If It’s Not a Secret, It’s Not Safe: Girls, Boys and the Pleasure Paradox

The risk of masturbation becoming still another duty in the lives of anxious teen girls seems admittedly slight. (Though the pressure from boys to perform self-sex on Skype is not an unheard-of-phenomenon in girls’ lives.) Orgasms are a hell of a lot more likely to reduce stress than to add to it. The real problem — what makes Ford’s wise prescription still just out of reach for so many –- is a culture that still sees women’s sexuality as something upon which men have a legitimate claim.

In teaching courses on sexuality, I’ve heard what’s essentially the same anecdote from many female students. They tell stories -– usually from their high school years — of being asked by male friends if they masturbate. If they say “no,” they’re accused of lying; if they say “yes,” they’re almost invariably peppered with requests for explicit details of how they get themselves off. Some of these guys may be looking for reassurance that girls really are sexual creatures, but many seem to be trying to feed their own masturbatory fantasies. The assumption that Ford mentions –- that those who ask about young women’s pleasure are pruriently preoccupied with it –- may not always be accurate, but it’s at least partly grounded in the real experiences of many girls. Pleasure itself may not be dangerous, but talking about it in the wrong company can be.

Another aspect of the problem is the enduring myth that masturbation is a mere substitute for sex with another person. Normalizing self-pleasure as part of healthy adolescent development makes sense, but that entails more than a vibrator for one’s 15th birthday. It requires ending the remarkably persistent stigma that masturbation is a sign of desperation, social ineptitude, or sexual insatiability. Reframing pleasure as responsible self-care is part of the answer, but so too is making it clear to men and boys that young women’s horniness isn’t a proclamation of sexual availability.

In a class discussion recently, one student recounted that when she had admitted to a male high school acquaintance that she had a vibrator, not only did he ask to see it, but he assumed that because she liked to have orgasms she’d automatically be interested in sex with him. “He was upset when I rejected him,” my student said, “because he actually couldn’t seem to understand how wanting to come in private didn’t translate into a willingness to fuck all of my guy friends.” For too many guys, women’s sexual desire is something fungible, easily transferred from vibrator to dude to dude. This myth is at the heart of slut-shaming: in guy culture, women who don’t confine their sexuality to one monogamous relationship with a man have a kind of democratic moral obligation to make their bodies available to every interested male party.

To say “I like sex, I just don’t want to have it with you,” is challenging for any young person trained to be a people pleaser. Much easier to pretend one isn’t interested in sex at all than to explain why –- even though you have an admittedly healthy libido – you don’t want to have sexy times with Trevor or Tyler or Timmy. Dealing with young men’s sense of wounded, sulky entitlement can be exhausting if not genuinely dangerous. Many parents know this, which is why even the most progressive moms and dads may equate their daughters’ sexual self-discovery with frightening vulnerability to pressure or coercion.

The answer, of course, isn’t to treat girls’ sexuality like the Ring of Doom, something that must be kept secret in order to be kept safe. As Ford writes, “we do our girls no favours by refusing to acknowledge the raw complexities of their own sexual desires.” But helping girls own their own pleasure will take more than explicit encouragement to masturbate. It means teaching men of all ages, in no uncertain terms, that women’s sexuality belongs to women. Just as we need to reiterate that sexy Halloween costumes and short skirts aren’t an invitation to harassment, so too we need to remind our boys -– loudly and clearly -– that girls’ interest in sex isn’t an open invitation. Until we do that, the grim “policing” of young women’s sexuality will continue.

Image by Jim Cooke, source photo via Michael Blea/Shutterstock