Fifty Shades of Masturbation

 

I've tried to ignore it up to now. God, how I have tried! But because I'm interested in literary trends, I couldn't help but notice something:  in all those year-end summaries for 2012, just one book (or series of books) was at the very top of the list.

I don't think I need to tell you which one it was: Fifty Shades of Grey, a sort of Dairy Queen soft-serve of female pornography. Its wild success has left publishers everywhere feeding all their well-written novels into the shredder and beating the bushes for women who can't write, but CAN fuck, or at least fuck their female readers' minds.

There was so much written about this remarkable phenomenon (warmly applauded by publishers on the verge of bankruptcy) that I decided to narrow my search and just read religious views. I thought they might be more entertaining. Then I was so overwhelmed by all that stuff that I narrowed it down even more, restricting myself (with a taut silken tie) to Catholic views.

 

 

 

I don't know about you, but it makes me squirm just to think of Catholics having sex (though they do have lots of children, don't they?). It makes me squirm even more, as if my hands were wrenched behind my back with cold, hard handcuffs, to think of the Pope writing about simultaneous orgasm (if such a thing even exists). I found this juicy tidbit on a site called The Catholic Realist. This is from the comments section:

I’m not judging the book or you but I have one question, Is there a better book you could have read, a book with Christian values, instead of the 50 shades of grey book?

What a great question! If there is, I don’t know of one…and that’s a problem. The Catholic Church has some amazing books written about holy, married, sex, but most of them are written in a way that’s inaccesible for the average person. Pope John Paul II’s Love and Responsibility gets pretty specific in talking about what an ideal sexual encounter between a married couple looks like – including suggestions on using foreplay to build up to the woman’s climax so that both spouses can ideally orgasm together. But as much as I love JPII, his book is not an easy read – it’s not super accessible.

We also have Christopher West’s The Good News about Sex and Marriage. West also gets pretty explicit – he talks openly and honestly about all kinds of questions married couples would have including things about oral sex, anal sex, sex toys, and orgasms. While his book is an easier read than Love and Responsibility, it reads more as a Catechism than something designed to enhance holy married sex.
 

 

Hmmmmm. I didn't realize there WAS a Catechism (and I confess as a Protestant I'm not even sure what that is) for oral and anal sex, not to mention vibrators and "dills". I wonder if West writes about them in the sense of  "thou shalt not try this, thou shalt not lubricate that, thou shalt not put batteries in that thing over there," etc. From what I have heard, the Catholic church only sanctions conventional marital sex in the missionary position, and only if the couple desires to conceive a child. Anything else is sinful and forbidden.

But still, having someone tell me not to do something is pretty arousing in itself. I haven't read these religious sex how-tos any more than I've read the Fifty Shades trilogy (which is supposed to be one of the biggest buckets of swill in literary history), but only because I couldn't get through them without going into cardiac arrest.
 

 

This passage also interested me. It's a sort of inventory of cliches that keep repeating in Fifty Shades:

According to my Kindle search function, characters roll their eyes 41 times, Ana bites

 

her lip 35 times, Christian’s lips “quirk up” 16 times, Christian “cocks his head to one

 

 side” 17 times, characters “purse” their lips 15 times, and characters raise their

 

 eyebrows a whopping 50 times. Add to that 80 references to Ana’s anthropomorphic

 

 “subconscious” (which also rolls its eyes and purses its lips, by the way), 58

 

 references to Ana’s “inner goddess,” and 92 repetitions of Ana saying some form of

 

“oh crap” (which, depending on the severity of the circumstances, can be intensified to

 

 “holy crap,” “double crap,” or the ultimate “triple crap”).

 

…Ana says “Jeez” 81 times and “oh my” 72 times. She “blushes” or “flushes”

 

 125 times, including 13 that are “scarlet,” 6 that are “crimson,” and one that is

 

"stars and stripes red.” (I can’t even imagine.) Ana “peeks up” at Christian 13 times,

 

 and there are 9 references to Christian’s “hooded eyes,” 7 to his “long index finger,”

 

 and 25 to how “hot” he is (including four recurrences of the epic declarative sentence

 

 “He’s so freaking hot.”). Christian’s “mouth presses into a hard line” 10 times.

