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Perversity Think Tank
Perversity Think Tank attempts to formulate a philosophical conception of sexual perversion. In this it is the black mirror of one of the most famous texts in the history of philosophy. Plato's Symposium sought to answer a simple What is love? Perversity Think Tank begins from an equally simple but darker What is perversity? Necrophilia, pedophilia, bestiality, feederism, voyeurism, fetishism -- how is it possible to abstract a single category of sexual behavior from so many unusual and often sordid proclivities? What does a flasher or a groper have in common with, say, the willing "victim" who undertook with a cannibal to cook and eat his own genitalia? Perversity Think Tank dissects a wealth of examples drawn from literature, art, individual experience, and real-world incidents reported on the blog PervScan.com. However, far from being a "book of the blog," Perversity Think Tank utilizes PervScan the way Freud did his case histories. It serves as a research laboratory for the entirely new vision of perversion presented in the book. And whereas a blog is typically improvisational in tone, like a lab note, Perversity Think Tank is a taut, deeply considered analysis. Like Supervert's previous works, it makes full use of an arsenal of techniques -- non-linearity, juxataposition, erasure -- derived from vanguard aesthetics. The result is not only a novel approach to perversion but a new sort of work that is simultaneously philosophy, literature, and heck knows.
118 pages, Paperback
First published February 14, 2010
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333 people want to read
About the author
Supervert
10 books179 followersSupervert is an alias — a nom de plume — a moniker for an individual — a corporation — a brand name. Supervert offers you a unique combination of intellect and deviance. Perversity for your brain. Vanguard aesthetics, novel pathologies.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 19, 2010
I have a pretty serious book crush on Supervert. Every now and then you come across an author who seems very much like he or she is on your wavelength, whose words seem like they could have come out of your own brain. Supervert is one of those authors for me. I felt a great amount of kinship reading a few of the stories in Necrophilia Variations (and yeah, when you say that, when you admit a book with this particular title spoke to you directly, you are making a certain statement about yourself and now that I am officially a harmless, middle-aged woman, I feel I am safe making any sort of admission I want). I found myself nodding a lot when reading Perversity Think Tank as the book tried to answer the question of “What is Perversity?”
If I didn’t know this before reading the book, I now understand that defining perversity can be very much akin to holding mercury but Supervert manages to nail down some interesting perspectives on the topic. Mostly, I walked away knowing what perversity isn’t, while marveling that there is another human being on the planet who had thought about the complete narcissism that is involved on reproductive incest, which I will discuss in a moment. You can read my entire review here.
If I didn’t know this before reading the book, I now understand that defining perversity can be very much akin to holding mercury but Supervert manages to nail down some interesting perspectives on the topic. Mostly, I walked away knowing what perversity isn’t, while marveling that there is another human being on the planet who had thought about the complete narcissism that is involved on reproductive incest, which I will discuss in a moment. You can read my entire review here.
February 14, 2021
From 2003 to 2010 Supervert ran Pervscan.com, a site dedicated to the analysis of sexual perversion. Severeal examples of deviant behaviour were documented and 'rationalised' through a careful, multi-disciplinary approach. Nothing was to be held back: cheap pornography, literature, philosophy, anthropology were means for Supervert to look into the facts beyond all sorts of moral judgment. Thus Supervert got engaged in an intellectual inquiry on the nature of sexual perversion as such, aiming to point out the basic difference between the demented bestiality of the brute and what is indeed deviant though not necessarily criminal. Perversion is less an abomination than an intrinsic tendency of socially accepted sexuality, something we shape with our own hands and in our own image.
What is 'normal', though?
Supervert doesn't provide any ultimate answer. "Perversity Think Tank" is an important achievement precisely because it deals with questions, not with answers: it's less thought-imposing than thought-provoking. It's a serious attempt to analyse rather than establish the difference between a socially acceptable attitude toward sex and a deviant one.
Sade, Sartre, Deleuze, Kant, Nietzsche, Saint Paul, Schopenhauer, Freud are among the intellectuals he quotes and refers to, along with artists, filmmakers, photographers whose work got involved with the controversial subject of abnormal eroticism.
