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Author writes defense of women who really would rather eat chocolate |
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Written by Cheryl Truman, MCT
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Thursday, 15 February 2007 |
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Joan Sewell has written a book about a subject that might be the last great sexual taboo.
You might take a moment now to consider how very few sexual taboos are left.
Done?
It's about her low libido.
"I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido" (Broadway Books, $19.95) is Sewell's first book, and it gets to the point immediately:
"If I had a choice between reading a good book and having sex, the book wins."
Then Sewell goes on to note that it doesn't, in fact, have to be a particularly good book.
With this gambit, Sewell digs into the can of worms that has bedeviled couples since the beginning of couples time: Who's the bigger love machine?
And not only that, but how does a couple with sex drives that vary by more than a couple of notches manage to stay together?
"I've been playing defense with sex since I was 15," Sewell said in a phone interview from Seattle, where she lives and works - contrary to conceptions about first-time authors living the high life - as a leasing agent.
"I realized that guys had a lot more sexual interest in me than I did in them."
The immediate question and answer: Yes, Sewell is married - to a very nice guy, in fact.
They spend much of the book in negotiations about sex: how long, how often, wearing what, to what degree and whether Joan can bail after a certain point.
"There are times I need to say, I need to stop right now, it's a little too much," Sewell says. "I need a break. ... I feel like once I get into the elevator, I still have to go up the 100 floors."
In other words, once the intimacy has begun, she feels obligated to see the job through to its, er, conclusion.
The book is both frank and detailed about Sewell's experiences: This is not family reading in even the most liberal of families.
For a book that's often about the non-having of sex, there's plenty of frank sexual talk.
Sewell, 45, is kind of horrified at the idea that the family of her husband, Kip, 36, will be reading the book, because there isn't much left out: from who fantasizes about what to taste in vinyl costume attire, Sewell's life is richly detailed across 207 pages.
Throughout it all, Sewell is sticking to her guns: If women don't feel the need, they shouldn't feel compelled to have more sex than they would like or carry on for longer than they would like.
"Possibly the most important thing that makes the agreement work is that my comfort is never optional," Sewell writes in "I'd Rather Eat Chocolate." "I don't do anything I'm not comfortable with. Ever since I hit adolescence, I've felt pressure from the media, the sexperts, and boyfriends to push past my so-called inhibitions, or in today's parlance, boundaries and zones."
But isn't the great cliche about sex that it's all in the brain anyway?
"For women, it isn't a big physical thing," Sewell says. "It is more mental ... but when they say that your brain is your biggest sex organ, everything starts in the brain - I mean, c'mon, that's misleading."
But simply giving into the argument that sex shouldn't be an issue isn't an option for Sewell.
"My compass point is always my own comfort and self-respect - not love," Sewell writes. "Giving sex out of love is a slippery slope."
———
Here are two excerpts from the book:
"Never shall we admit that women have much lower sex drives than men. Never. I will be treated with drugs, psychoanalysis, spa-based encounter groups, warm rocks placed on my back, thong therapy, sex-toy parties, empowerment rituals, aromatherapy, and the advice to crash a Girls Gone Wild screening ..."
As I end up in a straitjacket in a psych ward hopping about madly, I simply can't help noting the obvious. No one is trying to lower men's sex drives. I don't hear, 'Doctor, my sex drive is too high. Please, do something about it. I feel guilty and ashamed that I don't want less sex. It's killing my marriage.'"
— From "I'd Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido" by Joan Sewell | Only registered users can write comments.
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