ABSTRACT
If the way we think about sex shapes the way we experience it, then words are tiny marks of those thoughts, haphazard signs scribbled on the page or floating in the air, which we charge with meaning. Let us take two words that are common in discussions about sexuality. The first is ‘perversity’, the state of being ‘perverse’ or ‘perverted’, a turning away from what is proper and right. The second is ‘diversity’, the condition of being ‘diverse’, concerning ‘difference’ or ‘unlikeness’. The two words are clearly related, each of them suggesting a move away from a strict ‘normality’ (another key word). The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary acknowledges the link by recording as one meaning
of ‘diversity’ the word ‘perversity’, a usage it dates back to the sixteenth century. There is clearly a common history. Yet when applied to sexuality, the implications of these words today are distinct. Perversity and diversity may appear to refer to the same phenomenon. In reality a chasm has opened between them signifying a major shift in the language of sexuality and the way we think about our needs and desires. For while all the terms relating to ‘perversity’ suggest a hierarchy of sexual values in which ‘the perversions’ are right at the bottom of the scale, ‘diversity’ hints at a continuum of behaviours in which one element has no more fundamental a value than any other.
