In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

So I’m glad masturbation prevents cancer and all, but…

Jill

I’m pretty sure men aren’t the only ones who masturbate. Just sayin’.

And while I’m bitching about The Independent, I’ll add that it’s a travesty they list the “10 Best Sex Toys” but fail to include a single vibrator. I’m sure silk and diamonte boobie tassles are great, but they’re missing a certain… something. If there’s room on the list for candles and a glorified foot stool, surely you can squeeze in the Hitachi Magic Wand. Come on, Independent writers, throw us ladies a bone here.

28 thoughts on So I’m glad masturbation prevents cancer and all, but…

  2. There’s a g-string on that list. Since when are g-strings sex toys? Why not just say “lingerie” and be done with it? Those stupid nipple tassels can go on there too. They just look like glorified pasties. Ugh.

  3. …And by “on there” I mean “in the category of lingerie.” Got caught up in the where-the-hell-are-the-vibrator-fun-times moment. 🙂

  4. Until sometime last year, the Indie used to be a decent enough paper. Then they got a new editor who seems to think he’s running news media’s FHM to the tabloid’s Nuts or Loaded. I recall reading a quote when he took the job (sadly, I can’t remember what it was or where I read it) that was basically unreconstructed misogyny under a thin veneer. I’ve steered clear of their output since then, and this just goes to affirm my boycott! I mean, seriously? In a country where Ann Summers is on just about every high street, with a wide array of vibrators and toys for women and this is what they come out with??

  6. (obligatory I’m a vegetarian but PETA annoys me post)

    There are so many things that I feel that the Independent is lacking:

    1: anal toys. Yeah, there is a vaguely penis-shaped dildo on the list. But nothing really designed for anal play. And while we are on that topic, was anyone else annoyed at the assumption that the singular dildo was for a female partner.

    2: safer sex. No dams, condoms, gloves, or latex-safe lubes.

    3: vibrators.

    4: things for men to wear.

  7. But Jill, how could us little ladies masturbate? We don’t (generally) have penises! Duh. Also, even if we could masturbate, it would be icky and gross because good girls don’t have sexual desires and definitely don’t do that sort of thing.

    As a completely unrelated side note, it’s a special shame that the study only seems to look at men, because I wanted to know what my own chances are . . . 😛

  8. Hm mm, very interesting, self-gratification? By women? Who’d a thought? But inquiring minds what to know. Cara, your chances of cancer from masturbation are just around zero.

    In fact, as a side note to a side note, in our 50-year study, girls who begin noticeable masturbation around age 3-5, have a much higher incidence of sexual satisfaction (even with the male sex paradigm) than those who begin later or not at all. We address this in detail in our book, along with all the others ridiculous requisites foisted on women by society when it comes to female self-pleasure.

    Currently, in our questionnaires and in our forum, we are continuing to survey women as to the question of whether they teach their daughters the ins and outs (excuse me?) of masturbation…most do not…which is another topic in itself that needs to be addressed if women really want to reclaim their sexual autonomy, a freedom they had before patriarchy. Please join in and contribute your knowledge and beliefs if you will as every voice (unlike votes) counts.

    If this is too much off topic, please excuse me, but I find it difficult to resist adding some flavor whenever the chance presents.

  9. That is by far the worst list of sex toys that I’ve ever seen. There’s only one thing on there that I’d even consider a sex toy. OK, and maybe the cushions, those are handy to have for sure, but not exactly toys.

    Ribbons? A heart-shaped padded paddle? Come on. I don’t even really understand how anyone gets off on stuff like that. I guess this is the kind of stuff that sells big, even at Babeland, which is getting increasingly soft-core too.

  10. Not to be picky, but if the article is about prostate cancer, I don’t see how female masturbation would be applicable. Do you know of other research connecting masturbation to preventing breast cancer, etc?

    Normally I’m 100% with you guys, but this seems like a red herring.

  11. …right. But the criticism is about the framing of the article. The headline is something like “Masturbation prevents cancer.” You can bet that if female masturbation prevented breast cancer, they would have clarified that (the headline would have been “Female masturbation prevents breast cancer,” or something like that). My problem is with the universalizing of masturbation as male — as if masturbation is so obviously a dude thing, they don’t even have to clarify anywhere when when they say “masturbation,” they only mean the peen version.

