I thought this was an interesting article on the history of the word pervert. Apparently it started off as a word to describe an atheist. It wasn’t till the end of the 19th Century that it became associated with sexual depravity. Prior to that unconventional sexual acts were simply seen as a sign of moral degeneracy and decadence. It was the early sexologists who created the idea of sexual desire being an orientation and re-purposed perversion (‘turning away from the right course’) to describe people who fitted into that group.
The really shocking thing about this is that it means the highly historically accurate Blackadder II, set in 16th Century Elizabethan England, used the word incorrectly for the character of the baby eating bishop of Bath and Wells.
Bishop: Yes. You see, I am a colossal pervert. No form of sexual depravity is too low for me. Animal, vegetable or mineral — I’ll do anything to anything.
Edmund: Fine words for a Bishop. It’s nice to hear the Church speaking out for a change on social issues.
The clip itself can be seen here. And for any of my US readers who have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, I suggest checking out one of the most brilliant comedy series ever recorded. It’s currently on NetFlix streaming, although I’d recommend skipping the first season and sticking to seasons 2, 3 and 4.
As for an image I wanted something featuring a whole heap of perversity, and the one below seemed to fit the bill. There’s bondage, cross-dressing, cuckolding, homosexuality and butt plugs. All sorts of good stuff.
I found the image via the sissiebondage tumblr and once again I’ve failed to track down an original source for it. Either Google reverse image search is really sucking these days or I’m picking particularly obscure images. If anyone knows the artist then feel free to leave a comment.
A disappointing article in a way, since it does not address the crucial issue.
Imagine you are an anthropologist from some other planet far away in another galaxy. You land on earth and discover that earthlings have various orifices, hollows, and protuberances that are erogenous, and that they are rather fond of erotic pleasure, and are intelligent and inventive enough to enhance and enrich that pleasure by various practices.
But then you look closer and you find that in fact, they are supposed to do sex in a way that is ‘normal’, and that ‘normal’ means heterosexual with a penis inserted into a vagina.
What would you make of this fixed notion of normal sexuality?
And what would you conclude if you discovered that there was also something called gender which is also fixed, involving strict rules governing ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’?
And further, what if you discovered that there is something called ‘patriarchy’ that exists in many different cultures, ethnicities, and religions, but that insists that these fixed roles are immutable and that all else is ‘perversion’?
You might be tempted to conclude that the reason why patriarchy bears down so heavily on those who practice forms of love that are officially verboten is because these forms are subversive, and threaten the fixed sex and gender hierarchies that underpin the patriarchal system.
That’s certainly an interesting issue, and a fascinating one to discuss, but I suspect covering it fully would require more of a book than an article 🙂 Given the limited scope of this piece, and it’s focus on the origin of the word, I did appreciate it’s focus on the positive and ‘no harm’. I can imagine worse ways for the article to have developed.
As for our alien anthropologist, I suspect he’d report back that early humans had strong tribal characteristics and an us/them mentality, all of which arose for evolutionary reasons. That basic trait got baked into the cultural rules and was still strongly in evidence despite our apparent progression to a more ‘civilized’ society. It would probably return home thinking we were driven by our baser instincts, and were far closer to our primitive ancestors than we realized.
-paltego