Masturbation – the touching of one’s own genitals. Is it a pleasure, or a sin?
It’s certainly been a topic of contention in society, plagued with misconceptions and old wives tales; including the warnings that your hand will shrivel up and fall off, or you’ll grow hair on the back of your hand, or your hair will fall out.
As well as the standard joke about the little boy who was told by his mother that if he masturbated he would go blind, and he flashes back, “Well gee Mum, can’t I just do it until I have to wear glasses?”
Society sure doesn’t set us up to feel safe to enjoy it. Even the name is a turn off. ‘Masturbation’. Say it ten times and it still doesn’t sound pleasurable. It’s a harsh sounding word isn’t it? It sounds a bit like a serious illness.
And in fact the word is a corruption of a Latin and Greek root that put together, literally means, “to defile yourself with your hand”. That doesn’t sound like much fun, does it?
At least men have come up with some more ‘boys club’ expressions which wryly acknowledge the universality of masturbation. These include things like ‘Mrs Palmer and her five daughters,’ ‘wanking,’ a ‘hand job,’ ‘jacking off’ or ‘jerking off’.
But women tend not to even admit to masturbating, as evidenced by their lack of terms for it. A woman would be likely to call it ‘masturbation’ or at best she might say she was ‘fingering herself’ or ‘giving herself a hand job’.
And the truth of it is that most women never even admit to doing it, much less naming it in public.