The book, however, is just as concerned with Julie's butchering lessons as with her marital misadventures, and spends considerable time explaining, in lyrical detail, how pigs, or cows, and lambs get turned into dinner -- and describing the raucus camaraderie of her adopted butcher shop. Salon spoke with Powell over the phone about her disdain for vegetarians, the BDSM community's bad rap, and why cutting apart animals isn't so different from being tied up.

As you were writing this book, knowing that the Nora Ephron movie was coming, did it influence your choice of subject matter?

Honestly, when I was writing "Cleaving," my policy toward the movie was always very firmly to stick my fingers in my ears and go "lalala" very loudly and pretend it wasn't going to happen because of this terror of jinxing it. I wasn't thinking, "Oh, what would people like to read after seeing a Nora Ephron movie called 'Julie and Julia'?" Of course when the movie came out, once the movie publicist figured out that there was a book out there getting ready to be published, they flipped out a little bit and I'm sure a lot of them wished that "Cleaving" didn't exist, but, oh well!

Having written a small amount about my own personal life, I know that there's a  kind of discomfort that comes with writing about your own experiences -- especially when it comes to sex. Why did you decide to go into that territory?

It was a way of reenacting and trying to figure out what [my affair] really meant. Honestly, if you talk to my editor you should see what remains on the cutting-room floor. There were many instances where she was like, "Ehh maybe you needed to write this, but we don't need to put it in the book."

I'm assuming both your husband and "D," the man with whom you had the affair, have read the book.

Eric is an extraordinarily reserved person and we talked for a long time about what was in the book and would he give me the blessing for writing it. I wouldn't have published it if he hadn't. It's difficult for him and I think his reaction to this entire process is that I just need to sort of back off from it a little bit and let the book have its life. He's been extraordinarily great about it, but it's also something that we don't sit around the coffee table talking about in the evening.

I haven't spoken to ["D"] in nearly a year, but when he read the book in order to give the rights, it was all very cordial and he had a few notes of things he wanted to change for reasons of identification, which I was happy to do.

There are a few moments in the book, where you describe some fairly rough sex, both with your lover, "D," and a stranger. Why did you decide to include the rough stuff?

There was actually more on it originally, that we got rid of. I think for me some of the questions that I was asking myself were: Why this guy? Why this kind of sex? Everybody thinks about getting tied up and tickled with a feather every now and then -- but in terms of that real craving, where was that coming from? I think it was really tied to some other kind of deep, really deep psychological issues that I was having at the time and need for this self-punishment.

The anonymous sexual encounter was an important moment for me, because it was me trying to work out in a really, really crazy and self-destructive way who the hell I was. I think that when someone is processing a lot of stuff you make a lot of wrong turns and strange choices that are going to be -- for your average reader of "Julie and Julia" -- a little disconcerting. I discovered something about myself in doing that, and in the horror that I felt afterward, doing something that I felt in the moment was empowering and realizing in the moment of it that it couldn't be more opposite of empowering.

In some ways, it seems to me that butchery and sadomasochistic sex have a similar kind of stigma attached to them.

I think that there is a similar reason for my attraction to both. The BDSM stuff that I was doing, and was really very attracted to, had to do with the taking and the giving up of power and that balance that happens. In these rough sex encounters I was playing the part of the submissive, but I got power out of that because I was making these guys think they were powerful, and that was a sort of power in itself. I think that the butchering has the same kind of uncomfortable dynamic. There are knives; the men are very strong; the meat is dead.

They're both things that many people don't want to think about. They don't want to think about where their meat comes from and how it gets to their plate in the same way that people don't want to think about how much sex is about power and the lack of it. There is all kinds of squeamish stuff that goes on in both of those cases, and I think for me I feel like squeamish is where I live a little bit.

Do you think that the stigma against bondage and discipline [BDSM] is unfair?

