- Acting, instead of fantasizing
- Failing to tolerate difference
- Sex from intent, rather than desire
- A dream, in life
- Hatred, expressed sexually
- Understanding others via their functions
So I’m a pervert. All of us are, to greater or lesser degrees.
The term has a history, and its general understanding is almost entirely divorced from its technical definition. Most people think a “pervert” is someone whose desires are “sick.” But that’s not the meaning of the word, and it’s got little to do with its history.
The Oxford University Press (Google) definition of “pervert” is “a person whose sexual behavior is regarded as abnormal and unacceptable.”
Those same folks define the verb to mean to “alter (something) from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended.” In sex, obvs., that means sex for any purpose other than reproductive.
Psychoanalysis has a host of ways of using the concept, all of which are, to my mind, more useful, more meaningful, more instructive. I’ve listed some of them above.
I am, without question, a pervert. We all are, at various times, in varying degrees.
