Here is a photograph of Mr Hersel. He has brown eyes, a small mouth, large cheeks, and ears that look like they’ve been surgically stapled to the sides of his head. The news reports make no mention of his profession, but his appearance suggests a line of work ranging from sports agent to car salesman. Of course, appearances can be deceptive. His colleagues, whoever they are, probably had no idea he liked to be humiliated by the Westlake Warriors. According to another report, “It didn’t take long for word to spread among local teens that they could get paid to spit in a man’s face.” Easy money.

Unlike the “saliva fetish” pervert — a guy who would obtain spittle from young girls under false pretenses and then masturbate with it — Mr Hersel apparently sought from teen boys what many men seek from sadists, masters, and dominatrixes. What he wanted to do was not uncommon, nor who he wanted to do it. Thus far there have been no reports that he sought out boys younger than 16 or so. A law blog expresses skepticism about the worth of even arresting the guy: “After years of practicing criminal law, most lawyers will never see a charge of ‘child annoyance’ being prosecuted. The question for many is whether with California’s budget crisis, this is a crime truly worth prosecuting and spending precious local resources on.”

It would be interesting to calculate how much money is spent every year on the criminalization of sexual behaviors. In America, there has doubtless been a drastic decrease in the amount spent on the criminalization of homosexuality. Conversely, there has been an exponential increase in the amount spent on pedophilia. Probably that is quite rational, since a child has less ability to engage in a consensual relationship with an adult than an adult has to engage with another person of the same gender. But how much is a society willing to pony up to rid itself of any given form of deviance? Is a billion dollars too much or too little to combat perversion x? Or what if the question was posed on a very direct, individual level… How much tax would you be willing to pay to combat, say, pedophilia? Ten dollars a year? A hundred? A thousand? More? Or to the contrary, would you pay to promote rather than suppress it?

The patient, a 57-year-old right-handed man, sustained his first cerebral vascular accident in the right middle cerebral artery region at the age of 45, which resulted in right-sided hemiparesis that resolved completely within 3 months… [After his recovery, he was fine] until he sustained the second cerebral vascular accident in the left middle cerebral artery region at age 53.

The patient started complaining of his changed personality and heterosexual orientation 6 months after his second stroke. At the same time he complained of excessive mood swings and changed interests… His sexual orientation remained heterosexual 4 years following the second stroke, and he preferred to describe himself as bisexual because of his previous homosexual orientation.

Our patient was aware of his homosexual orientation beginning in his early teens. He always enjoyed his gay relationships and had had at some point a live-in partner… It is unlikely that his psychological reaction to his first and/or second stroke could explain his altered sexual orientation, and his sexuality was accepted by his social network and family members.

Taking into consideration the interval between his first and second stroke, it is likely that an organic process within the left middle cerebral artery region is the cause of his altered sexual orientation.

While there is a great deal of debate about whether it is nature and/or nurture that determines sexual orientation, the one thing you never quite imagine is that gender preferences can be flipped on or off like a light switch. When a gay person comes out, it generally appears to be a matter of learning to accept the social consequences of a pre-existing orientation. This is reinforced by the fact that gays — and straights — often know their orientation at a very young age. It seems hard-wired.

But what if sexual orientation is as simple as that — a switch in the brain? How would you feel to know that a good bop in the head might cause you to wake up the next day with a desire for something you never desired before? And what if it weren’t just a matter of gay or straight but of a variety of sexual types? For example, it is known that various types of head injury can result in hypersexuality. What if you were to have a stroke and suddenly find yourself with an irresistible fetish for feet or puppies? Is it possible that perverts are not sexually liberated (as they like to think) or mentally ill (as some like to think) but rather victims of cerebral events? What if perversion is nothing more than a symptom in the same class as slurred speech or blurry vision?

Of course, if it turns out that sexual orientation is a switch, there will be those who want to flip others’ switches — puritans who want to straighten the queer, or maybe militant queers who want to undermine the straight. On the bright side, there will also arise a class of people who flip their switch back and forth just for kicks. “Now what sexual orientation matches my shoes tonight? Hmmm…” Gender hackers… Sexual proclivity tinkerers… Pansexual dilettantes… Is it possible that the future of fun lies in the hands of neuroscientists?

Evidently Mr Scared-of-Gay-People Trucker missed the memo that highway rest stops often serve as cruising grounds. His 911 call is available to hear online. It can be inadvertently funny to listen to the trucker and the operator banter back and forth about what a gay person looks like. You’d think they were trying to describe an extraterrestrial.

On consideration, though, the whole thing is alarming. This trucker actually called the police because a guy who “looks like a woman, but he’s a man” made a pass at him? Well, so fucking what? If you’re not interested, say so. Then, provided the interested party isn’t pointing a knife at you, forget about it. Gay or straight, it’s not illegal to make a pass at an adult.

