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](http://www.sexinmommyville.com/).