Sexual perversion

© 2011 Lee Chun Tuan Jarrod JulianThe concept of sexual perversion is not a new one, and yet it appears that attempts, both philosophical and non-philosophical, to provide a coherent and justified account have failed. In this paper, I explore what the four main accounts of sex and sexual perversion – procreation, love, communication and plain sex – have to say about sexual perversion and why they run into the problems that they face. Following this, I examine the arguments presented by Humber, Priest and Primoratz against the concept of sexual perversion. While Priest’s and Humber’s arguments seem to provide a compelling case against the concept of sexual perversion, attacking its logical foundations, rejoinders are available through the arguments of Baltzly and Kekes. Primoratz’s claim that he has surveyed the main possible lines that an argument for the concept of sexual perversion could take is overstated because there remains at least one more option. I argue that the aforementioned accounts of sex and sexual perversion fail because they fall too sharply along the mind-body divide, either by privileging the rational purposes that sex can be put to, over and above the physicality of sex, or because there is too much emphasis on the physicality of sex such that its rational aspects are overlooked. With this in mind, I propose a new account of sexual perversion that is premised on a view of human sexuality that acknowledges the equal importance of both the rational and physical aspects of human sexuality in the flourishing of the human being. Such an approach, I argue, allows us to generate a concept of sexual perversion that is largely in line with ordinary usage