 

 

 

Characters “murmur” 199 times, “mutter” 49 times, and “whisper” 195 times

 

(doesn’t anyone just talk?), “clamber” on/in/out of things 21 times, and “smirk” 34

 

times. Christian and Ana also “gasp” 46 times and experience 18 “breath hitches,”

 

suggesting a need for prompt intervention by paramedics. Finally, in a remarkable bit

 

of symmetry, our hero and heroine exchange 124 “grins” and 124 “frowns”… which,

 

 by the way, seems an awful lot of frowning for a woman who experiences “intense,”

 

 “body-shattering,” “delicious,” “violent,” “all-consuming,” “turbulent,”

 

“agonizing” and “exhausting” orgasms on just about every page.

 

Hmmmm.

Literary types such as myself protest this series of books mainly because they are so badly-written: pure tripe with a side order of smut. Religious people are uncomfortable with the very idea of  erotica and porn (and they may have a point: it can and does take the place of "real" sex in many marriages), and believe it's sinful for a wife to be aroused by anything except the holy touch of her husband.

I have another theory! Here it comes - it's evil, wicked and sinful.

These are masturbation books.

These are books that make women (especially middle-aged women who are frustrated and perhaps inorgasmic) begin to experiment with self-pleasure, something they may have avoided because our culture still thinks that female sexuality is dirty, smelly and dangerous, and never a force for good.

 

We're not supposed to touch ourselves "down there", are we? It feels too good, and besides, it does not serve the needs of our Master (not God, but our potbellied, stubbly, burping, useless husband). And God might not like it either, though up to now he's never really said anything about it.

Do you remember masturbation coming up in the Bible? Only that Onan guy, and we're not quite sure what happened there. But the problem with female masturbation is obvious, isn't it?

It's not goal-directed. It does not serve the marriage or serve the Lord. It does not help us conceive yet another baby.  All it does is give us pleasure, and for God's sake what makes you think THAT is OK?

But consider this.

 

There is an organ of the human body (ONLY of the female body) which has no other purpose whatsoever than to give pleasure. So much pleasure that, indeed, it can and does trigger orgasm. Furthermore, religious teaching tells us never to touch this organ. Only our husbands may touch it, but for the most part they don't because they don't know where it is or, in some cases, that it even exists.

So we carry this thing around, dormant. Then along comes this hot book, a lowest-common-denominator kind of thing that the most meagre IQ could understand, and all of a sudden women are starting to get ideas.

They're starting to get ideas about pleasure.

About female pleasure, and about how they've pretty much missed out on it because they are waiting for their stupid-ass husbands to figure out where their clitoris is.

But maybe one day they realize that this whole thing can be a do-it-yourself job. And THAT is the day of sin and God's retribution, of thunder and flame descending to envelop the world!

But, curiously, it doesn't happen. The worst that happens is one of those mind-blowing orgasms that show up in the book 14 million times. Will Mr. Stupid-ass Husband ever catch on? No, he's too busy looking at porn on his iPad and whacking off.

There's this impossible sexual ideal around, and it would be great if it ever happened, that a couple can feel intense passion for each other for 50 years and always experience simultaneous orgasm with no prior stimulation at all. After all, it only takes him 15 seconds. So what's HER problem?

In the middle of this erotic wasteland, Fifty Shades comes along and gives women an excuse (at least for a while - eventually it will go away again) to feel some real sexual pleasure, perhaps for the first time. Women had better get their hands on this book, and the vibrator that should be attached to it, before it's too late and the Pope has the lot of them rounded up and burned.

Sex! Sex! And More Sex!

Fascinating topics can come from the strangest places.

I like to read in bed at night before drowsiness carries me off. I'm omniverous in my tastes, usuall ordering used books from Amazon for one cent, paying only the shipping and handling. When I saw an ad for a new book about my favorite series, Mad Men, I snapped it up, only to find that it wasn't at all what I expected.

It's about the series, yes, but it's also about a lot of other things, not all of which pertain to advertising and/or the '60s. The most startling chapter deals with Peggy (first woman copywriter at Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce, a single gal with an unconventional lifestyle and an odd but appealing personal style) and her fruitless attempt to obtain birth control pills from a judgemental doctor.

This interlude led the author, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, to take a sharp jag to the right and plunge into the subject of Victorian morality. She dredged up the life of an obscure, oddball pioneer for women's rights, one Ida Craddock. Though unmarried, she took it upon herself to write a series of pamphlets on the subject of sex: specifically, proper conduct in the marriage bed.

Eventually, the repressive society Ida was trapped in caught up with her. Facing a jail sentence for publishing obscenities, she committed suicide. But that isn't all there was to Ida.

