Sexual moderates

The American media makes us think we are strange if we aren't thinking about sex all the time.

By Emily Jenkins

Oct 12, 2000 | I am a sexual moderate. I have intercourse -- or at least something that involves two naked bodies and leads to orgasm -- three or four times a week, sometimes less. Sex books and magazine articles tell me that's about the norm for a person in my married state.

I don't think of sex when commercials come on TV. I don't get hot when I see Robert Downey Jr. with his shirt off on the cover of Details. And I don't sweat when the "Thong Song" comes on the radio, although I read somewhere that the average person thinks about sex several times an hour.

When I have it, I like sex probably an average amount -- which is to say, I enjoy it very much, but it's not a preoccupation or anything. I do an average range of sex stuff. I'm not a prude, but I have certain things I'd rather not do (like have sex with other people watching) and certain things I enjoy on a regular basis that are so mainstream as to be pedestrian (like the missionary position).

Sometimes I'm in the mood for sex to be an epic and systematic debauchery, but other times I just enjoy it in a moderate sort of way and am ready for it to be over in about 15 or 20 minutes.

I am outing myself here. As a sexual moderate in today's climate, there is a lot of encouragement for me to stay in the closet.

Two recent books -- Elizabeth Abbott's "The History of Celibacy" and Carol Groneman's "Nymphomania" -- point out that moderation has traditionally been the norm. Throughout history, both abstention and enormous desire have ostracized people from mainstream culture. Surprisingly, this happened partly because both nymphomania and celibacy are associated with frigidity, if you define frigidity as a lack of sexual satisfaction. Celibacy is connected to frigidity because so long as it's voluntary, the person is presumably either out of touch with, psychologically incapable of or immune to the urges that plague the rest of the population; nymphomania, because in the first half of the 20th century it was associated with women being stuck in a juvenile, clitoris-centered sexuality that prevented its sufferers from ever achieving the mature bliss of the vaginal orgasm. "It was frigidity that provided the ultimate push-over-the-edge into sexual abandon," writes Groneman of the attitude in the '40s. "Not lascivious desires or hot blood, but lack of sexual satisfaction most often bred nymphomania."

As a moderate, I essentially fit the confused definition of sexual health that led midcentury doctors to treat diagnosed nymphomaniacs with analysis and mood-altering drugs: That is, I want it just about as much as my husband does, so my desire doesn't frighten anybody, nor is anyone calling me a cold fish. But in the aftermath of the sexual revolution, the definition of health has changed. These days, the ideal level of erotic interest (in the popular mind, if not in the medical professions) can essentially be summarized as "Me so horny."

Next Page: To be average in bed is to be not good enough

• View blog reactions