Self Service. Not the kind at the grocery store.
Recently, Christianity Today published an article in response to all this chatter (some of it in house) about female self-pleasure boldly titled, “The Real Problem with Female Masturbation.”
Unfortunately, too often the conversation doesn’t overcome the unhelpful stereotypes about the female sex drive…or lack thereof…
Christians remain uncomfortable with the idea of women possessing sexual desire. Even as they talk about the ideal Christian woman being a steamy hot wife willing to fulfill her husband’s every desire by not depriving him once married, we don’t want to imagine the wife’s own libido.
…
To fully address female masturbation, we don’t need more psychoanalysis about sex that implicitly negates female sexuality. We need a biblical approach that recognizes both the immense pleasure of the female orgasm and the inherent goodness of sexual desire while reserving its proper place for within marriage.
Good stuff. These are, as I said, very old cultural attitudes Monge is fighting against here; they’re attitudes that the culture at large has largely moved beyond; but of course, as is sadly the norm, conservative Christians are way behind the curve. All of which is to say, this part of Monge’s premise is spot on and very helpful.
Unfortunately, where Monge goes right is also where she goes wrong. In an effort to acknowledge and even celebrate the ways in which women and men are fundamentally similar, Monge proceeds to treat male and female sexuality as more similar than they are. After rightly applauding men for calling a spade a spade (though whether masturbation outside of marriage is always lustful — Monge’s other major premise — is another conversation for another day), Monge takes a leaf from a man’s guide to combating lust. She does follow this up with a nod to the different triggers of sexual desire in men and women (presumably visual versus emotional/intellectual or even purely physical stimuli), and she even provides a valuable tip about how important it is that women know their bodies, specifically their ovulation cycle, when a woman is both most fertile and arouse-able.
Where Monge falls short, however, is when she states “there is no good moral outlet for these natural [and in some sense good sexual] desires before marriage” perhaps forgetting that men do experience a natural outlet for the sexual tension in their loins… and women do not. And this is why Piper’s ANTHEM solution is helpful but inadequate.
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About The Author
Renea McKenzie
(Editor) earned a Masters' degree for her studies in literature and is currently doing graduate research in African American Literature, specifically, the women poets of the Harlem Renaissance. Prior to starting her current work, Renea spent a year studying at the famous L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, where she, in addition to studying theology, read the Harry Potter saga for the first time and fell in love with the stories of the triumph of sacrificial love. In her "spare time," Renea takes great pleasure in leading a very talented creative writing group at her church and swing dancing at the historic Sons of Hermann Hall.
I received this insightful comment this morning in my email from a friend who said I could post it here anonymously if I thought it would be helpful, and I obviously do:
The “natural outlet” that you refer to at the end, ahem, I assume is the one that occurs while sleeping? If so, I’d question your assertion that’s it’s an outlet for “tension” and posit that it’s more of an outlet for biological waste. Because my experience with this is through my marriage, it was something I had to ask questions about and understand better. I took it so personally when after getting married this still happened to my husband. I felt like it meant I wasn’t meeting his needs, or his dreams were so vivid maybe he had desires there that he wasn’t comfortable sharing, etc. I felt like surely it wouldn’t happen if he was satisfied, but it just wasn’t true. We were young, quite in love, and active enough in the bedroom to have two of our three children be total surprises, and still it happened. It only took seeing him wake up irritated and disgruntled because he needed to clean himself up that I realized it wasn’t pleasurable, or at least not to a degree that registered with him. I’ll say that just because something happens physically doesn’t mean it satisfies, stifles, or calms the desires a man may have. Often waking without ever realizing it happened, it can seem like a biological hijacking, not a satisfying experience. That… can happen and a man’s desire, or “sexual tension,” can be as strong as ever. The body sometimes makes what it doesn’t need, and has to dispose of it. It can be as non-sexual as waking up without remembering a dream and finding you’re grossly covered in something you wish you weren’t….much like a period. Our female bodies have monthly releases for unused reproductive material, and so do men’s. I’d argue that because it is connected to males, we’ve been more likely to “sexualize” what can be a rather innocuous and pleasureless experience.
Just a different perspective, because I too used to think, “well how nice for them that they have a convenient excuse to helplessly orgasm without guilt or conviction…” but it’s apparently not all it’s cracked up to be.
