Lecture 10: Paraphilia's and Coercive Sexuality

Statistical Approach (What is abnormal sex?)

the degree that a particular sexual behaviour deviates from the central tendency of a group’s sexual behavior

Sociological approach (What is abnormal sex?)

How closely aligned sexual behaviour is with currently accepted norms in society

Psycho-medical approach (what is abnormal sex?)

Sexual behaviour is abnormal if it causes stress, anxiety, or unhappiness for the individual or harms the individual or someone else

• E.g., paraphilias

Paraphilia’s

refer diagnostic categories used by the American Psychiatric Association to describe atypical (abnormal) variations in sexual behaviour

• “Any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, physically mature, consenting human partners” (DSM-5, 2013)

  • It’s about intense and persistent

  • It’s about interest in atypical targets of attraction or atypical behaviors of interest

Paraphilias: A few objections

1. A central aspect of paraphilia is an intense and persistence sexual interest.

   • Does that make adolescence a period of temporary paraphilia?

2. Engaging in a behavior is not in itself is evidence of psychopathology.

   • Is having with fruitreally a pathology?

3. Labelling particular atypical sexual behaviors and interests as unhealthy leads to discrimination against all practitioners of those behaviors even when their behavioral expressions are safe and healthy.

   • Homosexuality in loving relationships ring a bell?

4. Social, political, and religious and historical factors affect the inclination to see certain behaviors or sexual interests as pathological.

5. The therapists own socialization and/or theoretical perspectives affect judgements of health or pathology.

6. Clearly dangerous behaviours should be signs of a mental illness, right? We can’t have people ruining their lives, or the lives of others around them.

Paraphilic Disorder

Is a paraphilia that causes distress or impairment to the individual, causes personal distress and/or harm to the individual or to others

• In other words, atypical patterns of arousal or behaviour that become problematic in the eyes of the individual or potentially cause harm in the eyes of others

Fetishism

• When an inanimate object, such as an article of clothing or items made out of rubber, leather, or silk, elicit sexual arousal and fixation

  • Leather boots and high-heeled shoes are popular

• The fetishist may interact with the object while masturbating or having sex with others.

• Most fetishes are harmless and private.

Partialism

Attraction to a specific body part (e.g., feet) is now considered a fetish in the DSM.

Sexual Masochism

• Characterized by the desire or need for pain or humiliation to enhance sexual arousal and attain gratification.

  • E.g., being restrained, blindfolded, spanked, slapped, whipped, or choked, or made to perform humiliating acts

• The most common paraphilia among women*

  • However, paraphilic interest in voyeurism is considerably higher

• Mild pain is known to heighten arousal through increased arousal.

Sexual Sadism

• Characterized by the desire to inflict pain or humiliation on others to enhance sexual arousal and attain gratification.

• Most sadist hurt or humiliate willing partners; a small minority stalk and attack non-consenting victims.

BDSM (Not a Paraphilia)

• An umbrella term that stands for bondage and discipline (B&D), dominance and submission (D/s) and sadomasochism (S&M).

• BDSM tends to be practices in mutually gratifying ways that involve negotiated power exchanges between consenting partners.

  • The erotic appeal of pain for some may come from the ritual of control rather than from the pain itself.

• Activities are mutually discussed and agreed upon in advance.

• Roughly 1 in 5 people experiment with B D S M now and then (Brown et al., 2020); they generally don’t inflict severe pain or harm.

Sexual Addiction

• Sex “addicts” are likely a heterogeneous group made of people with different underlying issues:

  • The avoidance of blame

    • e.g., “I’m not responsible for my actions, I have a sickness”

• Genuine problems inhibiting sexual urges

• Obsessive compulsive disorder

• Coping mechanism of depression and anxiety

• Tension between sexual needs and personal attitudes and/or social circumstances

  • What happens to erotophiles with high sex drive and unrestricted sociosexuality in a sexually inhibited culture?

Prevalence and Gender Differences

• Estimates of paraphilias and paraphilic disorders are poor, but generally, they appear to be rare.

•  With the possible exception of masochism, men are more interested in / less repulsed by paraphilic behaviors

Sex Drive and Paraphilic Interests

Sex drive (hypersexuality) appears to be one of the strongest predictors of paraphilic interest and largely explains gender differences (Dawson et al., 2014).

Hentai

• Hentai is a style of pornography, or erotic material, that is either drawn or animated.

• Hentai is typically in a Japanese (anime) art style, however it can be inclusive of any drawn material.

• Due to the nature of the medium, hentai provides an opportunity to experience and engage with paraphilias beyond those previously described.

• Is Hentai itself a paraphilia? Yes and no, and I will try to explain why here.

Ahegao

Is a term in Japanese pornography for a facial expression of characters (usually women) during sexual arousal or an orgasm.

Why Hentai?

• Hentai provides a visual alternative that depicts sexual activity that may be difficult to depict in real-life.

• The desire to seek out hentai may suggest that one’s needs or desires are not met by real-life pornography.

Paraphilias in Hentai

• Some paraphilias in hentai are things that can happen in real life. Some popular paraphilias include:

  • Cuckolding

  • Bondage

  • Crossdressing

  • Maid Outifts (and other clothing)

  • Feet

  • Impregnation

  • Urination

Paraphilias Unique to Hentai

Other paraphilias are viewable only in hentai, compared to real-life:

• Futanari

• Tentacles

• Mind Control

• Kemonomimi

• Nekomimi

• Vore

• Among others

Canadian Law and Fictional Pornography: R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46, 163:

Every person commits an offence who makes, prints, publishes, distributes, circulates or has in their possession for the purpose of publication, distribution or circulation any obscene written matter, picture, model, phonograph record or any other obscene thing.

For the purposes of this Act, any publication a dominant characteristic of which is the undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence, shall be deemed to be obscene.

Candian Law and Fictional Pornography: R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46, 163.1:

163.1 (1) In this section, [Child Sexual Abuse Material] means

(c) any written material whose dominant characteristic is the description, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years that would be an offence under this Act;

(2) Every person who makes, prints, publishes or possesses for the purpose of publication any child pornography is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than 14 years and to a minimum punishment of imprisonment for a term of one year.

R. v. Sharpe affirmed the above statue to include: “purely fictional material even when no real children were involved in its production”

Canadian Law and Fictional Pornography: Three major cases on hentai have been adjudicated:

1. A man possessing hentai of a fictional under-18 character was sentenced to prison

2. A man was sentenced to 90-days of prison for mostly anime images

3. A man was given parole for attempting to import a sexually-graphic figure

• Under obscenity laws, other cases could be brought for depictions of violence or illicit activity, however, to my knowledge, none have been adjudicated at this time.

Online Prevalence

• Despite these laws around obscene imagery and written content, hentai is both readily available and easily searchable on the Clearnet.

• Hentai consumers/advocates argue for its availability by stating that because the depictions are not of real people, that nobody is getting hurt.

• While the actual amount of harm is unknown at this moment, research and ethicists alike argue that viewing paraphilic content makes people more likely to engage in that behaviour, suggesting a real chance of harm.

Is Hentai a Paraphilia?

• Some might argue that hentai itself is a paraphilia; however, it is more nuanced.

• Pornography is not in itself a paraphilia, and hentai is drawn/animated pornography.

• However, attraction to drawn/animated characters may be paraphilic, as does the exploration of paraphilias contained therein