Stuff You Should Know - What are paraphilias?

Episode Date: September 26, 2019

Josh and Chuck dive into the world of paraphilias so you can get the skinny in 45 minutes or less.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, it's me, Josh. In this Wednesday, October 2nd, I'm going to be in Austin, Texas to do my live end of the world show. I'm gonna be at the North Door,

and you can get tickets at ndvenue.com. So come see me, cause it's gonna be pretty boss. And there's a few tickets left, and they're going very fast. If you want to come see me and Chuck for Stuff You Should Know Live in New Orleans on October 10th, you better go to sysklive.com. You'll get tickets and info there, and you will be very happy that you did.

So see you guys in October. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer Lowell. I didn't say Noel, everybody, I said Lowell. He's a first timer, and he's here to party.

Is that why he has the beer bong? Yep. Which we didn't even call beer bongs, we just called it funneling beer. Yeah, yeah. Oh, is that a beer bong? I didn't realize they were one and the same. I think so, it must be regional.

Oh, I just thought like the crazy college kids would come up with something, some new thing that was a beer bong that was different than a funnel. But okay. You know, the good old days where you did keg stands and beer bongs and, you know. I think I did one of each of those in my entire college career and was like,

no, these aren't that great. I never did a keg stand. They're really hard, I don't understand them at all. They don't make any sense whatsoever. Well, I think the idea is you're upside down, but you're drinking, you know, the beer is going in the opposite direction as you're standing. All right.

I mean, I'm not sure what the effect is supposed to have. I'm sure if there's a head rush involved, I don't know, I always thought it was dumb. It'd make way more sense to do one of these beer bongs and then do a handstand really quick. Yeah, I mean, not funneled a beer or two in my day, but that wasn't really my bag either. Okay.

Just drinking like a normal human being. Yeah, you know me as a freshman in college sitting back with my brandy snifter. Mm-hmm, in your smoking jacket. That's right. Slippers? Well, obviously Chuck, since I said smoking jacket and slippers,

we're talking today about paraffilias. Which could be the case if the smoking jacket and slippers was the only way that you could achieve erection and completion. What do you mean completion? Like, you know, ejaculation. Oh, I got you. Completion, that's like such a great way to put it, man.

It's so like, so crisp and sterile. Is it too late to issue our COA? Yes, it is, but we should anyway, you mentioned it. Yeah, I mean, I figure since this is about paraffilias, unless you don't know what that is, then you probably don't have your kids listening already. But, you know, we're gonna be talking a lot about stuff like, you know, ejaculation.

And completion. And completion. Abnormal sexuality. Yeah, which you might as well, the can of worms has been opened because you said the word abnormal. Yeah, I mean, that's what paraffiliam means. Like para, the prefix means beside,

but really in the usage, especially with psychology, para means like abnormal, not normal. And then filia means love. So it's abnormal love, which is kind of a funny way to put it, but it's a lot better than the way they used to put it, which is like deviance, sodomy. Pervert.

Perversion, yeah. So it's actually a huge, massive step forward to call it paraffilia. Yeah, I actually found a couple of quickie definitions that don't even use the word abnormal. Great. That I felt kind of nailed it a little better. One is psychology today says a condition

in which a person's sexual arousal and gratification depend on fantasizing about and engaging in sexual behaviors that are atypical and extreme. Okay. And then the other one says, you become sexually aroused by an object or activity that most people don't consider sexually stimulating. Okay, yeah, that's even more interesting.

That makes a lot of sense, that second one. My favorite one is not hurting yourself or anybody else, just go with it. That's a definition that I can get behind. Right, and that will also bring up the distinction which we're gonna be focusing a lot of this on between a paraffilia and a paraffilic disorder. Yeah, because the whole point of studying paraffilias

is not to be like, well, look at this weirdo, let's poke him and see what comes out, see what brings him to completion, you know? It's instead to help people who are distressed by the fact that they have an atypical object or desire of sexual arousal, right? Like that there's some sort of compulsion that they can't disregard,

and it's causing them to stress in their lives or it's harming their lives in some way. Or, and this one's even more important, that there are paraffilias that involve other people that are not consenting. Right. That's a big, big problem too. It's big enough problem when it's affecting your own life,

but when it involves somebody else who does not wanna be involved in your paraffilia, then it's a big problem and the courts frequently become involved. Yeah, so this is mainly an overview, so we're not gonna get too much into specific paraffilias, although tell me you didn't have a bunch of ideas for further episodes.

Dude, I'm so glad you said that. But also did you hear like a million people just go, oh. Yeah. But let's, can I read through some of these real quick though at least? Yeah, let's do that. So common paraffilias, voyeurism is one.

