"Sexual deviancy"

Anonus

This strikes me as a rather nebulous term, for some reason.

(If this is/gets "too sleazy", then please lock/delete this)

Gelzo

Good point. Where does one deviate from?

glennmagusharvey

The mean, obviously.

How many standard deviations is your sexual practice away from the mean?

[Deleted User]

Do sexual practices follow a normal distribution? I can't even figure out what would be the independent axis. Listing the practices isn't quantitative.

LouieW

I have not heard the term "sexual deviancy" used in a while, but I might not hang around with the right people or something.

The only kinds of divisions based on sexual activity that I have really heard discussed have to do with reproductive vs. non-reproductive sexual activity and sexual promiscuity. I think the former is often based on religious or moral standards. Thus, calling someone a sexual deviant based at that person engaging in non-reproductive sexual activity makes some sense to me (though I think it sounds a bit rude to name call like that) if one assumes that those moral standards are the norm. I am not completely sure that they most people think they are the norm though so I question whether that person is deviating from the norm.

As for sexual promiscuity, I think there are certainly benefits of only engaging in sexual activity once one is in a stable relationship, but from what I can tell, being sexual promiscuous is not necessarily frowned upon. Still, I think that depends on one's gender because of unfortunate double standards and obviously there are levels to this. I mean, even most people who are very socially liberal probably draw the line somewhere in terms of sexual behavior (i.e. I doubt they think that committing crimes related to certain sexual behavior is okay).

As I stated before, I am no expert on this and I obviously bring into this my own bias. I apologize if I sounded like an idiot here or even worse a pseudo-intellectual.

   

glennmagusharvey

LouieW, you're fine, as long as you don't keep on talking about how you're not an expert and your opinion is worth nothing.  None of our opinions are worth anything, and we're either all coming off as pseudo-intellectuals or none of us are.  You don't have to worry.