ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the way that sex has commonly been divided up: into normal and abnormal kinds of sex. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) defines paraphilias as sexual practices that involve ‘intense and persistent sexual interest. The history of homosexuality in the DSM helps to reveal a further issue with the paraphilias. When homosexuality was first removed from the DSM it was replaced with the category of ‘ego-dystonic homosexuality’, which basically meant people having same-sex desires that they were distressed by or which caused impairment to their lives: rather like the recent move from ‘paraphilias’ to ‘paraphilic disorders’. Sexual reproduction in animals only began 300 million years ago and asexual reproduction is still the norm in many animals and plants, probably because it requires a lot less time and energy than sexual reproduction, and there is no risk of not finding a mate.
