of I noticed the subtle and not so subtle statement, that women should not enjoy books more than sex, that women who don't want lot of sex should somehow learn to want it. ("Hoppe ... offers numerous ways women can boost their desire for sexual intimacy.")Healthy Sex Drive, Healthy You: What Your Libido Reveals About Your LifereviewNo matter how liberated or accepting of diversity our society becomes, we cannot seem to get away from the constant conflicting condemnations. A woman must not be a slut. A woman must not be frigid. A woman cannot just have as much sex as she wants, she must determine how much she is meant to want, and somehow achieve that frequency. A woman must not prioritise other things above having just the right amount of sex. A woman is important to the extent that she is providing and receiving sex ("Physical intimacy with your partners is important because it is a barometer of your whole life").
To be fair it is entirely possible that the book focuses on women who want a higher libido, rather than prescribing it, if you will excuse the phrase, willy-nilly. But all of the surrounding materials seem to ring with echoes of my collection of Victorian sexual non-fiction. "Women's lives are fuller and richer than ever, but often at the expense of sexual intimacy." (Working women are de-sexed). "[A] woman s libido is a reflection of her overall health" (if you don't want sex--or 'enough' sex--you are abnormal and sick). Hoppe's book, for all its professed 'holism' seems to exist in a world devoid of healthy celibates, asexuals, single people or--as far as I can tell, lesbians. A world that would be strangely familiar to the bearded sexual experts of one hundred years ago.
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This particular 'sexpert' is of the normalcy school of social engineering. Everyone must be normal, or there is something wrong with you. Of course, normal is defined by the said sexpert, and if the history of such people is anything to go by, this definition is often what they would LIKE to be, not what they are themselves. My guess is that behind the facade Hoppe is not 'normal', and finds this embarrassing or shameful.
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