She was one of those bizarre Spiritualist ladies, the type who conducted seances, where tables rocked and knees rubbed against each other in the dark. She claimed to have a Spirit Husband who visited her in her bed, and lectured widely on the wildly popular Theosophist teachings of Madame Blavatsky.

But mostly, Ida took it upon her maidenly self to tell everyone how to. . . y'know. . . do it.

Her little books were mighty strange, and in their own way, more repressive than the most tight-lipped schoolmarms of the era. But because they were also fairly explicit in matters that no one ever talked about, many people considered them scandalous and even pornographic.

Here are a few excerpts from The Wedding Night.

THE WEDDING NIGHT
By Ida Craddock

Oh, crowning time of lovers' raptures veiled in mystic splendor, sanctified by priestly blessing and by the benediction of all who love the lovers! How shall we chant thy praise?

Of thy joys even the poets dare not sing, save in words that suggest but do not reveal. At thy threshold, the most daring of the realistic novelists is fain to pause, and, with farewells to the lovers who are entering thy portals, let fall the curtain of silence betwixt them and the outside world forevermore.

What art thou, oh, night of mystery and passion? Why shouldst thou be thus enshrouded in an impenetrable veil of secrecy? Are thy joys so pure (ALL RIGHT, lady, shut the bleep up! Let's get to the juicy part.)

(For) there is a wrong way and there is a right way to pass the wedding night.
In the majority of cases, no genital union at all should be attempted, or even suggested, upon that night. To the average young girl, virtuously brought up, the experience of sharing her bedroom with a man is sufficient of a shock to her previous maidenly habits, without adding to her nervousness by insisting upon the close intimacies of genital contact.

And, incredible as it may sound to the average man, she is usually altogether without the sexual experience which every boy acquires in his dream-life. The average, typical girl does not have erotic dreams. In many cases, too, through the prudishness of parents--a prudishness which is positively criminal--she is not even told beforehand that genital union will be required of her.

Yet, if you are patient and loverlike and gentlemanly and considerate and do not seek to unduly precipitate matters, you will find that Nature will herself arrange the affair for you most delicately and beautifully. If you will first thoroughly satisfy the primal passion of the woman, which is affectional and maternal (for the typical woman mothers the man she loves), and if you will kiss and caress her in a gentle, delicate and reverent way, especially at the throat and bosom, you will find that, little by little (perhaps not the first night nor the second night, but eventually, as she grows accustomed to the strangeness of the intimacy), you will, by reflex action from the bosom to the genitals, successfully arouse within her a vague desire for the entwining of the lower limbs, with ever closer and closer contact, until you melt into one another's embrace at the genitals in a perfectly natural and wholesome fashion; and you will then find her genitals so well lubricated with an emission from her glands of Bartholin, and, possibly, also from her vagina, that your gradual entrance can be effected not only without pain to her, but with a rapture so exquisite to her, that she will be more ready to invite your entrance upon a future occasion.

As to the clitoris, this should be simply saluted, at most, in passing, and afterwards ignored as far as possible; for the reason that it is a rudimentary male organ, and an orgasm aroused there evokes a rudimentary male magnetism in the woman, which appears to pervert the act of intercourse, with the result of sensualizing and coarsening the woman. Within the duller tract of the vagina, after a half-hour, or, still better, an hour of tender, gentle, self-restrained coition, the feminine, womanly, maternal sensibilities of the bride will be aroused, and the magnetism exchanged then will be healthful and satisfying to both parties. A woman's orgasm is as important for her health as a man's is for his. And the bridegroom who hastens through the act without giving the bride the necessary half-hour or hour to come to her own climax, is not only acting selfishly; he is also sowing the seeds of future ill-health and permanent invalidism in his wife.

Some woman have an abnormally long clitoris, which it is impossible not to engage during coition, and such women are usually sensual, and lacking in the ability to prolong the act. In extreme cases the excision of such a clitoris may be beneficial; but it would seem preferable to first employ the milder method of suggestive therapeutics, and for the wife to endeavor to turn her thoughts from the sensation induced at the clitoris to that induced within the vagina, which is the natural and wholesome sensation to be aroused in a woman.

(And here it gets really interesting.)