I think it's something that people are fascinated and scintillated by and terrified of. If you talk to people in the BDSM community or read their Web sites, it's so nicey-nicey, so indulgingly generous and inclusive and sex-positive, which is why it's hilarious to me that people are so terrified of these folks. People have this image of it being sort of a corrupt, dangerous practice that only complete freaks engage in and you're going to wind up dead on the floor like Diane Keaton in "Mr. Goodbar."

The same thing goes with butchers. Now it's a little different because there's this rock-star butcher thing happening -- but the traditional image of butchering is violent and bloody and destructive, whereas it's actually a really delicate thing. Most of the butchers that I know, once you get about half an inch under the surface, they're these incredible, sweet, gentle men with a lot of skill and a lot of knowledge.

Do you feel like you were breaking gender taboos by becoming a butcher -- and writing so openly about the sex?

Just the idea that a married person taking a lover is something that men have been writing about for a long time, but women normally don't write about those experiences.

Was I wrong to read the book as an indictment of monogamy?

I'm now in a marriage that is much happier than it was, but I am skeptical of the sort of complacency with which traditional marriage is defined. I'd had very childish views of what a marriage is. We'd put ourselves in this box with a bow -- and I realized you can't live like that. Monogamy can work beautifully but it's a constant moving and growing and changing thing. A marriage doesn't get fixed, it moves. I don't know if I'd call it an indictment of marriage, I'd call it an indictment of the assumption that monogamy is the one necessary thing. I had to change how I was married and become a person who can stand on her own two feet. To find out that I could be a singular human being and also be in a marriage was the only reason that our marriage was able to survive.

How would you feel if you became a poster woman for the BDSM community?

I would be amused. When you look at what I write in the book, it's pretty tame. I've long been a supporter of people just being cool with all that stuff. I love the community, and what people are doing -- being very open and supportive. If they want to make me poster girl, I am perfectly fine with that.

In the book you seem to have a considerable amount of contempt for vegetarians. Why is that?

I was raised Texan. We're a liberal family, but there are some things Texans won't give up. I always judged their smugness. I also hated feeding them -- with them coming to my dinner table and going "ewww." Working at the butcher shop allowed me to gain a weighty sense of responsibility about where my food comes from -- so I'm less contemptuous, but I still hate their self-satisfaction. To quote "The Big Lebowski": "You're not wrong, you're just an asshole."

If "Cleaving" becomes a movie, who would you like to see play yourself?

I entertain this perverse fantasy of forcing Amy Adams to play me in every stage of my life at all times. The other person I'd thought of may be a little old: Catherine Keener. I love somebody who can be strong and neurotic at the same time -- or Kate Winslet, or Zooey Deschanel.

I was hoping you'd say something a little more bizarre, like Charlotte Rampling.

OK, let's say Zooey when I'm young, and Charlotte Rampling when I'm older.

Thankfully, in a response to the news, the silver-haired sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer commends the change for allowing roommates to forgo the awkward negotiation of privacy with romantic visitors. But then she goes on to caution that "those students who do not have steady partners are going to feel bad." I suppose we should also ban couples from walking around campus holding hands? She doesn't go that far, instead she suggests setting aside "some rooms with locked doors where students can go to have a couple of hours of privacy." You know, like an X-rated update on the concept of "date rooms." It's unclear, though, how exactly this will make jealousy-prone students feel any better about their singlehood.

There is one rather refreshing aspect of this story: The potential benefit for lesbian, gay and bisexual students has raised nary an eyebrow. They soon will have the option to live on campus with a member of the opposite sex, so as to avoid the awkwardness and sexual tension of same-sex cohabitation. There are plenty of cynical ways to interpret that lack of outrage (as well as the decade-dissonant controversy over coed housing) but I'd rather celebrate the fact that queer students at Columbia will soon have the same choice straight students have always had.

