So….

Let’s say the average man’s libido magically dropped to half that of the average woman’s?

I’m finally reading Heidi Raykeil’s Confessions of a Naughty Mommy: How I Found My Lost Libido (which I bought last Valentine’s Day in combination with Joan Sewell’s excellent I’d Rather Eat Chocolate: Learning to Love My Low Libido.) Between that and reading Raykeil’s column at LiteraryMama I’m still stuck at “compared to what?”

In Raykeil’s case it was “compared to my pre-pregnancy libido.” For Sewell it was “compared to my partner’s.” And, for a lot of men, I think, it’s “compared to as often as I wish I could.” (That last not being at all related to “how often I, or anyone else, actually could!“)

So…

I was thinking what if men’s libidos were half that of women’s?

This actually isn’t meant as a trick question, by the way. Although I have my suspicions about the exact gender ratios between experienced and expressed desire this has nothing to do with that. Instead it’s just a straightforward question: what if men’s libidos were half that of women’s?

Would heterosexuals have sex more often, less often, or about the same? Would we simply switch roles, with men’s magazines and books worrying about boosting libido and “getting it back?” Would we still tell stories about how evolution conditions men to “spread their seed” through promiscuity? Would men be less inclined to promiscuity? Would women be more? Would society look pretty much the same (except possibly with reversed gender-interest roles?) Or would it be completely, radically different?

Ok, it’s still not a trick question. But all our “getting it back” literature and Dr. Phil and John Gray lectures and “not tonight dear I have a headache” punch-lines notwithstanding… I think we already have the answers. It’s just that hardly anyone is looking.

Think of it this way. Let’s say libido is distributed on a normal bell-shaped curve. Men get one bell, women get another. We set our X and Y dimensions to any value we choose — number of preferred couplings per day, week or month for instance — and chances are that even if it’s not that different it’s still not going to be a perfect match. And unless it’s a perfect match you’re going to have non-overlapping areas between men and women. And it’s almost certain that if there’s a spot where women’s libidos are 50% of their respective partner’s. (That’s where everybody starts writing those books, articles, and blog posts.) But then it’s also almost certain that there’s a corresponding point on the other side of the two curves where men’s libidos are 50% of their respective partners’.

“But figleaf,” you might protest, “you’re assuming the normal bell-shaped distributions are of exactly the same magnitude and amplitude for men and women.” To which I would reply, if you protested that way, that even so there would be a point somewhere on the two curves where men’s libidos are 50% of their respective partners’.

And that’s the spot — a spot that pretty much has to be there — that you’d find the answer to my question. Only… not that many people are talking about it. And those who do often do so apologetically, as if their inevitable location on a curve is not just wrong but unpredictably so.

(This isn’t part of my question but, dialing back out again for a moment, isn’t it also inevitable that if you’re matching up two even slightly dissimilar bell-shaped curves that some women would necessarily be at a point where their libido was 50% of their partner’s? Without it being anybody’s fault?”)

Anyway, now that I’ve pointed out that it’s already that way for some fraction of the population of heterosexual men and women I’ll ask my original question again: what if men’s libidos were half that of women’s?