followed by a hasty exit

Pervert can be a verb or a noun. When we pervert something, we alter it from its intended course - we distort or corrupt - while a pervert is the thing distorted or corrupted.

As a noun, pervert has both a strong and weak form. The weak is often self-applied. For example, I often refer to myself as a pervert, which is true. The strong form is usually screamed and followed by a hasty exit.

Some people think homosexuality is a perversion. Some people think masturbating to hentai is as well, or coprophilia.

The disgust is (for the most part) understandable, although probably best kept to yourself. That is, not everyone has to like what you like. They are free to find it distasteful. They are not free to discriminate.

But bigotry does not come from disgust. It comes from fear. People fear the perverted, but rarely because of the perversion. Rather, it comes from our implicit binary division of the world.

We each live at the center of a circle. Inside that circle is everything we find rational and reasonable. Outside that circle is everything else.

When someone admits to being aroused by human excrement, or animals, first there is disgust, then aversion, because if that person can indulge in such a thing, if they are actually capable of that, then they are outside the circle and who knows what else they might do?

It’s a cliché that we fear the unknown because it's a truism. And anything outside the circle is not just unknown, it's irrational, unpredictable. Hence bigots often see perverts as subhuman, something closer to a lion, where you're afraid because you're never quite sure what the beast will do.

Disgust also implies contamination and therefore contagion: corruption spread by contact. And then we're back to fear.

I am a pervert. That I am aroused by the genuinely obscene does not make me any less rational. I am no more likely to steal or commit murder or run around covered in peanut butter than you.

In fact, in my experience - and Jung’s - those who are aware of their demons, who acknowledge them, are in control. It is all you fools who pretend to have none that worry me.

Normal people are outside my circle.