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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

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Page 78
Roger Scruton also appears to adopt the "view from nowhere" when he argues that sexual perversion is wrong because it is a violation of a person's "sexual integrity." From this view, sexual perversion is sex that divorces lust from love, flesh from the spirit, the animal from the personal.
30
Bestiality, masturbation, and fetishism are examples of perversion, in that they concentrate either totally on the body or part of a body or not on a live human body at all, missing the personal element that, for Scruton, elevates human sexuality above that of the other animals.
Scruton is a good example of a philosopher whom feminists would take to task for assuming that sex for pleasure alone is somehow evil in the absence of a higher goal. Scruton assumes not only that all perverted sex is degrading in its abolition or diminishment of the other but also that there is a clear conceptual and moral demarcation between the flesh and the spirit. Scruton does make an important normative distinction between two forms of sadomasochism (s/m), which those who object to this form of perversion often miss: s/m as the sexual embodiment of an immoral slavery and s/m as the sexual embodiment of mutual recognition of each partner's embodied desires. However, given his claims about the necessarily degrading nature of perversion, Scruton cannot recognize the latter case as an example of perversion.
31
On the contrary, some sex radical feminists would argue that both cases reveal important moral distinctions between different sorts of perversions. Moreover, Scruton's normative characterization of perversion does not capture all that feminists object to in perverse sex, since a cultural feminist's objection is precisely that no matter how consensual or reciprocal the s/m sex, there is still something degrading about it.
While Scruton's analysis may not go far enough in one direction, his analysis goes too far in another by compelling us to regard any sex that is dehumanizing as perverse. People who treat others as mere sexual objects include the intimidating or abusive spouse, the sexually harassing employer, or the leering passerby; yet their behavior is not perverse simply because it is dehumanizing. Even if Scruton can somehow distinguish these cases from sexual perversion, his morally biased analysis leaves no room for questioning whether, as opposed to how, any of the perversions that are exclusively bodily or immediately sensual are objectionable.
32
Thomas Nagel and Robert Solomon both offer conceptual analyses of perversion that profess moral neutrality and confine perversion to the failure to conform to a sexual ideal. Nagel defines sexual perversion in terms of the unnatural, and the unnatural in terms of the failure of a reciprocal interpersonal sexual awareness; such an awareness implies that each partner is aroused not only by the other but by each partner's awareness of the other's arousal. Like Scruton, Nagel sees sexual perversion as a truncation or incompleteness in an otherwise natural process of flirtation and seduction. Robert Solomon regards sexual perversion as a breakdown in communication of the body language that is the essence of sex.
33
Both philosophers contend that sexual perversion need not be immoral sex, although Nagel admits that his concept of completeness makes perversion (by definition) the failure to conform to an ideal in sex, giving the concept of perversion negative evaluative meaning. He comments that perverse sex will be more pleasurable sex for some people than his reciprocally aware complete sex and that, other things being equal, perverse sex is probably better for such people than no sex at all.
34
 
Page 79
However, if perverse sex can be made better by being made pleasurable, then it would appear that its characteristic of incompleteness does not condemn it to the wholly bad. Indeed, if incompleteness is a sign of inferior sex (as Nagel's original analysis implies), but pleasurable sex is prima facie good, then perversion, by being pleasurable, could theoretically offset its failure of completeness. If completeness is an ideal in virtue of the sexual satisfaction that results from it, then sexual perversion, when sexually satisfying, need not be bad at all. Indeed, unless Nagel is willing to say that perverse sex can never be pleasurable, perverse sex will conform to at least
some persons
' ideals of sex, although not everyone's. Thus,
whose
ideal perverse sex fails to conform to remains the crucial question; Nagel's assertion that perversion is a
failure
to live up to (someone's) sexual ideal is no more compelling than perversion construed as
success
in living up to the sexual ideal of a practitioner of perversion.
In his article "Sexual Paradigms," Solomon contends that perverse sex need not be either bad or immoral sex;
35
yet his analysis of perversion as a failure of communication is no less a socially located evaluation than Nagel's, since it is unclear whose sexual communication is failing or whether all practitioners of perverse sex would describe their sex as a failure of anything. In another article offering the same body-language analysis of sex, Solomon refers to perversion as an "
abuse
of an established function, a corruption, not simply a diversion or a deviation" (Solomon's italics).
36
Such normative bias is complicated by the fact that Solomon's and Nagel's analyses are both too broad and too narrow: intimidating or abusive sex can be incomplete or noncommunicative, as can unrequited love or sex between partners who enjoy pleasure through fantasy; yet such sex need not be perverse. In addition, pedophilia, group sex, sadomasochism, homosexuality, and sodomy are often regarded as unnatural or perverse, yet each can be complete sex and communicative of intense personal feelings. Janice Moulton has pointed out that Nagel's complex system of arousal through flirtation and seduction does not often fit long-standing, familiar partners, whose arousal may be a function of their understanding of what each partner wants out of sex. Therefore, Nagel's and Solomon's psychological analyses of perversion in terms of interpersonal communication can neither justify the negative normative status they give to sexual perversion nor capture distinctions typically made between perverse and normal sex.
37
Alan Goldman and Robert Gray claim that the least problematic way to conceptualize sexual perversion is to describe it without any normative content at all. Goldman suggests that while perversion is a deviation from a norm, that norm is purely statistical, not evaluative. Gray contends that a description of sexual perversion is merely an empirical description of those sexual activities that are "not consonant with the natural adaptive function(s) of sexual activity," whatever these turn out to be.
38
The difficulty with both of these analyses is that while they leave open the question of whether sexual perversion is bad or immoral sex, they fail to provide the concept of perversion with any substantive content. For example, while Goldman acknowledges that not all deviations from a sexual norm constitute perversions, he never goes beyond specific examples of perversion to tell us what kinds of deviations
 
