Sexual Deviance Essay

Sexual deviance is any behavior with a sexual act that goes against the expectations of the society in which the act was performed. To be considered deviant, there are usually consent issues, the people or things involved create a deviant combination, the specific sexual act and anatomy is outside the realm of socially acceptable, or the place involved is unacceptable (Ritzer, 2007). In American society, it appears according to media accounts, billboard advertisements, and daily observation of the people passing by, sex is bought, sold, and traded in the open market; however, just because we see it everywhere, does not mean that it is socially acceptable. As we learned in the Tittle and Paternoster (2000) article, indiscretion is the deviance

Hills (1980) relates two different perspectives with regards to deviancy, and explains that deviancy is determined not by the deviant but by the observer. In order to understand sexual deviance, we must first understand the rule makers and the people who consider a specific sexual encounter as deviant. If a thirty year old man is arrested for statutory rape because he is having a sexual relationship with a fourteen year old girl, the absolutist is outraged and citing the man as a sexual deviant--a predator--without ever considering the man could be from Mexico where girls are married at fourteen and beginning families. Cultural perspective isn’t even considered because the absolutist has an elevated moral compass, and the way they see things is, well, absolute (Hills, 1980). From the relativist perspective, the above case-study reveals a cultural problem, not a sexual perversion or deviance (Hills, 1980). We assign the deviant status based on our own concepts and value system; rather than seeing the situation from the parties involved who have been enculterated in a system who allows that specific behavior they are now being sanctioned