Is it truly the other side of Desire

By Melissa Brenman

Daniel Bergner takes a closer look at four people's hidden desires in his book The Other Side of Desire. At first normal members of society look at these sexual deviations as detrimental to a functioning society, but some, not all of these sexual preferences are truly problematic to a person trying to live within mainstream society. The "fetishes" addressed by Bergner are a sexual attraction to feet, S-M practices, pedophilia, and a sexual attraction to amputees and other people with misshaped bodies.

In part one, entitles the phantom of the opera, Bergner takes a closer look at a man named Jacob Miller. He begins this chapter by expressing Jocob's love for Toronto, Canada. Jocob stated that "Toronto, he felt, was a place even for monsters, a city for men such as himself." This man had an unusual attraction to women's feet. According to Kinsey, Jacob wasn't a paraphiliac but rather had a paraphilia.

The human race consists of erotic "diversity" in many forms. Bergner here addresses the idea that a cure in the form of the transformation of desire might never be possible but a measure of peace between his desire and reality might be able too be reached. Jocob's attraction to women's feet is in no way a danger to society, but it is a bit off from the norms society has decided to embrace as sexy. It is just another way of objectifying women, some men are breast men, some are bottom men, some are feet men.

Part two, entitles the beacon, fallows a women named the Baroness. She is a woman who has a husband and a "vanilla" sex life but also lives another life as a dominatrix who obtains sexual pleasure through controlling other people. At first when I began reading this chapter I thought of the Baroness as a monster but then quickly realized she is actually more like a savior than anything else. This is a woman who degrades other people but in a sense gives them the freedom of submission, the freedom from having to make decisions for themselves. She is a constant presence in their lives and thus provides them an awkward type of stability in this unstable world that we live in.

I assumed that the people who sought after her help were pathetic human beings but then realized that these are actually well adjusted members of society who choose to obtain sexual satisfaction through the control of a dominatrix. There is not only a physical but also an emotional connection between the dominated and the dominatrix. There must be a sense of trust in order for this to work. The Baroness helps her servants by stripping them of their egos, returning them to an "abjection" stage in which they are almost infantile, where no boundaries are formed yet.

The Baroness also gave hope to many people. In one part of the chapter she addresses the fact that she sometimes have servants ave body deformations. These people worshiped her on a completely different level, not only because they wished to be dominated but because the baroness was one of the few people who didn't shy away from them as they walked down the street. She was "Willing to look at them. She not only looked into their eyes but also at their bodies and into their minds."She freed them and allowed them to be themselves, even if it was only for a few brief seconds before the rest of reality set in and they remembered their differences. For this reason alone I view the Baroness as a humanitarian  before a dominatrix.

Part three called the water's edge fallows a man named Roy and his pedophiliac tendencies. He viewed himself as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, one part good and the other part evil man lusting for little girls. He was admitted into a treatment program that was based on the idea of acknowledging your crime and then learning to deal with it and the development of self control. Roy realized that the desires he had outside of marriage were all deviant and couldn't been enacted upon.

Many males have been proven to have sexual attraction to both adult females and preadolescent females while women are mostly only attracted to adult males. Is this apart of the male brain or is it a deviant thought within only a few people then entitled pedophiles? The idea is expressed that at one point we were all pedophiles because we were attracted to people our own age as we were children. The theory is then that a select people don't develop and still remain attracted to the types of people they were first attracted to, children.

The last part, entitled the devotee, addresses the sexual attraction that some people have for amputees and other types of mis-formed people. Many amputees believe that they will no longer be sexually desired since they lost a limb or two, but in reality there is a group of men who are specifically attracted to these types of women. Then the question comes into play: do these men actually love these women who are missing limbs or do they just love their deformed bodies?

There is an entire section of pornography directed just at women with deformations. It allows these women to still feel desirable and comfortable within their own bodies. Men attracted to these women are attracted not only to their lack of limbs but also to the admiration they feel for the way these women coped with their differences. Many men believe the vagina is more "vigorous" in crippled women. Women with abnormalities need to be loved too, so I really see this particular fetish as beneficial rather than detrimental to society.

In all this book took a great look at several fetishes which are looked over by main stream society. The only one I find to be detrimental to the functioning of society is the pedophilia, but the other fetishes I believe should be embraced by society as only a few of the many differences between human beings as a whole.