Sex is natural, generally, and many people feel that sex is, indeed, fun (the specific circumstances under which it is best are for another day). “Fun,” however, isn’t the same as “always top priority for everybody.”
This isn’t a problem per se. Unless it is; in other words, when there’s a woman involved. Researchers are working feverishly on treatment for female sexual dysfunction. Progress is said to be slow because the condition is so complex.
Of course, to simultaneously affect 12% of the female population and 44% of the female population, it would have to be.
The 44% is the number of women with “low desire.” The 12% is the number of women bothered by low desire. Since “low” is obvously subjective, normally you would expect a “low libido” to be so low as to bother the person with this condition, but evidently not always. There’s a brass libido in a lab somewhere that all sex drives are measured against, I suppose.
An interesting thing about this is that when a woman is less interested in sex than her male partner, she’s considered to be the one with the problem, but when a man is less interested in sex than his female partner . . . she’s still the one with the problem, as in the demeaning term “nymphomaniac” (Carol Groneman‘s excellent book Nymphomania details the horrors visited on women in the name of “diagnosing” and “treating” a sex drive) and jokes about new brides and all. I can’t help but wonder what happens with mismatched same-sex couples, when one partner can’t whine about the other being all female and stuff.
What I suspect happens is they either work it out or split up, helped by the lack of any sort of expectation that one partner, and only she, needs to make whatever changes are necessary. That’s because it turns out “normal” actually covers quite a wide range, and it’s possible for two normal people to be hideously mismatched, and then each meets a normal person with whom he or she is quite well matched.
Like with any other emotional, a sex drive at or near one end or the other of the bell curve is only a problem if, well, it’s a problem. Being different from one’s partner is no reason to take a pill.
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December 12, 2008 at 7:55 pm
marit
Please don’t forget that sexual dysfunction can include dysparunia (pain with intercourse) and that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with level of desire…
…although that in and of itself, can have eventually influence a change in desire.
In which case, when it really is that distressing & painful, some kind of outside medical intervention might actually be called for – not necessarily for the head but for the nerve endings, muscles or mucous membranes. Every once in awhile… there really is a biological thing going on.
December 14, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Sungold
The problem with “matching” is, of course, that people often fall in love with someone who’s not well matched to their libido – and while the thrill of the early months and years may mask the mismatch, it can become a big problem over the long haul. (I wrote on this topic recently with respect to Lauren Slater’s essay a week or two ago in the New York Times Magazine – did you see it? She had a long justification of, basically, why her husband will just have to put up and shut up.)
Nice post, Charles. I found my way here from Feministe and wasn’t disappointed. I especially like your point that no matter which way the mismatch cuts, in a heterosexual relationship it’s typically the woman who shoulders the blame. However, to be fair, it’s also typically the high-desire partner who pushes for change, so no gender gets off the hook entirely.
December 15, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Charles Lieberman
Sungold:
True, that’s why there are so few remedies for a high sex drive that isn’t obviously pathological. But when a man does it, his female partner thinks “what’s wrong with me?” while when a woman does it, her male partner thinks “what’s wrong with her?” thanks to a cultural narrative that tells us women’s sexuality is for men’s benefit.
marit, I misspoke, perhaps, probably a result of my habit of posting first drafts. Any sexual dysfunction I think seldom requires (only) psychological treatment. Dysparunia (which Chrome tells me I misspelled. Feh) should no more be blamed on either partner than a low or high sex drive per se. But that’s clearly a medical problem, while “low desire” is, again, highly subjective.
December 16, 2008 at 4:51 am
Pup
“True, that’s why there are so few remedies for a high sex drive that isn’t obviously pathological. But when a man does it, his female partner thinks “what’s wrong with me?” while when a woman does it, her male partner thinks “what’s wrong with her?” thanks to a cultural narrative that tells us women’s sexuality is for men’s benefit.”
Yeah. I’d like to see some statistics for that. Oh yes, you don’t have any because you’re just generalising from your experience of life. Well in my experience it’s the partner with low drive that gets pathologised, unless the partner with high sex drive has _really_ high drive, like two or three times a day.
Which one of us is right? Oh yes, we can’t tell, since we don’t have the numbers. I guess we should both drop our opinions.