The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World at Your Fingertips (15 page)

Lonnie Barbach and other West Coast sex educators began advocating masturbation to help women learn to have orgasms. Barbach published For Yourself: The Fulfillment of Female Sexuality.
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Like
Sex for One
, the book became a classic and has remained in print since. Shere Hite asked about masturbation in the

questionnaire that she distributed to over 100,000 women in the early 1970s, and in her best-selling
Hite Report
, women poured out their feelings on the subject for over 150 pages.
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These books were all internationally distributed and became critical in beginning to rescue masturbation from silence and shame.

In the 1970s and 1980s, for the first time in human history, self- pleasuring was openly acknowledged as a significant and healthy sexual activity. As women’s sexual autonomy increased through contraception, abortion, divorce, and economic independence during the 1990s, though, masturbation once again came under attack due to pressure from the religious right in Congress and fundamentalist advocacy groups. President Bill Clinton fired his Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders for agreeing (not for advocating, as the media repeatedly misreported) that information on masturbation should be included in teenage sex education courses. Masturbation is rarely mentioned as a significant means of self-pleasuring or a self- discovery technique in the new government-funded “abstinence only” sexuality education programs across the country.

Psychologist Leonore Tiefer believes that “masturbation symbolizes all the primary problems that the Christian Right has with sexuality: it represents sex for pleasure rather than procreation, and because it’s done in secret by children and adults, it’s not subject to external control.” She adds, “they believe that the Bible prohibits it.” Tiefer suspects that the real focus of this attack is on girls,

because anything that enhances women’s autonomy threatens the male order. “I think we can estimate the success or failure of the right’s influence on sexuality by how masturbation seems to be going. Right now, it’s going badly.”
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In response to this dismal state of affairs, Good Vibrations, Grand Opening!, and Toys in Babeland, three well-known women- friendly sex boutiques, instituted the First National Masturbate-A- Thon on May 7, 1999. They solicit pledges as for a walkathon, but for minutes of masturbation. The proceeds are divided among

several organizations that promote AIDS awareness and services.

MASTURBATION FOREVER!

Masturbation is defined as any kind of sexual stimulation that does not include coitus. This means touching oneself on the breasts, genitals, or any other part of the body in a way that is intended to elicit sexual feelings or sensations. To keep masturbation interesting, people not only use hands, vibrators, dildos, or other sex toys, but add an astounding variety of objects including feathers, rubber gloves, whipped cream and other foodstuffs, cat-o-nine-tails, even whips and other instruments and apparatus traditionally used in S/M games. There is also mutual masturbation, in which a couple stimulates each other with or without having intercourse. What does this mean for lesbians who have very real and sexually rewarding experiences? Or for gay men, or even for heterosexual couples who

do everything but put a penis in the vagina or anus? Aren’t they having sex? Perhaps there is no such thing as masturbation—just sex with or without intercourse.

Numerous studies have shown that for many women, masturbation results in orgasm more reliably than does intercourse, and typically it produces stronger orgasms to boot. Masturbation has count less benefits. It helps you to discover the types of stimulation you like best. You’re in complete control of the amount and type of stimulation that you prefer. You don’t need contraception or STD protection. It is sex when you want it, and it can provide stress reduction, menstrual cramp relief, and even a cardiovascular workout if you do it for a long enough period of time and have many orgasms. Sexual activity produces the body’s natural opiate, endorphins, as well as hormones that can enhance mood and increase a sense of well-being. Some people masturbate to increase their desire for sex. As Truman Capote once said, “You don’t have to dress up for it.”
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In an after-dinner speech delivered to the Parisian “Stomach Club” in 1879, Mark Twain cited a reference to masturbation from
Julius Caesar’s Commentaries
: “To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and impotent it is a benefactor; they that be penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion.”
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HOW WE DO IT

There is no right or wrong way to masturbate, but the variations seem quite endless. Wanda found vibrators too harsh, so she adapted an electric toothbrush quite handily. Some women masturbate as frequently as once or more a day to achieve what Jill calls “maintenance orgasms.” In a survey done for
The Good Vibrations Guide to Sex
, Cathy Winks and Anne Semans found that people tend to change their masturbation habits when they are with a partner.
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Some people felt that they didn’t need to masturbate with a partner, while others didn’t want their partners to know that they masturbate. It seems that while many women may have recovered from the guilt of solitary masturbation, many are still too uncomfortable or feel too guilty to share this sex-enhancing activity with a partner.

