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[Yes, I know....it's been quite a while since I last posted here...too much work and not enough time.  I'm doing my best to make up for lost time...so just bear with me.]

Well, Masturbation Month is with us once again….that month of the year where all  us sexual beings give tribute to the joy of self love and self gratification.

Now, some would wonder why we need 31 days of a year to celebrate an act that we take for granted all year long. I mean, Black folks didn’t make history only in Feburary, so why only have Black History Month?

And…it’s not as if we need any more excuses to put our hands down and in our pants and/or panties, do we??

On the other hand, though, it is nice to be reminded about the beauty and simplicity of playing with one’s self…..or, if you are really lucky, playing with a appreciative lover.

And it’s especially so when you have forces who would want to deny you that right to determing your own sexual self-pleasure through guilt-tripping and cracked theories of “sex addiction”.

Usually, it is men who have been the primary targets of such antisexual campaigns of shaming and repression…whether it be through the radicalfeminist rhetoric of “male feminists” like John Stoltenberg and Robert Jensen, or the more traditional fundamentalist rhetoric of folk like W.K. Kellogg,  Ted Haggard, and Jimmy Swaggart (the latter two’s issues with their own sexuality aside, of course).

But now it seems that the Religious Right (and I’m sure their colleagues on the antiporn feminist side will soon follow) have discovered a new vehicle for the special brand of sex policing and sexual shaming: female sexual “addiction” via masturbation.

Now, the concept of “sex addiction” as a “disease” to be cured through prayer and “self-control” has been with us for about as long as people have been fingering themselves. And, there is no doubt that there are a few who do feel out of control about the struggle between their conservative personal beliefs about sexuality and the throbbing call between their thighs.

However, the very meaning of “sex addiction” has been mostly bastardized by certain authorities from its original meaning of chronic, uncontrolable, and hazardous sexual behavior that directly threatens harm to one’s self and others, to simply condemn any sexual activity that doesn’t match their particular politically correct standards. In short, it is mostly a tool to shame people back into fear and loathing of their own sexual selves and to enforce the repressive and reactionary sexual order.

While the so-called “ex-gay” ministries targeting male homosexuality is the most prominent example of how “sex addiction” theory is misused to enforce sexual fascism, a more recent development has come in to target young women whom have taken advantage of technology and the sexual liberalization of the 1990s to get more in touch with their bodies.

I refer to this movement as the “ex-slut” ministries because it relies and thrives on the common creed that women who are more open and honest and accepting of their sexuality should be condemned as simply “sluts” who enable male rapists, destroy families, poision Western civilization, spread diseases, and do all other kinds of evil offense to “God” and country.

The primary target of the “ex-slut” ministries are mostly young women or adolescent girls who get into sex indirectly through watching or downloading porn, or even young women who are in porn who feel alienated by some of the industry’s more sleazy practices.

Shelley Lubben’s Pink Cross Foundation is a prime example of the “ex-slut”  ministry that uses former porn performers (including Lubben herself) turned “born again” to push the message of sexual denial and salvation through sexual denial and repudiation.

 But that only targets the porn industry…for the broader public, a different approach is needed…and here is where the theory of “female porn/masturbation addiction” comes in.

And…where we meet Crystal Renaud and the “Victory Over Porn Addiction” group she oversees for her local megachurch, the Westside Family Church in Lenexa, Kansas.

Ms. Renaud, according to an article recently published in the New York Times, provides counseling both online and physically for young girls supposedly wanting to break their “addiction” to porn (and to other evil non-Godly acts such as masturbation, too) through the usual means of religious lecturing healing, plenty of prayer…..and, it seems, popping balloons. Some snippage from the NYT article:

To the wide array of programs offered by evangelical megachurches like Westside, the group adds what Ms. Renaud says is something long overdue. While churches have addressed pornography use among the men in their congregations and among the clergy, a group for women who say they are addicted to pornography is new territory, she said. 

“In the Christian culture, women are supposed to be the nonsexual ones,” said Ms. Renaud, who also runs an Internet site called Dirty Girls Ministries, choosing the name to attract people searching for pornography. “It’s an injustice that the church is not more open about physical sexuality. God created sex. But the enemy has twisted it.”

Of course, the “physical sexuality” that Ms. Renaud wants to support is reduced to women making lots of babies within “traditional families” for the glory of “God” and “Jesus Christ”, with everything else reduced to being a tool of “the enemy” (the Devil?? Osama bin Laden?? Planned Parenthood?? President Barack Obama??)

