wonderfully unfinished in this very interrupted state, as we go off to the bedroom to make love. [Interview]
MASTURBATION
Not all idle minds drift to sexual fantasy, as not all sexual fantasy (and idle hands) leads to masturbation. In fact, it’s the old chicken-and-the-egg routine. Fantasy and masturbation: which comes first? But one thing seems certain: that masturbation without fantasy is unlikely, unhappy, unreal. Masurbation doesn’t just require fantasy, it demands it. Without fantasy, masturbation would be too lonely. I don’t even want to think about it.
In my researches I didn’t find one woman who said she had never masturbated. You could say that this has something to do with the nature of my subject, that the kind of people who talked to me were bound to be more sexually candid. Perhaps my surprise at finding that all the women I talked to masturbated is 74
more a comment on me than my contributors. Possibly. But you see, it wasn’t that I didn’t expect women to masturbate – to have tried it or stumbled upon it at some point in their lives – I simply didn’t think my own experience was all that universal. It goes back again to how little women know about one another, how inclined we are to feel isolated, different, not like the other girls, because we don’t know about other girls.
We all know about men; they masturbate. Little boys and masturbation are a normal, even charming part of the women’s magazine stories as to how little boys are. I suppose that’s it; we’ve all read so much about it, about little boys discovering it, and being discovered. It’s charming.
But women? We’re as hidden as our clitorises. By the time we’ve found them, hidden away up there, we’re guilty at having located them. If it were meant to be found and enjoyed, wouldn’t it be in the open, hanging down and swinging free like a cock?
(No wonder little girls suffer penis envy.) That, I suppose, is why I was so surprised to find we all do it: I simply assumed without thinking that I was as alone in my discovery as I’d been alone while growing up, with my other female thoughts about my femaleness. Logically, I accepted my similarity to other women – why should I be different? – but emotionally I was as uncertain as to how I stood on the subject of masturbation as I was on whether I was oversexed. No one talked about girls masturbating, it was not a part of the prescribed myth of innocence, of growing up, of becoming a woman. Actually, I don’t think there is a female version of that popular myth: neither Heidi, Nancy Drew, or the Little Women masturbated; there is no female equivalent to Studs Lonigan and Huck Finn.
I’ll tell you some things I’ve learned about women and masturbation. Despite their long training to reticence, once you’ve engaged their confidence, women talk about it easily.
Once they realize they aren’t the only ones, they admit to masturbation as readily as to sex, they accept it and, unlike men, 75
seem to feel no less a woman for doing it. You could reduce this to a sign of our times, to the nature of my research or of the women who would talk to me. But it’s more than that; it’s the essence of what all this research boils down to: that women, once opened up and allied to other women, are indeed less ashamed, more adventurous, more accepting sexually than men. If books like mine help women to be more trusting with each other, to talk, to explore, we may find that the whole chapter on sex in our permissive age has not been written. Only half.
Here is some incidental data on the subject of fantasy and masturbation that I found interesting: Most of the women I talked to remember their first sexual fantasies and their first masturbation to have occurred at about the same time, usually between seven and eleven (for reasons I don’t understand, these two ages, seven and eleven, are the specific years most often mentioned). Also, when they do masturbate they don’t
MASTURBATION
Not all idle minds drift to sexual fantasy, as not all sexual fantasy (and idle hands) leads to masturbation. In fact, it’s the old chicken-and-the-egg routine. Fantasy and masturbation: which comes first? But one thing seems certain: that masturbation without fantasy is unlikely, unhappy, unreal. Masurbation doesn’t just require fantasy, it demands it. Without fantasy, masturbation would be too lonely. I don’t even want to think about it.
In my researches I didn’t find one woman who said she had never masturbated. You could say that this has something to do with the nature of my subject, that the kind of people who talked to me were bound to be more sexually candid. Perhaps my surprise at finding that all the women I talked to masturbated is 74
more a comment on me than my contributors. Possibly. But you see, it wasn’t that I didn’t expect women to masturbate – to have tried it or stumbled upon it at some point in their lives – I simply didn’t think my own experience was all that universal. It goes back again to how little women know about one another, how inclined we are to feel isolated, different, not like the other girls, because we don’t know about other girls.
We all know about men; they masturbate. Little boys and masturbation are a normal, even charming part of the women’s magazine stories as to how little boys are. I suppose that’s it; we’ve all read so much about it, about little boys discovering it, and being discovered. It’s charming.
But women? We’re as hidden as our clitorises. By the time we’ve found them, hidden away up there, we’re guilty at having located them. If it were meant to be found and enjoyed, wouldn’t it be in the open, hanging down and swinging free like a cock?
(No wonder little girls suffer penis envy.) That, I suppose, is why I was so surprised to find we all do it: I simply assumed without thinking that I was as alone in my discovery as I’d been alone while growing up, with my other female thoughts about my femaleness. Logically, I accepted my similarity to other women – why should I be different? – but emotionally I was as uncertain as to how I stood on the subject of masturbation as I was on whether I was oversexed. No one talked about girls masturbating, it was not a part of the prescribed myth of innocence, of growing up, of becoming a woman. Actually, I don’t think there is a female version of that popular myth: neither Heidi, Nancy Drew, or the Little Women masturbated; there is no female equivalent to Studs Lonigan and Huck Finn.
I’ll tell you some things I’ve learned about women and masturbation. Despite their long training to reticence, once you’ve engaged their confidence, women talk about it easily.
Once they realize they aren’t the only ones, they admit to masturbation as readily as to sex, they accept it and, unlike men, 75
seem to feel no less a woman for doing it. You could reduce this to a sign of our times, to the nature of my research or of the women who would talk to me. But it’s more than that; it’s the essence of what all this research boils down to: that women, once opened up and allied to other women, are indeed less ashamed, more adventurous, more accepting sexually than men. If books like mine help women to be more trusting with each other, to talk, to explore, we may find that the whole chapter on sex in our permissive age has not been written. Only half.
Here is some incidental data on the subject of fantasy and masturbation that I found interesting: Most of the women I talked to remember their first sexual fantasies and their first masturbation to have occurred at about the same time, usually between seven and eleven (for reasons I don’t understand, these two ages, seven and eleven, are the specific years most often mentioned). Also, when they do masturbate they don’t
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