By Maria Padhila
I know this sounds like sacrilege on a website run by Eric Francis, but I really don’t like masturbation.
I don’t mean the action — that’s fine. It’s the word. It sounds awful. It’s hard to pronounce. No wonder no one wants to talk about it — they can’t even say it. It’s neck-and-neck with “menstruation” for the coldest, most technical-sounding sexually related word. Even “ejaculation” isn’t as bad — at least that has that breezy “jack” syllable at its heart, calling to mind a carefree sailor off to seek his fortune, as well as a phonetic kissing kinship with “exclamation.”
But masturbation sounds like a combination of “smash” and “disturb,” clicking off into a robotic terminal suffix that smacks of machinery (not that I have anything against vibrators — they’re not for me, but I don’t have anything against them). [And according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, there is long-standing speculation that the Latin word mastubari is an altered form of a word meaning “to defile oneself with the hand.” — Amanda]
The whole contraption of a word has an ominous steampunk resonance, conjuring up mustache twirling and tying poor Nell to the train tracks. So if you catch me avoiding using it as I write, understand this is why.
Not that other terms have much going for them. “Self-abuse” is simply inaccurate. Speaking of Victorians, “onanism,” while just as difficult to say, does have that Biblical origin as well as that killer association with the Dorothy Parker anecdote (she named her parakeet Onan, “because he spilled his seed on the ground.” If I’m ever feeling blue, all I have to do is think of that one.).
Saying “self-pleasuring” in these times earns a snort. You might as well project a big image of the original hairy couple from the first edition Joy of Sex book. (And guess what? I have one! Right now everything’s everywhere because we had a flood in our house, and a lot of the books are jumbled, and The Joy of Sex is on top of The Inauguration of Barack Obama. Apologies to both the Comforts and the first family.) Or you could link to a Will Farrell “my luv-ahhhhhh” sketch.
So this is what happens when you’re a poet and writer. You have to get this word stuff out of the way first.
What brought this to mind was an essay Eric wrote on artist, writer and sex educator Betty Dodson for the subscriber version of Planet Waves two weeks ago. He included a link to a facsimile of her original groundbreaking article on masturbation for Ms. Magazine — he says 1973, but I could swear it was 1974, and online references have it in both years.
The reason I think it’s 1974 is that as soon as I pulled up the link I recognized it. I remembered the photo first, then some of the text. I remembered it from the summer of 1974, because I remember also reading a National Lampoon magazine during that vacation, and its cover was “Isolationism and Tooth Decay.” For reals. I was 13, and this experience actually formed many of my later beliefs and practices.
Here’s how it happened: The school I attended had a magazine sale as a fundraiser, and my mother believed in both supporting the school and in reading, and so she ordered a couple of subscriptions as well as letting us check off pretty much any boxes we chose. She subscribed to Ms.; the National Lampoon was my brother, of course. My mother never put any restrictions on our reading (being a First Amendment-loving librarian, bless her) and my father was too busy being a depressed rageaholic and building weapons to care.
I recognized, simply and suddenly, the photo of a nude woman, her head thrown back and back arched and legs crossed. “A daily yoga-style workout helps Betty Dodson keep in touch with her body,” read the caption. I remembered that I had somehow gotten the impression that she was in that picture demonstrating one of the techniques she was writing about, which further confused me.
I remember another article in that Ms. that was probably as formative for me: Rock critic Karen Durbin (there were actually women who wrote about rock and roll! That’s what I wanted to do when I grew up!) wrote “Can a Feminist Love the World’s Greatest Rock Band?” arguing that cock rock — or even Mick Jagger whipping the stage with a belt during “Midnight Rambler” — could be appropriated, critiqued and just plain enjoyed from a feminist perspective.
I actually could understand the problem and the argument, and had some of my own opinions on it all — being sexy was a form of power, performance was a form of power, and there was no reason a woman shouldn’t do it in the same manner as a man. I was already a fan of the growing androgynous and glitter movement in rock, and saw blurring of gender boundaries as a duty of an artist and that it had been going on for at least a century.
As you can tell, I was an insufferable young woman and it’s no mystery why friends dropped me like a hot potato and why I was usually so lonely.
What I think was revolutionary and what appealed to my logic and curiosity was her contention that self-sex was just another form of sex, not something less worthy or in any way wrong. I guess I still have that youthful way of looking at things in that respect — the only question I’d ever had about any kind of enjoyment is “who is it hurting?” It’s this, along with being in the arts, that made anti-gay bigotry impossible for me to understand and let me push for gay rights, that made me brazen my way through the ’70s and ’80s version of bullying and slut-shaming, and that makes what I’m doing today possible. Innocence, ignorance or perversity? I guess it’s seen these ways by some. But can anyone answer my question in a way that’s rational or that has any proof?
