Readers might politely wonder whether the only reliable knowledge we can have of human nature is that gained through a particular historically contingent set of scientific practices.Īnother question is how much fun the author should attempt to have at the expense of people who, he keeps insisting, didn't choose their own preferences. There is an occasional tang of scientism to Bering's project, as when he somewhat condescendingly congratulates literary figures from the past ( Genet, Bataille) on intuiting something about sex (for instance, that lust can impair decision-making) that psychology researchers have now triumphantly confirmed. A psychiatrist even thinks there is a category of people who have "excessive desire" for other consenting adults in socially approved ways, and suggests we call them "normophiles", though I think that term is better reserved for people who fancy the generous-waisted pants off Norm from Cheers.
One "objectophile" woman is "in a relationship with a flag named Libby". "If the supermodel Kate Upton were to walk into my office right now and tie me to my chair before doing a slow striptease and depositing her vagina in my face," Bering writes, "I think I'd require therapy for years." You'd hope that, as a scientist, he would also know that this would be a medical emergency for the poor supermodel.įor the middle third of the book Bering scoots through an eye-opening panoply of case studies and research findings about everything from a preference for amputees (acrotomophilia) to a passionate love of bees (melissophilia). For one thing, he notes, "harm" is subjective. Given consent, though, Bering's position is that anything goes. After all, animals also force themselves on one another, but that doesn't make it OK for men to rape women. But this employment of the "naturalistic fallacy", Bering points out, is misguided.
(Those long suspicious of homophobic ranters will be tickled to learn that, according to laboratory tests, "the more hostile a man is toward gay men, the stronger his erectile response is to gay male porn".) These days, one often finds people sympathetic to gay rights observing that homosexual behaviours are also found in other species, eg the bonobo. Homosexuality, of course, was until recently considered deviant, and Bering writes movingly of his own experience as a confused and frightened closeted teenager.
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