Perversion

Faced with the bad news from Abu Ghraib, we find ourselves reaching for old and distrusted concepts. Sexual humiliation, administered by women to men who have been stripped and bound, is tainted, we think, by perversion—indeed, it is a form of perversion. And then, having given voice to this idea, we find ourselves in forbidden territory. Owing to political correctness, nothing that adults do in private is now to be regarded as intrinsically disgusting. The idea that one person’s action may be a violation and desecration of another person’s body, even if the other consents to it, has almost slipped from our consciousness.

Almost, but not quite. For even the most polymorphously perverse among us will find acts and desires that disgust him. Even he will—if he has retained the capacity for love—recognize that the body of the person whom he desires is not an object to be used, but a subject to be venerated. Even he will recognize that there is such a thing, in sexual conduct and desire, as desecration. He may not use that word—for it belongs with terms like modesty, decency, and perversion, which drew the contours of those old restraints. But he will be aware, nevertheless, that there is more to sexual morality than consent, and that this “more” arises because desire is both a creator and a destroyer of human happiness.

RS

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Roger Scruton

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Faced with the bad news from Abu Ghraib, we find ourselves reaching for old and distrusted concepts. Sexual humiliation, administered by women to men who have been stripped and bound, is tainted, we think, by perversion—indeed, it is a form of perversion. And then, having given voice to this idea, we find ourselves in forbidden territory. Owing to political correctness, nothing that adults do in private is now to be regarded as intrinsically disgusting. The idea that one person’s action may be a violation and desecration of another person’s body, even if the other consents to it, has almost slipped from our consciousness.

Almost, but not quite. For even the most polymorphously perverse among us will find acts and desires that disgust him. Even he will—if he has retained the capacity for love—recognize that the body of the person whom he desires is not an object to be used, but a subject to be venerated. Even he will recognize that there is such a thing, in sexual conduct and desire, as desecration. He may not use that word—for it belongs with terms like modesty, decency, and perversion, which drew the contours of those old restraints. But he will be aware, nevertheless, that there is more to sexual morality than consent, and that this “more” arises because desire is both a creator and a destroyer of human happiness.