Words that are used, as pervert is, to marginalize people and stigmatize them tend to lose that power when adopted. Witness "queer" in the TBGL community, or "freak" in the counter-culture. Many of the people I know in the sex positive community feel the same way about "pervert." The word intended to attack people can be turned into positive thing, or at the very least, we can take the sting out of it. And how exactly is this word used? It is used to define behavior that is not in keeping with the mainstream Christian principals of repression and depravation.
In short, we live in a culture that has a Big Time tendency to demonize sex. And I strongly feel that there needs to be a slow, gradual shift away from that. I understand you can't force it on anybody and I do not want to force it on anybody. But, like many of the people on this board, I have never been good at repressing myself, and I had a hard time, for a long time, accepting that in myself, and in others - much less, being accepted for it.
Among ourselves, we don't even like the "p" word much and think of what we are doing as Responsible Hedonism. We think that RH is a transformational experience for a lot of people (and fully understand that its not for everyone either). And I don't even like the use of the word 'responsible' in there, preferring 'sustainable.' Its not a burn-out deal, its being in touch with the life-giving forces in the universe, and beyond that, being very in touch with what I think is about one of the most central unChristian principals of all, that every desire of your body is holy, sacred, and acting on that is about as close as your going to come to divine.
This is hedonism that doesn't create drama (though is very dramatic) and isn't about excess, but is very strictly focused on pleasure, as both a means and an end. And to the degree that such behavior is thought of as a perversion in a culture where sensual depravation is seen as saintly, well then I'm happy to run with the sinners. And I know I'm not alone. The shortened version - the happy version of 'pervert' is 'pervy' and you will get about 770K google hits on that word. So I'm not alone.