We're all in an uncomfortable position with regards to our own sexuality, stuck between what we are and what we're taught.
"What is morality? When you think of being subject to it, you have a sense of being pushed and pulled like a man in a windstorm. Sometimes you're in the right, the wind is at your back. Sometimes you're in the wrong, the wind is on your face. Other times you're not sure which way the wind is blowing, you simply feel the effects of moral wind shear."
The only way out is therefore a cold-blooded approach to a matter each of is familiar with - in his own way, that is. None of us is a stranger in the land of perversion: Supervert's work opens a new track in this inner territory, a path that - hopefully - will take us a step forward toward self-consciousness.
Perversion is a deliberate act, not a compulsion. A serial raper is a mentally ill criminal, not a pervert. Perversion is not necessarily violent or disgusting: it can even be totally unrelated to all sorts of intercourse, morphing into self-deprivation of sex:
"There are little punctures in sexuality, black holes, and it is possible to venture into these. You can escape from sexuality by plunging into perversion."
The all-pervading pornography of our era seems to have awakened any sort of latent desires, to the point of narcotising them by overfeeding and codification. Perversion might well be an escape and a means to reshape sexuality.
However, the pervert is not a rebel. He's hardly interested in changing the moral values of society, precisely because the confinement they impose triggers his kink and justifies his restless quests:
"Even in the most hideous examples of perversion, is there not a spark of creativity, a sort of art, a vision of how sex could be?"
This book leaves the reader with lots of questions and very few answers. But then again, Supervert is a thinker, not a guru; he's more a philosopher than a Messiah and he does not in the least forward a vision of depravity as the freedom to harm or humiliate an unwilling subject:
"If you can extract yourself from your own solipsism, you'll see that the moral boundary of your perveme coincides with the faces, arms, crotches of other people."
In his own words, his aim is "to tempt you with the possibility of a truth", to point out a new direction of thought; a modern philosophy of perversion, seen as one of the drivers of human behaviour.
Perhaps the best way to understand Supervert's work is to look at the images. There's plenty of pictures in this book... we just can't see them. We see nothing at all. They're black spaces, only the captions tell us about the subject. We can google them, check them out, but we can also look at those black holes and wait for our mind to fill the visual gap with its own images of perversion - our personal 'Perversity Think Tank'.
What is 'normal', though?
Supervert doesn't provide any ultimate answer. "Perversity Think Tank" is an important achievement precisely because it deals with questions, not with answers: it's less thought-imposing than thought-provoking. It's a serious attempt to analyse rather than establish the difference between a socially acceptable attitude toward sex and a deviant one.
Sade, Sartre, Deleuze, Kant, Nietzsche, Saint Paul, Schopenhauer, Freud are among the intellectuals he quotes and refers to, along with artists, filmmakers, photographers whose work got involved with the controversial subject of abnormal eroticism.
We're all in an uncomfortable position with regards to our own sexuality, stuck between what we are and what we're taught.
"What is morality? When you think of being subject to it, you have a sense of being pushed and pulled like a man in a windstorm. Sometimes you're in the right, the wind is at your back. Sometimes you're in the wrong, the wind is on your face. Other times you're not sure which way the wind is blowing, you simply feel the effects of moral wind shear."
The only way out is therefore a cold-blooded approach to a matter each of is familiar with - in his own way, that is. None of us is a stranger in the land of perversion: Supervert's work opens a new track in this inner territory, a path that - hopefully - will take us a step forward toward self-consciousness.
Perversion is a deliberate act, not a compulsion. A serial raper is a mentally ill criminal, not a pervert. Perversion is not necessarily violent or disgusting: it can even be totally unrelated to all sorts of intercourse, morphing into self-deprivation of sex:
"There are little punctures in sexuality, black holes, and it is possible to venture into these. You can escape from sexuality by plunging into perversion."
The all-pervading pornography of our era seems to have awakened any sort of latent desires, to the point of narcotising them by overfeeding and codification. Perversion might well be an escape and a means to reshape sexuality.
