Every Man Has a Tiger in His Tank

"You want to know the surest way that you can spot a 'sex addict?' He's got a penis."

Bill Maher

Comedians aren't the only ones noting that the line between what people are calling "sex addiction" and normal male human libido is very fine, if not non-existent. I'm willing to grant that there's a problem if someone loses his job because he can't stop looking at porn, but I'm certainly not willing to grant that looking at porn constitutes cheating on one's spouse or is inherently indicative of some underlying pathology. I mean, where do we stop once we go wandering down that path? Is it cheating to think of someone else when masturbating? When making love with one's regular partner? When sound asleep, dreaming?

"Last time I tried to make love to my wife, nothing was happening. I said to her, 'What's wrong, you can't think of anyone, either?'"

Rodney Dangerfield

But it's not just disreputable folks like Maher, Dangerfield, and yours truly who are making this argument. Writing at The Daily Beast, T. Byram Karasu, who's got credentials out the wazoo*, says, "Sex addiction is simply a new name for the old evolutionary concept—the innate urge to impregnate as many females as possible. In this sense, every man is a sex addict or was one at some point in his life." Dr. Karasu suggests it's time to "stop pathologizing every human behavior, like male libido." Amen to that.

A final thought: The underlying assumption in all the cluck-clucking over Tiger, Bill Clinton, David Letterman and the rest of them (us) is that they've got some problem with self-control. But when you consider the fact that a famous, super-wealthy, charasmatic guy like them has gorgeous women offering themselves day after day, night after night . . . who's to say Tiger doesn't have ten times the self-discipline of the normal ("healthy") man, but is facing a hundred times the temptation?

*He's the Silverman Professor and University Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center.