A World Of Unusual Sexual Orientations - Dr James Cantor

It's the final domino in the series, 'cause the entire sexual spectrum of everybody's, whatever they're into, all of the kinks, this is the hardest one. If we can unravel this one, all the others are simpler, less fraught version of this toughest.

Your research area, paraphilia and associated phenomena, what is-

Uh-

... paraphilia?

Uh, well, I study what makes anybody into whatever it is that they're into. Uh, when, when I started, the big question was, and including for myself, um, uh, uh, what made me gay? What makes a gay person gay, you know? I, I started with the same curiosity that, uh, uh, that we all did. Uh, I just kinda tripped over the course of my career to an opportunity to start asking the bigger version of that question. Nevermind gay, what makes, you know, all of the others? How does the brain know what to be attracted to or not to be attracted to? Uh, and so that then led me to what, uh, uh, to the paraphilias themselves, which are sexual interest patterns, but not just preferences, not blonde versus brunette or top versus bottom. I mean, people who are... It's meaningful to call these sexual orientations unto themselves. They show, uh, these are interest patterns like exhibitionists, pedophiles, uh, uh, tuturists, some kinds of cross-dressers when they, when they find it sexually arousing. These are profound, profound sexual interest patterns that these people have. And as I say, it seems to show every, uh, uh, every sign of being innate and immutable. So what's up with that? So the paraphilias, you know, we still debate over, you know, does this one count, does that one, uh, uh, count? But the general idea are these other, other than sexual orientation, other than male versus female, all of the other atypical, uh, sexual interest patterns. The, the really, really built in, practically born with it kind of interest patterns. So that, that, that I guess- (laughs)

Mm-hmm.

... is my, my non-technical, uh, uh, my non-technical definition of it, allowing room for we don't exactly know where the boundaries are.

What about asexuality, the least sexual of the sexual paraphilias?

Yep. Uh, there's no good simple answer. I don't think it's an it. Uh, the term is a bit of a catchall. Uh, people these days especially are kinda mixing up medical language, you know, when a medical diagnosis where we've identified the cause of something, with psychiatric diagnosis, which doesn't identify the cause. Psychiatry is different from other branches that, uh, of medicine. In psychiatry, they label the symptoms. You know, we just call the symptom depression or sadness, depression. But whether it's caused by one thing or another, that doesn't matter, you get the same, same diagnosis, as I say. So psychiatry is unlike the rest of medicine in that it labels just the symptoms. So for the paraphilias, uh, and the others, that's, as I say, kind of an open question exactly where the line goes. When do we diagnose it? When do we not? Is it in the, uh, uh, is it in the person's favor? Uh, so it's not, as I say, it's not such a simple, uh, question. So for asexuals, well, it's not posing a problem for anyone else. And there can be way more than one thing leading a person to think that that label kinda, kinda fits them. Now, it could be somebody just with a low sex drive, you know? But low sex drive is an, pardon the pun, very sexy label for it. But asexual is something that it's a label they can use. All of a sudden they have a support group and people-