BooksReviewWe cannot choose who we are sexually attracted to – so stop judgingNot many pop-science books open with a breezy confession that the author once masturbated to an image of a Neanderthal, but then Jesse Bering thinks the social emotion of shame is corrosive and that we should all be more open about our own sexual quirks and kinks. Admirable, then, that he has the balls (so to speak) to go first. Don't worry, I won't be reciprocating.
In a friendly way, Bering, a psychologist, argues that all sexual "perversions" or "deviancies" should be viewed objectively as just statistically more-or-less common structures of desire, without the moral disapproval that usually attaches to them. (We will come back to the surprising implications of that "all".) Language, he notes, is unhelpful here, as the idea of a "pervert" implies an immoral choice, but research shows that people's proclivities, from the vanilla to the baroque, are fixed in early development.
Homosexuality, of course, was until recently considered deviant, and Bering writes movingly of his own experience as a confused and frightened closeted teenager. (Those long suspicious of homophobic ranters will be tickled to learn that, according to laboratory tests, "the more hostile a man is toward gay men, the stronger his erectile response is to gay male porn".) These days, one often finds people sympathetic to gay rights observing that homosexual behaviours are also found in other species, eg the bonobo. But this employment of the "naturalistic fallacy", Bering points out, is misguided. After all, animals also force themselves on one another, but that doesn't make it OK for men to rape women.
Given consent, though, Bering's position is that anything goes. For one thing, he notes, "harm" is subjective. "If the supermodel Kate Upton were to walk into my office right now and tie me to my chair before doing a slow striptease and depositing her vagina in my face," Bering writes, "I think I'd require therapy for years." You'd hope that, as a scientist, he would also know that this would be a medical emergency for the poor supermodel.
For the middle third of the book Bering scoots through an eye-opening panoply of case studies and research findings about everything from a preference for amputees (acrotomophilia) to a passionate love of bees (melissophilia). One "objectophile" woman is "in a relationship with a flag named Libby". A psychiatrist even thinks there is a category of people who have "excessive desire" for other consenting adults in socially approved ways, and suggests we call them "normophiles", though I think that term is better reserved for people who fancy the generous-waisted pants off Norm from Cheers.
There is an occasional tang of scientism to Bering's project, as when he somewhat condescendingly congratulates literary figures from the past (Genet, Bataille) on intuiting something about sex (for instance, that lust can impair decision-making) that psychology researchers have now triumphantly confirmed. Readers might politely wonder whether the only reliable knowledge we can have of human nature is that gained through a particular historically contingent set of scientific practices.
Another question is how much fun the author should attempt to have at the expense of people who, he keeps insisting, didn't choose their own preferences. Bering's relentlessly jokey style does risk undercutting his sympathetic stance. While arguing that we should jettison attitudes of disgust and mockery towards unusual sexual desires, he simultaneously makes stylistic hay with those who "become aroused by the steaming, mottled member of a Clydesdale" horse, and loves to dream up outre combinations such as a "psellismophilic nebulophile (someone whose most passionate moments involve masturbating in the foggy mist while listening to a person stutter)". Nor does Bering's sympathy extend (as logically perhaps it should) to people who can't really be blamed for sharing the prejudices of a less enlightened age – a 19th-century doctor whom Bering calls "quite a piece of work" for his callous attitude to a "nymphomaniac", for example.
Abruptly, he becomes more serious during the last third of the book, which is about paedophilia. (Paedophilia is distinguished in science, as it rarely is in the media, from a primary sexual attraction to pubescents, which is called hebephilia, and from attraction to older adolescents: ephebophilia.) Remember what he said about combating moral disapproval of "all" sexual orientations? He meant it. The most demonised members of modern society, Bering says, did not choose their orientation either. "Telling a paedophile that he needs to be attracted to grown-ups, not kids, is like telling a lesbian that she just hasn't found the right guy." Bering displays an impressive sympathy for the cultural devil, imagining the sheer fear in which paedophiles must live. "These people aren't living their lives in the closet; they're eternally hunkered down in a panic room."
What some will find most controversial is Bering's argument about images involving children. The available research suggests, he writes, that possession of such material is not a predictor of future child abuse, but actually helps forestall it by providing a fantasy outlet. So if governments are really interested in preventing harm to children, he argues, they should provide existing material to paedophiles. Much better, of course, would be synthetic or digitally simulated imagery, the making of which involves no children at all, but Bering points out that this is already illegal almost everywhere – an example of the quixotic official attempt to regulate desire as thought crime.
Despite its wild variations in tone, this is, overall, a serious and humane book. It should, though, come with a warning to the user, given Bering's gleeful propensity for the gross-out example. At one point I was moved to scribble in block capitals at the bottom of the page "DO NOT READ WHILE EATING", as his description of a particularly icky fetish had really put me off my boeuf bourguignon.
This article has been amended according to the Guardian style guide. The original piece used the phrase "child porn". This has now been omitted.
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