Am I Normal?

In the years that I’ve made talking about sex my job, I’ve been asked this question in a hundred thousand variations. Working at a sex store, a common opening line from customers would be “you must see a lot of weirdoes working in a place like this” (read: do you think I’m a weirdo for being here?). In social settings, when people find out what I do for a living they’re always eager to hear about the sexual oddities and strangeness they assume I encounter on a daily basis (read: tell me about the real freaks, so I can feel normal with my mild fetish for macaroni).

Often when people are in front of me, asking if they are normal, they’re in very real pain. And while my short answer is always, yes, you’re normal, everything is normal and nothing is normal, I know this doesn’t satisfy them the way I want to.

Thus it was with great interest that I recently came across two very different takes on the question, one from BBC Radio and the other from a small Washington daily. Neither response is fully satisfying, but both are worth considering, and it’s always instructive to watch others try to work out a question you’ve been stuck with for ages.

BBC Radio 4: The Sex Lives of Us, Am I Normal?

Daily Evergreen – If Polyamory Weren’t Taboo