At the risk of being crude – a lot of men enjoy their nocturnal emissions. It’s a fun experience. I realize that’s not necessarily what you wanted to hear, but conversation is what I think you guys are about.
Thanks, Anon. That complicates things a bit further, but in a good way. The fact that there isn’t just one universal experience is important.
I also want to point out that I think my friend brings up an important issue regarding our general tendency of over-sexualizing men much in the same way that we de-sexualize women. Both of which are unfair and unhelpful to both men and women.
This article from The Good Men Project touches on this and is something that might be worth a post of its own: http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/andrew-smiler-male-sexuality-is-threatening-because-we-dont-understand-it/
(My apologies for the decidedly less than intellectual tone of this comment.)
As a man in my 30s, I’ll tell you that I’ve never, ever had a nocturnal emission. I’ve never even had premature ejaculation. So, those are not universal experiences. And there is a difference between ejaculation and orgasm. In my experience, a man cannot orgasm without ejaculating, but he can definitely ejaculate without having an orgasm. This is especially true for the circumcised, though I (sadly) cannot speak for the intact.
Masturbation is important and essential to good sexual health. It’s a universal human experience and something that God designed to help us discover, explore, enjoy and understand our sexual nature. All of this moralizing over it is ridiculous.
Masturbation is not a moral good or evil. It’s a natural function of sexual development and enjoyment. The correct question to ask is not, “Is masturbation right or wrong?” It’s “Are you lusting and entertaining evil thoughts when you masturbate?” And, more broadly, “Are you using masturbation for evil ends?”
Because, honestly, we all do it–unless some religious overlord shames us for it and tells us to repent. Then we still do it, but now we feel incredibly (and unnecessarily) guilty about it.
And married people do it too! Why? Because your spouse isn’t always available or awake or in the mood or in good health or clean, etc. Masturbation is good for marriages because intercourse is not always an option and when it’s not, people who masturbate regularly tend not to be horny enough to make stupid decisions with co-workers, strangers at bars, hookers, etc. And, for those (like me) who don’t believe in using contraceptives, mutual masturbation is a great way to be sexually intimate during a woman’s fertile times.
To me, hemming and hawing about masturbation is a waste of time. We all do it. Let’s figure out (like we do with everything else) how to do it in a good, God-honoring way. Which, by the way, is pretty easy: 1. Don’t be lustful about it. 2. Don’t use it to avoid sex with your spouse out of spite or some such thing. 3. Don’t shame yourself or others about it. 4. Use it wisely to augment a healthy married sex life or to comprise the entirety of a healthy unmarried sex life.
Is there really anything else? Oh, yeah. Drop this gender politics nonsense. Women do it; men do it; get over it.
Those are my feelings. Thanks for sharing this, Renea! It’s important that we get more open about this stuff (says the anonymous guy). 😉
Well, now, Anon 2, you’re stealing the thunder of the followup post I alluded to regarding whether extramarital marital masturbation is always, or fundamentally, lustful. 😉 Truthfully, since this is the bigger problem with the article, it likely should have been the focus of this post in the first place, but I couldn’t figure out how to hack Adam’s account and write that post under his name! (I kid… mostly.) Thanks for your comment, friend; as you say, shaking off the stigmas and opening the avenues for honest conversation is part of the main goal of this post and most of what we do here at TTC.
Just call me the Thunder Thief! Looking forward to the next post. 🙂
So the logic of Anon 2’s argument is that because masturbation is universal (it’s not, btw. it might be normative; i haven’t taken any polls lately), 1) there’s no use talking about if it’s right or wrong anymore, and 2) there must be a God-honoring way to do it; let’s figure it out. Neither of those conclusions flows from the idea that “everyone does it.” The Bible has a category for things everyone does that are bad and that can never be done in a God-pleasing way: sin. Masturbation may or may not be a sin, but everyone doing it doesn’t get us out of that conversation. And assuming there is a God-honoring way to do it at this point in the conversation seems more than a little dangerous until we clear that up.
I agree, Anon 3, it’s worth working through; but in 2’s defense, he did open his comments with the caveat that he wasn’t aiming to present a logical case, but rather his feelings on the matter–though I appreciate your feeling the need not to let that opinion be the last word, so to speak–as I’ve said, working through the logic is worth its own post. Thanks for your comment. If nothing else, I think this conversation has highlighted the complexities of the issue.