However, the pervert is not a rebel. He's hardly interested in changing the moral values of society, precisely because the confinement they impose triggers his kink and justifies his restless quests:
"Even in the most hideous examples of perversion, is there not a spark of creativity, a sort of art, a vision of how sex could be?"
This book leaves the reader with lots of questions and very few answers. But then again, Supervert is a thinker, not a guru; he's more a philosopher than a Messiah and he does not in the least forward a vision of depravity as the freedom to harm or humiliate an unwilling subject:
"If you can extract yourself from your own solipsism, you'll see that the moral boundary of your perveme coincides with the faces, arms, crotches of other people."
In his own words, his aim is "to tempt you with the possibility of a truth", to point out a new direction of thought; a modern philosophy of perversion, seen as one of the drivers of human behaviour.
Perhaps the best way to understand Supervert's work is to look at the images. There's plenty of pictures in this book... we just can't see them. We see nothing at all. They're black spaces, only the captions tell us about the subject. We can google them, check them out, but we can also look at those black holes and wait for our mind to fill the visual gap with its own images of perversion - our personal 'Perversity Think Tank'.
April 17, 2024
An inconclusive but worthwhile attempt at conceptualizing sexual deviance. At most, it’s a philosophic manifesto for sexual depravity; a metaphysics of perversity, if you will. At the very least, it scratches that itch of intellectualizing your kinks.
January 29, 2023
Sex is always a relevant topic, weirdness is exciting, so how about weird sex? Supervert offers his philoso-poetic analysis of various paraphilias and is trying to articulate the concept of "perversity" as a whole (mainly via the works of Marquis de Sade, but also Baudelaire, Huysmans, etc.). The book's counter-cultural slant occasionally leaks beyond mere sex, reaching out into a network of implicitly pro-individualistic topics such as freedom of information. But on the negative side, Supervert often seems more satisfied with his own rationale for a kink rather than exploring its veracity - and the end result is clearly more akin to pulp entertainment rather than a second Psychopathia Sexualis, mere mental (and maybe even otherwise) masturbation, albeit on a catchy tune. Occasionally this spurs him to such weird and disagreeable conclusions as that rape is some libidinal status quo of the male only curbed by his conscience, merely hinging on the old cliché that "animals do it". (the fact that animals also have their mating rituals is somehow not brought up)
This kind of purely analytical perspective on sex isn't easy to come by, so I believe that he should be spared some leniency though. He isn't afraid to voice such provocative conclusions and that's a big part of the book's strength. There are enough solid pearls of wisdom in here to continually pique one's interest, and the fresh lateral perspective on a familiar subject I ultimately found worth struggling through the writer's logical "kinks" for - for example, the book's angle on censorship being paradoxically provocative via engaging one's imagination is, while not really new, quite intriguing and applies to so much more in life than just vintage pornography.
"Perversity is when you understand the reasons for not doing a thing, then you do it anyway."
"Perversity can be an instrument in the quest for self-knowledge, a protocol for performing experiments in selfhood. However, rather than allow you to wallow in quiet self-contemplation, perversity hurls you into the unknown, takes you somewhere new, puts you to the test. It can be a philosophy, a weird existentialism that, in contrast to Sartre’s emphasis on taking responsibility for your life, posits the irresponsible act as a venue of self-knowledge."
This kind of purely analytical perspective on sex isn't easy to come by, so I believe that he should be spared some leniency though. He isn't afraid to voice such provocative conclusions and that's a big part of the book's strength. There are enough solid pearls of wisdom in here to continually pique one's interest, and the fresh lateral perspective on a familiar subject I ultimately found worth struggling through the writer's logical "kinks" for - for example, the book's angle on censorship being paradoxically provocative via engaging one's imagination is, while not really new, quite intriguing and applies to so much more in life than just vintage pornography.
"Perversity is when you understand the reasons for not doing a thing, then you do it anyway."