Do not expend your seminal fluid at any time, unless you and the bride desire a child, and have reverently and deliberately prepared for its creation on that especial occasion. Your semen is not an excretion to be periodically gotten rid of; it is a precious secretion, to be returned to the system for its upbuilding in all that goes to emphasize your manhood. It is given to you by Nature for the purpose of begetting a child; it is not given to you for sensual gratification; and unless deliberate creation be provided for by both of you, it should never, never be expended. This however does not mean less pleasure, but more pleasure than by the ordinary method of sex union. As to the details of how such sexual self-control may be exercised during coition, and without harm to the nervous system, you can learn these from my pamphlet on RIGHT MARITAL LIVING.

Also, to the bride, I would say : Bear in mind that it is part of your wifely duty to perform pelvic movements during the embrace, riding your husband's organ gently, and, at times, passionately, with various movements, up and down, sideways, and with a semi-rotary movement, resembling the movement of the thread of a screw upon a screw. These movements will add greatly to your own passion and your own pleasure, but they should not be dwelt in thought for this purpose. They should be performed for the express purpose of conferring pleasure upon your husband, and you should carefully study the results of various movements, gently and tenderly performed, upon him.

Whew!

This is just about the strangest sexual literature I've ever seen. Though it rhapsodizes about the mystical union a bride and groom can obtain just by, well, getting it on, it also severely discourages ejaculation (while not exactly telling men how to do that), and insists that the bride's "passion" is "maternal" and "affectional", taming it into something sweet and winsome rather than a rocking, moaning, bone-shaking eruption of primal release.

Or something.

This sort of belief was fairly common then, making me honestly wonder how blue men's balls must have been in that era. "Free love" often meant the couple were not married but still engaging in some sort of close erotic contact that never ended in sexual release. Ida insists men can have an orgasm without ejaculating (oh, yes, perhaps a swami who has trained himself for decades!), and that women can have an orgasm without clitoral stimulation. Indeed, she insists the male partner should never touch his wife's genitals with his hand: this "masturbative" action will only incite unseemly appetites. The only proper "wand" to grant her satisfaction is his penis. Period.

This twists sexuality into something that must be rigidly controlled at all times, yet enjoyed as a source of unending bliss. There are so many conflicting messages in this literature that it makes my head spin. Ida Craddock really wasn't an authority on human sexuality by training or study, but by mere fascination, and (perhaps)some illicit experience. Her spirit lover may have been able to rouse her to ecstatic heights (while never touching her clitoris!): so why should she get married at all?

In another passage, she suggests that men should be allowed to ejaculate once every two years and nine months, so that children will be properly spaced apart. "Rounded off," she states, "once every three years."

I just don't get it. The hydraulics just don't work out. Back then, there was this belief that a man's joy juice somehow circulated all over the body and improved his general health. But we now know that it doesn't do that at all. Except for the presence of all those pesky wigglers, it's no more mystical than spit.

As for never touching a woman's genitals or even doing more than "salute" the clitoris (a Monty Python gesture, if there ever was one), how many orgasms would a woman be likely to have? Craddock shared the typical Victorian's horror of masturbation. She believed it would arouse a snarling, writhing, primitive lust in women, so that their genteel rotary actions would escalate into furious animal thrusting and pumping and. . . oh. You must excuse me. Sorry, Ida, I just can't follow your instructions.

******************************************************
POSTSCRIPT. Every once in a while I look back at what I've written. Bad idea, because then I see my obsessions in all their shabby glory. Lately all I seem to write about is sex (Victorian sex in particular, though that may seem like a contradiction in terms). When I'm not writing about sex, I'm moaning about the fact that my novel hasn't been published yet. It's getting monotonous.

Mail order orgasm

This, from Wikipedia, absolutely made my day. I had never heard of vibrators for sexual purposes until the mid-'70s, and assumed they were a recent innovation. Why was this fascinating bit of medical history censored?

Take it away, boys.

"The history of hysteria can be traced to ancient times; in ancient Greece it was described in the gynecological treatises of the Hippocratic corpus, which date from the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. Plato's dialogue Timaeus tells of the uterus wandering throughout a woman’s body, strangling the victim as it reaches the chest and causing disease. This theory is the source of the name, which stems from the Greek word for uterus, hystera.

"Galen, a prominent physician from the second century, wrote that hysteria was a disease caused by sexual deprivation in particularly passionate women: hysteria was noted quite often in virgins, nuns, widows and, occasionally, married women. The prescription in medieval and renaissance medicine was intercourse if married, marriage if single, or vaginal massage (pelvic massage) by a midwife as a last recourse.