Page 80
count. Investigating what he calls "the form of the desire" to identify instances of perversion is meaningless if we have no theoretical understanding of
what
form particular types of perversion take.
Gray's analysis does not fare much better, as he is unwilling to specify exactly what the natural adaptive function of human sexuality is. Without knowing this, we have no way of distinguishing sexual perversions from sexual activities that are not perverse. Furthermore, Gray suggests that such adaptation might be culturally relative, such that homosexuality might be adaptive in a society with a higher population of males than in one where the female population is higher. However, this line of reasoning suggests that Gray's "natural" adaptation is really non-essential and relative after all. Indeed, it could turn out that sexual activities like homosexuality, bestiality, necrophilia, and coprophilia contribute to population control, in which case none of them could correctly be called perversions on Gray's model.
39
As Donald Levy remarks, if it turns out that artificial insemination is more adaptive to the survival of the species than heterosexual sex, then we will have to start calling straight sex perverted.
40
Gray laments that the expression "sexual perversion" has become so morally loaded that we should consider dropping it from the language: "Other clearer and less emotive terms may just as easily be substituted for it."
41
Given the difficulties associated with refining a working concept of perversion, this is just the strategy I plan to pursue.
Michael Slote comes closer to my own perspective on sexual perversion by calling it an "inapplicable concept," although his reasons differ from my own. Slote contends that the notion of sexual perversion is made nonsensical by its synonymy with the term "unnatural." Since the unnatural is not of this world, according to Slote, and sexual perversion clearly
is
of this world, as much as we would repress or deny it, the term has no applicability as a description of abnormal sexual preference.
42
However, rejecting the semantic applicability of perversion in this way requires that we accept (1) Slote's equation of the perverse with the unnatural and (2) his definition of the unnatural. If sexual perversion is subversive of normal sexuality in the ways I have suggested, then according to Slote, the subversive becomes the unnatural. Yet subversive sex may be no less "natural" for the practitioner of perversion (and very much "of this world"). Even if we equate perversion with the unnatural, Slote's definition of unnatural appears to be both too narrow (Why should something not of this world be
unnatural
?) and too vague (What is to constitute "this world"?). Slote has rejected the term "nonprocreative" outright as failing to specify all and only those activities that are sexually perverse; yet his own characterization of perversion as unnatural sex is subject to the same criticism, particularly if from the ''view from somewhere different," we recognize that equally partial but differently situated subjects will have different conceptions of perversion.
43
Even if we reject the concept of perversion, as Slote recommends, he has given us no replacement for identifying that which fills so many people, Slote readily admits, with both horror and fear.
44
The concept of perversion may be inapplicable as typically understood, but I contend that its controversial meaning and value require that we look for an alternative means of talking about it.
Mortimer Kadish compares what I have called the subversiveness of perversion to the violation of the deep structural grammar of a language. According to Kadish, sex-
 
Page 81
ual perversion is like unintelligible talk that we vaguely recognize as language but that we ultimately do not understand. Thus, sexual perversion constitutes an offense to the deep structure of society's sexual institutions and ideology, "an assault on [society's] identity rather than a possible variation."
45
Michael Ruse also suggests that perversion is not merely the different or the deviant but something personally incomprehensible. According to Ruse, sexual perversion is "something we could not imagine wanting to do."
46
But who is this "we" exactly? The practitioner of sexual perversion may sensibly refer to herself as a pervert, if only because this is how she has been taught to refer to her sexuality; yet at the same time, she may not only "imagine" her sexual practice but also engage in it, relish it, and, in a deeply personal sense, understand its role in her life. While I agree with Kadish's and Ruse's sense of the profoundly subversive nature of perversion, I suspect that their "view from nowhere" ignores the differently situated perspectives of those who practice perversion.
I have also argued in the preceding pages that the dominant perception of perversion as a threat to the status quo gives the concept of perversion compellingly negative normative weight. The two authors seem to share this view, albeit from the "view from nowhere": Ruse believes that we
[sic]
call something perverse that repels us but that its negative normative weight need not be a moral one. Kadish goes further by describing sexual perversion as a "spiritual malaise, a malaise in the consciousness of self," where the pervert "feels pain when he ought to feel pleasure."
47
It is my contention that because negative normative weight, moral or otherwise, biases any investigations we may wish to conduct concerning the value of sexual perversion, the concept of perversion must be replaced with a more representative one that can describe sexual difference without presuming its devaluation. I believe that Kadish and Ruse are on the right phenomenological track in their explorations into sexual perversion but that they err in retaining conceptions of sexual difference that overdetermine any normative evaluations of it.
Sara Ruddick and Janice Moulton come closest to voicing my own concern that one should socially locate individual cases of sexual perversion in order to evaluate perversion with a minimum of misrepresentation. Ruddick rejects the equation of the natural with the good, contending instead that "[t]he social desirability of types of sexual acts depends on particular social conditions and independent criteria of social desirability." Janice Moulton echoes this view when she states, "I believe that sexual behavior will not fit any single characterization."
48
However, Ruddick offers a definition of perversion that makes her claims about the importance of social location in evaluating sexual behavior less convincing. Ruddick suggests that the sexually perverse desire is an unnatural sexual desire that "could [not] lead to reproduction in normal physiological circumstances."
49
Yet this characterization misleadingly implies that the desire to have sex after menopause is sexually perverse and that perverse sex includes sex that is not hetero-genital. (Does kissing count? Fondling without intercourse?) In addition, Ruddick's characterization makes the pedophilic desire to make a twelve-year-old pregnant perfectly natural. Moulton, on the other hand, believes that the only thing we can really say about sexual perversion is that it "makes people frightened or uncomfortable by its bizarreness."
50
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