Most Bizarre Sexual Deviations In The World Of Pedophile's Politicians And Celebrities

Sexual Disorder is a type of Personality Disorder that may be further divided into Sexual Dysfunction and Sexual Deviations. In Sexual Dysfunction there is a reduction or total loss of sexual capacity, which includes frigidity in females, and premature ejaculation and impotence in males. Sexual Deviation involves sexual interest directed primarily towards objects other than people of the opposite sex, towards objects not usually associated with sexual intercourse, or towards sexual intercourse performed under bizarre circumstances. This video lists and describes the 10 most bizarre Sexual Deviations in the world.

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TIMESTAMPS:- 0:00 Ten Bizarre Sexual Deviations - 0:29 Beastiality - 1:11 Exhibitionism - 1:46 Fetishism - 2:11 Homosexuality - 2:51 Incest - 3:42 Masochism and Sadism - 4:19 Pedophilia - 4:46 Transvestism - 5:28 Voyeurism

Sexual perversion is an old-fashioned diagnostic term that served as a label for sexual activities considered outside the norm of heterosexual sexual desire and activity. This norm was defined as coitus with a person of the opposite sex with the aim of achieving orgasm through genital penetration. Any other type of sexual activity, regardless of the sex of the participants, was traditionally considered perverse.

Sexual perversion appears most famously in Richard von Krafft-Ebing's nineteenth-century medical textbook Psychopathia Sexualis, first published in German in 1886. There sexual perversion is defined as a disease of the sexual instinct, as opposed to sexual perversity, which is defined as vice rather than pathology. Sexual perversion was understood as a deviation of instinct, which means that it refers to predetermined behavior that is invariable as regards both its performance and its object. The sexual perversions delineated by Krafft-Ebing included sadism, masochism, fetishism, bestiality, sexual inversion in men and women (understood either as what is now termed homosexuality, on the one hand, or gender dysphoria, on the other, or both), rape, nymphomania, onanism (masturbation), pedophilia, exhibitionism, necrophilia, and incest.

In psychoanalysis perversion is used exclusively in relation to sexuality. Sigmund Freud used the notion of sexual perversity in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality [1962 (1905)] to question traditional notions of so-called normal sexuality. He noted rudiments of sexual perversions, such as touching, looking, kissing, and various sorts of fetishism and idealization, in most normal sexual processes. For Freud perversion was limited to sexual activities that either extend anatomically beyond the genital regions of the body or linger indefinitely on activities leading up to coitus without ever arriving at sexual intercourse.

To pervert something is to turn it away from its natural course, but the term has become so exclusively associated with sexuality in the 100-plus years since Freud's Three Essays that calling someone a pervert in the early twenty-first century is tantamount to labeling them a sex criminal. Because sexual perversion carries with it judgments about the naturalness and value of some kinds of behaviors and the artificiality and wrongness of others, it has been replaced in medical dictionaries and diagnostic manuals by the more neutral term paraphilia. Paraphilias are no longer understood as dysfunctional deviations from the normal, as the sexual perversions once were, but are now defined as behaviors centered on sexual arousal with objects or situations where affection may not be reciprocal or returned. The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV-TR (2000) lists the paraphilias as exhibitionism, fetishism, frotteurism, pedophilia, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, transvestic fetishism, and voyeurism. Masturbation and homosexuality are no longer considered to be sexually perverse, but some gendertransgressive behaviors have been singled out and retained, such as erotic cross-dressing. Voyeurism, which Krafft-Ebing did not consider unusual and which Freud related to the essentially healthy scopophilic drive, is considered an atypical sexual disorder in the early twenty-first century, and is often associated with criminal behaviors such as stalking.

One or some of the eight major paraphilias must be a patient's sole means of sexual gratification for six months and cause them distress and interpersonal difficulty in order to be diagnosed as an illness requiring medical intervention. Of these exhibitionism is defined as the recurrent urge to expose the genitals to another person; fetishism as the use of objects for sexual pleasure; frotteurism as the urge to rub against nonconsenting persons; pedophilia as the desire to have sex with children; masochism as the desire to be beaten, tied up, humiliated, or made to suffer; sadism as the urge to cause pain and humiliation as a form of sexual excitement; transvestic fetishism as a sexual desire directed at the clothes of the so-called opposite gender; and voyeurism as the desire to secretly observe people undressing or having sex. Many of the older sexual perversions, such as necrophilia (the desire to have sex with dead bodies) or bestiality (the desire to have sex with animals), can be grouped under the major paraphilias, such as sadism and fetishism.

Theories of how paraphilias develop tend to focus on traumatic events associated with early sexual experience, during which subjects are conditioned to respond sexually to unusual situations. Because almost anything can be sexualized, it follows that paraphilias can encompass any behavior, object, or sexual subject.

Perverts, Creepers, and Freaks: A History of Sexual Perversions. In this explores the history of sexual perversions, examining how and why particular sexual desires and behaviors were labeled as bad, abnormal, and unnatural at certain periods in Western thought. Which sexual behaviors qualify as perverted? What kind of person deserves the label “pervert” and its consequential ostracization? Who among us deserves to be locked in a cage for our sexual desires and actions? And, most intriguingly, why have certain sexual behaviors become the object of scrutiny at various points in history, while others have not?

Why, for example, did Americans become so obsessed with pedophiles in the mid-late twentieth century? When did cross-dressing become associated with sexuality and thus marginalized as a perversion? Which rapists are considered perverted, or criminal, and which are just boys being boys? Is BDSM a healthy expression of desire, or a historically produced pathology?

Grounded in feminist queer theory and historical analysis, this Olio covers the history of sexual insiders and outsiders from the colonial era through the twentieth century. By examining just who and what constitutes the category of the pervert, we will learn something new about our assumptions of what we call normal, natural, or even worse, good.