"Rachel P. Maines has observed that such cases were quite profitable for physicians, since the patients were at no risk of death, but needed constant treatment. The only problem was that physicians did not enjoy the tedious task of vaginal massage (generally referred to as 'pelvic massage'): The technique was difficult for a physician to master and could take hours to achieve "hysterical paroxysm." Referral to midwives, which had been common practice, meant a loss of business for the physician.

"A solution was the invention of massage devices, which shortened treatment from hours to minutes, removing the need for midwives and increasing a physician’s treatment capacity. Already at the turn of the century, hydrotherapy devices were available at Bath, and by the mid-19th century, they were popular at many high-profile bathing resorts across Europe and in America.

"By 1870, a clockwork-driven vibrator was available for physicians. In 1873, the first electromechanical vibrator was used at an asylum in France for the treatment of hysteria.

"While physicians of the period acknowledged that the disorder stemmed from sexual dissatisfaction, they seemed unaware of or unwilling to admit the sexual purposes of the devices used to treat it. In fact, the introduction of the speculum was far more controversial than that of the vibrator.

"By the turn of the century, the spread of home electricity brought the vibrator to the consumer market. The appeal of cheaper treatment in the privacy of one’s own home understandably made the vibrator a popular early home appliance. In fact, the electric home vibrator was on the market before many other home appliance ’essentials’: nine years before the electric vacuum cleaner and 10 years before the electric iron.

"A page from a Sears catalog of home electrical appliances from 1918 includes a portable vibrator with attachments, billed as ”Very useful and satisfactory for home service.” Other cures for female hysteria included bed rest, bland food, seclusion, refraining from mentally taxing tasks (for example, reading) and sensory deprivation."

Too bad they couldn't just lie there on their fainting couch and watch reality TV while stuffing their fat faces with Cheetohs. They could have satisfied all their appetites at once, and squeezed the extra pounds away with one of dem-dar corsets they wore.

I wonder if attitudes toward female sexuality have improved that much: women are either pole dancers in thongs and net stockings, or dutiful but frumpy Moms trundling the kids off to soccer games. Oversexy, or not sexy at all. And what is "sexy" anyway? It all looks pretty stereotyped to me.

On a previous post, I wrote about princesses. So what's the deal there? In all the fairy tales, they were universally virginal and untouched until that amazing First Kiss. First sex is always awkward, in fact it can be downright painful, but somehow, in its fumblingly determined way, the human race has managed it (and managed and managed and managed it).

Has the deck been stacked against female plesure from the very beginning? I'm a slavish fan of Mad Men, the best series I have ever watched. The sharks of l960s Madison Avenue circle one another every week, waiting to lunge for the kill.

But there are domestic dramas unfolding behind the piranha-tank of the office.

Don Draper is the alpha male of the series and the biggest prick the ad world has ever seen. But he does have a redeeming fondness for his 10-year-old daughter Sally, traumatized by her parents' recent divorce and her mother's remarriage to a wealthy man she doesn't

love.

In this past episode, Sally hacks her hair off, causing her mother to slap her hard across the face. In my experience, cutting off one's own hair is pretty close to slashing or burning: it's self-mutilation, and to be slapped for that by your mother is pretty harsh stuff. But then Sally really gets into trouble.

While at a sleepover at a friend's house, Sally watches TV raptly while Ilya Kuryakin of The Man from UNCLE, tied up back-to-back with someone, murmurs in his usual seductive way. We see Sally slowly begin to hike up her flannel nightgown.

And then -

Then her friend's mother bursts in, shrieks at Sally, strongarms her out of there away from her daughter (who slept through the whole thing), and drags her home, telling her mother she was masturbating in public.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the adults' reactions to this news. It was blank disbelief mixed with a kind of repulsion A sort of "whaaaaaat?" thing. Betty Draper even tells her ex-husband, "Girls who do that are, you know. Fast." Sally is promptly packed off to a child psychiatrist to be straightened out.

Oh, you can say this was a long time ago, but I really don't think the reaction now would be that much different. The impression was that, perhaps being a bit young for full-blown sexual feelings, Sally was experimenting a little, curious about her own body and what it was capable of.

This is supposed to be "normal" and "healthy", but do we really see it that way? If you went to a psychologist and said, "My daughter masturbates in public," what do you think they'd say?

I once tried to post something on the Oprah web site that contained the word "masturbation". It appeared for a second, then was deleted. I tried once more, and it was deleted again. Too dirty and offensive to mention,

I guess.

Time to break out the mail order vibrators again?