Out From Under

I had a group of teens in my home a while back for a birthday party. One girl, who’s in a theatre troup that gives sex and sexuality presentations in junior and senior high schools, was telling the group how a certain principal had not allowed them to present part of their show. “It was ‘too mature a subject’ for her students.”

“How old were the students?” I asked.

“Grade nine.”

Someone else wanted to know which part had been prohibited. She suggested they guess.

“Abortion?”
nope.
“Homosexuality?”
nope
“Sexual assault?”
nope
“STD’s?”
nope

Ummm… so what was it?

“Masturbation.”

“WHAT?” One boy shouts out. “The one aspect of the whole presentation that they have the most experience with??”

Ha. Too right. This squeamishness about masturbation is bizarre, and I believe that women are worse about it. Men take masturbation largely for granted, but women? Even as television and celebrities popularize it, making vibrators the next must-have accessory for the modern woman, the very women who watch these shows and ogle the vibe-toting celebrities curl their lips in girly squeamishness at the mention of the M-word.

Why is that? More of our cultural schizophrenia regarding sex, says I. Masturbation is all over the place, but it’s never spoken of; it’s empowering, it’s shameful; it’s normal and healthy, it’s disgusting.

Why can’t it be, as it seems to be for men, simply a given? Yes, it happens, of course it does. I have yet to see a baby boy who hasn’t discovered his wee joystick by the time he’s two at the very outside. Baby girls discover their vagina within the same time frame. The clitoris is a little harder — that eternal cosmic injustice — but lots of them manage it before preschool. It’s not perverse. It’s human nature to enjoy pleasure, and when we’re very small humans, we don’t differentiate between the pleasure of the sweetness of ice cream, the pleasure of a warm blanket on a cold night, and the pleasure that comes from between our thighs.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t eventually make the distinction. I’m not looking to see people masturbating at the bus stop. I mean, really. There are enough dollops of spit, wads of gum and cigarette butts on city sidewalks as it is. Who needs more goop down there? Masturbation, unless between consenting adults, is a private event. Appropriately so.

But why the squeamishness? “Private” is not the same thing as “shameful”.

Some days I wonder if the reason adolescent girls tend to be so much more emotionally volatile than boys is that girls don’t masturbate at the same rates as boys. Maybe some of that feminine volatility is simply sexual charge with no outlet.

Which suggests to me that girls should be given a vibrator no later than their 15th birthday. Possibly sooner. So that they can learn what gives them pleasure. So that they can take charge of their own sexuality and not be dependent upon a (quite likely inept and inexperienced) partner. So that they can be independent and autonomous women, in charge of this, as in every aspect of their lives.

So that they will give their mothers a flippin’ break…

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 13th, 2008 at 6:39 am and is filed under the solution is in your hands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.