List of Paraphilias are sexual interests in objects, situations, or individuals that are atypical. The American Psychiatric Association, in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition (DSM), draws a distinction between paraphilias (which it describes as atypical sexual interests) and paraphilic disorders (which additionally require the experience of distress, impairment in functioning, and/or the desire to act on them with a nonconsenting person). Some paraphilias have more than one term to describe them, and some terms overlap with others. Paraphilias without DSM codes listed come under DSM 302.9, "Paraphilia NOS (Not Otherwise Specified)".

In his 2008 book on sexual pathologies, Anil Aggrawal compiled a list of 547 terms describing paraphilic sexual interests. He cautioned, however, that "not all these paraphilias have necessarily been seen in clinical setups. This may not be because they do not exist, but because they are so innocuous they are never brought to the notice of clinicians or dismissed by them. Like allergies, sexual arousal may occur from anything under the sun, including the sun."

Most of the following names for paraphilias, constructed in the nineteenth and especially twentieth centuries from Greek and Latin roots (see List of medical roots, suffixes and prefixes), are used in medical contexts only.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paraphilias

Pedophilia is a paraphilia that involves an abnormal interest in children. A paraphilia is a disorder that is characterized by recurrent intense sexual urges and sexually arousing fantasies generally focused on non-human objects; the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner (not merely simulated); or animals, children, or other nonconsenting persons. Pedophilia is also a psychosexual disorder in which the fantasy or actual act of engaging in sexual activity with prepu-bertal children is the preferred or exclusive means of achieving sexual excitement and gratification. It may be directed toward children of the same sex or children of the other sex. Some pedophiles are attracted to both boys and girls. Some are attracted only to children, while others are attracted to adults as well as to children.

Pedophilia is defined by mental health professionals as a mental disorder, but the American legal system defines acting on a pedophilic urge as a criminal act.

Description
The focus of pedophilia is sexual activity with a child. Many courts interpret this reference to age to mean children under the age of 18. Most mental health professionals, however, confine the definition of pedophilia to sexual activity with prepubescent children, who are generally age 13 or younger. The term ephebophilia, derived from the Greek word for “youth,” is sometimes used to describe sexual interest in young people in the first stages of puberty.

The sexual behaviors involved in pedophilia cover a range of activities and may or may not involve the use of force. Some pedophiles limit their behaviors to exposing themselves or masturbating in front of the child, or fondling or undressing the child, but without genital contact. Others, however, compel the child to participate in oral sex or full genital intercourse.

The most common overt aspect of pedophilia is an intense interest in children. There is no typical pedophile. Pedophiles may be young or old, male or female, although the great majority are males. Unfortunately, some pedophiles are professionals who are entrusted with educating or maintaining the health and well-being of young persons, while others are entrusted with children to whom they are related by blood or marriage.

Causes and symptoms
Causes
A variety of different theories exist as to the causes of pedophilia. A few researchers attribute pedophilia along with the other paraphilias to biology. They hold that testosterone, one of the male sex hormones, predisposes men to develop deviant sexual behaviors. As far as genetic factors are concerned, as of 2002, no researchers have claimed to have discovered or mapped a gene for pedophilia.

Pedophilia, as a disorder based in compulsion and impulse control, may be related to other disorders associated with obsessive-compulsive and impulsive behaviors. Research, including an imaging study, suggests that abnormalities in an area of the brain called the frontal cortex are associated with pedophilia. Other studies have identified similar abnormalities in obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders. In addition, recent research indicates that pedophilic behavior may be rooted in early disturbances in neurological development, although a clear biological basis for the disorder has not yet been established. Neurotransmitter (nerve signaling molecules) pathways in the brain related to mood regulation have been implicated; these include pathways involving serotonin and dopamine .
Some experts believe that there is an association between pedophilia and having been sexually abused as a child. Still others think that it derives from the person’s interactions with parents during their early years of life. Some researchers attribute pedophilia to arrested emotional development; that is, the pedophile is attracted to children because he or she has never matured psychologically. Some regard pedophilia as the result of a distorted need to dominate a sexual partner. Because children are smaller and usually weaker than adults, they may be regarded as non-threatening potential partners. This drive for domination is sometimes thought to explain why most pedophiles are males.

Symptoms
A pedophile is often seems particularly trustworthy to the children who are potential victims. Potential pedophiles may volunteer their services to athletic teams, Scout troops, or religious or civic organizations that serve youth. In some cases, pedophiles who are attracted to children within their extended family may offer to baby-sit for their relatives. They often have good interpersonal skills with children and can easily gain the children’s trust.

Some pedophiles offer rationalizations or excuses that enable them to avoid assuming responsibility for their actions. They may blame the children for being too attractive or sexually provocative. They may also maintain that they are “teaching” the child about “the facts of life” or “love”; this rationalization is frequently offered by pedophiles who have molested children related to them. All these rationalizations may be found in pornography with pedophilic themes.

Demographics
Pedophilia is one of the more common paraphilias; the large worldwide market for child pornography suggests that it is more frequent in the general population than prison statistics would indicate. Together with voyeurism and exhibitionism, pedophilia is one of the three paraphilias most commonly leading to arrest by the police.

The onset of pedophilia usually occurs during adolescence. Occasional pedophiles begin their activities during middle age but this late onset is uncommon.

The frequency of behavior associated with pedophilia varies with psychosocial stress. As the pedophile’s stress levels increase, the frequency of his or her acting out generally rises also. This manifestation echoes those of a behavioral addiction.

Pedophilia is more common among males than among females. In addition, the rate of recidivism for persons with a pedophilic preference for males is approximately twice that of pedophiles who prefer females.

Marital status, socioeconomic level, educational background, and religious observance does not seem to predict pedophilia. Little is known about the incidence of pedophilia in different racial or ethnic groups.

Diagnosis
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition text revised, the following criteria must be met to establish a diagnosis of pedophilia.