There are women who get a particular thrill from secretly masturbating in public places. LuAnn says that she often does it on the train during her long, boring commute to work, strategically placing a coat or sweater across her lap. “If no one is sitting beside me,” she explains. Edna and her boyfriend like to masturbate each other at rock concerts with hands in each other’s pockets. They both suspect that they aren’t the only ones. Rachael, a magazine editor, recalls one particularly memorable orgasm of the “look-ma-no- hands” variety in the fifth row at Carnegie Hall to Beethoven’s Ninth.

Despite unrelenting efforts to erase masturbation throughout history, it shows us time and again that it is ubiquitous. According to
The Complete Dictionary of Sexology
, some 95 percent of men and 85 percent of women masturbate, at least occasionally.
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VIVA LA VIBRATOR

In
The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction
, Rachel Maines documents the secret history of the vibrator, and revealed that once electric models were available around 1880, they were widely advertised in needlework magazines, appliance catalogs, and Sears and Roebuck catalogs, marketed as a sexual health aid.
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The mass marketing of vibrators relieved physicians and midwives from having to treat women suffering from “hysteria,” or sexual depravation, with labor-intensive genital massage. Sometime after 1930, advertisements for vibrators disappeared. Maines surmises that this may have been attributable to their frequent appearance in pornographic films.

The vibrator resurfaced in the 1960s, and this time, Maines notes, “few efforts were made to camouflage its sexual benefits.” Nonetheless, she shows that many sex therapists, and even feminists, were slow to endorse the sexual independence that vibrators gave women.

More than anyone else, Betty Dodson is responsible for reclaiming the humble vibrator from the electronic dustbin. Dodson

says that many women still hold the romantic fantasy of Prince Charming leaning over and kissing them awake, and the two of them living happily after. “In my version, Sleeping Beauty wakes herself up with a 60 hertz electric massager vibrating at 5,000 revolutions per minute,” she says. “This activity can be shared with a lover, unless he or she has fallen asleep after they’ve had their orgasm.”
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In contrast to the widespread use of vibrators in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, laws controlling sex toys— especially vibrators—were enacted in the 1950s, greatly impeding their distribution. Many models continued to be sold in drug and department stores, but only as “massagers.”

Vibrators now come in an astonishing variety of shapes and colors, including penis-shaped, ribbed, or “smoothies,” straight, bent, egg-shaped, animal-shaped, or balls. Some can be quite fanciful with faces that have lips or tongues molded on the tips, and appended to serve as extra stimulation to the clitoral glans while the body is inside of the vagina, in direct contact with other clitoral structures. There are battery-powered and plug-in models each with its advantages and disadvantages. Battery-power models are noisier but tend to be cheaper and smaller, and you can use them on a camping trip or in countries that have an incompatible electrical voltage. Some battery vibrators are waterproof, designed for bathing, or cavorting in a hot tub or cool mountain stream. There are battery-run

strap-ons for those who want or need hands-free vibration, and smaller ones for anal stimulation.

Electric vibrators are larger, quieter, more powerful, and there are no batteries to run down mid-climax, but you can’t use them every where. Most electric models have two speeds, medium and high, but some have a slide mechanism that allows you to vary the speed from a low purr to a hearty roar. Vibrator aficionados often have impressive collections on hand for any occasion. Good Vibrations, which began as a vibrator store, reports that the battery- operated Crystal Jelly G Spot Vibe is their number-one seller.

