Full Frontal Feminism_ A Young Women's Guide to Why Feminism Matters - Jessica Valenti [12]
The only way to battle shame is with pride; we have to be proud of the choices we make and stand behind them. We have to take the power out of sexual insults like “whore” and “slut.” There aren’t many feminists my age who don’t remember musician Kathleen Hanna—of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre fame—scrawling SLUT across her stomach as a way to reclaim the word. We need to do the same thing, not just with the word, but with the idea. There’s nothing wrong with having sex; don’t let anyone forget that.
Beyond Bean-Flicking
I always wondered why there weren’t more terms for female masturbation. I mean, men can jerk off, choke the chicken, rub one out, or spank the monkey, but the only one I’ve heard for women is flicking the bean, and frankly, that just sounds painful. But then I realized that women don’t really talk about masturbating all that much, especially younger women. When I was in high school, my friends and I would chat about sexual positions and blow jobs as easily as we discussed our last math class. But masturbation was hush-hush. Looking back, that’s just weird. Seems to me that masturbation should be the most-talked-about sex. After all, it is the safest sex of all. (Even emotionally—when was the last time you broke your own heart?) And it’s not like most women aren’t masturbating. For as long as we’ve had vaginas, we’ve been messing around with them—scientists recently found a dildo from the Ice Age.13 I shit you not.
But unless you’re screwing yourself silly in front of a camera for boys’ viewing pleasure (you’ll see what I mean when you get to Chapter 3, “Pop Culture Gone Wild”), female masturbation is taboo. Probably because it’s the ultimate “selfish hedonism.” Ain’t no way any bean-flicking is going to get you pregnant. Masturbation is just for fun, so it must be bad.
Despite the fact that encouraging young women to masturbate might cut down on STDs, and even lower rates of supposedly evil teen sex, it’s really not stressed in sex ed classes. It’s just too much for the anti-sex folks to take. In 1994, U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders said that masturbation “is a part of human sexuality, and it’s a part of something that perhaps should be taught—perhaps even as part of our sex ed curriculum.”14 Smart lady, right? I thought so, too. Unfortunately, being logical was just as frowned upon then as it is now. She was forced to resign.
In Mississippi you can buy a gun with no background check, but vibrators are outlaw.
But it’s not just young women in school who are getting the shaft when it comes to masturbation. Women of all ages are discouraged from taking matters into their own hands. This is not to say that women only masturbate with battery-operated aids, but I think it’s telling that pretty much anything that vibrates (and is therefore fun for the ladies) is outlawed in eight states. Seriously—Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Virginia, Alabama, and Colorado all have “anti-erotic massager” laws. Something tells me these states don’t have a similar ban on Lubriderm and Playboy.
A woman in Texas was even arrested last year for daring to throw a “Passion Party.”15 (Kind of like a Tupperware party, but with naughty stuff.) Arrested! Apparently, in Texas you can sell vibrators, but only if you sell them as “novelties” or “gag gifts.” Selling them in a way that admits their actual role in sex is the illegal part. You know, because girls masturbating should be funny, not real. Then, of course, there are the ladies who don’t partake because they’ve internalized the same sentiment that these bullshit laws enforce. This just makes me sad. Did they fall for the vaginas-are-gross thing? Didn’t they ever get the hand-mirror lesson?
Please, ladies—if this is you—hop to it! Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you any step-by-step instructions; I’ll leave that to the sexperts. I will, however, highly encourage some serious self-loving. Shit, it helps you go to sleep; it helps you