Who is it hurting, to touch yourself? Who is it hurting, for a woman to love a woman? Who is it hurting, to love more than one?
You can hurt all kinds of people if you’re the kind of person who hurts people. You can do this no matter what kind of relationship you’re in. But the relationship itself? I’ve never seen how that can do harm.
I’m aware that the early prohibitions against masturbation in Western European Christianity came from the logic that it “robbed” from the primary relationship (just as a “secondary” would rob love, when love is conceived as a finite resource). The primary relationship had to be one of two, defined as male and female, to be a sacrament and reflect Christ and the church. That’s the concept, but my goodness, it’s hard to understand how they came up with that one. It’s kind of like the idea that if you’re going to lie, you better make it a real doozy, because that’s more likely to be believed.
As a young person, I wondered: Wouldn’t it make more sense for a marriage to be between two men, because Christ was a man and the church is all represented by men? And what about the nuns; they marry Christ but then who does Christ marry? Because then he’d have to marry the church, but only two people can get married. Except that a whole bunch of nuns get married to one Christ, except he’s three people, except he’s not.
There’s a lot of time to think while you’re sitting around during those eternal church masses. I told you I used to read anything I could get my hands on, and that included whatever religion class texts would pop up in the pew hymnal rail. I would also read the Bible at random, as well as the missal for different types of ceremonies, including marriage. There would be little explications of this sort, and that’s where all this thinking came from. It’s still happening today, obviously.
The first part of Dodson’s article wasn’t as interesting to me, because it told mostly of an older woman who had been married and divorced and had vast life experiences of which I could understand little. When she got into her artistic projects and theory, I could come along. So to speak. For all my pseudo-intellectualism, I wasn’t sure (like most people of that day and age) what or where a clitoris was. In fact, at first, I wasn’t sure what masturbation meant, because it only popped up occasionally in written texts, only to be hushed and never heard again. It was never explained or defined, just surrounded by a miasma of shame, so I even wondered if it had something to do with some kind of abuse.
As with most of my vocabulary, I picked it up through context, and Dodson’s article made that particularly easy. If only three concepts took hold in my turbulent brain, these three would have been enough to create a healthy sexuality, against all odds. Reading back, here are the three I suspect stuck with me:
• “Sexual skill and the ability to respond are not ‘natural’ — at least not in our society … . Sex is like any other skill or art form — it has to be learned and practiced.”
• “I have never met a person whom I would consider a good lover who wasn’t totally turned on by any information I could give about what turned me on.”
• “Our society does not really approve of sexually proficient and independent women. Which gets us to the double standard — the concept that men have the social approval to be aggressive (independent) and sexually polygamous, but that women should be nonaggressive (dependent) and sexually monogamous.”
(Please note that I don’t believe women should not be monogamous — and I’m not equating being polyamorous with independence and sexual proficiency. I’m only siding with Dodson against the notion that women should be monogamous. Women should be the way that suits them.)
What’s remarkable (as much so as that “Isolationism and Tooth Decay” issue of National Lampoon) is that we’re still trying to figure this shit out, even when someone put it as clearly as Dodson did in 1974.
Here’s something that’s just as accurate now: “We have been conditioned to make love as though we are rushing to an appointment,” I read today. I know that as an older teen and in my early 20s, I enjoyed — and I think this is true of many growing up in America — much more leisure in time, even if those long stretches of makeout sessions did happen in the cramped space of a car or a tiny, cold rented room.
Or this — another thing that bears repeating: “Joyful masturbation and self-love naturally flows over into a sexual exchange with another person. We can give and receive love best when we feel good about ourselves. Because I am secure about my sexual response and orgasm, I feel free to stimulate my clitoris along with penetration — or to show my partner what turns me on. During oral sex, I can state my preference — giving my partner necessary feedback on what pleases me.”
As I’m writing this, I’m listening to an Internet radio station with songs from the 1970s, to kind of set the mood. They’re playing Randy Newman’s “Political Science.” It’s one more instance of déjà vu all over again:
No one likes us — I don’t know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let’s drop the big one and see what happens…
They all hate us anyhow,
So let’s drop the big one now
I can remember that when I first heard the word I wondered what “bation” was and how did one get to be a master of it. Ahhhh innocence!
