Canadians are kinky and shrinks say that is abnormal.

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Lots of ordinary people are into sex with a dash of voyeurism, fetishism and masochism - all habits classified as deviant in the manual doctors use to diagnose mental health disorders, a survey of Quebec residents suggests.

Researchers focused on what the manual calls paraphilic disorders - sexual behaviors labeled as abnormal, illegal or inducing suffering or impairment - and so-called normophilic, or typical, activities.

Most people have probably never heard of the guidebook in question, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

But this book that once called homosexuality a deviant act can still help create and reinforce negative stereotypes for perfectly healthy sexual behavior, said lead study author Christian Joyal, a psychology researcher at the University of Quebec Trois-Rivieres.

"The adjective `abnormal' is judgmental," Joyal said by email. "I don't think it should appear in a psychiatry manual."

"Paraphilic disorders are rare because people who practice kinky or atypical sex are virtually all happy with it," Joyal added.

Researchers surveyed 1,040 adults in Quebec to see how often they desired or practiced eight sexual behaviors defined as outside the norm in the manual - fetishizing objects, wearing clothes from the opposite sex, spying on strangers, displaying genitals to unsuspecting strangers, rubbing against a stranger, pedophilia, masochism and sadism.

Overall, almost half of the respondents expressed interest in at least one of these eight sexual behaviors that the manual labels as deviant, researchers reported in the Journal of Sexual Research.

Roughly one third of the people surveyed said they had experienced one of these behaviors at least once, the survey found.

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