AMERICAN SEXUAL TRAGEDY

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emotionally disturbed, or 'neurotic', individuals who are fetichistically attached to some particular type of sex activity--and who usually, though not always, became fetichistically attached to this form of behavior because of peculiarities or fixations which arose during their childhood. Sexual neuroses are essentially the same as other forms of neurosis--except that, in our anti-sexual society, we emotionalize them and tend to view them in a special light.

"The psychological criterion of sexual 'abnormality', therefore, becomes that of fetichism or exclusivity. A brief consideration of homosexual behavior may illus'trate most clearly. As I have elsewhere pointed out, there is nothing 'abnormal' or 'deviant' about homosexual activity in itself--since the human animal is biologically pluri-sexed, and will (if not arbitrarily hemmed in by his culture) engage spontaneously in monosexual (masturbatory), heterosexual and homosexual acts at different times during his life. Normally, in a sexually restrictive culture like our own, he learns to give up most monosexual and homosexual activity, and to confine himself, especially after marriage, to heterosexual behavior. But the point is that he does so because he learns to be heterosexual, not because he is created so by nature. Even in our own culture, which is violently opposed to homosexuality, Kinsey and his associates have reported that some 37% of all males exhibit homosexual behavior at some time during their lives; and the probability is that the vast majority of all males at some time desire to participate in homosexual activity, but many refrain from doing so out of guilt and fear.

"If, then, a male (or female) in our culture engages in some homo sexual behavior, alongside of his more socially acceptable heterosexual activities, we are hardly justified in calling him abnormal from almost any standpoint--since biologically, statistically and psychologically he is behaving in a normal fashion. But suppose this male (or female) becomes mainly or exclusively

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