"Perversity can be an instrument in the quest for self-knowledge, a protocol for performing experiments in selfhood. However, rather than allow you to wallow in quiet self-contemplation, perversity hurls you into the unknown, takes you somewhere new, puts you to the test. It can be a philosophy, a weird existentialism that, in contrast to Sartre’s emphasis on taking responsibility for your life, posits the irresponsible act as a venue of self-knowledge."
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October 4, 2021(currently going through it, but I feel like this can also relate to what's to come. I'll wander a lot in this review)
From what I've gathered, this has some interesting insights on human behaviour and I really like the author's tone and the way he refers to some amazing deviations from the conventional views of interpersonal interactions (may it be sexuality or a pure ego feast).
The thing is: these are amazing and interesting for their entertainment value and analysis, but obviously not desirable behaviors, even if people like to romanticize them in an anarchist manner to prove themselves to be adventurous, interesting, brave, anti-convention, you name it.
While certain acts and thoughts have different receptions according to time and social setting, people shouldn't overuse that argument.
I can't help but find some of these cases just laughably dumb, "teen" in a way and in need of therapy and study.
People can have a very jolly evening embracing some old-fashioned conventions. There is absolutely no need to subvert expectations all the time with spanking fantasies and other sadistic little thingies. Degradation is devaluation (of course) and most likely results from trauma. This is the opposite of laughable and should be seen through a prism of rejection of such behaviors, with the help of therapy and self-troubles cleansing. What's childish (absolutely no worries in using "child" while talking about this; it fits the essay's theme) is the act of one's absorption by a social state that's soaked in attention seeking and apparently the most prized award goes to whomever says "choke me" the most times or any other manifestation of stupidity.
Well, other stories in this are just fucked up, but the fact that some people are just blobs of malfunctioning meat with legs and a (unfortunately) social status isn't news to me.
Anyway, great read so far.
----
"Nowadays everybody wants to be a little bit different, a touch radical, slightly perverted."
Exactly. This. The good ol' race to see who is THE outlier, under the illusion that being that way is interesting by itself. Consequently and quite paradoxically, it ends up being a pursuit for attention.
From what I've gathered, this has some interesting insights on human behaviour and I really like the author's tone and the way he refers to some amazing deviations from the conventional views of interpersonal interactions (may it be sexuality or a pure ego feast).
The thing is: these are amazing and interesting for their entertainment value and analysis, but obviously not desirable behaviors, even if people like to romanticize them in an anarchist manner to prove themselves to be adventurous, interesting, brave, anti-convention, you name it.
While certain acts and thoughts have different receptions according to time and social setting, people shouldn't overuse that argument.
I can't help but find some of these cases just laughably dumb, "teen" in a way and in need of therapy and study.
People can have a very jolly evening embracing some old-fashioned conventions. There is absolutely no need to subvert expectations all the time with spanking fantasies and other sadistic little thingies. Degradation is devaluation (of course) and most likely results from trauma. This is the opposite of laughable and should be seen through a prism of rejection of such behaviors, with the help of therapy and self-troubles cleansing. What's childish (absolutely no worries in using "child" while talking about this; it fits the essay's theme) is the act of one's absorption by a social state that's soaked in attention seeking and apparently the most prized award goes to whomever says "choke me" the most times or any other manifestation of stupidity.
Well, other stories in this are just fucked up, but the fact that some people are just blobs of malfunctioning meat with legs and a (unfortunately) social status isn't news to me.
Anyway, great read so far.
----
"Nowadays everybody wants to be a little bit different, a touch radical, slightly perverted."
Exactly. This. The good ol' race to see who is THE outlier, under the illusion that being that way is interesting by itself. Consequently and quite paradoxically, it ends up being a pursuit for attention.
January 8, 2021
Incredible and thought-provoking work, I read it once a year.
January 1, 2026
The pervert is stubbornly only a ‘He’ here.
...But he doesn’t care or, more probably, he likes the fact that he’s in the wrong. Why? Because being in the wrong does not prevent him from doing what he does...