  15. Jill, this article is such a journalistic trainwreck that they actually misspelled the name of the principal investigator on the prostate cancer study – and did it so badly that when I went to track down the original journal article, Google couldn’t even prompt me for the correct spelling! I did find the study eventually but no thanks to The Independent.

    Scientifically, this study is interesting because previous research has shown masturbation to be protective against prostate cancer across the board. This study says that ain’t so for younger men. I’m skeptical; if flushing out toxins is good for older dudes, why not for younger ones, too?

  16. Cara, your chances of cancer from masturbation are just around zero.

    Well, relief though that is, I pretty much knew that much. I wanted to know my chances of preventing cancer (as is suggested by this study to be an effect for certain men). 🙂

  18. Wow. I can name ten things in my kitchen that are better sex toys than anything on that list… and it’s not a particularly interesting kitchen. Just sayin’

  20. 1: anal toys. Yeah, there is a vaguely penis-shaped dildo on the list. But nothing really designed for anal play. And while we are on that topic, was anyone else annoyed at the assumption that the singular dildo was for a female partner.

    It probably was intended for such. You need certain types of dildos for anal play, ones that are less likely to break under the greater pressure. A hollow ceramic dildo and anal play strikes me as a dangerous combination. That doesn’t make it any less of a heterosexist choice of dildo, but it’s still a fair assumption to make with that particular product.

  21. You can bet that if female masturbation prevented breast cancer, they would have clarified that (the headline would have been “Female masturbation prevents breast cancer,” or something like that). My problem is with the universalizing of masturbation as male — as if masturbation is so obviously a dude thing, they don’t even have to clarify anywhere when when they say “masturbation,” they only mean the peen version.

    You hit on exactly what drives me crazy – the Bugs Bunny view of gender. When something’s about men, it’s straight forward like “Masturbation can be good for over-50’s” … aka regular Bugs Bunny. When it’s about women, they have to put on the cultural markers of femaleness, like for Bugs, the skirt, lipstick and eyelashes. If it was an article about women, they’d say, “Masturbation can be good for over-50 women.”

    It’s the indication that for men, everything is “normal” while for women, it has to be tagged as something for-women… almost like it’s just for women and men can ignore it, while articles implicitly about men can be read by both genders. I feel like this sentiment comes up a lot in movie marketing, too.

  25. Dear Jill,

    I’m not with you at all (@CK).

    Are you telling me you KNEW only men have a prostate, but STILL made this ridiculous point Re the Indy?

    You say ‘if it were about breast cancer, you can guarantee…’ But you can’t can you? Because such an article doesn’t exist.

    It’s stuff like this that makes people think that modern western feminists are so busy finding non issues to carp about that they have forgotten what real feminism is all about…which I hope is not the case here, just commenting on this one.

    There’s plenty to complain about in the ‘quality’ press, for example ‘page 3 on the sly’, such as pretty schoolgirl pictures with exam results every year and hugely patronising women’s supplements/magazines containing exactly the same make up/boys/clothes junk that even Just 17 tried to look beyond…yet here you are making absurd judgements on an editorial line based on examples that in this case make you look, frankly, like an idiot. Sorry but that’s how I see it.

    The vibrators one is just as bad. It’s a family newspaper FFS, and lets be fair, all of the items are pretty ambiguous and for him/her, so it doesn’t tell you anything about their editorial line.

    In fact, all that comment suggest to me is that you read everything with a filter in your head tuned to ‘hypersinsitive on any gender related article and will instantly cry SEXIST!!!!!! at the slightest provocation’.

    Still, you’ve got some great links here and I’m all for the cause…we’ve still got a looooooooooooooooooooooooong way to go before we get true and meaningful equality (or rather quality of life, I think there’s lot’s of issues like Paternity leave where men are suffering from sexism too)…so well done on the site, keep up the good stuff but I’d rather you picked out on real, concrete issues you know?

    Seb

  26. Or you could head on over to Seb’s site and read all about such important issues as who won the largest, smallest, and weirdest vegetables contests at the London Green Fair.

    Keep fighting the good fight, Seb.

  28. I am curious, Jill, if the headline would have read “Masturbation prevents prostate cancer” would that have been significantly better or is the sex qualification necessary?

    And I, too, am pretty skeptical of any long-term implications of this study, mainly b/c of the discrepancy of the finding b/w masturbating and sexually active men and for the author’s hypothesized protective effect explanation somehow being untrue at a younger age –> masturbation does not cause testosterone production (as best we know), masturbation may be a general indication of testosterone level.

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