Over a period of at least six months, the affected person must experience recurrent, intense and sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or actual behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children aged 13 or younger.
The fantasies, sexual urges or behaviors must cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important areas of daily functioning.
The affected person must be at least age sixteen and be at least five years older than the child or children who are the objects or targets of attention or sexual activity.
A diagnosis of pedophilia cannot be assigned to an individual in late adolescence (age 17 to 19) who is involved in an ongoing sexual relationship with a 12-or 13-year-old person.

In establishing a diagnosis of pedophilia, it is important for a mental health professional to determine if the patient is attracted to males, females or both. It is also important to determine whether incest is a factor in the relationship. Finally, the doctor must determine whether the pedophilia is exclusive or nonexclusive; that is, whether the patient is attracted only to children (exclusive pedophilia) or to adults as well as to children (non-exclusive pedophilia).

One difficulty with the diagnosis of the disorder is that persons with pedophilia rarely seek help voluntarily from mental health professionals. Instead, counseling and treatment is often the result of a court order. An interview that establishes the criteria for diagnosis listed above may be enough to diagnose the condition, or surveillance or Internet records obtained through the criminal investigation may also be used.

An additional complication in diagnosis is that the paraphilias as a group have a high rate of comorbidity with one another and an equally high rate of comorbidity with major depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse disorders. A person diagnosed with pedophilia may also meet the criteria for exhibitionism or for a substance abuse or mood disorder.

Treatments
In the earliest stages of behavior modification therapy, pedophiles may be narrowly viewed as being attracted to inappropriate persons. Such aver-sive stimuli as electric shocks have been administered to persons undergoing therapy for pedophilia. This approach has not been very successful.

In 2002, the most common form of treatment for pedophilia is psychotherapy , often of many years’ duration. It does not have a high rate of success in inducing pedophiles to change their behavior.

Pedophilia may also be treated with medications. The three classes of medications most often used to treat pedophilia (and other paraphilias) are these: hormones, particularly the synthetic medroxyprogesterone acetate, or MPA; luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LHRH) agonists (mimics), which include such drugs as triptorelin (Trelstar), leuprolide acetate, and goserelin acetate; and antiandrogens, which block the uptake and metabolism of testosterone as well as reducing blood levels of this hormone. In particular, these drugs with antiandrogenic effects (interfering with the action of the body’s androgenic hormones) have shown some efficacy in reducing the rate of recidivism. Most clinical studies of these drugs have been done in Germany, where the legal system has allowed their use in treating repeat sexual offenders since the 1970s. Researchers have reported some benefit with leuprolide acetate, for example, finding during a two-year study that none of the pedophiles being administered the drug re-offended.

Surgical castration is sometimes offered as a treatment to pedophiles who are repeat offenders or who have pleaded guilty to violent rape.

Increasingly, pedophiles are being prosecuted under criminal statutes and being sentenced to prison terms. Imprisonment removes them from society for a period of time but does not usually remove their pedophilic tendencies. In 2002, many states have begun to publish the names of persons being released from prison after serving time for pedophilia. Legal challenges to this practice are pending in various jurisdictions.

Prognosis
The prognosis of successfully ending pedophilic habits among persons who practice pedophilia is not favorable. Pedophiles have a high rate of recidivism; that is, they tend to repeat their acts often over time.

The rate of prosecution for pedophiles through the criminal justice system has increased in recent years. Pedophiles are at high risk of being beaten or

KEY TERMS
Aversion therapy —An approach to treatment in which an unpleasant or painful stimulus is linked to an undesirable behavior in order to condition the patient to dislike or avoid the behavior.

Castration —Desexing a person or animal by surgical removal of the testes (in males) or ovaries (in females). Castration is sometimes offered as a treatment option to pedophiles who are violent rapists and/or repeat offenders.

Comorbidity —Association or presence of two or more mental disorders in the same patient. A disorder that is said to have a high degree of comorbidity is likely to occur in patients diagnosed with other disorders that may share or reinforce some of its symptoms.

Ephebophilia —Sexual desire on the part of an adult for youths in the early stages of puberty, as distinct from prepubertal children.

Incest —Unlawful sexual contact between persons who are biologically related. Many therapists, however, use the term to refer to inappropriate sexual contact between any members of a family, including stepparents and stepsiblings.

Paraphilia —A disorder that is characterized by recurrent intense sexual urges and sexually arousing fantasies generally involving non-human objects, the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner (not merely simulated), or children or other non-consenting persons.

Recidivism —A tendency to return to a previously treated activity, or repeated relapse into criminal or deviant behavior.

Voyeurism —A paraphilia that involves watching unsuspecting people, usually strangers, undress or engage in sexual activity.

killed by other prison inmates. For this reason, they must often be kept isolated from other members of a prison population. Knowledge of the likelihood of abuse by prison personnel and inmates is not, however, an effective deterrent for most pedophiles.

Prevention
The main method for preventing pedophilia is avoiding situations that may promote pedophilic acts. Children should never be allowed to in one-on-one situations with any adult other than their parents or trustworthy family members. Having another youth or adult as an observer provides some security for all concerned. Conferences and other activities can be conducted so as to provide privacy while still within sight of others.

Children should be taught to yell or run if they are faced with an uncomfortable situation. They should also be taught that it is acceptable to scream or call for help in such situations.

Another basis of preventing pedophilia is education. Children must be taught to avoid situations that make them vulnerable to pedophiles. Adults who work with youth must be taught to avoid situations that may be construed as promoting pedophilia.

Many states have adopted legislation that requires periodic background investigations of any adult who works with children. These persons may be paid, such as teachers, or they may be volunteers in a youth-serving organization.

The Boy Scouts of America has tried to address the problem of pedophilia by creating a training program that is required for all adults in the organization. All applications for volunteers are reviewed and approved by several persons. Adults and youth are required to use separate facilities on all activities. Secret meetings and one-on-one interactions between adults and youth are prohibited. This program has received several national awards.

