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.).