Obviously, you need some credibility as an “ex-slut”/”porn addict” to effectively sell an “ex-slut” ministry…and Ms. Renaud has plenty of that:

Ms. Renaud, who is taking a DVD course in sexual addiction counseling from the American Association of Christian Counselors, said she started the group and the Web site based on her own experiences. She became interested in pornography at age 10 after finding a magazine in her brother’s bathroom. After that, she said, “I wasn’t able to get enough of it.” 

“At school I wanted to go home and look at it more,” she said. “Then I went online. I’d stay late at the library to look at it. Eventually I got into masturbation, phone sex, cybersex.” She also cracked the code on the family’s satellite television service, she said. “That was my life for eight years.” Then, she said, she met a Christian woman who helped her stop.

Of course, this begs the question of how a 12 year old was able to crack the codes of the local library’s porn filters (and remember, this is Kansas, not exactly a liberal state when it comes to sexual expression) and look at all kinds of porn without at least some authority catching her; or get into phone sex and cybersex without the inevitable credit card charges showing up; OR how she was able to crack through her parents’ satellite code so easily to access all that Spice/Vivid/Playboy/HOTT Network (or maybe just Skinemax/Blowtime softcore??) porn without her parents or the satellite company outing her.  But I guess that all that is moot once you are “saved”, right??

But this isn’t to challenge Ms. Renaud’s personal experiences and feelings, since she probably did feel out of control and in need of Christian counseling to “save” her. That’s her right, and so is her right to form groups to counsel others who may feel as she does about being “addicted” to porn and masturbating too much.

The real issue comes when she and her ministry extrapolates her personal experiences to emasculate the experiences of others who don’t feel so threatened by masturbation and porn, and uses their group to directly assault people who don’t think like them. Which is where we get to an old friend called XXXChurch.com.

You may remember them as the group that ends up at every porn convention, whether AEE, Adultcon, XXXotica, XRCO, or whatever, attempting to recruit new members to sell their beliefs that porn is the absolute devil?? Well, guess who Ms. Renaud uses as a model for her own organization?? Again, quotiing the NYT piece:

In May she plans to attend a three-day seminar in Las Vegas called Launch 501c3, for Christians who want to start nonprofit organizations. The founder of Launch 501c3 is Craig Gross, a youth pastor who in 2002 helped start a Web site called XXX Church, one of the first ministries for pornography users. For Ms. Renaud, XXX Church is a model for building her ministry.

After a cool reception in the early years, 200,000 to 250,000 unique visitors now view XXX Church’s site each month, and its free Internet monitoring software, X3, is downloaded 500 times a day. And Mr. Gross and others in the group have paid speaking engagements most weekends. A 30-day online workshop sells 100 copies a month, at $99 each, Mr. Gross said. About 20 percent of the buyers have been women, he said.

Michelle Truax, the event planner for Fireproof Ministries, which includes XXX Church, said that when churches asked for programs directed at men, she suggested that they also consider programs for women.

But Mr. Gross said: “The problem is, most churches have male leadership, and if you want to pitch an event like that, they’ll say, ‘Our women don’t struggle with that.’ This is going to be the next wave, but you’re going to get a lot of blank stares. ‘Really? Come on, this isn’t a big deal.’ ”

And now we get to what is called “the money graph”.

The programs at Ms. Renaud’s group and at XXX Church diverge from secular sexual theory by treating masturbation and arousal as sins rather than elements of healthy sexuality. Emphasis is on recovering “sexual purity,” in which thoughts of sex outside marriage are illicit. 

Hmmmmmm. You wouldn’t think that, if you read all the free pub that XXXChurch.com gets from porn message boards and gossip sites like Lukeisback.com; you’d think that people like Craig Gross were simply just plain folks concerned about the darker side of porn and sexuality, expressing their free speech rights. Especially since every attempt by those who know them to expose their true agenda is met with stern lectures of “you’re CENSORING them!!!”

Similarly, I’m betting that all those on the Lukeisback site forums who defend The “Reverend” Shelley Lubben and her Pink Cross ministry as merely people concerned about the social welfare of female performers would probably slide over her rhetoric of calling performers who don’t cross over to her side as “diseased”, or practicing such statistics as how “90% of all performers have STD’s” or “most performers take drugs to get through their degrading scenes”. It’s a wonder that Lubben hasn’t put her organization squarely behind Ms. Renaud’s efforts…although, considering her current alliance with AHF director Micheal Weinstein to impose mandatory condom usage within the porn industry, perhaps it wouldn’t be so politically viable to be seen with fundamentalist anti-masturbation (and openly anti-gay) activists. At least, not in public.