Sadomasochism
Sadomasochism is a controversial subject. The psychological humiliation or physical punishment of a sexual partner through practices such as bondage and flagellation are commonly identified as characteristic of sadomasochism. As a concept that links sexual arousal to violence, the origins of sadomasochism as a term in modern Western culture are rooted in discussions of sadism and masochism that date back to late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century medical discourse in its exploration of "perversion" as a deviation from normal sexual instinct.

The 7 Most Common Sexual Fantasies and What to Do About Them Fantasies are totally normal
Let’s start by saying everyone has sexual fantasies. Yep, the entire human race has a mind that drifts to the gutter at least some times.

Many folks feel ashamed of their turn ons and inner erotic thoughts, but “no matter what the fantasy is, it’s completely normal!” according to certified sex coach Gigi Engle, author of “All The F*cking Mistakes: A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life.”

“The more we talk sexual fantasy and normalize the conversation, the less we’ll beat ourselves up for having twisty, sexual, steamy [thoughts],” she says. That’s why we put together this fantasizing crib sheet.

Keep reading to learn what we’re all dirty dreaming about — plus how to act them out IRL, if you want to.

Although the possibilities are endless, there are 7 main categories
Turns out your sexual fantasy is less unique than you probably thought.

After conducting a 4,000+ person, 350 question survey in 2018, internationally recognized sex educator Justin Lehmiller, PhD, concluded that there are 7 main fantasy themes.

While the possibilities are endless, chances are you’ll find your steamy wish explored below. And if not — well let’s just say you’re more creative than most. Wink.

Multi-partner sex
Eyes glued to the screen during that Game of Thrones scene (yes, the one where Theon Greyjoy gets naked with two drop-dead queens)? Hand travel between your legs at the thought of a multi-person orgy?

You’re not alone. Group sex is the most common arousal material for Americans.

Why can group sex be so hot? Engle explains: “In most folks’ multi-partner sex fantasies, you’re the star of the show. The idea of multiple people wanting to have sex with you is part of the turn on.”

Threesomes, orgies, and the like also create sensory overload. Think about it: There’s simply more bits, smells, tastes, holes, poles, and sounds than in a two-some or solo session.

What to do about it
Every fantasy falls into 1 of 3 categories, according to Engle. “Those we keep to ourselves, those we share with our partners to up the steaminess during sex, and those we’d want to try in real life.”

If this is simply a fantasy for you, don’t overthink it.

If you want to share with your partner — but not necessarily enact this fantasy — start by asking for consent to incorporate this kind of lingo in bed.

For example, “I’ve been thinking it might be hot to talk through a fantasy of another woman going down on you in bed. What do you think?”

Actually want group sex IRL? Good news. “Group sex is also a pretty accessible fantasy — you might not be able to have sex with your favorite celebrity, but you can probably find someone who is down for a threesome,” according to sex educator Cassandra Corrado with O.school.

If you’re in a couple, talk about whether you want it to be a one-time or ongoing encounter, and whether you’d prefer a stranger or friend. Establish boundaries for those interactions.

Power, control, or rough sex
Cue S&M by Rihanna because whips and chains excite millions of Americans.

Sadism and masochism (S&M) and bondage, discipline, dominance, and submission (BDSM) make up the second most popular fantasy.

BDSM is basically about the consensual exchange of power in a sexual or nonsexual situation.

“The idea of being sexually submissive can be arousing to people who are always in control outside of the bedroom,” says Engle. “And the idea of being in control can be hot due to the taboo nature of rough sex and [a] sense of authority.”

Daddy/step-daughter, professor/student, boss/employee roleplay falls into this category. So does “forced sex” (which Dr. Lehmiller calls “mock rape”).

S&M is about giving or receiving pain through things like spanking, whipping, humiliation, and more.

Corrado says, “Really, this kind of play is about radical trust because it’s a vulnerable type of play. And that vulnerability has arousal potential.”

What to do about it
From spanking and blind folding, to electroplay or needle play, BDSM contains a wide range of sexual activities.

So the first step to enacting this fantasy IRL is to ensure it’s safe, sane, and consensual (SSC), then figuring out what the fantasy is, exactly, and then talking to your partner about it.

“Whatever the fantasy, there should be a plan in place around what will happen in that sexual scene,” says Daniel Sayant, founder of NSFW, a club hosting sex-positive events and workshops.

“That way you can eliminate the risk of unwanted, or nonconsensual, acts — even in the face of control play,” he adds.

How to define the scene:

Agree on a safe word.
Talk through what the roles are.
Establish boundaries.
Take it slow.
Check in continuously.
Novelty, adventure, and variety
Sex on a beach or mountaintop. Boning in an airplane bathroom or while wearing a butt plug. Getting it on in a park.

Fantasies that center around novelty (incorporating a new sexual activity like anal or oral) or adventure (having sex in a new location) are common.

“The feeling of facing the unknown [and] trying something for the first time can give you a thrilling adrenaline kick, and for some people, arousal is connected to that feeling of adrenaline,” says Corrado.

In long-term relationships in particular, keeping novelty alive is paramount for fighting bedroom boredom and maintaining an active sex life, says Engle. “Trying something new reignites the passion you had at the beginning of the relationship.”

What to do about it
What’s novel or new for one person may not be for another. So the what and where between folks’ fantasies will vary.

Whether you want to explore anal play, non-missionary penetrative sex, 69-ing, or bringing food into the bedroom, the first step is to talk about the addition of the act.

Avoid making your partner feel inadequate by framing this convo about what you can add to your sexual play.

Try “I love when you’re inside me, how would you feel about exploring doggy style next time we have sex?” or “I love the way you look between my legs, would you want to taste me the next time we have sex?”

What if you want to do the same ‘ole thing in the same ‘ole way… but outside the bedroom? Again, ask your partner if it’s something they’d be down for.

Keep in mind: In the United States, having public sex is illegal. Charges of public indecency, indecent exposure, lewdness, and obscene displays are all possible risks.

Non-monogamy
Open relationships, polyamory, and swinging are becoming increasingly acknowledged as a (healthy and happy!) relationship structure — and it’s common masturbation fodder for folks in monogamous relationships.

For the most part, someone’s fantasies are about consensual non-monogamy. Meaning, one partner has provided their blessing for the others extramarital play. Some fantasize about their own non-monogamy.

Others fantasize about their partner sleeping with others. Cuckolding is the specific fantasy of letting your partner have sex with someone else, but only if you get to watch or hear about it (in detail) after the fact.

Less than 0.5 percent of folks said cheating, being unfaithful, or committing adultery was arousing to them.

What to do about it
First, establish whether this is something you want IRL, says Engle, “because that is a different animal than simply having the fantasy.”

If you want to change your relationship structure, “start by exploring what that means to you,” says Corrado.

Some people clearly know that they want one romantic partner but want to be sexually explorative with other people. Other people want deep, romantic relationships with more than one person at a time.

Once you can articulate those desires, talk to your partner.

“Not everyone will be comfortable with changing their relationship structure, but if you do decide to move forward together, you’ll need to practice this kind of open communication,” she says.

If you’re having cheating fantasies, Corrado offers the following advice: “Identify why you’re having this fantasy. Are you unsatisfied in your relationship? Are you craving an adrenaline rush? Is there some other internal conflict going on?”

What are your feelings in the fantasy? Exploring your emotions may give you clues to your unmet needs.

Next, solve for your W-H-Y. Go to couples therapy or break up with your partner if that’s right for you. Go skydiving or deal with the underlying issue.

Or, live out your fantasy. But understand that nonethical non-monogamy is violating the rules or boundaries of your relationship and there may be consequences such as feelings of guilt, or your partner leaving you if they find out.

Taboo and forbidden sex
“In and out of the bedroom, we want what we can’t have. It’s the way our brain works,” says Engle. “Any sexual relationship or act that could get us into trouble or be seen as weird or forbidden or gross in real life, can be a turn on.”

Common taboos include licking feet or armpits and worshipping leather or lycra.

Voyeurism (watching people engage sexually without their knowledge or consent) and exhibitionism (exposing one’s genitals while others look on — sometimes with, sometimes without their consent) are the most common iterations of forbidden sex.

What to do about it
Nonconsensual exhibitionism and voyeurism is illegal, because the people getting exposed to your genitals or being watched aren’t willing participants. While this may be hot to fantasize about, these shouldn’t be practiced in real life.

Placing a mirror in front of your bed so you can watch yourself, going to a sex club or party, or consensually role-playing Voyeur or Exhibitionist with your partner(s) may help you explore a similar sensation.

Other sexual desires can be communicated with your partner(s) — and depending on their likes or dislikes, enacted.

Passion and romance
Turns out, long walks on the beach, candlelit dinners, and eye contact during love making aren’t just romantic hyperbole. They’re all part of the fantasy of being desired, intimate, and romantic.

“Many people want to be treated like royalty,” says Corrado. “Romantic gestures show a large amount of time, effort, and maybe even money being put in, and can make us feel significant to that person.”

What to do about it
If you find yourself fantasizing about this, it might be because you don’t feel appreciated in real life.

If you’re in a relationship, you and your partner may need to spend more time together, learn each others’ love languages, or have sex in positions that allow you to sustain eye contact.

If you’re single, Sayant says you might explore doing a massage chain with a friend, taking yourself out to a nice dinner, or making love to yourself in the candlelight.

Erotic flexibility
There are two main categories here:

Gender bending fantasies — in which someone explores their own gender presentation and dress, or has a partner who does
Sexual fluidity fantasies — in which the featured acts or characters are seemingly inconsistent with how one identifies sexually
What makes these so appealing? “Getting to explore and play different roles and personas can be really fun, creative, and freeing,” says Corrado. “It allows us to tap into a part of ourselves that doesn’t get out often.”

According to Dr. Lehmiller, bending gender roles and orientation also allows folks to inject something new, different, and exciting into your sex life, while simultaneously subverting cultural expectations of what you’re “supposed” to be or do.

And as Corrado says, “being able to do or be what and who you’re not supposed to do or be with your partner creates a layer of safety and vulnerability that further connects us with our partner.”

What to do about it
In some cases, these fantasies may be rooted in a desire to explore your sexuality or gender identity and presentation. However, experts say in most cases it stems from a desire to be comfortable in your skin with a partner.

Communication, as always, is key to learning if your gender bending or sexual fluidity fantasies mesh with the likes of your partner.

So what’s the point?
While you might learn a thing or two about what you want in real life from your dirty thoughts, there are many other reasons people have sexual fantasies.

Why we fantasize, from the most to least common reasons:

to experience arousal
because we’re curious about different sexual sensations
to meet unfulfilled needs
to escape reality
to explore a sexually taboo desire
to plot out a future sexual encounter
to relax or reduce anxiety
to feel more sexually confident
because we’re bored
Does it vary by gender?
Across all gender identities, there’s a lot of commonality in what folks fantasize about. The main difference is the frequency with which they have a certain fantasy.

For instance, men are more likely than other genders to have multi-partner or taboo fantasies. Women are most likely to have BDSM or romance fantasies, and have them more frequently than other genders.

How can you bring your fantasies up to your partner?
Whether you bring it up or not boils down to whether or not you want to (and it’s legal to) enact the fantasy for real.

Survey results reveal that while 77 percent of Americans want to incorporate their fantasies into their actual sex lives, less than 20 percent have broached the topic with a partner.

If it’s clear that activity is consensual, legal, and safe, and you’re ready to bring your partner(s) into the fantasy, the following steps can help:

Communicate in detail before hand. Then, communicate during and after.
Establish a safe word (no matter what fantasy you’re trying out!)
Do some research on best practices for safety and mutual satisfaction.
Continue implementing safer sex practices.
Go slow. There’s no rush!
Communicate and stay calm if things don’t go according to plan.
The bottom line
Sexual fantasies are a normal part of life. Some may be hot only as fantasy. Others might be things you want to test out in real life.

