Perv that our first instinct when it comes to judging whether or not any given sexual behavior is ethical is usually strongly influenced either consciously or unconsciously by disgust. That's normal, he says, and easily explainable in terms of evolutionary psychology. But that yardstick doesn't always measure true because our disgust reactions tend to be learned, hence culturally specific, and not necessarily well suited to a modern society in which we are required to make judgments about people we don't know personally. In other words, judgments based primarily on disgust are apt to be inconsistent, irrational, and hence unjust. Thus, Bering says, we'd do better to judge by evaluating harm. And, he makes tolerably clear, “harm” ought to mean physical or psychological harm to the individuals involved; “harm” shouldn't include nebulous notions of social outrage or violated traditions.
Okay, so far, so good...
Bering doesn't talk much in this book about evaluating “harm” apart from pointing out, reasonably enough, that sometimes harm is objective and sometimes it's quite subjective. Neither does he suggest much about how we ought to calibrate our responses or quantify “harm.” I guess those issues were beyond the scope of what he wanted to discuss. That's fine, but I think his book would make a stronger statement if he acknowledged its limits a bit more explicitly and pointed toward further discussion a bit more than he does. But it's pretty clear that Bering didn't mean for Perv to be a detailed prescriptive treatise on sexual ethics and morals; he's no moral philosopher in this book. Fair enough.
In Perv Beringdoesincorporate and discuss a fair amount of carefully-footnoted literature, but his book clearly isn't meant to be a meticulous survey of scientific thinking relating to variant human sexuality any more that it's meant to be a comprehensive primer on sexual morality. Perv is a serious book, but it's not a weighty academic tome by any means. Bering's goal is to be a chronicler, a popularizer, and a pretty good storyteller at least much as to be an advocate. His style is characteristically light and conversational, chock full of descriptive passages that only very rarely cross the line from flowery to florid. He brings a light touch to a touchy subject and for the most part it serves him well. The tone throughout is informative but not didactic. It's a book written for a general audience, mercifully free of jargon and technical argot.
In part because of its tone, Perv is a fairly quick read at just under 250 pages of text. Even so, Bering covers a lot of ground in those pages. His book is in part a history of sexual psychology, in part a light survey of current thinking in the fields of evolutionary biology and psychology regarding sexual variation, in part an introduction to breadth and range of human sexuality across cultures both now and throughout our history (and prehistory, for that matter), as well as in part a plea and a recommendation for greater understanding and rationality.
Although Bering doesn't say so, the structure of his book is, I suspect, a bit of an homage to some of the classic sexology texts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries that Bering quotes. Like those books, Perv contains a compendium of case studies that serve as a springboard for discussion and observation. Unlike most of those older works, this book uses the results of quite a few scientific studies to inform and bolster the discussion. Also unlike most of those older works, Bering is much less interested in comprehensively categorizing deviation than he is in telling a story and drawing his readers along with him.
And draw us along he does. The ride isn't always pleasant, as Bering necessarily touches upon some difficult and disturbing topics. But it is unfailingly interesting and is chock full of information. Bering is quite candid in detailing what we don't know about how our sexual identities are formed – and we don't know a lot – but he highlights what we do know and what we think might be true in an engaging manner.
(Part 2 continues below)
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