So…what does all this have to do with National Masturbation Month?? Plenty.

Because, those of us who defend the right of women and men to freely enjoy and participate in consensual adult activities without fear of harm or censure need to understand the mentality of those who are in opposition to that key principle. You know, that “know your enemy in order to defeat it” thing.

Once again, this is not to deny that people can get a bit too excited with masturbation, and can even take it to some major extremes to the point of actual harm. But, the overall benefits of masturbation as a tool of self-sexual discovery (and simply being a fun and relatively safe way to pass the time) more than outweighs any potential harm…and reasonable people can learn to respect the rights of others and practice self-love/self-lust safely.

Most importantly, especially now with women’s autonomy and their reproductive freedoms under such harsh attack these days, it is even more vital to loudly and unabashedly defend her right to determine her own sexuality and her right to be a free and conscious sexual being. Standing up to sexual bigots who would deny women and young girls (and boys) that right and shame them for simply acting on their sexual thoughts and desires isn’t just an act of defiance; it’s essential to basic human rights.  If they can control how or when you have an orgasm, what’s to prevent them from controlling every other aspect of your life??

Screw the additionologists and the fearmongers and the fundie/radfem deniers, I say….pleasure is still good for you, and sex with someone you love (or simply lust after) is still pretty damn nice. Even if that someone is your own damn self. I’ll take a “slut” who cums early, often, and on her own terms, and doesn’t mind tickling her clit twice a day because she feels like it,  over some self-denying “expert” any day of the week. And, I’ll jerk off when i damn well please when I feel like it.

And if you don’t get what I am saying, Mr. or Ms. Addictionologist, I’ll make it explicit with a picture:

 [Pics of Vicky Vette doing her part for self pleasure courtesy of VickyatHome.com]

Update (5-5-10):  Seems like I’m not the only one willing to call out Dirty Girls Ministries on their nonsense. “Porn for Women” advocate Ms. Naughty decided to unleash her own brand of fury towards Cynthia Renaud’s brand of slut shaming additionology this morn at her blog, and it packs a punch. Snippage:

Fact is, plenty of people can look at porn, enjoy it and then get on with their life. They can happily make use of it as a tool in their sex lives, just like a vibrator. And then it’s put away and done with. Most people are also able to make critical judgements about what they’re watching, decide if it’s good or bad, and make decisions about where porn belongs in their life.

There are some people, however, who can’t do this thanks to their obsessive personalities. Those people should be seeing qualified counsellors to get their life back together. They absolutely should NOT be handed over to religious nutjobs who make the situation worse by inculculating the victim with further guilt and shame… and then extract cash for the privilege.

This is why the regular use of the term “porn addiction” (and “sex addiction”) is so troubling. It’s actually part of the religious right’s wider anti-sex agenda. They’re opposed to porn and they will use any devious means necessary to get rid of it. The usual arguments about “sin” started to fall on deaf ears so they began to couch it in medical terms, in an attempt to garner support for bans.

Thus you end up with Judith Reisman telling the US senate that porn produces poisonous “erototoxins” that damage the brain. According to Wikipedia, Reisman defined “erototoxins” as being the natural chemicals and hormones testosterone, adrenaline, oxytocin, glucose, dopamine, serotonin, and phenylethylamine.

That’s right. These people actually think testosterone and the pleasure-producing chemicals serotonin and oxytocin are harmful. They also push the idea that masturbation is sinful and addictive because, according to the X3pure website: “Studies have shown that ninety-nine percent of all masturbation involves lust and mental fantasy*, which disconnects you from real relationships with real people. Despite these difficulties, masturbation can be conquered. If your desire is to change, God can heal and bring restoration.”

And these fundamentalists will keep pushing their message that all porn and pleasure is dangerous because it is ultimately gets more people through the doors of their church and paying 10% tithes into the church coffers.

 By all means, read the full essay and get some real education from someone who GETS IT.

Oh…and while you are there, make sure you read Ms. Naughty’s latest, where she dissects Naomi Wolf’s latest attempt at porn bashing and sex shaming in the name of “feminism”. Damn good stuff..even if you might not be a fan of “porn for women”.

Funny thing about college journalistic standards here in these United States….you can say just about anything about politicians, even lie about their birthplaces, their policies, even their personal sex lives, and all that is protected, supposedly, by the First Amendment.

But try to talk frankly about mutually pleasurable sex that bothers no one and even helps fight STI’s..and you get the Joycelyn Elders treatment….scorn, disgust, and rapid unemployment.