If you’re frequently having sexual fantasies about things that aren’t legal and want to explore these for real, consider meeting with a sex therapist to unpack the urges.

Otherwise, take a deep breath and talk to your partner. Odds are they’ll have a sexual fantasy or two of their own that they’d like to try in IRL, too.

One hundred years ago, people had a very different idea of what it means to be heterosexual. Understanding that shift in thinking can tell us a lot about fluid sexual identities today, argues Brandon Ambrosino. The 1901 Dorland’s Medical Dictionary defined heterosexuality as an “abnormal or perverted appetite toward the opposite sex.” More than two decades later, in 1923, Merriam Webster’s dictionary similarly defined it as “morbid sexual passion for one of the opposite sex.” It wasn’t until 1934 that heterosexuality was graced with the meaning we’re familiar with today: “manifestation of sexual passion for one of the opposite sex; normal sexuality.”

Whenever I tell this to people, they respond with dramatic incredulity. That can’t be right! Well, it certainly doesn’t feel right. It feels as if heterosexuality has always “just been there.”

A few years ago, there began circulating a “man on the street” video, in which the creator asked people if they thought homosexuals were born with their sexual orientations. Responses were varied, with most saying something like, “It’s a combination of nature and nurture.” The interviewer then asked a follow-up question, which was crucial to the experiment: “When did you choose to be straight?” Most were taken back, confessing, rather sheepishly, never to have thought about it. Feeling that their prejudices had been exposed, they ended up swiftly conceding the videographer’s obvious point: gay people were born gay just like straight people were born straight.

The video’s takeaway seemed to suggest that all of our sexualities are “just there”; that we don’t need an explanation for homosexuality just as we don’t need one for heterosexuality. It seems not to have occurred to those who made the video, or the millions who shared it, that we actually need an explanation for both.

There’s been a lot of good work, both scholarly and popular, on the social construction of homosexual desire and identity. As a result, few would bat an eye when there’s talk of “the rise of the homosexual” – indeed, most of us have learned that homosexual identity did come into existence at a specific point in human history. What we’re not taught, though, is that a similar phenomenon brought heterosexuality into its existence.

There are many reasons for this educational omission, including religious bias and other types of homophobia. But the biggest reason we don’t interrogate heterosexuality’s origins is probably because it seems so, well, natural. Normal. No need to question something that’s “just there.”

But heterosexuality has not always “just been there.” And there’s no reason to imagine it will always be.

When heterosexuality was abnormal

The first rebuttal to the claim that heterosexuality was invented usually involves an appeal to reproduction: it seems obvious that different-genital intercourse has existed for as long as humans have been around – indeed, we wouldn’t have survived this long without it. But this rebuttal assumes that heterosexuality is the same thing as reproductive intercourse. It isn’t.

“Sex has no history,” writes queer theorist David Halperin at the University of Michigan, because it’s “grounded in the functioning of the body.” Sexuality, on the other hand, precisely because it’s a “cultural production,” does have a history. In other words, while sex is something that appears hardwired into most species, the naming and categorising of those acts, and those who practise those acts, is a historical phenomenon, and can and should be studied as such.

Or put another way: there have always been sexual instincts throughout the animal world (sex). But at a specific point in time, humans attached meaning to these instincts (sexuality). When humans talk about heterosexuality, we’re talking about the second thing.

Hanne Blank offers a helpful way into this discussion in her book Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality with an analogy from natural history. In 2007, the International Institute for Species Exploration listed the fish Electrolux addisoni as one of the year’s “top 10 new species.” But of course, the species didn’t suddenly spring into existence 10 years ago – that’s just when it was discovered and scientifically named. As Blank concludes: “Written documentation of a particular kind, by an authority figure of a particular kind, was what turned Electrolux from a thing that just was … into a thing that was known.”

Something remarkably similar happened with heterosexuals, who, at the end of the 19th Century, went from merely being there to being known. “Prior to 1868, there were no heterosexuals,” writes Blank. Neither were there homosexuals. It hadn’t yet occurred to humans that they might be “differentiated from one another by the kinds of love or sexual desire they experienced.” Sexual behaviours, of course, were identified and catalogued, and often times, forbidden. But the emphasis was always on the act, not the agent.

So what changed? Language.

In the late 1860s, Hungarian journalist Karl Maria Kertbeny coined four terms to describe sexual experiences: heterosexual, homosexual, and two now forgotten terms to describe masturbation and bestiality; namely, monosexual and heterogenit. Kertbeny used the term “heterosexual” a decade later when he was asked to write a book chapter arguing for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. The editor, Gustav Jager, decided not to publish it, but he ended up using Kertbeny’s novel term in a book he later published in 1880.

The next time the word was published was in 1889, when Austro-German psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing included the word in Psychopathia Sexualis, a catalogue of sexual disorders. But in almost 500 pages, the word “heterosexual” is used only 24 times, and isn’t even indexed. That’s because Krafft-Ebing is more interested in “contrary sexual instinct” (“perversions”) than “sexual instinct,” the latter being for him the “normal” sexual desire of humans.

“Normal” is a loaded word, of course, and it has been misused throughout history. Hierarchical ordering leading to slavery was at one time accepted as normal, as was a geocentric cosmology. It was only by questioning the foundations of the consensus view that “normal” phenomena were dethroned from their privileged positions.

For Krafft-Ebing, normal sexual desire was situated within a larger context of procreative utility, an idea that was in keeping with the dominant sexual theories of the West. In the Western world, long before sex acts were separated into the categories hetero/homo, there was a different ruling binary: procreative or non-procreative. The Bible, for instance, condemns homosexual intercourse for the same reason it condemns masturbation: because life-bearing seed is spilled in the act. While this ethic was largely taught, maintained, and enforced by the Catholic Church and later Christian offshoots, it’s important to note that the ethic comes not primarily from Jewish or Christian Scriptures, but from Stoicism.

