Sexual Devince

Sexual Deviance Fantasy, symbolism, ritualism, and compulsion are the four elements of sexual behavior. These elements are true in either normal or deviant sexual behavior (Holmes and Holmes 2009). Sexual fantasies are needed for one to be sexual, some of the fantasies being more difficult or in depth than what some imagine. When rape is the situation sexual activities take place without the woman, or sometimes even the man having no sexual fantasy. Everyone has fantasies; they just vary from person to person. Symbolism, also known as a fetish (or partialism) is a visual element. A sexual fetish is the arousal one receives from a physical object. Partialism involves an attachment to isolated parts of the body. While everyone has fetishes, many people do have a partialism such as the legs or neck, but not everyone. Fetishes can be anything; short skirts, high heels, sex toys, etc. Fetishes and partialisms are natural and found in all humans, however, they become considered unhealthy attractions when these symbols are required to have any type of sexual activity. Next we have ritualism. Rituals play a big role in who we are as a person, as there are rituals in just about all the we do. Sex offenders are as ritualistic as in their sexual predations as others who are sexually active (Holmes and Holmes 2009). When things are not done according to ritual during the sexual encounter it will be started over until the sequence of events are correct. Married couples are also at ritualistic. Words will be spoken in a certain manner or the gestures made toward one another will send messages back and forth that come across as sexual. Some may have Sunday rituals or morning rituals when it is their time away from the kids and time they always engage in sexual acts. Compulsion is when the offender feels they are compelled to commit the act they committed. The offender has no sympathy toward their victims, feeling the need to act out on the crimes they commit (Holmes and Holmes 2009). As Ted Bundy explained, their were urges inside of him that needed to be fulfilled that he had no control over. It’s basically the addiction one has to sex.

Ones social behavior is studied in Sociobiology. Sociobiology attempt to explain social behavior and examines the behavior assuming if is an effect of evolution. The concept of sociobiology didn’t become popularly known until 1975 when Edward Wilson released a book, however, it is traced back to the 1940s. While there are female deviants, a large number of deviants are males, females are more likely to be the victims. There are many theories behind sexual deviance, the main one being due to heredity. While many say the deviance is due to ones environment, there are explanations saying there is something wrong with the offenders brain, and possibly the offender being born with a chemical imbalance. The psychological model and psychiatric model claim it is in the genes while the social learning model explains sexual deviance is learned and motivated by people and things around the individual. Recently, it has been said there are 3 different types of sexual deviance once may experience. The first one is “normal deviance” where the behavior has such a low visibility to society and the behavior is fairly widespread there is little or no effort to control the deviance. An example of this would be masturbation. Incest is another type of deviance (“Pathological deviance”), and then there’s the deviance they say “generate specific forms of social structure.” The third type of deviance included homosexuality and prostitution.

Holmes, R. & Holmes, S. (2009). Sex Crimes. 3rd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Schur, E. (2006). Sociological Perspective on Sexual Deviances. 13 (7). Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/docview/614251546?accountid=8289.