“most people don’t generally think of masturbation as being about sex with oneself” – oh!
ok here’s one way to put in the rhetorical scalpel: masturbation is sex with oneself as opposed with someone else (despite misuse of the word in the context of ‘masturbating another’ though there may be times when that’s actually true). most people don’t generally think of masturbation as being about sex with oneself. The interesting thing is that apart from euphemisms and slurs, there is just one word for it in English!!
Joe Trusso once pointed out to me that very few people associated masturbation with self awareness. So yes — a new experience would lead to another concept of the experience and that could lead to a new word. I suggest we start with the experience and the concept and then figure out how to describe what we just did or plan to do.
i’m all for using the “correct” words so as not to veil truth, or cut ourselves off from reality. but i have to say that when i read about the latin roots of “masturbation” on sheri winston’s website & then corroborated it in the etymology dictionary, it made me wonder:
is it possible that the “correct” terms are sometimes *worth* getting rid of in favor of terms that are just as accurate but not linked to negative/oppressive root meanings? i’m not any more crazy about perpetuating possible millennia-old vibrations of shame that may surround use of the word “masturbation” than i am of perpetuating current-world shame and ignorance by not using that word.
how do we know, culturally, when we’ve gotten relaxed enough about the word “masturbation” that we can choose something friendlier and still be fully present in truth?
Good discussion going on here, thanks, Maria!
Enjoyed your comment, Green-Star-gazer, words are symbols, and it makes sense that they would be subject to cultural interpretation. Interesting that perception seems to follow form — I’ve always thought that those born before Pluto was discovered seemed less able to understand the need FOR personal transformation, let alone go along with some kind of system of self-discovery. All stuff to ponder.
Back to topic, I’m amused at some of the euphemism’s listed here but it wasn’t until Eric weighed in on the bias against finding an acceptable word or phrase that isn’t considered offensive by one party or another that I started to laugh and I’m still erupting into giggles: do any of you remember the Fruitcake Lady? As they say on the intertubes, I LMAO every time I think of her!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-1ehDZv6JQ
Maria: Just hunted this out to have another look. John Donne (1572 – 1631). Self Love
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/donne7.php
The Caravaggio ‘Narcissus’ is also interesting alongside it [and in my view a naive reading of both]. The tragedy in the Narcissus story as i read it is that Narcissus fell in love with an image of himself believing it to be his real self.
In whatever ways we love ourselves (the deep self), sexually, emotionally, intellectually etc. at this point in history it’s as often as not going to feel like work. I gave my ‘Our Bodies Ourselves’ to the local secondhand bookshop over ten years ago, because I thought we’d be travelling new ground now….
So we carry on carrying on – but hey, it’s valuable work, we are worth the investment in ourselves and each other, and yes, it can be tiring, draining, and depressing; but, sometimes we can, we have to, make it very very pleasurable for ourselves (and each other) too.
All best… nilou
Maria, sword in the sheath is not poetic when it’s being said around a girl ostensibly to prevent her understanding the meaning. Also a sword cuts; a penis brings life. A sheath is where the sword is when it’s not being used; a vagina is where a penis is when both are being used. Euphemisms can be in poetic language and be toxic…
“sword in the sheath” is poetic…and not just for its medieval overtones. but this is poetry too: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171282
i just remembered that in this burning man musical theater parody group i used to be in, we did a song and dance about an all-female sex toy party. at one point, each of us in the chorus would pop up to the front mic and sing out one of the euphemisms, sort of roll call style. mine was “wax on…wax off!” (and a guy wrote the number! he’s multi-talented ;))
there’s so much interesting stuff in these comments…PW people know so much about so many subjects. thanks y’all, i was just hit by some depression and overwhelm again but i knew i wanted to check in and this gives me so much to think about.
The use of language and the making of our worlds is a topic of continued fascination for me. Yesterday on Radiolab they had an interesting segment on the relationship between language and the perceptions of colour. Researchers cannot explain this but it seems that until we have a word for a particular pigment so that we can replicate a colour we may not actually have been able to perceive it very well. They used the example of going thru ancient texts from all over the world in various time periods and discovering that there are but a tiny handful of references to the colour “blue”. This correlates to the reality that very few cultures had the ability to create blue pigments for art/cultural use. The main exception being the Persians and Egyptians who had access to Lapis Lazuli. Except for these cultures there are practically no references to the color blue. There are “red” skies and “yellow” waters a-plenty. So the question becomes, once we have a word for a thing, can we then start to perceive it? The jury is still out on this one because in other studies, color-blind monkeys were given full spectrum vision with the insertion of biological cells that can perceive the missing color….. but it took their brains some time to sort out the new signals and actually become aware that they were seeing with literally new eyes.