"Rrowl! Beware the Cheetah!" is a piece of such cynical, calculated offensiveness that my initial response was to ignore it entirely. But hey, I'm just a predatory female, and when that rodenty aroma of bad writing hits my nostrils, I can't help myself. In it, Morgan -- who pointedly excuses himself from the pack of prey by mentioning his wife -- alerts us to the growing menace of "the cougar's young niece," a woman who gets men wasted, takes them home, and then doesn't even have the decency to get up and leave. "The cheetah stays the night," he warns. (Yes, it's true, fellas, older Liz Phair-era riot grrls totally have a lock on the fuck and run.)

I'm all for mockery and making light of romantic foibles. But next time it might be helpful to add some wit, because the only insight here is how a story about female insecurity reveals so much about the male variety. Since we're all dumb animals, I'll speak slowly and break down why the story is so lame:

1.) The feline metaphor again? Really? Yet Morgan crams not just cheetahs and "self described cougars" into his story, but pumas and even the hoariest of all beasts, the dreaded saber-tooth. That shit is more played than "I Gotta Feeling."  If you're a woman over 35, you've probably already heard it so much that you find yourself copping to it.  Yes, I am a big scary animal. Now excuse me, I have to go take a nap in a gazelle carcass.

2.) While I'm loath to argue that a joke wouldn't be funny if the roles were reversed (in a good joke, it's the reversal that makes it work), I'm none too keen on Morgan's fantasy of desperate women sexually preying on drunken men. But good luck wringing comedy out of a city full of lady rapists.

3. The author's clear discomfort with females regardless of what neat species classifications they occupy. He grudgingly affords "Auntie Cougar and Cousin Puma … a certain dignity ... They’re out there shakin’ it up, slaying dudes and taking names." Ummmm, thanks? But as he channels Caitlin Flanagan, he reserves his greatest shudders for poor, lonely, spinster-to-be cheetahs. They're already "past the first flush of youth" and yet still "wanting to date or at least fuck 'above their station.'"

I'm not even sure how this whole aspirational screwing thing works, but gentlemen, you've been warned. The cheetah is out there looking for "potential mates," hoping, as Morgan's cougar pal explains, "her pussy’s still good enough to keep him." Why the insecurity? Because as another of Morgan's charming compatriots explains, "Getting laid is not as easy as it once was.”

4. The story's scolding reminder, via Morgan's cougar friend Angela, that "men like to chase." Ah, now we're getting somewhere. Congratulations, New York Observer, you're a Rules Girl! A woman who does not placidly wait around to be picked off by a wildebeest -- or maybe it's a crocodile -- is so unnatural, so terrifying, she threatens to throw the whole ecosystem into chaos. And who's the only man weak enough to be ensnared by her wiles? "A pussy."

5. Pop rhetorical quiz time! Why is it that gay men can classify themselves as bears and otters and all other manner of creatures and it seems cute and sexy, but female sexual animals are somehow just pathetic?

6. Final question: Is it possible to write about women and their dating habits and not sound like a nosy busybody, clutching at your pearls and fanning your scandalized brow at the garden gate? Answer: No.

Because the funny thing -- funny strange, not funny ha-ha -- in each eager new spin on the women-as-cougars-and-cheetahs-and-pumas-and-kittens-and-ocelots story is the same old criticism of us for our sexual choices and erotic initiative. Whatever species you name it, it's all just catty. Mrrrreeer!

In summation, there are three weeks left in this decade, and then I am personally shutting these BS trend stories down, rejecting all attempts to brand me as any feline predator.  You will hence refer to my ilk and me as naked mole rats. We like darkness, multiple sex partners, and starchy food. See you in the tunnel.

All of the subjects claimed to totally dig gender equality and feel "victimized by rhetoric demonizing pornography," according to the press release. Simon Louis Lajeunesse, the Université de Montréal researcher behind the study, which is still in its infancy embryonic phase, reports: "Pornography hasn't changed their perception of women or their relationship which they all want as harmonious and fulfilling as possible," he said. "Those who could not live out their fantasy in real life with their partner simply set aside the fantasy. The fantasy is broken in the real world and men don't want their partner to look like a porn star."

