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Yes, you're correct about all this. There is something qualitatively different about male sexual impulses (their "seriousness", and all the downstream effects thereof that you mention) that sets them apart from other basic biological drives.
I think this seriousness stems from the fact that a man's sexual impulses (and the fulfillment thereof) are closely tied to his sense of self-worth and self-actualization, in the same way that a career or other major life project might be. When he has sex with an attractive woman, he gets more than just the raw physical pleasure of the act: he gets a sense of holistic contentment, he feels that everything must actually be going quite swimmingly right now, he feels like he's exactly where he needs to be. Threatening the fulfillment of his sexual impulses is the same as threatening the fulfillment of his life project as a whole. This extends, albeit in a limited or distorted sense, even to fetishes that are shameful or harmful. The crossdresser might be ashamed of his crossdressing and try to hide it, but he still feels like he's expressing something vital by crossdressing, he's exploring an integral part of himself that might otherwise remain obscure. Asking him to give up his crossdressing is the same as asking him to give up part of his soul, even if it's a part of his soul that he's ambivalent about.
Now you might reasonably ask: can't you see, in a moment of sober reflection, that this is all a bit silly? Can't you see that there are plenty of other sources of meaning in life (friends and family, career, creative projects, etc) that obviate the need for this obsessive sexual drive? And the answer is, well... no. No matter how much I reflect on it, I can't disavow the importance that men place on sex and their particular sexual fetishes. Perhaps that's just the testosterone-induced delusion that I can never extricate myself from (it's a bit like saying "I've shown that love is just a chemical reaction, so now you can discard love as nothing but a useless illusion, yes?" -- the biology is whatever, but the feeling remains real regardless). But from a certain perspective, it also kind of just makes sense. Objectively speaking (not subjectively/psychologically), it's more difficult for men to reproduce than it is for women. Significantly more women than men throughout evolutionary history have reproduced. He's competing against an army of other men who are all offering large quantities of the same commodity (sperm cells) at very cheap rates. If he's able to enter into a normal and healthy (not talking about extreme fetishes here) sexual relationship with a woman, where she gives herself not just willingly but enthusiastically, then that is an accomplishment that he should objectively feel proud of.
Evolution had to instill men with a strong drive towards sexual competition (complete with that whole "all reward centers firing at once, total-soul-actualization" feeling) because otherwise they would be out-competed by other men. And the extreme fetishes that you bring up (necrophilia, self-mutilation, etc) are a result of this basic drive going haywire and becoming misdirected. The drive is, by necessity, strong enough and all-encompassing enough that its behavior becomes unpredictable.
It’s all a bit difficult to talk about because there are multiple types of sexual impulses (everything from “normal” relationships to extreme harmful fetishes) directed at different types of objects, and multiple levels of explanation (objective “marketplace” dynamics, biologically-mediated instincts, and the internal-phenomenological experience) all interacting with each other.
No worries! Those were my words, not yours. I really do think that men are crazy (for good and for ill).
On the one hand, a desire that extreme (plus the will to actually act on it) is foreign to my own experience, so in some sense I can only speculate. But on the other hand, I think I can say that, yes, I do get it. At least on a theoretical level. I could see a path where, if you kept turning up the dials on my currently existing sexuality, I could end up in a place like that. It's just that the vast majority of men don't have the dials turned up that high.
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