Other stories exist that say that the indigenous people of central America were unable to “see” Columbus’ ships when they first arrived because they had no word for “sail” in their vocabulary….but once they started to talk about what they were seeing, and they developed or adopted the words for the ships that were anchored on their shores, the more the native peoples could finally actually see them.
There is a mysterious relationship between perception, language and our experience of the outer world. It is something so subtle that we barely can grasp that that this bridgework even exists we use it so effortlessly. So yes, the naming of things and the power that is then held over that thing is more than just a device used in fantasy and myth…. it may actually be something built into our biological neural net and we don’t even know it exists most of the time.
Then we add the different uses of the same word across cultures and we get into more trouble. In our American culture one can use the word “monstrous” to simply mean very large, overwhelming, or gigantic which we do all the time. But my Scottish friend was horrified when I commented on the “monstrous” beech trees that beautifully lined a walking path. To her ears I was labeling the trees as evil or wicked… same language, VERY different meanings! So sometimes even when we think we are being clear, we may not be.
‘Stoking my fire’ does it for me, but in polit(ish) conversation mostly i’d be saying ‘sorting her out’ or ‘taking care of something/me/myself’. It isn’t much wonder that the language is so impoverished around its taboo subjects. Quite a useful way to see the taboos. If there is a choice of Latin or euphemism that pretty much equals ‘taboo’. And we need the words to have the conversations we need to keep having. I’m also liking ‘fuck with my self’, ‘fuck by my self’ and ‘fuck for me myself and i’. [The F in F-off although derived from the same root, is as far as i’m concerned a hynonym]. For communicative purposes ‘masturbation’ does the communicative job. “Hi, how are you?” “I’m fine, just masturbating.” “Shall i call back?”, “No, it’s okay, I’m nearly there” Yes, I have had this phone conversation – communication clear and direct.
‘Masturbation’ isn’t onomatopoeic but as words go it has a lot going for it, vast rhyme-potential on the last syllable, two distinct stresses, four internal vowel sounds, nominal and verb forms…… Like so many things, it not the words themselves, but what we do with them. When we have a hundred different ways of calling ‘masturbation’, that will be good.
Masturbation – ‘probably by influence of ‘turbare’ “to stir up” ‘ – i’m liking this idea also, and probably why it’s still a supposed-to-be-off-limits subject.
In the history of sex, euphemisms have been used to veil the truth, distort perceptions, and propagate shame and denial. Part of being real is using the words that are in the dictionary. “Self-pleasure” says as much about masturbation as “sword in the sheath” says about fucking.
One question to ask is whether a word is inherently a problem or whether it’s our feelings about it.
For a while I had a girlfriend when I was in Belgium. I once used the word cunt and she was offended. So I said, ok what would would you prefer? Vagina? Vulva? Pussy? None of the above…no word could be used.
Using a euphemism takes us closer to using no word at all, and I think we need to claim our words, what they represent and our feelings about them.
Thanks, Maria, fantastic!
Though this one made me roar wth laughter, aword, “auditioning the finger puppets”.
Great piece, as always, Maria! I have to say that I like the word ‘masturbation’. I think it’s so liberating to call things by their proper name, even if it’s not very beautiful. As children we were taught to tiptoe around the words penis, vagina, etc. Masturbation, menstruation, penis, vagina – bring ’em on!
First — this article seems to have a root in the recent piece I did introducing Virgo, which references Betty Dodson:
http://planetwaves.net/astrologynews/317801196.html
and her article from Ms Magazine, which we’ve reproduced here:
http://planetwaves.net/astrologynews/getting-to-know-me.html
I have some more thoughts on one of Maria’s topics — the word ‘masturbation’ which I will add soon.
One other reference: I’ve covered in some detail the history of the prohibition on masturbation in this article:
http://www.planetwaves.net/compersion/series/05/index.html
Totally enjoyable, Maria!
While “hand job” verbiage often seems to be directed toward the men, somma these r way more fun than the M-Word: “night out with the girls”, “auditioning the finger puppets”, “coming into your own”…
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090424212956AAeMoFi
xo
Love this piece, Maria. Masturbation is a troublesome word, and because it reeks of shame, it needs to reclaimed. I mostly use spiritual PC words like Self-Love and self-pleasure. Masturbation shall one day come to mean that… or perhaps drop from use altogether, because self-Love and self-pleasure will rule!
PS one of my mentors, Joseph Kramer, call it Orgasmic Yoga, which is a whole creative meditative process involving many kinds and uses of self-pleasure practice.