As Catholic ethicist Margaret Farley points out, Stoics “held strong views on the power of the human will to regulate emotion and on the desirability of such regulation for the sake of inner peace”. Musonius Rufus, for example, argued in On Sexual Indulgence that individuals must protect themselves against self-indulgence, including sexual excess. To curb this sexual indulgence, notes theologian Todd Salzman, Rufus and other Stoics tried to situate it “in a larger context of human meaning” – arguing that sex could only be moral in the pursuit of procreation. Early Christian theologians took up this conjugal-reproductive ethic, and by the time of Augustine, reproductive sex was the only normal sex.

While Krafft-Ebing takes this procreative sexual ethic for granted, he does open it up in a major way. “In sexual love the real purpose of the instinct, the propagation of the species, does not enter into consciousness,” he writes.

In other words, sexual instinct contains something like a hard-wired reproductive aim – an aim that is present even if those engaged in 'normal' sex aren’t aware of it. Jonathan Ned Katz, in The Invention of Heterosexuality, notes the impact of Krafft-Ebing’s move. “Placing the reproductive aside in the unconscious, Krafft-Ebing created a small, obscure space in which a new pleasure norm began to grow.”

The importance of this shift – from reproductive instinct to erotic desire – can’t be overstated, as it’s crucial to modern notions of sexuality. When most people today think of heterosexuality, they might think of something like this: Billy understands from a very young age he is erotically attracted to girls. One day he focuses that erotic energy on Suzy, and he woos her. The pair fall in love, and give physical sexual expression to their erotic desire. And they live happily ever after.

Without Krafft-Ebing’s work, this narrative might not have ever become thought of as “normal.” There is no mention, however implicit, of procreation. Defining normal sexual instinct according to erotic desire was a fundamental revolution in thinking about sex. Krafft-Ebing’s work laid the groundwork for the cultural shift that happened between the 1923 definition of heterosexuality as “morbid” and its 1934 definition as “normal.”

Sex and the city

Ideas and words are often products of their time. That is certainly true of heterosexuality, which was borne out of a time when American life was becoming more regularised. As Blank argues, the invention of heterosexuality corresponds with the rise of the middle class.

In the late 19th Century, populations in European and North American cities began to explode. By 1900, for example, New York City had 3.4 million residents – 56 times its population just a century earlier. As people moved to urban centres, they brought their sexual perversions – prostitution, same-sex eroticism – with them. Or so it seemed. “By comparison to rural towns and villages,” Blank writes, “the cities seemed like hotbeds of sexual misconduct and excess.” When city populations were smaller, says Blank, it was easier to control such behaviour, just as it was easier to control when it took place in smaller, rural areas where neighbourly familiarity was a norm. Small-town gossip can be a profound motivator.

Because the increasing public awareness of these sexual practices paralleled the influx of lower classes into cities, “urban sexual misconduct was typically, if inaccurately, blamed” on the working class and poor, says Blank. It was important for an emerging middle class to differentiate itself from such excess. The bourgeois family needed a way to protect its members “from aristocratic decadence on the one side and the horrors of the teeming city on the other”. This required “systematic, reproducible, universally applicable systems for social management that could be implemented on a large scale”.

In the past, these systems could be based on religion, but “the new secular state required secular justification for its laws,” says Blank. Enter sex experts like Krafft-Ebing, who wrote in the introduction to his first edition of Psychopathia that his work was designed “to reduce [humans] to their lawful conditions.” Indeed, continues the preface, the present study “exercises a beneficent influence upon legislation and jurisprudence”.

Krafft-Ebing’s work chronicling sexual irregularity made it clear that the growing middle class could no longer treat deviation from normal (hetero) sexuality merely as sin, but as moral degeneracy – one of the worst labels a person could acquire. “Call a man a ‘cad’ and you’ve settled his social status,” wrote Williams James in 1895. “Call him a ‘degenerate’ and you’ve grouped him with the most loathsome specimens of the human race.” As Blank points out, sexual degeneracy became a yardstick to determine a person’s measure.

Degeneracy, after all, was the reverse process of social Darwinism. If procreative sex was critical to the continuous evolution of the species, deviating from that norm was a threat to the entire social fabric. Luckily, such deviation could be reversed, if it was caught early enough, thought the experts.

The formation of “sexual inversion” occurred, for Krafft-Ebing, through several stages, and was curable in the first. Through his work, writes Ralph M Leck, author of Vita Sexualis, “Krafft-Ebing sent out a clarion call against degeneracy and perversion. All civic-minded people must take their turn on the social watch tower.” And this was certainly a question of civics: most colonial personnel came from the middle class, which was large and growing.

Though some non-professionals were familiar with Krafft-Ebing’s work, it was Freud who gave the public scientific ways to think about sexuality. While it’s difficult to reduce the doctor’s theories to a few sentences, his most enduring legacy is his psychosexual theory of development, which held that children develop their own sexualities via an elaborate psychological parental dance.

For Freud, heterosexuals weren’t born this way, but made this way. As Katz points out, heterosexuality for Freud was an achievement; those who attained it successfully navigated their childhood development without being thrown off the straight and narrow.

And yet, as Katz notes, it takes an enormous imagination to frame this navigation in terms of normality:

According to Freud, the normal road to heterosexual normality is paved with the incestuous lust of boy and girl for parent of the other sex, with boy’s and girl’s desire to murder their same-sex parent-rival, and their wish to exterminate any little sibling-rivals. The road to heterosexuality is paved with blood-lusts… The invention of the heterosexual, in Freud’s vision, is a deeply disturbed production.

That such an Oedipal vision endured for so long as the explanation for normal sexuality is “one more grand irony of heterosexual history,” he says.

