The formative teenage years for an average girl involves slumber parties. Lots of slumber parties. Slumber parties consist of junk food, secret-girls-business and truth and dare.
I never performed a dare in truth and dare. Ever. There was no need and no point. My face is incapable of hiding strong emotion, and I always considered myself an open book. I chose ‘truth’ every time, and I told to truth too. I answered every question faithfully bar one, which was invariably delivered with an embarrassed blush and giggle; “Have you ever masturbated?”
‘No. Unequivocally, absolutely not!’ Would be my response, except in teenage language, which would probably sound more like ‘Yeah sure! Like I would do that – it’s gross!’ Because it was acceptable to steal alcohol from your parents, spread rumours at school, have sex, smoke pot or have a crush on your friends brother, but definitely not ok to touch yourself.
We had all suffered through ‘the talk’ with our mothers and sex education at school. ‘Sex education’ would probably best be re-named harm-minimisation for sexual trauma and dysfunction for all of the warnings and fear-mongering that goes on. We learned exclusively of the risks and negative outcomes/aspects of sex; teenage pregnancy, STIs, rape, regret. Dolly doctor clearly explained things like discomfort during first time sex and feelings of inadequacy during intercourse. So all in all sex in our minds was devoid of pleasure though we were convinced that it would get better.
Pleasure or no, sex was still high on the ‘to-do’ list. It was a mark or maturity, status, fearlessness. We wanted to ‘get it over with’ since we all agreed it was ‘backwards’ to wait until we were married to lose our virginities.
In the end our initial sexual experiences were everything Dolly doctor and out sex-ed teachers had attempted to prevent. A number of studies have shown why; We were never taught about pleasure, sexual curiosity, foreplay, erotica. No body encouraged us to masturbate it was seen as dirty and slutty, where as male masturbation was seen as normal. The tiny proportion of girls who were initiated into the positive aspects of their sexuality are more likely to have safe sex and enjoy the experience, as opposed to the other 75% who felt pressured or rushed into physical intimacy.
As we matured into adult women with healthy sex lives masturbation is more acceptable, as is erotica. Yet is it still more widely acceptable for men to masturbate than women. And certainly it is still taboo for young women to touch themselves.
With further studies showing that for the most part teenagers use contraception as faithfully as adults and have sex most often in loving relationships, why are we still teaching our young women about the dangers to the exclusion of the pleasures. Wouldn’t we as women (mothers, mentors, aunties, big sisters, friends) do well to teach our teenage sisters the power of their bodies, its capacity for pleasure and that their desire is healthy? It certainly would have changed my life.