Women occupy a lot of space, but only as the objects of perversion. The few ones that do get to share their own desires are the author’s girlfriends — one mentions having sex in a hearse:
A girlfriend once had a contest with her gal pals. They wanted to see who could have sex in the weirdest place.
another one claims to have practised zoophilia:
She had had sex with a llama, she swore. It was obviously a lie. I couldn’t imagine how she, a city girl, would have had the opportunity to experiment sexually with a pack animal normally found in the Andes. It was a wonderful lie, though, and like the McDonald’s story it expressed a keen intuition about the nature of a perverse act. A llama — what could be more novel?
and with the second one it seems that it is hardly about her, it just loops back to his perspective — she probably didn’t even do it, she is saying it to him in order to spark something in their relationship.
There is another girlfriend who makes an appearance because she was sexually traumatised, but that is even further removed from “women expressing their own perversions”. And another one who was so normal that it was unusual.
And if women are at least talked about, queerness is being mentioned offhandedly only in a ‘it used to be a sort of perversion, but now it is being normalised so it no longer has the same flare to it’ (i may be paraphrasing heavily here).
It’s not that i find this offensive, i find this to be boring. It’s a man’s world, i get it, but men are also awfully unimaginative with their fetishes. Almost all of them can be categorised into:
[1] being awful to women or being violent in a general direction of a living being
[2] being blandly masochistic
[3] liking anal sex a bit too much, and refusing to be normal about it
[4] actually being creative about sex
There’s a quote from the book that i actually really like:
Perversion is sex mixed up with vision and invention. Perversion is creative, which is perhaps why artists are often as avant-garde in their behavior as in their work. Perversion can also be destructive, soul-killing, homicidal, evil — but even in the most hideous examples of perversion, is there not a spark of creativity, a sort of art, a vision of how sex could be?
It is as though perversion inserts those little black bars into the sex act itself: let me block out your cunt, free myself from its despotic grip on my libido, explore, innovate, let’s try something new...
It sums up my own opinion on perversions neatly, as well as my reasons for finding this topic interesting. Which is why i am all the more frustrated that the author, despite taking up the role of a kind of scholar of perversions doesn’t find perspectives of anyone who isn’t a heterosexual cis (and likely white) man to be deserving more interest than a passing glance. It’s a terribly lopsided book.
...But he doesn’t care or, more probably, he likes the fact that he’s in the wrong. Why? Because being in the wrong does not prevent him from doing what he does...
Women occupy a lot of space, but only as the objects of perversion. The few ones that do get to share their own desires are the author’s girlfriends — one mentions having sex in a hearse:
A girlfriend once had a contest with her gal pals. They wanted to see who could have sex in the weirdest place.
another one claims to have practised zoophilia:
She had had sex with a llama, she swore. It was obviously a lie. I couldn’t imagine how she, a city girl, would have had the opportunity to experiment sexually with a pack animal normally found in the Andes. It was a wonderful lie, though, and like the McDonald’s story it expressed a keen intuition about the nature of a perverse act. A llama — what could be more novel?
and with the second one it seems that it is hardly about her, it just loops back to his perspective — she probably didn’t even do it, she is saying it to him in order to spark something in their relationship.
There is another girlfriend who makes an appearance because she was sexually traumatised, but that is even further removed from “women expressing their own perversions”. And another one who was so normal that it was unusual.
And if women are at least talked about, queerness is being mentioned offhandedly only in a ‘it used to be a sort of perversion, but now it is being normalised so it no longer has the same flare to it’ (i may be paraphrasing heavily here).
It’s not that i find this offensive, i find this to be boring. It’s a man’s world, i get it, but men are also awfully unimaginative with their fetishes. Almost all of them can be categorised into:
[1] being awful to women or being violent in a general direction of a living being
[2] being blandly masochistic
[3] liking anal sex a bit too much, and refusing to be normal about it
[4] actually being creative about sex
There’s a quote from the book that i actually really like:
Perversion is sex mixed up with vision and invention. Perversion is creative, which is perhaps why artists are often as avant-garde in their behavior as in their work. Perversion can also be destructive, soul-killing, homicidal, evil — but even in the most hideous examples of perversion, is there not a spark of creativity, a sort of art, a vision of how sex could be?