I think we all know what that is. Sure, the peeping Tom. This is listed, which kinda, I don't know, I didn't know what was gonna be on here. Transvestitism. Yeah, cross-dressing is a better way to put that. Sure. Which is, we'll talk a little more about that one later

because it's a good example. Exhibitionism. Yes, which can be just, you know, if you like acting in porno films, you could be an exhibitionist and it could be very fulfilling. Or, more frequently from what I understand, you can expose your genitalia

to an unsuspecting person. Yeah, in a parking lot. And the thing that I read about exhibitionism in males, what we commonly call like flashers, they're not, they don't get gratification from the other person being like, oh, hey, 10 out of 10, you know, or let's go, something like that.

They get their gratification. This is the whole point of their exhibitionism is from the shock, from the surprise that they elicit from the other person when they suddenly expose their genitalia. Are you surprised by that? Yes, I was actually. Really?

Did you think it was like a legit come on? I guess I always did. Now that I think about it, it is a little ridiculous, but it never occurred to me that that is what they were going for, was that shock or surprise. Gotcha. Yeah, which makes the whole non-consenting thing

even worse, you know? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So fetishism, and this is interesting because I think a lot of people think a fetish is just any, you know, atypical sexual desire, but a fetish specifically is a non-living object, like a shoe, like a high heel shoe or something.

Sure. That excites you sexually, whereas if you say like, oh, I've got a foot fetish, that's actually called partialism. Yes, that's right. And it could be a foot fetish, it could be a breast fetish, it could be a butt fetish, whatever.

But I think with partialism, it's specifically part of the human body, right? That's right. Okay, but the other stuff, it's like a non-human object, like you said, a shoe or something. Yeah, you know. Oh, I don't know, like a nice candle stand.

Or a smoking jacket and slippers. That's right. A candle stand. Oh, what are they called? A candlestick. Candlestick, what you used to murder people, I forgot. The candlestick. There is fraudurism, that is when, you know,

subway creeps rubbing up against you. Right. Non-consenting, obviously. Again, yes, non-consenting. There is SNM, so sexual sadism and sexual masochism. So do you know the difference? I'm sure you do. Sure, masochism is self-harmed, self-abuser,

or enjoying being abused or humiliated. Masochism is, or sadism is inflicting that on somebody else. Correct, you're doing really well. Thank you. Well, we should turn this into an internet quiz. Pedophilia, which everyone knows what that is. Terrible. It is terrible, and there's a lot more to unpack with that,

so much so I think that that one deserves its own episode. Oh, for sure. And those are the most common. Less common are somnophilia. That is fondling a person who is asleep or unconscious. I would guess that's also unconsenting too. Yeah, although imagine you could act that out in a consenting way.

I wonder, well, yeah, and I wonder if also that's like an introductory level beginner's class for necrophilia because like the lightest form of necrophilia is the other person pretending they're dead. All right, so necrophilia 101. That's another one that deserves its own episode. Yeah, for sure.

And I know which other one you're gonna pick too. There's telephone scatologia. Yes, prank calls but obscene variety. Like Philip Seymour Hoffman and happiness. Right. Not the pursuit of happiness. Right, different altogether. Right.

Really different. Right. Like the opposite of each other. Yeah. There's coprophilia, do you know what that is? That's an obsession with poop, maybe being pooped on. Sure. Just poop in general turns you on.

Urophilia, that's obvious, right? Pee-pee. And then zoophilia. Yes, man, which is, you might think like, oh, that's gross, the person is engaging in acts of bestiality. That's the new name for bestiality is zoophilia. But one thing that a lot of people overlook, or at least I did until I saw the documentary zoo,

was that it also involves non-consenting partners or other people, but not a person, an animal. The animal can't consent to that. And so it's basically a form of rape, but it's animal rape. Yeah, I never saw that documentary. Man. I know, it's been many years. You've been wearing that t-shirt every day.

Yeah, the I Heart Zoo. Yeah, I watched. They're getting the weirdest looks. I watched Zoo and I was like, that was this lousy t-shirt. Right, but it's like, I want to recommend it, but at the same time, I also want to be like, stay away. You know, like you're going to change in some ways, some of which you might not be fully okay with.

That's right. It's a tough one, but as far as documentary filmmaking goes, it's about as close to a masterpiece as there is. All right, sold. Although it did get a lot of flak chuck for a lot of recreation. If I remember correctly, I think the whole thing might have been voiceover and recreations.

Wow, how specific do they get with those recrees? Oh, very, like, it's just slightly out of focus kind of stuff. Oh, interesting. Yeah. All right. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure how they did that. So the important thing to remember about these paraffilias,

and this is, we're not talking about the disorder part, but it's important to what language people use, because for many, many years and still in many circles, things like homosexuality have even been considered, you know, a perversion. So things have evolved over time, but depending on who you are and where you are in the country even and what your political affiliation

might be, there still might be a lot of damning language to use for what some people consider immoral. Yeah, and like you kind of hit it on the head, homosexuality was considered a disorder until the, I think late 70s, as far as the psychology community was concerned, and things change, but it all basically boils down to morality. So much so that it's like, you know,

the fact that there have been laws against certain sexual acts and that those have changed and evolved over time really kind of underscores this idea that, you know, society says this is not okay because we think it's weird. Right. Or this is not okay because you're harming somebody else. But the fact that it changes or evolves

really kind of shows that in a lot of circumstances, especially when it comes to the kind of paraphernalia where you're just involving yourself and you're not harmed by it in any way, it's not causing distress, that there's really little reason whatsoever for anybody to be legislating or moralizing about that because it doesn't really have anything

to do with anybody else. Right, so there are for sure legal acts or illegal acts and thus I guess legal acts in terms of paraphernalia. There are problematic behaviors too. And that is like you mentioned, I don't know if you mentioned masturbation. I didn't because I don't know that, I mean, I'm sure there is a paraphernalia

where all you want to do is masturbate, but that seems more like, I don't know, it just doesn't seem like a paraphernalia to me. I could be wrong though. Well, the whole idea of problematic though is like if you're so consumed by masturbation that you can't go to work or you leave work so often that you miss meetings.

And basically I think the point is what could be a harmless behavior can be problematic if it's all consuming and like affects your job or your home life or your social life. Right, or it's like causing you to be arrested so you miss work the next day. There's this guy who, there's actually multiple people but one man was arrested,

I guess making love to a car is how you would put it, which is mechanophilia, mechanophilia. Interesting. And there's another guy who claims to have made love to over a thousand cars in his lifetime. And as far as I know, he's never been arrested and he seems to be totally great with the idea. He said that his peak sexual experience was airwolf.

I was gonna say with like a 57 Chevy. No, he has, I don't know how else to put it, made love to Herbie before Herbie the beetle. Like the real thing or he had it recreated? As far as I know, the real thing. But airwolf, Chuck, airwolf, he got with airwolf. The plane? The helicopter.

Oh, the helicopter, okay, I couldn't remember. Yeah, the J.M. Michael Vincent helicopter from the TV show. But this guy, that guy, he seems to be totally fine with it because he submits to interviews and poses for photos that show up in the paper from time to time. But I don't think he's ever been arrested. So his would just be a paraphernalia.

The guy who got arrested, his would be a paraphernalic disorder as far as the DSM-5 is concerned. But it sounds to me like this guy just didn't get caught because you can't make love to airwolf and Herbie legally. I guess you can't, you're right. Because those have got to be in like a museum or something, right? He's dancing along the line, unless he has a lot of money

and he's like, hey, I'll pay you a thousand dollars to look the other way while I get an hour with airwolf. Or he's the night watchman at the Hollywood Car and Air Space Museum. But even that, that would be technically illegal or at least he could get fired for that. So that would be a paraphernalic disorder then. This is all very interesting stuff.

It really is, but also I want to point this out. Like if you're starting to feel a little bit confused and it sounds like we're just kind of throwing stuff at the wall, welcome to the world of studying parapherias from in the field of psychology. Yeah, absolutely right. Should we take a break? Yeah.

All right, let's do that and we'll come back and never talk about airwolf again. ["The Nineties Call David Lasher and Christine Taylor"] On the podcast, Hey Dude, The Nineties Called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the nineties. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the nineties. Listen to Hey Dude, The Nineties Called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself,

what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast

or wherever you listen to podcasts. OK, so we're back and we're more confused than ever. I thought we started out really well. Yeah. Descended into genuine confusion. That's right, which is very easy to do because, like we said from the get go, the definitions change so often in what is acceptable

or not acceptable and immoral or not immoral is all a matter of opinion. So it's kind of hard to dive into this stuff. It really is. So that's why over time, the definition of paraffilia has kind of expanded and contracted. And the ones that tend to be called out in the DSM, which we'll get to in a minute, some of them

make total sense, like pedophilia being in there. That's like something that psychology should take a keen interest in addressing. Other ones don't make any sense, like transvestism, cross-dressing, where if you are into wearing women's clothes and you're a man and that is how you achieve sexual arousal, there's no problem with that. And it shouldn't be psychologized.

But then the field of psychology would say, well, well, well, well, there are people who are into cross-dressing and they can achieve sexual arousal without it. But they find this very distressing. It's running up against society's expectations of what it means to be a man. They are having trouble rectifying that. So we need to play that role, too.

