It seems to me that labeling certain acts and certain sexualities/sex drives as "normal" only seems benign until you're the person falling outside the norm and realizing that that makes you "abnormal". Do you think that considering certain certain types of sexual expression to be "Normal sex" is unnecessarily shaming to those who don't conform and might discourage sexual exploration and development?

For example, here on EF it's "normal" to masturbate, but out in the "real world" it's assumed that "normal" people don't masturbate if they have a partner, or even that those who masturbate are pitiful because they can't have "normal" sex.

Another example would be that a large number of people seem to believe that it is "normal" for the man to do the penetrating, therefore pegging is considered "Abnormal"

My third example would be that Vaginal sex is considered "normal" sex, therefore everything outside of PIV intercourse is "abnormal" (Anal, pegging, etc.)

And for a final example, the "Normal" sex drive for men is supposedly "always ready" and for women "extremely low" so every woman with a high sex drive and every man with a low one are considered "Abnormal" and asexuals are told that they're broken and need to go get help. less

Normal is as normal does. I think it centers on "majority/minority" lines of thinking. If the majority of a population enjoys anal sex, or BDSM or whatever then it's "normal". If there are only a few occurrences of these preferences in a population, it is considered "abnormal". It basically works off the law of averages.

I think people need to get out of the habit of checking their sexual preferences against society's views, especially American views on sex. They are largely puritanical in nature and destructive to one's relationship if they allow those labels to have any bearing on who they are in or out of the bedroom. less