Masturbation

Masturbation.

My friend Sandi says she doesn’t masturbate. It shocked me when I first heard it, because for me as an empowered woman, she should be able to masturbate. This is now my empowered self dictating how empowered women “must” be. But anyway, my ex-boyfriend Steve told me once that he had never touched his dick in his life. He too has never masturbated before! Which shocked the shit out of me, because as a man, he too should be able to masturbate.

It appears that I am under the impression that everyone should be able to masturbate. Except, it was definitely easier to accept that Sandi doesn’t masturbate than it was to accept that Steve has never masturbated. I can’t tell if my perceptions were governed by the multitude of information about men and women and their roles in society or if it was because I thought that Steve is just a little bit more promiscuous than Sandi as a person. You see, I am so empowered with information that I cannot tell the difference between a person and a construct. I am so empowered that both Sandi and Steve became constructs before they were people, bearing the burden of social analysis by hyper critical mindsets determined to see the ‘sameness’ of men and women and ironically their difference at the same time.

But, back to masturbation. I asked Sandi “why?” my face disgruntled by judgment. She told me that she doesn’t see the need to be doing THAT to herself. This completely baffled me because I couldn’t understand why you would let someone else from God knows where insert their penis, their fingers and I don’t know what else into your vagina, but not yourself?? As I said, I am judgmental, so to proceed past this stage of ignorance, I just really wanna know; Why do you not trust yourself with your own vagina? This is your vagina, your only vagina, your magic cave!

Sandi is not the only one who speaks this way about her genitalia by the way, Steve and many other of my female friends that I asked about this tell me they don’t touch THAT! They say THAT when speaking of their private parts.

I think, most of the time we treat our privates the way we treat ourselves everyday. We often hide the things that are natural to us, we don’t want to engage in our own existence. We are constantly fighting our own humanity because of the way we hope others would see us. We want to be responsible, upstanding and better than, so we settle for mediocre treatment and a mediocre way of living. When we say THAT! And remove ourselves from our vaginas and penises, we are refusing to engage with the reality of our own names, just as we are refusing to engage with the reality of our own genitalia. Who told us that we do not belong to ourselves? You have a Penis, you have a Vagina, you have Both, just deal with it!