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Normal Versus Abnormal

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Submitted By allyson69
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Sexual activity is described to be any sexual activities associated with sexual intercourse. However, sexual activity is often categorized as either normal or perverted. Two analytic philosophers, Thomas Nagel and Alan Goldman, described their views on natural sexual activity and sexual desire versus abnormal sex and sexual desire.
Thomas Nagel, who is a professor of philosophy and law, borrows his ideas relating sexual desire from the well-known French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. Nagel is able to give human beings his insight of who we are, specifically our sexual desires. There are three general conditions that an accurate account would have to meet relating perversion. The first one states, “If X is a sexual perversion, X must be a desire or practice that is somehow unnatural.” This first condition assumes that X is something abnormal, which results in perverse activities. The second condition states, “certain conditions will be perversions if anything is, such as shoe fetishism, bestiality, and sadism; other practices, such as unadorned sexual intercourse, will not be; about still others there is controversy” (34). This one states that having sex with an animal or inanimate objects will be considered perverse, whereas plain sex will be considered as normal sexual activity. The last condition states, “if there are perversions, they will be unnatural inclinations rather than just unnatural practices adopted not from inclination but for other reasons” (34). This one states that perversions are abnormal desires, and that contraception cannot be the excuse for unnatural sexual intercourse. Although Nagel does not state these conditions, he believes that sex and reproduction have nothing to do with perversion. But he does believe that non-sexual appetites could be perverse. “Nagel insists that perversion lies not in the nature of the act performed, but in the

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