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been a synonym for “sexually normal.” Early in the history of the term, it was even used interchangeably with the term “normal-sexual.” And there, as they say, is the rub. “Normal” is not a mode of eternal truth; it’s a way to describe commonness and conformity with expectations. But what is most common and expected, in terms of our sexual lives or any other aspect of the human condition, does not always remain the same.
    Sexual expectations and behaviors, like all other social expectations and behaviors, change over time. Within living memory there have been massive shifts on questions like whether women were supposed to feel sexual desire or have orgasms, whether sex outside of marriage could ever be openly acceptable, and the permissibility and desirability of sex acts other than penis-in-vagina intercourse. Casting further back in time, historians have tracked major shifts in other aspects of what was considered common or “normal”in sex and relationships: Was marriage ideally an emotional relationship, or an economic and pragmatic one? Was romantic love desirable, and did it even really exist? Should young people choose their own spouses, or should marriage partners be selected by family and friends? Even assuming that we speak only of interactions and relationships between males and females, these relationships have simply not always been the same, nor have the people participating in them been expected to do, think, feel, or experience the same sorts of things. What “normal–sexual” is, above anything else, is
relative.
    A similar situation holds in regard to the beliefs that are held about why it should be that women feel desire for men and vice versa. Beyond the old tired tug-of-war over nature and nurture, there are numerous other contestants vying for pride of place as being The One True Reason that men and women want anything to do with one another in the first place. The religious often make claims that different-sex attractions are “God-given,” others that they are “universal.” With an eye to sexual dimorphism, some determinists announce that an interest in a different-sex sexual partner is “biological.” Dozens of scientists and pseudoscientists in dozens of fields have hurried to supply their own, ever more specialized, hypotheses. The cacophony of opinion on this does not appear to have reduced anyone’s faith that there must, inevitably, be a right answer to be found. Having decided that heterosexuality exists, we maintain a correspondingly unshakable faith that it exists for a reason. Hardly anyone seems to notice or care that we go back and forth, and then back and forth some more, about what that reason might be.
    Nor do we seem to achieve consensus on where to place heterosexuality’s limits, or even how best to police them. Often, points of damage or destruction—the places where a thing becomes not
this
but
that
—are useful places to look for the boundaries that limn definitions. Not here. At various times and in various places, people have believed that heterosexuality (or normal-sexuality) could be destroyed by, among other things, becoming a Catholic monk, reading novels, not moving your bowels often enough, cross-dressing (including women wearing pants), too much education, not enough religion, divorce, improper ejaculation, masturbation, the abolition of slavery, women’s working for pay, and too much leisure time for anyone.
    Even if we are not inclined to paranoia about heterosexuality’s potential destruction by the literary, the constipated, and the apostate, we still have to reckon with situational homosexuality. Sometimes, even the most devoutly heterosexual find themselves in circumstances where their normal pattern of being sexually interested in different-sex partners seems to go right out the window. As unnumbered sailors, prisoners, and boarding-school boys have demonstrated,