Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
As a practicing doctor who was heard of and even seen way too many paraphilias, I went into this book believing that there's nothing about human sexuality that can shock me. Boy was I wrong! i don't think I was disgusted by any of the things mentioned in the book, but definitely a bit surprised. Us humans have found unbelievable ways of deriving pleasure! How can one explain a man deriving sexual satisfaction from seeing another man sneeze?!But this is exactly the kind of weirdness Jesse Bering sets out to explain. This book is not a collection of sexual oddities you can derive pleasure from. It is an attempt to explain the evolutionary origins of these paraphilias, and why they are mostly harmless. I'm definitely way more impressed by this book than I had expected. There are two main premises of the book. What generates sexual arousal in people isn’t something that is decided and can manifest in unusual ways (whether it be homosexuality, sadomaschism, attraction to inanimate objects, or anything else) and ethically, a person should really be judged on how they decide to act on fulfilling their desires. “Do no harm,” is basically what the book advocates, if a bit weakly.It’s a pretty easy read (highly informal) and but only fairly informative. It’s not all that paradigm shifting. If you’ve looked at the mechanics of sexuality at all you should already agree with the premises of the book and you’ll probably just pick up some bits of trivia from reading it. It would have benefited from discussions of more research in place of personal anecdotes from the author (who happens to be gay).
What do You think about Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us (2013)?
I have a degree in sociology so this was up my alley. But I found the book kind of boring.
—Megan040
Quotes:...to be a pervert wasn't to be a sex deviant; it was to be an atheist.
—Nicole
Alot of interesting facts and some good-natured humor.
—dynastybaby92
very informative without being dry, very funny
—Nimzi