It is as though perversion inserts those little black bars into the sex act itself: let me block out your cunt, free myself from its despotic grip on my libido, explore, innovate, let’s try something new...
It sums up my own opinion on perversions neatly, as well as my reasons for finding this topic interesting. Which is why i am all the more frustrated that the author, despite taking up the role of a kind of scholar of perversions doesn’t find perspectives of anyone who isn’t a heterosexual cis (and likely white) man to be deserving more interest than a passing glance. It’s a terribly lopsided book.
July 22, 2021
What a thoroughly objective analysis of Perversity.
Supervert is like a precise plastic surgeon that peels the layers of the skin and with every layer, you get to the bottom of reality. This is a very heavy read as it relies on a lot of previous literature from De Sade to Freud to Nietzche. This book will take its toll on you in another way too and that is the way in which it delves into candid discussions about kinks/perversions and the truly fucked-up nature of what transpires within the realm of perversity.
A definitive, scholarly work on the subject!
Supervert is like a precise plastic surgeon that peels the layers of the skin and with every layer, you get to the bottom of reality. This is a very heavy read as it relies on a lot of previous literature from De Sade to Freud to Nietzche. This book will take its toll on you in another way too and that is the way in which it delves into candid discussions about kinks/perversions and the truly fucked-up nature of what transpires within the realm of perversity.
A definitive, scholarly work on the subject!
July 4, 2025
The book maintains the graph of confusion that is felt through questions which led to another set of questions and also questions within our mind. The general definition of perversity is shattered deliberately through language and literary examples. Perversity Think Tank is an essay which beholds the opposite dimension of society.
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December 5, 2020😳
March 18, 2013
I wanted to rate this 3.5 stars, but what can you do? This book forces the reader to think abou the philosphy of perversity. What it is, what it means, how it changes, etc, etc. The author doesn't really offer any clear cut answer, but the book will get you thinking. I did have an issue with the set up. There is bold text and not bold text so I would suggest reading one part and then going back and reading the other rather than try and go through both at the same time as I did. The author places a lot of paintings/art in the book one has to later go and look in order to see. This is to illustrate points he was trying to make in the book (he even mentions at the end he had no intention of placing the art in the book, therefore making sure if you wanted to see it you'd have to look it up)which I'll check out later. This is a fairly academic read and uses a lot of philosphy jargon the casual reader may not be familar with. Final thoughts: a good read that offers unique (one might say perversely inspired) insights into human behavior.
October 15, 2012
The only thing this book did was leave me with more questions. But maybe that was his point. Never before did I stop and think about what perversion actually is. Never did I think about longevity and it's effects on our sexual behavior. Never did I realize that what's considered perverse tends to change ( oral sex, homosexuality and having sex in positions other than the missionary position were considered perverted at one point too). What makes something perverse? What makes someone want to perform perverse acts? Questions questions questions. If this read makes you think as much as it made me think, the book is doing it's job
March 21, 2013
FULL REVIEW
Perversity Think Tank is not for everyone. If frank discussions of incest, rape, pedophilia and bestiality are beyond the pale for you, it's best you skip it. For everyone else, I can not recommend this book enough. It is fascinating, entertaining and an all around great read. I've purchased Supervert's other two books, and I very much look forward to reading them.
Perversity Think Tank is not for everyone. If frank discussions of incest, rape, pedophilia and bestiality are beyond the pale for you, it's best you skip it. For everyone else, I can not recommend this book enough. It is fascinating, entertaining and an all around great read. I've purchased Supervert's other two books, and I very much look forward to reading them.
March 7, 2015
"I did not want to convince you of any truth. That is the job of propaganda. What I wanted was to tempt you with the possibility of a truth. This would set you thinking [...]"
I think that's the best way of doing it, especially with such a topic... Extremely well written, intelligent and interesting!
I think that's the best way of doing it, especially with such a topic... Extremely well written, intelligent and interesting!
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July 8, 2016Wow!!! Quite dark ,fucked up and interesting
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews