The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World at Your Fingertips (14 page)

of an option, sex became a hothouse of desire to be explored and experienced at leisure.

Sunny recalls the spring of her junior year at college when she and her boyfriend had passionate outercourse in the bathtub. “We lived in a group house, and the bathroom was the only place we could have any privacy. It was a Catholic college, and the Student Health Service did not provide contraception, and I couldn’t afford a private doctor. We would bathe each other, do soapy massages, style our hair with bubbles, and masturbate ourselves and each other.” Sunny recalls the sex that she had in that tub as the best of her life. “It’s just never been so inventive,” she says wistfully.

Ruth, a sex therapist from California, relates her youthful experience with outercourse. “My boyfriend and I wanted to save intercourse for marriage, but that didn’t stop us from having ecstatic sex. We explored ourselves and each other and learned how to fantasize and kiss and touch in very imaginative ways. When we were finished, we always felt like we’d been transported to hyperspace.”

Rosalind, who has had many sexual experiences with both women and men, describes what she recalls as the most erotic night of her life. “At an office party, I started dancing with one of the executives I had a crush on, and it turned out to be mutual. He invited me to his place. We started talking about what we thought about each other, fantasies we’d had about each other, and that escalated into sex. I

didn’t have my cervical cap, and he had no condoms, so we did everything but intercourse over and over all night long. I was so dizzy that I would have an orgasm if he blew in my ear. Finally at dawn, we had to go sit in the bathtub to cool down and get our heads back together.”

Many lesbians and bisexual women who come out after having sex exclusively with men say that sex with women opened up unimagined new worlds of pleasure.

My all-time-favorite piece of erotic literature is a wildly funny riff by Sdiane Bogus (a pseudonym) called “Dyke Hands,” in which the narrator explores the ravishing sexual potential we hold in our fingertips:

Because dyke hands are the sexual organs of lesbian love, they can be as shocking to view as the penis through an open fly, or as bold (delicious) to behold as the breast of a woman suddenly uncovered... [Those hands] belong to our lovers, and those very hands come to our beds outstretched to touch, to rub, to tickle, to smooth, to run ripples of pleasure over our bodies, and often we take those very hands, finger by precious finger, into our mouths, assuming their cleanliness, their sanctity, and perform fingerling-us.

The narrator and her lover go for a manicure, and the results are explosive.

Massaging and drawing with a near-pornographic stroke, the manicurist pulled her own encircled hand down my lover’s arm, smoothly, pressing with sensual surety every molecule of lotion into the pores of her hand and arm.... There were my lover’s ten virile fingers stretched out like a naked man before a geisha.... How good these hands were to my flesh when their touch wrought magic fires in my feet, raised the hair on my arms, brought my clitoris to knot and explosion.

In spite of her rapturous fantasy, the narrator suddenly has misgivings about the public display of hands that perform such intimate caresses.

The hands that stroke my hair, caress my flesh, that grip my thighs, press my love button, that slide between the satin readiness of my labia, ought not to be seen by the daily populace.... My holiest orgasms come from the probing phalanges of my lover’s dyke hands. I’d not like to have them generally touching every Tom, Dick, and Harriet, not my dyke’s hands.
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These accounts illustrate how extravagantly incendiary and exquisitely intimate non-intercourse sex can be, and, for those of us

who have forgotten, they remind us that intercourse is only one way to experience the rich banquet of sexuality.

MASTURBATION

As Natural as Breathing?

Masturbation is as old as life itself. And, it appears to be innate. Gynecologists and ultrasound technicians are familiar with the sight of male fetuses with erect penises. A report from a group of Italian obstetricians published in the
American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology
describes similar activity of a female fetus during an ultra sound examination:

We recently observed a female fetus at 32 weeks’ gestation touching the vulva with fingers of [her] right hand. The caressing movement was centered primarily on the region of the clitoris. Movements stopped after 30 to 40 seconds, and started again after a few moments. Further, these light touches were repeated and were associated with short, rigid movements of the pelvis and legs. After another break, in addition to this behavior, the fetus contracted the muscles of the trunk and limbs, and the climax, clonicotonic movements [rapid muscle contractions] of the body, followed. Finally she relaxed and rested. We [several doctors and the mother] observed this behavior for about 20 minutes.
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Fetal masturbation? Female fetuses having orgasms? A resounding yes to both of these questions. This represents some very bad news for the antimasturbation lobby, since there are no pure foods, stern admonitions, or aluminum mittens that can prevent interuterine sex play. Babies as young as three or four months old have been reported to masturbate, and certainly many young children do.

Most people probably remember masturbating as children, but because it was done in secret, many assume that they were the only ones who did such a thing. Here are a few experiences that people have shred with me:

Marci remembers being enamored at age five by a
Life
magazine cover featuring a huddle of all-star football players. “I was awash with desire. I would sit and stare at that picture, touching myself lightly. I don’t specifically remember having ‘orgasms,’ but these were intensely erotic experiences,” she says. “I did this for many months until the magazine was in shreds. When I started school, I used the
National Geographic
magazines in the library to the same effect. It was the only place you could see pictures of naked bodies.” Daryl went to boarding school in the seventh grade and had roommates who all masturbated. “After lights out, you could hear those sheets popping,” she recalls. “I was enormously relieved to know that many other girls my age masturbated, too. I had gotten the

message that it was a no-no, but just couldn’t believe that something that felt so good could be bad.”

Pauline relates her childhood masturbation experiences:

I remember at age nine repeating the word “mas-tur-ba-tion” with my sisters in the back of our station wagon so that I could learn to pronounce this big new word. Yet, I was totally oblivious to the real meaning until I got to college. I thought that getting off under the faucet in the bathtub was my own little game, and that stroking my skin gently with my fingers (which equally turned me on) was actually the taboo my big sisters told me “masturbation” was. Despite my lack of understanding of the definition of masturbation, I practiced it at every opportunity.

The common thread here is that most young children discover masturbation on their own, that it feels so good and so right, but for some mysterious reason, it is considered bad or dangerous and is strictly forbidden.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MASTURBATION

Of all of the sexual activities that people engage in, masturbation has consistently been the most frequently employed, secret, and maligned. Physicians and philosophers in ancient China believed that

ejaculation from masturbation was a waste of vital
chi
, or energy, and the first sexuality advice manuals written by Taoist masters condemned men from doing it. Early Taoists understood that women ejaculated, too, but female emissions weren’t thought to be as vital as men’s, so female masturbation wasn’t specifically prohibited. Early Indian Tantric gurus also believed that sperm took forty days to produce (it takes sixty-three days) and should therefore not be wasted.
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Autoeroticism, as masturbation was referred to in classical Greece, was considered to be a favorite pastime of the mythical satyrs who embodied the baser side of human nature. While masturbation was not prohibited for humans, that is, men, it was derided as an activity more appropriate to slaves than masters who had “real” sex with boys and prostitutes.
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Hysteria, a complex of symptoms that includes fainting, edema (fluid or blood trapped in the genitals—the female version of “blue balls”), nervousness, irritability, weight loss, and depression, was reported in Egypt as early as 2000 B.C.E. and was apparently prevalent in Greece as well. Greek physicians often performed genital massage on their patients with the (accurate) belief that orgasm would bring some temporary relief.
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One might term this practice “professional masturbation.” In desperation, some women surely masturbated themselves, or a close female friend may have

lent a hand, but we’ll never know the extent of this solitary masturbatory practice.

The early Christians roundly condemned homosexuality, which they saw as going hand-in-hand (as it were) with mutual and solitary masturbation. Nuns who were caught using dildos were treated especially harshly. By the Middle Ages, Catholic authorities aggressively prohibited masturbation and any other sexual activity that was not performed in the service of marital fidelity, meaning reproduction. Medieval physicians were particularly concerned about masturbation by monks and virgins, and recommended a host of debilitating remedies including bleeding, ascetic diets or fasting, flagellation, cold baths, sitting on stones, and the deliberate suppression of fantasies.
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The Old Testament, however, does not forbid masturbation, as is commonly believed. In chapter 38 of Genesis, Onan was required by Jewish custom to marry his brother’s widow to provide a child to inherit the family property.
The New Annotated Bible
passage reads, “since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife so that he would not give offspring to his brother.”
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Onan, one of the most widely reviled biblical characters, was put to death, not because he masturbated alone, but because he apparently practiced withdrawal instead of fathering children that would not legally be his. It was only in the eighteenth century that the story of Onan was

reinterpreted by theologians to prohibit masturbation, or “onanism,” as it came to be known. In 1710, the anonymously published book
On the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, and All Its Frightful Consequences, in both Sexes, Consider’d with Spiritual and Physical Advice to Those, who have already injur’d themselves by this abominable practice. And seasonable Admonition to the Youth of the Nation, (of both Sexes) and those whose Tuition they are under, whether Parents, Guardians, Masters, or Mistresses
launched the modern campaign against masturbation. The title says it all. Another classic antimasturbation tract of the period is
Onanism: A Treatise on the Diseases Produced by Masturbation, Or, the Dangerous Effects of Secret and Excessive Venery
, by the Swiss physician Simon A. A. D. Tissot, who proclaimed that the loss of “vital fluid” through masturbation could cause mental illness, among a host of

other bodily ills.
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According to historian Sara Matthews Grieco, the eighteenth century was an era in which “doctors, pedagogues, and parents participated in a collective delirium of repression” against masturbation “that would reach its peak in the 19th century.”
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The Victorians took up the crusade against “self-abuse” and the “pollution of moral purity” with unparalleled vigor. Even feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft warned against “the nasty habits of schoolgirls,” which she feared would be carried into later life, where they might unduly influence the prescribed asexuality of proper Victorian women.
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Two of America’s most widely known food products produced in the 19th century—Graham Crackers and Kellogg’s Cornflakes— were aggressively promoted by their crusading developers as “pure” foods that would not promote untoward tendencies in children. Sylvester Graham, a minister who preached vegetarianism and athleticism along with Christianity, warned against the loss of “vital fluids” from masturbation, advocating foods made from whole wheat “Graham” flour in place of meat and spicy foods. He also promoted sleeping on wooden beds to suppress masturbatory urges in boys.
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Cornflake magnate J. H. Kellogg listed thirty-nine signs that a boy was masturbating, including poor posture, acne, bashfulness, nail- biting, and bed-wetting. For recidivists, he recommended draconian measures that included suturing the foreskin over the glans to prevent erection for boys, and pouring “pure carbolic acid to the clitoris,” for girls. Parents went to great lengths to prevent their children from “polluting” themselves, following Kellogg’s advice to bandage their genitals or hands.
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These strategies against childhood masturbation were still widely prevalent in the twentieth century. Mary Steichen Calderone, a physician and cofounder of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), often said that when she was a child in the 1920s, her parents forced her to wear aluminum mittens to bed to prevent her from masturbating.

In spite of these efforts, masturbation remained a popular if secret activity. Alfred Kinsey’s studies during the late 1940s and early 1950s found that 94 percent of men and 40 percent of women had masturbated to orgasm.
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Sex in America, a broad-based national survey published in 1994, reports that 60 percent of adult men and 40 percent of adult women say that they masturbated in the past year; 25 percent of men and 10 percent of women say that they do so at least once a week. This survey also found that women and men who engage in frequent partner sex are also the ones who masturbate the most regularly.

Betty Dodson, an artist and sexuality educator, was the first person to promote the use of vibrators to enhance masturbation. In 1971, Dodson began holding sexuality consciousness-raising sessions and self-published the booklet
Liberating Masturbation
, later updated, expanded, and reissued as
Sex for One
.
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Soon Dodson began holding her famous Bodysex workshops in which she exuberantly promoted genital pride and masturbation as a primary form of sexual expression, rather than as a crutch until the next partner comes along.