Still, Freud’s explanation seemed to satisfy the majority of the public, who, continuing their obsession with standardising every aspect of life, happily accepted the new science of normal. Such attitudes found further scientific justification in the work of Alfred Kinsey, whose landmark 1948 study Sexual Behavior in the Human Male sought to rate the sexuality of men on a scale of zero (exclusively heterosexual) to six (exclusively homosexual). His findings led him to conclude that a large, if not majority, “portion of the male population has at least some homosexual experience between adolescence and old age”. While Kinsey’s study did open up the categories homo/hetero to allow for a certain sexual continuum, it also “emphatically reaffirmed the idea of a sexuality divided between” the two poles, as Katz notes.

The future of heterosexuality

And those categories have lingered to this day. “No one knows exactly why heterosexuals and homosexuals ought to be different,” wrote Wendell Ricketts, author of the 1984 study Biological Research on Homosexuality. The best answer we’ve got is something of a tautology: “heterosexuals and homosexuals are considered different because they can be divided into two groups on the basis of the belief that they can be divided into two groups.”

Though the hetero/homo divide seems like an eternal, indestructible fact of nature, it simply isn’t. It’s merely one recent grammar humans have invented to talk about what sex means to us.

Heterosexuality, argues Katz, “is invented within discourse as that which is outside discourse. It’s manufactured in a particular discourse as that which is universal… as that which is outside time.” That is, it’s a construction, but it pretends it isn’t. As any French philosopher or child with a Lego set will tell you, anything that’s been constructed can be deconstructed, as well. If heterosexuality didn’t exist in the past, then it doesn’t need to exist in the future.

I was recently caught off guard by Jane Ward, author of Not Gay, who, during an interview for a piece I wrote on sexual orientation, asked me to think about the future of sexuality. “What would it mean to think about people’s capacity to cultivate their own sexual desires, in the same way we might cultivate a taste for food?” Though some might be wary of allowing for the possibility of sexual fluidity, it’s important to realise that various Born This Way arguments aren’t accepted by the most recent science. Researchers aren’t sure what “causes” homosexuality, and they certainly reject any theories that posit a simple origin, such as a “gay gene.” It’s my opinion that sexual desires, like all our desires, shift and re-orient throughout our lives, and that as they do, they often suggest to us new identities. If this is true, then Ward’s suggestion that we can cultivate sexual preferences seems fitting. (For more of the scientific evidence behind this argument, read BBC Future’s ‘I am gay – but I wasn’t born this way’.)

Beyond Ward’s question is a subtle challenge: If we’re uncomfortable with considering whether and how much power we have over our sexualities, why might that be? Similarly, why might we be uncomfortable with challenging the belief that homosexuality, and by extension heterosexuality, are eternal truths of nature?

In an interview with the journalist Richard Goldstein, the novelist and playwright James Baldwin admitted to having good and bad fantasies of the future. One of the good ones was that “No one will have to call themselves gay,” a term Baldwin admits to having no patience for. “It answers a false argument, a false accusation.”

Which is what?

“Which is that you have no right to be here, that you have to prove your right to be here. I’m saying I have nothing to prove. The world also belongs to me.”

Once upon a time, heterosexuality was necessary because modern humans needed to prove who they were and why they were, and they needed to defend their right to be where they were. As time wears on, though, that label seems to actually limit the myriad ways we humans understand our desires and loves and fears. Perhaps that is one reason a recent UK poll found that fewer than half of those aged 18-24 identify as “100% heterosexual.” That isn’t to suggest a majority of those young respondents regularly practise bisexuality or homosexuality; rather it shows that they don’t seem to have the same need for the word “heterosexual” as their 20th-Century forebears.

Debates about sexual orientation have tended to focus on a badly defined concept of “nature.” Because different sex intercourse generally results in the propagation of the species, we award it a special moral status. But “nature” doesn’t reveal to us our moral obligations – we are responsible for determining those, even when we aren’t aware we’re doing so. To leap from an observation of how nature is to a prescription of nature ought to be is, as philosopher David Hume noted, to commit a logical fallacy.

Why judge what is natural and ethical to a human being by his or her animal nature? Many of the things human beings value, such as medicine and art, are egregiously unnatural. At the same time, humans detest many things that actually are eminently natural, like disease and death. If we consider some naturally occurring phenomena ethical and others unethical, that means our minds (the things looking) are determining what to make of nature (the things being looked at). Nature doesn’t exist somewhere “out there,” independently of us – we’re always already interpreting it from the inside.

Until this point in our Earth’s history, the human species has been furthered by different-sex reproductive intercourse. About a century ago, we attached specific meanings to this kind of intercourse, partly because we wanted to encourage it. But our world is very different now than what it was. Technologies like preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and in vitro fertilisation (IVF) are only improving. In 2013, more than 63,000 babies were conceived via IVF. In fact, more than five million children have been born through assisted reproductive technologies. Granted, this number still keeps such reproduction in the slim minority, but all technological advances start out with the numbers against them.

Socially, too, heterosexuality is losing its “high ground,” as it were. If there was a time when homosexual indiscretions were the scandals du jour, we’ve since moved on to another world, one riddled with the heterosexual affairs of politicians and celebrities, complete with pictures, text messages, and more than a few video tapes. Popular culture is replete with images of dysfunctional straight relationships and marriages. Further, between 1960 and 1980, Katz notes, the divorce rate rose 90%. And while it’s dropped considerably over the past three decades, it hasn’t recovered so much that anyone can claim “relationship instability” is something exclusive to homosexuality, as Katz shrewdly notes.

The line between heterosexuality and homosexuality isn’t just blurry, as some take Kinsey’s research to imply – it’s an invention, a myth, and an outdated one. Men and women will continue to have different-genital sex with each other until the human species is no more. But heterosexuality – as a social marker, as a way of life, as an identity – may well die out long before then.

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