Denise passed along this Dan Savage column about a new book that, from the looks of it, suffers from Dawn Eden Syndrome: the tendency of an author to generalize from her own experience to make definitive declarations about what all women must be like — declarations that just happen to fit the thesis of her book.
Here’s the question:
Longtime reader with a vanilla question: What to do about differing libidos? We’re a straight couple together 20-plus years, and we’ve aged well. No weight gain, no radical changes in appearance. We are open and loving, and I am cognizant of her needs and feelings. Yesterday, I read an interview with Joan Sewell, author of I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido, and handed it to my wife and observed that this is the new ideal: women laughing at their male partners and shrugging their shoulders about women’s general lack of desire. My spouse can now point at this book and say, “You see, I’m normal, and so are all of my friends, ha ha ha, live with it…”
While I want sex daily, I get it maybe five to 20 times a year—and I am lucky compared to some straight married men! Where are the women you hear about who want sex constantly?
Not Giving Up
Savage’s reply is appropriately snarky:
I haven’t had a chance to read Ms. Sewell’s book, NGU, but I devoured Sandra Tsing Loh’s review of I’d Rather Eat Chocolate in the current Atlantic Monthly. (Loh’s book reviews are worth the price of a subscription.) And I’m saddened to report that, according to Sewell and Loh, there’s no such thing as a woman who wants sex constantly. They don’t exist—never did.
All that yammering about women with voracious sexual appetites during Sex And The City‘s long reign of terror? A cruel hoax. A figment of the straight-male imagination, a Big Lie picked up on and promoted by self-serving female “sexperts” eager to tell straight men what they wanted to hear. Women have naturally lower sex drives, Sewell writes. It’s a hormonal thing. Testosterone makes humans horny, men have lots more than women, so men are hornier—and all the Sex And The City repeats in the world aren’t going to change that.
Isn’t it funny how what “women” are like changes from book contract to book contract? Savage’s description of Loh’s review indicates that she’s bought into the premise of the book, that women are just hard-wired to not want sex very often and, in fact, would rather have chocolate.
Sounds like a Cathy cartoon come to life.
Loh even uses a lesbian couple’s pizza night as evidence that women, left to their own devices and free from the sexual demands of men, will choose carbs over sex.
Sigh. Could anything be more stereotypical?
Back to Savage and the snark:
So the jig is up, NGU. For a while, women with high libidos were normal, and women with low libidos were freakish. Now women with low libidos can hand their husbands Sewell’s book and rip open a bag of Doritos.
And French women don’t get fat! Well, except when they do. Uhh… he’s not that into you?
As Savage is quite aware, basing one’s idea of what’s “normal” on the latest thing coming out of Barnes & Noble is, well, kind of stupid. Because human beings are a lot more complex than all that, and no one theory is going to cover the sexual drives of all women or all men.
But maybe the reason that women’s libidos are so subject to fashionable theories is that there’s almost no way to know what really is “normal,” since women’s sexuality has been so controlled, constrained, shamed, driven underground, and, paradoxically, encouraged for public performance that a lot of women don’t really know what their baseline really is. But one thing that we do know (though Savage doesn’t seem to credit it) is that stress affects women’s ability to enjoy sex. And what’s a major source of stress?
But there’s a silver lining, NGU. Back when women with low libidos were regarded as abnormal—way back at the beginning of the month—it was fashionable to blame the man in a woman’s life for her lack of desire. For years, whenever I printed a letter from a guy who wasn’t getting any, or wasn’t getting much, mail would pour in from women insisting that he had to be doing something wrong.
I called them the “if only” letters: If only she didn’t have to do all the housework, she would want to have sex. If only he would talk with her about her day, she would want to have sex. If only she weren’t so exhausted from taking care of the kids, she would want to have sex. If only he didn’t ask for sex, she would want to have sex. Well now, thanks to Sewell, straight guys everywhere know that it doesn’t matter how much housework you do, or how sincerely interested you are in her day, or how much of the child care you take on: She still won’t want to fuck you. So leave the dishes in the sink, grab a beer, and go play a video game, guys. Your “if only” nightmares are over.
Some couples are truly mismatched in terms of their libidos, and Savage thinks that the one with the lower sex drive has to make a choice between monogamy and putting out — though he doesn’t limit “putting out” to vaginal or anal sex (he includes handjobs, blowjobs and watching your partner masturbate, which he advises the higher-libido partner to cheerfully accept). Which is, apparently, what Sewell herself has done in her marriage. I do wish Savage would give more consideration to stress-related causes of low libido, which has an awful lot to do with inequities in household responsibilities. But at least he recognizes that we are all different, and there is no blanket answer to the question of what women want.