If you’re not sure about which type of vibrator to buy, or aren’t satisfied with your current model, check out Joani Blank’s
Good Vibrations: The Complete Guide to Vibrators
.
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In addition to detailed information on how to choose, use, and maintain your vibrator, Blank offers a number of suggestions on how to integrate the use of a vibrator with a partner.

My friend Susan explains how she and her husband use a vibrator routinely:

I learned the pleasures of a vibrator when I was without a partner and for a long time thought it was just for pleasuring myself and at first I was a bit hesitant to tell my partner, now my husband, about my high-speed friend. Luckily he and I

were able to talk about what felt good and what our fantasies were. I told him that using the vibrator was like having another lover in the bed with us... a turn on for both of us. I especially like to use the vibrator on my clitoris while he fucks me. We also like to use it for massage; it feels great on sore necks and shoulders and can get you in the mood when you use it on the buttocks and inner thigh.

As long as we look at sex as a performance, many partners may continue to feel threatened or inadequate when a woman wants to introduce a vibrator as an extra hand, as it were, into lovemaking. If the goal is pleasure rather than performance, than the threat is removed, and sex becomes a journey of discovery rather than revelation. Susan took a smart approach and talked about it with her husband. Not surprisingly, they found common ground.

TOYS FOR GIRLS

The word “dildo” means “artificial penis,” and as such, dildos have been in use for at least 6,000 years and probably much longer. In addition to phallic-shaped objects, realistically carved dildos fashioned from leather, wood, bone, or stone have been found at archaeological sites dating as far back as 4000 B.C.E. A number of well-preserved examples have been recovered, including one from the Varna site in present-day Bulgaria, with a tip of hammered gold,

and an exquisitely carved double “phallic baton” found in France that bears a striking resemblance to modern-day sex toys intended for use by two women.
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Today, dildos are made from silicon, rubber, vinyl, or lucite for both vaginal and anal insertion, and there appears to be one designed to suit every requirement, taste, whimsy, fantasy, and predilection. Some dildos are amazingly lifelike, exhibiting molded glans, bulging veins, and scrotum, and tend to come in large to extra large. Millions are sold every year.

Dildos also come in many colors, from pinkish, lavender, brown, jet-black, and rainbow, to colorful translucent jellies with bubbles, to crystal clear. While manufacturers eventually responded to consumer demand for multihued skin tones, providing café au lait, chocolate, and black, salespeople in sex boutiques report that many people actually prefer colors that contrast with their own skin color. Dildos may be straight, curved, bent, double-tipped, rippled, ribbed, or smooth. Apparently there is no accounting for what will appeal to customers. Some women prefer the demure smoothies, while others unabashedly like the veiny bumps-and-all versions—and the bigger, the better.

The very definition of dildo implies an erect penis, but the newest wrinkle in faux penises is Mr. Softie, a squishy, pale-pink rendition of a flaccid penis that looks incredibly lifelike, feels marvelously pliable, and stretches several feet only to snap back to its limp state.

“I’d like one as a teaching tool,” says Isa, who teaches health at a New York City high school, “because men don’t walk around with this ramrod straight, ten inch erection in real life. This would be much more realistic.”

Some states such as Texas still have laws prohibiting the sale of devices intended for genital stimulation. The state has a law against the sale of sex toys, which was only recently modified to allow their purchase for “medical reasons.”

“Will residents need a note from their doctors to buy a dildo?”

Cathy Winks and Anne Semans muse. “Where are they supposed to buy dildos—from a pharmacy or an adult hook store?” In the spring of 1999, conservative Alabama legislators passed a law forbidding the sale of “any obscene material or any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.” The maximum penalty for flouting this law: a year in jail and a $10,000 fine. Predictably, this law was challenged in court and ultimately deemed unconstitutional. Had it remained in force, cows in Alabama would have had more rights to use vibrators (apparently employed by farmers as an artificial insemination aid) than women. The debate made national news, and was the butt of numerous late- night talk show jokes. While laughable and nonsensical, this bald attempt by Christian fundamentalists to impose regressive standards on sexuality is yet another skirmish in the ongoing sex wars and should not be taken lightly. If we value our sexual freedom, we