The Independent News Source
Twitter - Facebook - Email Alerts - RSS
A voyage to the hinterlands of desire
Printer-friendly version
Send to friend
PDF version
THE OTHER SIDE OF DESIRE: FOUR JOURNEYS INTO THE FAR REALMS OF LUST AND LONGING
By Daniel Bergner
Published by HarperCollins, $24.99
This is an unsettling but ultimately fascinating book.
New York Times Magazine’s Daniel Bergner wanted to discover how we come to be who we are sexually. How do we cope with the forces of desire? How can we understand the relationship between the transcendent and the physical; between the wish for love and the “anarchy of the erotic”?
Daniel BergnerHis book investigates, too, the origins of sexual orientation and the sources of the inclination toward pedophilia, both areas of concern for the Catholic church.
Venturing to erotic desire’s hinterlands, Bergner sought answers in the stories of four people whose longings were quite different: a devoted husband burdened by a foot fetish, a clothing designer who gets her ecstasy from causing pain to others, a man smitten with his young stepdaughter and subsequently arrested for propositioning her, and an advertising director attracted only to female amputees.
In their desires, Bergner found metaphors for issues that confront us all. He raises fascinating questions about the erotic differences between men and women and the very nature of sexual ecstasy itself.
His portraits are serious, even sympathetic. He spent a lot of time with these people. Their cumulative effect is to make readers realize that we understand a lot less about sex than we thought.
The hardest of the four to warm to, Bergner said, was Roy, convicted of groping his stepdaughter. His sexual deviation is “utterly condemnable, but he was quite open. I found it appealing that he was so introspective and searching.”
The most touching is Jacob, the foot fetishist, a traveling salesman and devoted husband whose fixation occasionally brings him extreme pleasure but more often such crippling shame he can’t even tell his spouse about it.
How do we come to have the sexual orientation and desires that we do?
Bergner’s interviews with scientists, psychiatrists and sexologists sifted out two overall theories: that from birth we are more or less wired to be the way we are (those who agree with Johns Hopkins University sexual disorders expert Fred Berlin); or, eros is mostly learned, not inborn (those who side with Johns Hopkins sex researcher John Money).
Writes Bergner, “Our culture -- or our scientific culture, anyway -- is leaning heavily right now toward the wired theory, the idea that someday not so far in the future we will be able to take detailed enough images of the brain to determine where the anatomical correlates for desire are located.”
But, he adds, “I’m not quite ready to go there.” In an interview he described a weekend he spent observing a mixer between female amputees and their male “devotees,” as men who are attracted to such women are known.
“After a whole weekend your vision ever so slightly starts to shift,” he said, “not that I became an amputee devotee; far from it. But I began to see as these other men were seeing. That’s what our culture does, and it has a tremendous effect. We find attractive what others do, and I don’t think all the MRIs in the world are ever going to get to that.”
Bergner also learned that the lines defining what is normal sexually and what is not are vague. We abhor pedophilia, for example, and yet our culture worships teenage girls and uses images of their bodies widely in advertising.
“When you get to the Baroness [a sadism and bondage practitioner], the blurry lines are barely lines at all,” he said. “When you start talking about the connection between pleasure and pain, there’s a whole body of psychological literature that says that’s pretty common. To watch the things the Baroness does and the people who submit to her is to be attracted -- at least abstractly.”
In The Other Side of Desire, Bergner interviews sex research- ers James Cantor and Ray Blanchard. They point to the near-absence of sexual aberration among animals. In humans, they say, “higher parts of the brain have taken over things done by lower parts in other species. And it appears that one of those things is sexual behavior.” Thus, “more things can go wrong. It’s like with each new version of Windows, we just end up with more problems.”
Plus, most animals have their mating seasons; humans are prepared for sex year-round, so in the case of desires that can’t be legally satisfied, the torment continues.
Investigation into our sexuality is well summarized by sex researcher Berlin:
“God or nature put sex in each of us. If we don’t eat, we die. If we stop having sex, we perish as a species. We are talking about a powerful, biologically based appetite. And if that drive gets aimed in the wrong direction it still wants to be satisfied. You know, sleep is another biologically based drive -- you could promise yourself all you want that you’re not going to give into that craving for sleep, but let me tell you, eventually you’re going to. That’s the struggle some people are having sexually.”
Any chance that someone with a dominant desire for children or teenagers could move to a different point on the continuum? Any hope that he could subordinate that lust to another? Any possibility for real change?
“Not that we’re aware of,” Blanchard and Cantor respond. To them, biology is the beginning and the end.
Rich Heffern is an NCR staff writer. He can be reached at rheffern@ncronline.org.
Section:
I. Book Reviews 
I guess we're going to have
I guess we're going to have to add more letters to GLBTQIA.
Seriously, if "justice" as some define it (see http://ncronline.org/node/3205 for an example) requires a more inclusive view of what constitutes an acceptable range of human sexualities, which of those Bergner writes about is acceptable - or not - and why not?
Is the new lower bound of virtue a) no harm b) full consent and c) a relationship of equals? And how are these sexualities to be incorporated into marriage and family life, so say nothing of the sacraments?
Totally can't not
Totally can't not sleep--can't not digest, can't stop that baby from coming out--but what we eat and how we behave with other people do seem to be things most of us can and do control. If someone's fetish is as uncontrollable as the need to sleep is, then that person has self-control problems not just deviant interests.
Marie, what you label as a
Marie, what you label as a fetish, lack of self-control or a "deviant interest" may be some one else's stable orientation - as the folks Bergner quotes might say, "just the way somebody is wired." In other words, they were born that way. And, as some like to say, "God doesn't make junk," and "God loves me just the way I am," then their built-in wiring, whatever it is, is morally-neutral, isn't it?
If this question is answered yes, then:
a) potentially there are as many stable sexual orientations as there are people and their orientations.
b) and all are, at least potentially, morally neutral.
If this question is answered no, then:
a) not every behavior can be considered a stable orientation.
b) not every behavior and/or orientation is potentially morally neutral.
c) ergo, some things might be right or wrong based on something other than the built-in wiring, orientation, behavior, or subjective intent of the acting person. Another phrase for this is "objective morality."
My perception of so-called progressives is that they are perfectly willing to say "yes" - and demand everyone else tolerate it - until they come face-to-face with something, some behavior, that make's them say "no."
Funny that something some call "The Institutional Church" says "no," too, and is damned for it.
Whether or not these
Whether or not these interests are "wired" biologically, are somehow imprinted by precognitive experiences, or are sublimations of some sort, the reality is that only the thought is uncontrollable. Researchers on this subject should address how it happens that some people do not control themselves even, or especially, when they understand that their impulses are deviant.
There is a difference between what the reviewer says that the author is describing and the kind of sexuality that leads to the formation of strong, eduring, and sustaining bonds between individuals. I do not think that homosexual attraction is in the same category of impulse as foot fetish, amputee attraction, or pedophilia. These impulses have more in common with a heterosexual man preferring blonds or bosomy women or model thin women, etc. than they necessarily do with same sex attraction.
Obviously, there is a physical aspect whenever people find one another attractive, but in normal people it is not the most compelling aspect. Features of personality and temperment play at least as big a role in both homosexual and heterosexual partnerships. Normal people often come to love certain physical features that they associate with people they love rather than finding themselves compelled by physical features to become involved with people with whom they would not otherwise associate.