News of a book review

I can recommend a book review called "How sexual perversion became the new norm" which is online at the 'New Statesman' site. (Google it!)

It actually reviews two new books: 'Perv: the Sexual Deviant in All of Us' by Jesse Bering (Doubleday), and 'The Pleasure's All Mine: a History of Perverse Sex' by Julie Peakman (Reaktion)

Being a sexual pervert (or fantasist) myself, I was struck by this:

'... How did we become, Bering asks, "the insufferably judgmental homonids that we are" and "why don't we empathise with, rather than judge, others?

'Jesse Bering and Julie Peakman are probably the most tolerant people who have ever lived, next to the Greeks who inhabited a libertine utopia where every philia, from bird sex to incest, was given the green light ...

'... [T]he most challenging chapter in Perv is on the varying age of consent (14 in Chile, 13 in Argentina, 12 in Mexico, 18 in Turkey, 15 in Sweden, and so on) ...'

The books themselves should be readily available, both being from leading publishers.

[T]he most challenging chapter in Perv is on the varying age of consent (14 in Chile, 13 in Argentina, 12 in Mexico, 18 in Turkey, 15 in Sweden, and so on) ...'

Thanks for the tip ... it is available on Amazon ..

The comment on age of consent is odd in a way. Just because some countries put the age relatively young compared to many US states for example, doesn't mean that anything goes, or that anyone can go around making 'indecent proposals' to all and sundry.

What it does do is take into account the age at which adolescents start to experiment with their sexuality. What would otherwise happen when let's say two 16 year olds have sex in a state with 18 as age of consent? Then you have statutory rape and all the legal consequences that come with it - possible arrest, trial, prison, sex offender registration and so on ... what good can come of that? And what relation does it have to societal reality when first sex is occurring on average at ever younger ages?

Several years ago in Belgium, the age of consent, under certain circumstances, was actually lowered specifically to rid the courts and judges of being mandated to treat and sentence youngsters between 14 and 16 as rapists when they had sex with others of approximately their own age. Social reality was that teenagers have first sex at ever younger ages. Why stigmatize those unlucky who are caught with even a juvenile criminal record?

I'd say that the challenging fact is why so many states still adhere to relatively late ages of consent. Is it because they get some kind of satisfaction of treating their teenagers as potential criminals?

Pleasing to read your thoughts about varying ages-of-consent in different countries, 'agracier'. I have followed some of your other posts, being particularly impressed by your list of favourite movies (whether Laurel & Hardy in 'Our Relations', or your choice of two Louis Malle classics, including the daring 'Le Souffle au Coeur' about a boy and his mother ...).

Yes, I'm sure there is something in what you say - a low age of consent in a particular country doesn't necessarily mean that 'anything goes' there - but in general the figures do seem to relate to the degree of sophistication about sexual matters shown by different countries. (In Australia the age of consent is 18. That does suggest to me that we're relatively staid. Or anyway cautious.) Hence the reviewer's comment that 'the most challenging chapter in Perv [by Jesse Bering] is on the varying age of consent'.

Unfortunately, neither of the two books reviewed sounds a must-read. 'Neither book makes easy reading: Peakman's because it is lazily written and she has no rapport with the reader, and Bering's because he takes us into the worlds of those who have not so much been hiding in the closet as quivering in the panic room of a building in a David Lynch film.'

Speaking of films ... I like, in this context, some pertinent words of Alfred Hitchcock: 'Everything's perverted in a different way, isn't it?'