Besides, you know that if a trucker were to wander into a gay bar, nobody would call the police. Shouldn’t the hospitality extend both ways?

It is always a little surprising to see a municipal authority act so reasonably toward sexual behavior. There must have been an internal study that said, “In the course of a year, we spend x amount on the harrassment of homosexuals. To put up a few signs will cost only a few percent of that, and it will placate the local parents too.” It’s a win-win strategy, and doubtless it will excite a good many voyeurs too. “Gay Sex Here” signs basically transform parts of the park into homosexual zoos. How long can it be before guides offer tours of the “homo zones” to prurient tourists? Or perhaps there will be horse-and-buggy rides, as there are in Central Park here in New York, during which you can be sure to glimpse some fisting in the cranberry bushes.

Of course, the damnable thing about sexuality is that, once you show it any tolerance, it will want to probe the limits. How much public gay sex can a community put up with? And do you think it would tolerate any other zones of perversion? Suppose bestialists get it into their heads to fondle their dogs or assault all the squirrels in a certain part of the park. Would the community respond by setting up “Animal Sex Here” signs? Could they conceivably put up “Kid Sex Here” signs by elementary schools or “Corpse Sex Here” signs over a graveyard?

(Thanks for the link to Margaret, who wrote: “This is crime, not perversion, but… what a scene.”)

What a scene indeed. Let’s all hope that a surveillance video or, failing that, witty reenactment turns up on YouTube. A woman threatening to ram her brother’s semen into her wife’s vagina with what amounts to a turkey baster isn’t the sort of thing you see every day. You have to struggle not to laugh at the images the story calls to mind. It’s like a lesboid Keystone Cops episode.

On reflection, it is fascinating that the whole sordid saga does not appear at first glance to be perverse. Probably there are a handful of reasons for this. First, the protagonists are lesbian, and nowadays it is only to the ultra-conservative that homosexuality is a perversion. Second, the “criminal” was motivated by a desire to have a baby, and this desire is practically the gold standard of normality. (Which is also to say that the desire to have a child is rarely associated with perversity.) Third, the fact that liquor was involved makes the assault seem less pervy than reckless or rash. Fourth, the origin of the brother’s semen is unreported. Did the younger Ms. Lighten ask her brother to jerk off in a Tupperware container? Ironically, the fact that she is a lesbian appears to remove the incestuous connotations that might otherwise have clung to a woman running around with a container full of her brother’s ejaculate.

Evidently this brouhaha has caused Reverend Mullen to (finally?) censor himself. His entire blog, which was located at petermullen.typepad.com, is no longer available online. Fragments of the blog preserved at archive.org show that the Reverend is indeed fond of the, uh, “light-hearted joke.” For example, there was the post in which he spoke of Islam as “the bottoms-up chaps’ religion.” In another he laments: “Funny how words don’t mean anything any longer — or rather the people who use words.” Ouch. Perhaps the Reverend himself, trying to sweep beneath the carpet his proposal to tattoo homosexuals, is one of those folks who doesn’t mean anything.

If Reverend Mullen finds this sort of thing funny, perhaps we could all suggest a few other tattoos that might give him a belly laugh. For example, we might tattoo SODOMY CAN SERIOUSLY DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH on the penises of priests, since too often lately they seem to be putting their manly members into the buttholes of altar boys and the like. We could suggest some further variations on the pedo priest motif: COCK IN A FROCK… THE MOUTH THAT PRAYS IS THE MOUTH THAT MOLESTS… etc. And of course we could strike right to the heart of the matter. How about Reverend Mullen gets a tattoo on his forehead that says SELF-RIGHTEOUS IGNORANT BASTARD? That’s pretty funny, no?

(Thanks to Furpo for the link.)

From a purely philosophical standpoint, it’s too bad that a guy was involved in the story. It changes the whole thing. He got his rape pleasure first. “Roles were then reversed” — well, not really. The victim didn’t force the male rapist to give her head. What happened was the rapist, in a jovial post-climax mood, probably thought it would be a hoot to force the victim to give head to his female friend. That’s not a pure woman-on-woman rape. It’s more like a side effect, perhaps even a girl-on-girl scene arranged for the man’s benefit. One hundred dollars says that that’s what the woman rapist will claim in court: she was a victim too, it was all the dude’s fault, boo hoo hoo.

A pure woman-on-woman rape is more arresting to contemplate — for the simple reason that it’s more rare. It does happen from time to time, but it’s like a woman with a full beard. It’s an aberration. You have to wonder, though, if women wouldn’t be better served with stronger rape impulses. For years, even centuries, societies have tried to combat sex crime by suppressing the urges of men. Clearly that doesn’t work too well. Why not try a real role reversal? If women committed more rapes and thereby taught men — and other women — that being violated is not so pleasant, maybe men wouldn’t be so quick to rape anymore.

