The female libido fairy. Rare. Endangered. Fragile.

By MIA FREEDMAN

“Every time a man lies in bed pretending not to hear a crying child, a female libido fairy dies.” This nugget of wisdom was coined by a guy called Jack Ellis, father-of-two in his entry for a competition to find Australia’s Mentally Sexiest Dad. “And you can’t bring her back by tapping together your red dancing shoes and saying, “I believe in fairies”.  I know.  I’ve tried.”

You’re right Jack. Truer words never spoken. Whenever I recount them to women they laugh. And nod. And then they keep nodding until their head falls off.

The reaction from men is different. When you mention dead female libido fairies, they laugh too but nervously. One guy I know responded by turning pale. “You mean every time I’ve pretended to be asleep is one less time in the future my wife will sleep with me?” He paused as the full horror sunk in. “Oh God, I’m never going to have sex again, am I?”

Possibly not. Confoundingly though, it doesn’t work in reverse. Ok yes, like many women, I’ve done my fair share of faking sleep when a child cries or a dog needs to be let out and funnily enough, this seems to have no detrimental effect on the male libido fairy at all. Who knew? Oh wait, EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER HAD SEX.

Generally, female libido fairies have little in common with male libido fairies (yes I’m generalising, some women go off “like a frog in a sock” and the mere touch of the right man or even the wrong one). This is probably because male libido fairies are not fairies, they are warriors. Almighty superhero warriors, who wear full body armour, wield light sabres and have magic powers of resilience capable of withstanding any threat. Fatigue, anger, negative body image, hangovers, flu, heartbreak, homelessness, Ebola, …they are immune even to kryptonite and gastro. Stress? Illness? Solitary confinement? Pah. Male libido warriors laugh in the face of such assailants and flick them off like bugs.

Female libido fairies however, can be fragile creatures. Really, they should live in a bubble. Possibly bubble wrap. Or at the very least, a carefully controlled ecosystem where they can be protected from the infinite number of seemingly innocuous things that can kill them. Like resentment.

I visited a butterfly farm once and you have to walk slowly and carefully around the enclosure. It was temperature-controlled so the climate was very hot and humid because butterflies need warmth to survive their very short lives. Despite all these good intentions, there were lots of little pretty carcasses dotted around the place. Alas. In another part of the farm, they were breeding butterflies by the hundreds to introduce to the enclosure so the supply never diminished to unsustainable levels.

Perhaps in your household, female libido fairies are an endangered species. In need of a breeding program of their own. Because there is no Greenpeace equivalent for the female sex drive, I’ve recently been pondering the ideal breeding conditions for female libido fairies.

Tell me, what do you think would encourage them to go forth and multiply? Because surely this is a cause we can all enthusiastically embrace as a community (gay men might be a little harder to convince since they will not see any direct benefits other than the women and straight men in their lives being a whole lot happier but I’m convinced they’ll be theoretically supportive of the idea).

I think the perfect breeding conditions for the female libido fairy would go something like this:

You have a room. And just to turbo charge this a little bit, we’re going to put 100 men in there. Yes, it’s a large room.  Natural light. Polished floorboards. Lots of windows. Wait, where were we?

Right. So in this big, light and bright room, all the men are sitting in chairs and listening. Just listening. Not solving. Not arguing. Not even making suggestions. Or even talking. Just listening but actively. There’s a lot of empathetic nodding. And understanding noises like “Mmmmm” at appropriate points.

Then, as one, all the men will get up and say, “Why don’t you go and have some time to yourself. I’ll deal with the kids/dog/plants/house/dinner/mess/your boss/my mother. Have a sleep. Watch the True Hollywood Story about Angelina Jolie on E!, or one of those documentaries about people who have 19 children. I’ll give you a massage and I promise it will stay G-rated. Surf the net. Read a book. Buy something on ebay. I’ll bring you some cake. ”

Hear that? It’s the sound of brand new female libido fairies being born by the thousand, multiplying faster than you can say, “Let me make you a cup of tea.”

The tea bit is very important. Female libido fairies like tea very much. It nurtures them. Even if they don’t actually drink it, they need cups to be offered and made in order for them to survive.

A guy once asked me, “Does the female libido fairy understand the concept of ‘taking one for the team?’” Not really, no she doesn’t. As much as people like Bettina Artndt argue that the female libido fairy could take redundancy if women simply had sex when their partners wanted it not just when they did, it was a tricky message to sell. A bit like the budget. And we know how that’s going…….

What would increase the population of female libido fairies in your household?