I don't doubt that most young men do not want their partner to look like a porn star and that X-rated flicks can be part of an innocuous -- and even healthy -- private fantasy life. It's just -- this isn't science. You don't determine the impact of porn by merely asking a small sampling of typical dudes whether it changed their view of women. If it's all they have known (since the age of 10 for most of the study participants), how the heck are they supposed to evaluate how it changed their view of women? I'm a female and feminist member of this porned generation and I'm only just beginning to pick apart how smut shaped my views on all things related to sex. I know one thing: It had an impact. I don't know how small or how big an impact, but I can't deny that such a major cultural influence had ... some influence.

These conversations are so often shouted across the chasm between political extremes -- whether it's an argument by Ariel Levy (for the record, a writer I greatly admire) that mine is a generation of "female chauvinist pigs" or a proclamation that porn is, meh, no big deal, so get over it. Neither position represents the whole truth, and half-baked research like this won't get us any closer.

The search for a "female Viagra" makes clear that there is no easy fix -- but writer Daniel Bergner points out that there isn't an easy definition of the condition, either. The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (D.S.M.) defines it as "persistently or recurrently deficient (or absent) sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity." These are women who can become physically aroused but mentally just aren't going there all that often. An essential element of the diagnosis is that a patient is "distressed" by these symptoms, he explains. In other words, it's only a problem if you think it's a problem. An interesting paradox arises: Does the act of defining hypoactive sexual desire disorder play a part in creating and reinforcing the condition?

Critics argue that the "distress stems not from within the individual but from the infliction of societal standards, from the culture’s disapproval and aversion." To make this point, Bergner invokes "icons in heat" like "the model with swollen red lips gazing out with molten need from the billboard." From the libidinous lass selling cologne, aftershave, or [insert any product under the sun] to the exaggerated moans of porno flicks, we fetishize enthusiastic female availability. On a day-to-day basis, that degree of spontaneous chest-heaving -- not to mention multiple orgasms at the touch of a (cough) button --  isn't realistic, generally. By those standards, most women would feel "deficient."

There's an important distinction to make here, though: We fetishize eager female availability, but not self-directed female desire. When we talk about sex "icons in heat," we're specifically talking about women who are prone and receptive. Culturally, truly libidinous women are not only treated as unsexy, they're considered abnormal. They're fucking scary! Maybe for some women it isn't that they feel a lack of sexual desire, per se, but an absence of a particular type of desire they think they're supposed to have. (Nowhere in the article is masturbation mentioned, by the way.)

Lori Brotto is the 34-year-old psychologist tasked with defining hypoactive sexual desire disorder for the next D.S.M., and she's aware of the sticky issues. She has proposed adding the symptom of not being "receptive to a partner’s attempts to initiate" to the criteria for diagnosis -- which only raises the additional issue of the role a woman's partner plays. Brotto would also like to do away with the word "desire" altogether: She's consciously moving away from a "male" model for sexual desire toward her colleague Rosemary Basson's "Sexual Response Cycle," which characterizes female desire as coming after arousal. Basson argues that women often commit to the idea of sex and display a "willingness to be receptive" to their partners' advances. Only after foreplay gets a woman aroused does she become hungry with desire, says Basson.

The "male" and "female" model seem pretty interchangeable to me. In a long-term sexual relationship people often take turns being receptive to each other's advances. Sometimes you've had a crap day at the office and you're just not into it -- until your lovah touches you just like so. That isn't a strictly male or female thing -- it's just a human thing. On a similar note, both sexes are under pressure to perform in very different ways, and when there is all that play-acting going on, it's no surprise that some are left unsatisfied -- not to mention unenthusiastic about a repeat performance.

The truth is female sexuality isn't easily categorized into "normal" and "abnormal" -- it's variable and idiosyncratic. There is no definitive all-purpose map; the best we've got is a caricature. As is often the case with such things, many women will look at this sketch and exclaim: That doesn't look like me at all!