First off, it should be noted that Ms. Taormino is a very intelligent writer at the forefront of gender studies. In a way, what she writes about is quite different than what usually appears on PervScan. For her, perv is probably a sex-positive term with radical political meanings for gender and identity. For PervScan, perv isn’t quite so ideological a term. The pervs featured here are usually on their way to jail for fucking animals, kids, or corpses. The gender of these pervs is typically male. Their identity isn’t a matter of gender-bending. It’s a matter of mug shots.

Taormino’s column begins with the observation that straight women like gay porn — which isn’t very perplexing to contemplate, given that straight men like lesbian porn too. But what about queer women who like to watch gay male porn?

Another person chimed in: “Do you like fag porn? All my queer female friends do.” Hers wasn’t a surprising question. I know lesbians who dig it more than any other kind of hardcore fare. I briefly dated a genderqueer dyke who just loved gay male porn: She ran out and got the newest title from her favorite company the day it came out. In this case, she adored movies from Bel Ami (belamionline.com), which feature young, hairless European lads (think the boy-on-boy version of the straight barely-legal genre). The boys are very pretty and androgynous, and some of them could definitely be mistaken for dykes with their clothes on. But other girl-loving girls love über-butch men, leather daddies, and big hairy bears, so it’s not always about androgyny. By now, I think it’s commonplace to accept that queer women love queer male porn, but what is that all about?

By way of explanation, Taormino points out that there is a relative paucity of “lesbian porn produced by and for lesbians.” Evidently lesbians aren’t attracted to the sort of “lesbian porn” that is produced for straight men. Furthermore, notes Taormino, many lesbians “identify with various forms of masculinity.” The implication seems to be that, when such a lesbian enjoys viewing gay male porn, it’s because in her own mind she’s sort of a man — thus she becomes like one of those men who enjoys watching gay male porn.

If all this starts to sound convoluted, perhaps that is precisely the point. Anything goes. Gender studies can’t help but intersect perverse behavior because, out there in the wilds, there are inevitably people who harbor the strangest combinations of desire. There are gay men inhabiting the bodies of women and making like lesbians. There are children lusting inside the bodies of adults — pedophiles. There are animals lusting for other animals inside the bodies of humans. There are cocks that want to be feet, vaginas that wish they were assholes, and assholes that might as well be duffle bags, given what people shove into them.

Even if you don’t give much of a hoot about Jay Leno, it’s hard not to be fascinated by some of the backlash against his homophobic comments (which you can watch here.) In particular, Violet Blue wrote a great piece at the San Francisco Chronicle titled “Hot Gay Sex is for Homophobes.” To turn the tables on Leno, Blue wittily draws on a scientific study that sought to explore the question “Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal?” Here’s the abstract:

The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.

One line is worth repeating: Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. However, once you get done saying “Take that, Leno” to yourself, you can’t help but wonder… Is it in fact common that someone should desire the thing that, at least publicly, they affect to hate? For example, California recently passed a law criminalizing necrophilia. Would every lawmaker who claimed to be disgusted by necrophilia be secretly aroused by snuff porn?

It’s like a boxing match. In one corner is Camp Lickalotta, a GLBT-friendly campground that Nancy Leedy and Joanie Beasley are attempting to open in North Carolina. They describe themselves as “unabashed environmentalists, Christians and lesbians.” They may also be natural-born marketers, since the “campy” name they chose for their camp has been inflaming the debate. In one interview, they state their hope to “Lickalotta prejudice. Lickalotta pollutants. Lickalotta pessimism.” You can’t argue with those goals.

In the other corner is a horde of scandalized conservatives. For example, there is the Dakota Voice, a paper from Rapid City, South Dakota. It purports to examine “local, state, national and world issues of interest to conservatives and Christians.” A header on its web site declares that the Dakota Voice offers “news and commentary without the liberal bias.” As you can glean from its stance on a lesbian campground, its way of refraining from liberal bias is to remove the liberal and retain the bias.

What’s so awful about a gay campground? Are neighbors afraid their local government will be overrun by some weird Queer Eye for the Town Hall? The Dakota Voice imagines the horror of camps dedicated to other sexual orientations. Heterosexual Camp Screwalott — well, isn’t that what most camps are anyway? Bestial Camp Horsealott — gosh, city-slickers tend to think that’s what half of rural America is anyway. You don’t see many horse-fucking incidents here in New York. Camp Cheatalott — not so different than Camp Screwalott, is it?

Here’s a novel idea. How about Camp Mind-Your-Own-Fucking-Business-alott? What happens on private property is private. Isn’t that a core tenet of the conservative worldview?