The Wonder Chronicles: 5
On Masturbation
Art: Nadine Faraj, 2018, The State Where All Objects Dissolve III.
This is part of a running series. Read the previous Wonder Chronicle: On Asking for Help
Self love. What’s not to love?
On this International Masturbation Day, let’s not beat about the bush though: it’s pleasure we’re seeking. Love is fine. It’s pleasure that unclasps the stranglehold of puritans on our pussies and penises.
I was 11 years old when I gave myself my first orgasm. I thought I was going to pee myself but instead: wave upon wave, ah the wonder of pleasure!
And that’s why masturbation still remains taboo–because sex with ourselves is always there and how dare we take it.
Because sex with ourselves is for the sake of pleasure alone.
Because for cisgender women, how dare we own our pleasure, uncontrolled, unlegislated, ungovernable and therefore selfish; how dare we want to please ourselves alone, no penis or baby involved in the production of our pleasure? Bitch or cunt is not the worst thing you can call a woman. Selfish is.
And that is the wonder of masturbation–the danger of (selfish) pleasure!
Forty five years, several sex toys, and many more orgasms that I’ve given myself later and I marvel at that girl I used to be. The girl who discovered the wonder of masturbation after an educational film on the changes that puberty brings was shown during a biology lesson at her all girl’s school in London.
“Some children explore their bodies at this time and that is perfectly natural,” she heard.
And explore she did! Well done, little Mona.
For merely suggesting that schools in the U.S. do as my school in London did and tell children in sex ed that masturbation is natural and common, Dr. Jocelyn Elders, the first Afrcian American and the second woman to become Surgeon General of the U.S. was fired in 1994 by Bill Clinton–the president who fucked his intern with a cigar, remember. Dr. Elders dared to suggest that we teach children that there is no shame in touching their own genitals for pleasure. This, in a country where adult men in the majority of states can marry children. This, in a country where some states outlaw sex toys.
The (selfish) danger of pleasure!
Pleasure is political and the politics of sexual hypocrisy must be met with the political ownership of our pleasure and to protest the firing of Dr. Elders, sex positive retailer Good Vibrations declared May of 1995 “International Masturbation Month."
May 28 is International Masturbation Day. How are you celebrating?
Who owns your pleasure?
The answer to that is the answer to “Who owns your body?”
For cisgender women, how dare we own our pleasure, uncontrolled, unlegislated, ungovernable and therefore selfish; how dare we want to please ourselves alone, no penis or baby involved in the production of our pleasure?
Mona at 11, on the threshold of puberty, discovered the wonder that her fingers on her genitals could bring. Mona at 56, postmenopausal at last, wonders at the ways her fingers and toys continue to bring her pleasure
Recently, I took a friend, 61, visiting from London to Target.
“Want to see their sex toys?’
“Yes!”
We both went home with new toys.
Delight in the danger of self pleasure!
My goal: that you are found by wonder.
My wish: that you intensely live.
Mona Eltahawy is a feminist author, commentator and disruptor of patriarchy. She is editing an anthology on menopause called Bloody Hell! And Other Stories: Adventures in Menopause from Across the Personal and Political Spectrum. Her first book Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution (2015) targeted patriarchy in the Middle East and North Africa and her second The Seven Necessary Sins For Women and Girls (2019) took her disruption worldwide. It is now available in Ireland and the UK. Her commentary has appeared in media around the world and she makes video essays and writes a newsletter as FEMINIST GIANT.
FEMINIST GIANT Newsletter will always be free because I want it to be accessible to all. If you choose a paid subscriptions - thank you! I appreciate your support. If you like this piece and you want to further support my writing, you can like/comment below, forward this article to others, get a paid subscription if you don’t already have one or send a gift subscription to someone else today.