So over time, as we were saying, paraffilias have been distinguished most recently, I think, in 2013 with the DSM-5 between just an atypical sexual interest and an atypical sexual interest that causes distress in the person or involves non-consenting people. That's right. But over the years, a lot of these terms

have changed in their meaning up until, jeez, up until the 21st century. 2003. People were using words like a sodomite or sodomizer, even though it sounds like something from the Bible, which it is. For sure. And anti-sodomy laws were on the books

until Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court said that these laws are not constitutional. That was an interesting case. There was a weapons disturbance reported at a private residence. Houston police were called. They entered the apartment of John Lawrence and saw him with another adult man engaging

in a private and consensual consensual. Well, you just killed two birds with one stone right there. That's right, Consensual Sex Act. And they were arrested for deviant sexual intercourse in violation of Texas statute that said basically two people of the same sex can engage in certain intimate sexual conduct. It was held up by the state court of appeals,

but then eventually overturned 6-3 by the US Supreme Court. And that was they were arrested in 2000. And the Supreme Court ruled in 2003. And when they ruled in 2003 against Texas, they said, you 13 other states that have sodomy laws on the books, they're null and void now. You just cannot outlaw people's consensual sexual behavior in the privacy of their homes.

You just can't do it. Well, yeah, but the way they did it was they said it violates their due process clause, the due process clause of the Constitution. Oh, how so? Well, I mean, if they're behind closed doors in private engaging in a practice, then to arrest them for doing something is a violation of their due process.

Like, you know what I mean? I don't. To me, it's more just like it kind of follows in that great American tradition of, if you're not hurting yourself or other people, what you do behind your own closed doors is fine with everybody else. We'll just look the other way.

Well, that is true. But they have to frame it, I think, under the guise of the Constitution. Yeah, but I just don't see how that has to do with due process. Because isn't due process being like you have the right to be defended by a competent attorney in a court of law in front of a jury of your peers? I don't know.

I mean, Anthony Kennedy wrote, their right to liberty under the due process clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. Well, I mean, I agree with Kennedy. I just don't quite understand where he's coming from. No, I hear you. Maybe one of our wonderful listeners

will write in and say, I'm a constitutional law professor. And here's what he meant. Maybe so. So it's a big deal, like you were saying, that we started calling paraphernalia as paraphernalia rather than sodomy laws. Because it's basically psychology saying, thanks a lot for this religion.

We're going to take the reins from here. And we're going to take it out of the realm of just religious moralization and put it into scientific study. And that was a big transition. We said earlier that laws against certain sexual acts have been on the books for thousands of years now. Some of the earliest they found were from 1,000 BCE,

3,000 years ago, in Assyria, the Roman Republic. And that was just kind of how it stood. The Bible legislated against things like bestiality, homosexuality, adultery. There's just always been kind of moral codes and consequences that society said, if you break this moral code as far as sex is concerned, we're going to bury you up to your neck

and stone you to death or something like that, right? But then in the 20th century, I think slightly before the 20th century, as psychology started to develop, one of the first things it said is like, this is right up our alley. We're going to take this over. And in 1904, an Austrian scientist named Friedrich

Solomon Kraus coined the term parapherias. And it started to kind of transition into the scientific study. Yeah, and there's another guy named John Mone, or Mone. I want to say Mone, because if he's a sexologist named John Mone, that it doesn't get any better than that. And apparently he's a really prominent researcher

of parapheria and he kind of brought it into the forefront as far as using that word. Yeah, and I mean, just because Friedrich Solomon Kraus coined it in 1904, doesn't mean that psychology adopted it. And it wasn't until 1980 that the DSM started using parapheria in place of sexual deviance, 1980. Wow. Yeah, so they've got a lot of catching up to do.

And what they're involved in right now is trying to figure out what the heck is going on and exactly where the boundaries are between what they're supposed to be studying and what's none of their business really. Yeah, and there's a couple of psychological manuals that are often looked to. And we talked a lot on the show about the DSM,

the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. We haven't talked as much about the international statistical classification of diseases. There's a good reason for that, Chuck, because neither one of us knew it existed. I didn't know it existed. And apparently here in the States, people default to the DSM a lot,

which is why we know much more about it, obviously. The ICD is published by the WHO, the World Health Organization. But they don't offer a definition even, a blanket definition of parapheria. So the DSM is sort of the default. And it's important that it's used because the DSM is used, I mean, this can determine whether or not you get custody of your kids

or like their real world ramifications. For sure. For having a parapheria. And do you say having a parapheria or engaging in parapheric acts? Probably both. But it's not just like we want to label people. It's like there are consequences,

whether illegal or not illegal. Someone could go into divorce court and say, you know what, my husband can only achieve orgasm in a high heel stiletto heel. And a judge might think that's perverse and deny custody. Right, yeah. So I mean, that's a big deal because if you think about it,

like psychology isn't getting together and saying, we're gonna create this book that outlines what's normal and acceptable for human beings. And you guys go use it to throw somebody in jail. That's not the point. They're doing it to try to help people who need help, right? That's right. But that doesn't mean that other people

aren't coming along and figuring out how to use that to put other people in jail or gain custody of their children. I mean, there's really no faster way to undermine someone's credibility or just cast aspersions on them. Is it aspersions or dispersions? Dispersions, I think.

