How and why do you believe deviant labels vary across time?

Question

How and why do you believe deviant labels vary across time?

Answer 1

there is a phrase "defining deviancy down."  I believe that it means that what used to be considered deviant is not considered normal.  This will happen in a free society and people become free to choose how they want to live.  But it's a boom or bust sort of thing.  After we liberate ourselves from the previous norm we will do something excessive and a backlash with it's attendant call for a return to normalcy will take place.  In the mean time, even if this "return to normalcy" does take places, so of the erstwhile perversions will have come institutionalized and will be therefore impossible to dislodge.  

To site some less controversial examples consider life long employment  or the way we used to dress when going to the beach.   Short of the reinstitution of slavery or indentured servitude I can not see the promise of one job at one company in one geographic location returning in the near future.  Even if telecommuting every really got off the ground, I would think that people still would stay with one company for life.

And as for beach wear, while there are regional or temporary trends and fads that cover more skin, all it takes is one hottie in a thong to make us for that one good day when we saw here over the good old days when your great great grandma was afraid to show her ankle.

Answer 2

Deviant labels vary across time thanks to what is called "Linguistic Drift". Over time, words and their meanings shift so that both their implications as well as their pronunciations increasingly differ from one generation to another.  It's a result of the changing environment we face and the influence of our need to explain different phenomena from people in the past as well as changing values/tastes.