What place does morality have in sexual behaviour?
Personally I like the psychiatrist, Chess Denman’s, classification of sexualities into those which are ‘transgressive’ and those which are ‘coercive’. Transgressive ones just fall outside our current cultural comfort zone. They may well be accepted in other times and places and there is nothing inherently harmful about them. Coercive sexualities involve some degree of coercion or force: they are non-consensual. Denman argues that psychology and psychiatry has no business pathologising transgressive sexualities which people gain pleasure and happiness from. Coercive sexualities should be dealt with in the criminal-legal systems along with other acts of violence and abuse. I also like this quote from Gayle Rubin, one of my inspirations, on this issue. She says: ‘Most people find it difficult to grasp that whatever they like to do sexually will be thoroughly repulsive to someone else, and that whatever repels them sexually will be the most treasured delight of someone, somewhere… Most p