Cast aspersions on them then to frame them as a sex pervert in court when you're talking about the custody of children, right? That's it. So psychology is figured out or psychiatry has figured out in the last few years, like it just doesn't operate in a vacuum. And it has to really pay attention

to what it publishes in this Bible of normalcy that is the DSM. And they're getting better at it, but they still have a long ways to go, but at least they're awake to this idea that, no, no, no, the stuff we say is normal, we have to word it just so because if we do it wrong, people are going to go to prison for a very long time.

Yeah, especially when they use- Who might not should be in prison necessarily. Yeah, especially when they use words like unusual and bizarre and official definitions because that's so subjective. And again, it's not a legal manual, so it's very tricky territory, but the words are really, really important. So they started out, they were,

I think in the first DSM, paraffilia was called sexual deviance and the definition was just forget about it. And then it evolved, it got better from there until the DSM three, where they said that a paraffilia said that bizarre imagery or acts were necessary for sexual excitement and that these imagery and acts were persistent,

involuntary, repetitive and involved. And this is a big deal because what's just gone is kind of the persistence or the intensity of it. And then now they're kind of getting into the meat of what makes a paraffilia. It involves a preference for the use of a non-human object, repetitive sexual activity with humans involving real or simulated suffering or humiliation.

SNM. Or repetitive sexual activity with non-consenting partners. Subway creeps. Right, or pedophiles or fraudorously subway creeps. So they really kind of hit it on the head, I think with the DSM three R, if you ask me, like they said, here's some things that are, we consider atypical and that some,

and that here's how they can be problematic. Yeah, I think calling it unusual and bizarre was sort of the problem with NDSM three. And is that not in four and five? So four definitely had a different definition. Are we still talking about Led Zeppelin albums? Yeah, exactly. That one said Zoso, it said recurrent intense

sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviors generally involving non-human objects, the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner. And there's a real preoccupation with BDSM among psychiatrists. Don't ever let a psychiatrist tell you otherwise because they're lying to your face. And then the third one is children

or other non-consenting persons that occur over a period of at least six months. So they dropped unusual and bizarre then. They did, which rightfully so. They also called out children specifically, I think kind of to add a little bit of legality to the whole thing and to kind of say like, this is a separate special case.

This is beyond just non-consenting. And then they added that it has to persist for at least six months. Yeah, that's interesting. Because up to six months is just a bad streak you're on. I guess so. I did, everywhere I looked though in other places too, outside the DSM, I did see where these predilections,

is that the right word? Sure. They are basically permanent. So it's not like it changes. So if you got a thing for the high heel shoe, you're probably always gonna have a thing for the high heel shoe. And in the same way, if you have a thing for children,

you're probably always going to have a thing for children, which is a big problem. And I was joking by the way that there's a, anything up to six months is just a bad streak. Especially when you're involved with, if you have a paraphernalia that involves a non-consenting person. Yeah, but I wonder why they said that for six months.

I mean, just a, I don't know. It seems like it may, maybe should just be for any amount of time. Yeah, I think they are, I think they're kind of moving into the right direction where, so in the DSM five, it's unclear whether the DSM five actually changed the definition or not.

This article says that it stayed the same. But what they did was they separated them out and said, okay, look, we recognize that there are, there are atypical sexual proclivities that don't harm anybody. They're just not typical, you know? Like not everybody has a thing for women's high-heeled shoe or the tailpipe of air wolf or something, you know?

Like not everyone does, but as long as you're not harming anybody and it's not having a negative effect on your life and you're not distressed by it, if you're out there living your best life, you know, wearing women's high-heeled shoes around your house and just loving every minute of it, like go with God, that's great, you know?

There's, that's fine. That's, that's, that's different. We're just going to call it a paraffilia. A paraffilic disorder is where it does cause distress or it does involve somebody else who doesn't want to be involved. And now, now this is what we should be paying attention to. And then, so people say, okay, that's great psychology.

You're going in the right direction here, but just get paraffilias out of there entirely. Like just, just don't even include those because what they warn against is the fact that it's in this DSM, this Bible of normalcy, the very fact that it's in there suggests that there's something weird about it and abnormal about it.

Psychiatry said as much by including it. Yeah, that's like a mental disorder of some kind. Right. And so even if you don't fit the criteria for a disorder diagnosis, a paraffilic disorder, if you say wear women's shoes around, even if you're enjoying it, you still are in the Bible of normalcy

called out as a weirdo. And then that kind of thing can be used against you in like a custody hearing. When it really shouldn't be, you're probably not going to be wearing your high heels in front of your kids because you're probably involved in sexy time. And if you are doing that in front of your kids,

you got a whole other disorder that needs to be addressed that really has little than nothing to do with high heels. That's right. So this is where this is the hornet's nest that there's currently paraffilias and the DSM and psychiatry in general. Yeah, for sure. Should we take another break?

Sure, man. All right, let's take a break and we're going to talk about why humans have paraffilias to begin with. Right for this. All right, let's take a break. To come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars,

friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to, hey, dude, the 90s called

on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS

because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one.

Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, so we're talking a lot about a lot of interesting things. Some people might think this is pretty out there, that someone would make love to a car. Sure, maybe, but I'll bet if you really got to know your neighbor, you'd be pretty surprised. Yeah, who was it that sang that song? No one knows what goes on behind closed doors?

I think you're thinking of that song about nobody knows what it's like to be the bad man behind blue eyes. That one. That's the who. That's the World Health Organization. That's John Fogarty. What? I'm pretty sure that's John Fogarty.

Behind blue eyes? I'll give you Bob Seeger as a maybe. It's the who. It's on quadripenia. OK. All right, so John Fogarty. What song were you talking about? What Fogarty song did you mean?

Oh, I didn't mean it. I'm so mad at you right now. So where was I even? OK, here's the deal. Why do we have paraffilias? You hear these things, it might sound very unusual to you, but there are still people that they didn't wake up one day and say, you know what, I'm going to try.

I'm just going to try making love to a car for kicks. Like this is something that is in someone's brain. Some might argue in their heart, depending on how you feel about stuff like that. It's not some choice that someone is making just to be different. They found that it's probably genetic and probably caused by environmental factors, some mixture of both.

They can't point to some gene and say, hey, here's the gene that causes an obsession with an object. And they can't say for sure what behaviors, like environmental factors and behaviors at home might lead to it or how much. I know for years and still, Freudian psychologists are bound and determined to say that if your mom spanked you, then you're going to want to be spanked sexually

later in life. Right, by a woman you hired who looks just like your mom. Right, but that is very reductive. And although that things that happen in your childhood may play out later on, you can't always say exactly how. Yeah, so you might ask, well, then what does psychology explain? Nothing. Basically, nothing about paraphernalia is understood,

how they develop. And there's so many competing voices, like you said, not really one of them has been proven wrong. They've all kind of got their support and their detractors and their different schools of thought, which is a really, it's a head scratcher in this day and age and nearly 2020 that we have virtually no idea how paraphernalia is formed. Like you said, are they genetic?

Who knows? Maybe, maybe we will find a gene one day, but what about nurture? I mean, we all develop sexually at a certain rate and at a certain time and under certain circumstances. So if you happen to get a late spanking right around the time that you're becoming pubescent, maybe you will kind of get a little turned on by spanking.

Or if you work at a shoe store. Right, sure. Yeah, or if you were raised in a very sexually repressive environment, well, maybe that sexuality has to come out somewhere and it's going to come out onto mom's shoes or something like that. You know, it's going to find a way, just like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park did.

So will budding sexuality in a young kid. It's going to find its way out. And maybe that's where paraphernalia has come from. They really have no idea, but they have done studies that actually don't clear anything up at all. Yeah, the studies are problematic for a couple of reasons. One is because a lot of times their studies conducted on criminal behaviors.

Yeah, almost all of it is. Because they're the ones that are in jail and they're the ones easiest to study. And it's hard to get someone that's not a criminal, just in regular society, to step forward and take a survey and be super honest about something that may be their deepest, darkest secret. Sure.

So it's really hard and problematic to study. And they have found a few things as far as the genetic component goes. There was one study of five families where they had confirmed pedophiles. And they found a lot of evidence that pedophilia can be multi-generational in some families. And then across single generations and others,

like three brothers are all pedophiles in a single family. And so you would say, well, you know, obviously, there's a genetic basis. But a behaviorist would say, well, maybe that it spans multiple generations because it was a learned behavior. Right. And it was carried on in that way.

So it doesn't clear up anything whatsoever. They usually find pedophilias between men ages of 15 and 25, although it can vary wildly, of course. Sure. And there are other reasons that people put forward that maybe they've generally found them in men and not women. How we study things with a male slant could be one. The fact that men may be more apt to act out,

maybe in a violent way, if that's their pedophilia, or brazen enough to get on the subway and do something like that. It's also way more socially acceptable for, say, an exhibitionist woman to get into film and be able to fulfill her exhibitionism that way. Whereas we don't usually film naked men very often. So the exhibitionist man needs to just walk around town,

Donald ducking it, porky-pigging it. That's what I mean. I'm sure the Disney Corporation is happy with either one of those definitions. Yeah. Yeah, his Warner Brothers in Disney. They're both mad at us now. They did find, in that same study,

some comorbidities with low intelligence and, interestingly, deafness and blindness. That is interesting. And then some other studies have found some predominance in left-handed people. Yeah. Again, none of that means anything at this point. It's just, here's a data point I turned up.

Right, from five families. It's not very good study. Right. That's sexologist John Money. He wrote in the 80s. He wrote a book called Love Maps. And I think 1986, that was really authoritative on parapherias.

And his thing was that it's learned behavior that comes at a certain point. And our love map, which combines love and lust in normal ways, gets vandalized in some way from some traumatic experience. Or it could also be in some fun experience. But the introduction of this additional data point in the development of this love map creates a parapheria that

has to be, I guess, corrected through something like cognitive behavioral therapy. Sometimes drugs are used, SSRIs are used sometimes. And then in certain cases, they'll use things like chemical castration, actually. Yeah, we talked about that in a few episodes, I feel like. Yeah, I don't remember which ones. Well, definitely the one with, what's his name,

the enigma machine. Alan Turing. With Alan Turing, because he was chemically castrated. Did we do an episode on the enigma machine? No, but we talked about him, and I believe, or was that just the TV show with the Turing test, with CAPTCHAs? I don't remember.

It's all such a fog right now. It really is. Here's something, if you overhear someone in conversation say, if you were sexually abused as a child, then statistically you're going to grow up and do that to someone else. Not true. I saw both.

Oh, really? I saw that it is true. I saw that was largely refuted now. Yeah, I saw something on, I found a site called smart.gov. It sounds made up, but it seems real. But it was about paraphernalia from a criminal justice point of view. And it said outright that it's not a guarantee in any way,

shape, or form. But that people who sexually abuse children or are sexually abused as children are more likely to sexually abuse children than people who weren't sexually abused as children. How interesting. Yeah, which is, I mean, that brings up a really important point here.

There's a big distinction between sexually abusing a child, raping a child, and being a pedophile. They're not necessarily one in the same. Well, what, in that a pedophile can be a pedophile and not act upon that instinct? That's one version. Another version is, if you're a child rapist, you might not really have much of a desire for children.

You just had a desire to rape somebody, and that child happened to be handy at the time. So there is, in two different ways, at least, there's a distinction between pedophilia and child rape. And this is where that whole legality thing kind of comes in. Oh, right, in that a perophilia is not a legal defense. So if you commit a sex crime, you can't go to court and say, I plead a perophiliac?

Yeah, which is kind of surprising, because if you kill somebody and you go and say, I have been diagnosed with schizophrenia, they're probably not going to give you the death sentence, where if you're diagnosed with a perophilic disorder, they're going to totally set that aside in considering how you should be punished. What's weird, though, Chuck, is since 1990,

the actual opposite has been allowed to develop, too, where if they convict you of something as a sexually violent predator, SVP, I believe is what it's called. Senior Vice President? Right, they can keep you in jail longer. They won't keep you in jail, but they'll say this person shows that they have signs

of being like, they have a perophilia toward child molestation, toward pedophilia. So they've served their sentence for attacking this child, but now under the law, we can actually commit them to like a mental asylum, a hospital, indefinitely, to keep them from harming somebody else. So that's one way that the DSM can be used to keep people in jail.

For crimes they haven't even committed, this is like the prevention of future crime, which as far as I know, is completely contravenes the spirit of the law in the United States, right? Yeah, I mean, that's the minority report stuff. Right, but that's what they've been doing using the DSM. And for a little while there, they were able to do it

because the DSM had the word or in the wrong place that basically said you qualify as the definition of somebody with a perophilic disorder. If you've committed a criminal act that has something to do with the perophilia, now that's part of the criteria, it's not its own criteria, but for a while it allowed these laws to basically say, yep, this person committed this criminal act,

by definition they have a perophilic disorder and people with perophilic disorders have basically a chronic ongoing illness, disorder that we need to keep them out of society indefinitely for. Yeah, I mean, I know that you have seen the great, great documentary, Capturing the Freedmen's from 2003.

And boy, talk about a documentary to really take you on a roller coaster of how you feel about things like this. I remember, I mean, I've only seen it the one time way back when, but it just rocked my world as far as letting you come to your own conclusions, which I think the best documentaries do. Yeah, I haven't seen it in a while either,

but I remember feeling the exact same way about it. Yeah, really interesting stuff. What else do we have in here? I mean, we talked about treating it with cognitive behavioral therapy. There's another line of treatment, if you, I mean, I guess it's still called treatment, but in that they're not trying to say, don't do this,

but hey, maybe we can take something that you clearly want to do that's problematic in your life and just construct your life in a way so it's not so problematic and you can still do that. And it's not causing you or anyone else any harm and make it a positive part of your sexual identity. Yeah, I would guess like, for example, something like cross-dressing.

I think it's a really good example of how somebody might feel distress about having that paraphernalia, where they could really benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy with a therapist who basically said, hey, you know, is your wife okay with this? Yeah, like, what's the problem here?

Is it really because you're disappointing your parents? Maybe that is it. Well, both of your parents are dead. They aren't paying attention anymore. If you really are enjoying yourself, like maybe just go with it. It doesn't matter what society says. That would be a really beneficial situation

for somebody who is experiencing some level of distress where it just came from the fact that they had an atypical sexual proclivity and they were distressed by the fact that it contravened or it was in contradiction with society's norms or expectations and that was it. That was the whole problem. Right, or if there's a real world situation

like it's budding up against your job or a social relationship, maybe construct it in a way where it doesn't do those things. And then it's just, you know, it's all good. Yeah, maybe save the enemas for after work. Like don't leave work to go get an enema. Unless your job is giving enemas. Then you're in hog heaven.

I guess so. That one, by the way, is called. Let me see if I can find it real quick. What, do you have a master list on your phone there? No, I just wrote that one down. Oh, yeah, right here, chlismophilia. Really? That is a paraphernalia regarding receiving enemas

as far as I can tell. So you would receive an enema in order to achieve completion? That's right. Interesting. Yeah. I feel like there's probably nothing that isn't defined. I think it's one of those things.

You know, what's that? Was it rule 42 where if it exists, there's porn about it? Yeah, I mean, the internet is in a good way has brought these people together because of many, many people for many, many years, felt very alone in this stuff. And we should also shout out

kind of loose friend of the show, Kevin Allison from the comedy troupe of the state on MTV many years ago. He has a great podcast called RISC, All Caps, R-I-S-K, exclamation point. And RISC doesn't necessarily deal with this. It deals with, it's just really good, people telling kind of risky stories about their life

that they normally wouldn't tell in a room full of people. But Kevin is also championed, champion fetishes in the people, in the paraffiliacs basically, consenting paraffiliacs who don't have a disorder and kind of helping them to be right with themselves and to be more accepting of others. It's really kind of interesting and cool.

Yeah, I think that's the way it should be. If somebody has a kink that you don't jibe with but that doesn't have anything to do with you, just remember it doesn't have anything to do with you and don't judge them. Yeah, Kevin's a really, really good dude. Yeah, that's cool. Way to go, Kevin.

You're doing God's work. So, oh, by the way, it's rule 44. Lowell corrected me. Thanks, Lowell. What did you say? Rule 42? Yeah, I think I said 42. No, no, 42, 44, whatever it takes.

I was thinking of the Hitman, Agent 42. Lowell's like, that's 46. Right. So, you got anything else? I got nothing else. All right, well, look for some more, more specialized episodes on paraffiliacs coming down the pike, but for now, that's paraffilia.

If you wanna know more about paraffilia, the internet is wide open for you. That's right. Since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. The governor is off, the internet is ready to be goosed. Yes. Goosed? I meant that as like an engine revving thing,

not, never mind. I know what you meant. Yeah, this is a short one. Hey guys, remember we had that Listener Mail between Jeremy and Kate? Yeah, yeah. From the MSG episode about the Chicago thing? Yep.

So, we have Maggie chiming in now. All these people are so kind, I love it. This is great. Your Listener Mail conversation between Jeremy and Kate from Thursday's MSG episode had me smiling. And after the mail from Veronica, I couldn't help but continue this trend. So to Veronica, I am also a stuff you should know Listener

and also a teacher in Chicago. And I was also at that show. Being a first year teacher is extremely challenging in so many different ways. So please be sure to make, to take time to take care of yourself and stay positive. I promise it gets easier. Good luck with the new job

and welcome to Chicago from Maggie. Beautiful, that was so nice Maggie. Nice people. We're basically gonna turn Listener Mail into a, what was that, what's that one section? Like I saw you somewhere. Oh, like were you the guy on the train who helped me through the door?

You were so hot, I wanna meet you. And bring your puppy to our date. That's right. Yes, well regardless, I think that was very sweet. Who was that from? Maggie. Maggie, that was a really cool email. And congratulations to you also for being a teacher.

You too are doing God's work. That's my new thing I'm gonna say. Maybe that'll be a t-shirt. I do God's work, I listen to stuff you should know. I love it. Okay, well if you wanna get in touch with us like Maggie did or if you wanna get in touch with another Listener apparently,

you can go on to stuffyoushouldknow.com and follow our social links. You can also send us an email to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com. Let's get started. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90's called, David Lacher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90's. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90's called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life.

Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.