Flavor of the Week: Whoa, Mama!

I’m standing on Pier
70 in stifling humidity, watching moms with infants on their chests
trying to clap for singing clowns while their kids whine to go home. As
the moms begin to file out of the makeshift amphitheater, I diligently
hand out postcards to promote my show. “Hi, I have something just for
moms—a show just for you,” I say, and present them with an image of
myself sitting on a Thomas the Train potty with the words, “Sex In Mommyville” next to my face. One mom stops in her tracks and under her
breath, mumbles: “Sex? What sex?” Two seconds later, another mom does
the exact same thing. A third mom says, “Oh, I get it—you’re making a
joke because we never have any.”

There’s
a persistent belief out there that mothers don’t want sex. It’s an
assumption few question and most bring up without the slightest
hesitation and without understanding its ramifications for women. While
reading an article entitled “9 Harmless Habits that Age You,” one of the
steps recommended for women to stay young was to have more sex, but
with the following caveat: “‘Some women are not active participants in
their sex lives,’” and urged women to touch and seduce their husbands,
make the first move! CNN.com recently posted an article titled “New Moms and the Post-Baby Sex Slump,” which detailed a number of reasons
women don’t want to have sex after they have children, from physical
discomfort to post-partum depression to fear of getting pregnant again. One mom said she was making grocery lists in her head while doing it. The dad was presented as the willing, hungry, virile participant, “Ready
to get back into the sack.” In the end, the advice was: get pills like
Viagra, go to therapy and make the man happy.

But
it’s not confined to articles; we see it everywhere, from movies to an
HBO comedy special where male comics lament their exuberant libidos and
complain about their wives’ lack of interest in their magical penises.

Every
time I heard a joke about how a woman would rather go shopping than
have sex I wanted to throw a tomato at the TV. But why? What is so wrong
in citing a problem and trying to solve it? First, because this problem
is being presented in such idiotic and simplistic terms it fails to
tell the whole story. Second, jokes and articles that depict a woman’s
low sex drive are not simply a depiction of a problem, they are the
creation of a new image: Women as sexless—and powerless—beings.

So I decided to pursue an investigation of my own. I asked mothers with
young children the following three questions: 1) Do you want sex? 2) Are
you having it on a fairly regular basis? 3) What, and with whom, is
your ideal sex?

Cassandra, a happily married mother of two toddlers, said, “Sometimes I want it, just not with my husband.”

Annabelle,
mother of a 3-year-old, seconded that sentiment: “I’ve been fantasizing
about my old college boyfriend for years. I know it isn’t healthy and
he wouldn’t have been a good husband to me, but when I want to come, I
think of him.”

Ingrid,
mother of an infant and a kindergartner, complained, “Every time I
decide to have sex with my husband, he says something that pisses me
off, like ‘Why can’t you get the kids to go to sleep on time?’ or ‘Why
hasn’t anyone done the dishes?’ by which he means, me! At that point I
don’t want to have sex with him—I want to beat him with my Swiffer Sweeper until he begs for my mercy. Maybe then I’ll get horny.”

Delia,
who has a 2-year-old and a 2-month old, said, “The first time you have
sex after a baby, your vagina feels broken, foreign and the sensation is
terrifying. Yes, I want sex but for many different reasons, only one of
which is raw desire. Mainly now that I am a mother of two children, and
breastfeeding a 2-month-old, sex has become a treasured old friend I am
desperate to reconnect with.”

Brianna,
mother of an infant and a toddler, had this response: “I’m so sick of
all the men talking about how much they want it and we don’t! My husband
is the one who doesn’t want it. He comes home late, works on his
computer, doesn’t notice me, and I’m left panting and masturbating all
by my lonely self.”

“Why don’t you tell him?” I asked. “Oh, he’d freak out if he knew just how sexual I really am.”

These
mothers tell a narrative about female sexuality that seems to have
escaped the public sphere. Becoming a mother has not lessened these
women’s desire, but it has complicated it. It needs to be understood
that when a woman does not want sex, a myriad of reasons are involved,
few of which might be a woman’s “low” libido. The difference between men
and women when it comes to sex cannot be quantitatively measured, with
one wanting it more, the other wanting it less; the difference lies in
the conditions required for female desire, conditions that may be
irrelevant to the man, but are deeply, emotionally, physiologically
necessary for the woman.

Rather
than exploring those conditions, we’re stuck in the usual crude
dichotomy. When we’re bombarded with stories of sexless mothers, when
we’re recommending increasing women’s sex drives with drugs, when we’re
pointing our fingers at mothers’ sex slumps as the main problem in what
are otherwise happy and healthy relationships, we’re causing an
inevitable power imbalance between the genders—in one swoop we’re
desexualizing mothers and putting the onus of the blame on them. There’s
a silencing of women’s sexual appetites in society, especially the
women who’ve just had children, in part because there’s real discomfort
with an image of a sexually potent mother. But if sexuality is to be
equated with vigor, strength, health and, yes, power, then I can
certainly report from the trenches that we’re doing just fine.

Anna Fishbeyn’s new show, Sex in Mommyville, runs
from Aug. 18 through Aug. 29, at The Flea, 41 White St. (betw. Broadway
& Church St.), 212-226-2407. For information, visit www.sexinmommyville.com.