Want proof?? Try going to Towson State University.

Their student-run college newspaper, The Townlight, used to feature a column by a student named Lux — gender undetermined, but based on history, probably female — titled “The Bed Post”, in which she would discuss the more….shall we say, intimate side of college life.

I say “was”, because that column is now no more….because the editor of that paper canned it after some major stink was raised about the last “The Bed Post” column which was posted on September 27th.

The subject that created so much controversy:  Mutual Masturbation.

Yup….that would be the act of two or more people joining together to share some self-pleasure through touching themselves (but not each other).

So what was the controversy, then?? Too many explicit bombs in a “family-oriented” college newspaper?? The columnist revealed as a supporter of NAMBLA or a porn starlet?? An explicit attack on the local Campus Crusade for Christ or the College Republicans local???

Nope, not that at all.  Here’s a transcript of the column in its entirity (the original version can be found via the embedded link):

The Bed Post: How to make the feeling mutual

Happy Monday, my lovely, loyal readers, I’m hoping you had a great weekend and didn’t get into trouble. What did I do this weekend? It was actually pretty standard. I caught up on some sleep, hung out with some pals, got some work done, did a little mutual masturbation.

What?

That’s not how you spend your weekends?

Well, you might want to start.

According to Wikipedia, mutual masturbation is “a sexual act where two or more people stimulate themselves or one another sexually, usually with the hands.”

According to Lux, mutual masturbation is a way of life.

Got a boyfriend or girlfriend?

If you’re new to this concept, mutual masturbation is a great way to spice things up between the two of you.

Try not touching each other and only stimulate yourselves. Since you know your body so well, your hands will work exactly how you want them to, so you’ll always feel good.

You’ll stay safe, while being intimate at the same time. It’s sexy to watch someone pleasure themselves and even sexier for you to pleasure yourself with someone else watching.

Make a lot of eye contact during the act and there’s a good chance that you will both orgasm around the same time.

Want to take it to the next level? Try lying next to each other and linking arms.

Girls – add a vibrator or dildo into your routine.

Boys – find out if your girl will let you finish somewhere other than on your stomach. I tend to ask for it on my chest or back.

The other type of mutual masturbation might be better suited for someone that you aren’t in a serious relationship with.

This occurs when you both use your hands to pleasure each other. If you’ve been keeping up with my columns, you’re already all experts in the hand job department.

As for heavy petting, girls – tell your partner exactly how you like it, just as you would while receiving oral sex.

Want to make sure they really understand? Show them!

Use your hand or finger(s) and let them follow along.

Be careful, however, because PDS is a serious risk.

Pleasure Distraction Syndrome, or PDS, is something I made up completely to describe the situation in which both individuals are being stimulated and it feels so good, they forget what they are doing to the other person and stop.

Symptoms include failure to continue sexual act, confusion, and, if left untreated, will result in orgasm.

I almost always succumb to PDS while 69ing.

Just try to stay focused on the other person and what you’re doing, but if it happens, look on the bright side – your partner is very good at pleasuring you.

Regardless of how you do it, you should both be aroused, pleased and totally safe.

Mutual masturbation is a great way to make sure that you get what you want, your partner gets what he or she wants, and no one ends up pregnant.

So next weekend, in between watching movies with your roommates and partying with your friends, keep your hands busy with that lucky person in your life.

Now if you excuse me, the PDS is setting in.

Add another notch,

OK…so the column was a touch explicit, with direct reference to hand jobs and fellatio and oral sex, but as sex columns go, it’s pretty tame.

Nevertheless, talking honestly about sex in college campuses still tends to bring out the worst in sexual prudery, and that’s probably what prompted the Townson administration to come down hard on The Townlight.  So much so that the paper on October 4th issued a special statement officially pulling “The Bed Post from circulation.

Perhaps that’s what prompted Carrie Wood, who was the editor-in-chief of The Townlight at that time, to submit her own resignation papers on October 4th; citing a nasty email from the TU President which basically ripped the paper to shreds for allowing “pornography” to be shown in public. Unfortunately, in her haste to fall on her proverbial sword, Wood seems to want to throw Lux under the bus in typical Puritan liberal fashion.  Quoting from the resignation letter, which was posted to the paper here):

On the morning of Wednesday, September 30, I received an e-mail in my personal Towson student e-mail account from Towson University President Robert Caret. I felt the e-mail was written in an intimidating, patronizing and bullying tone, and it was copied to TU’s chief of staff and the University’s lawyer for them to see as well. Seeing this e-mail pop into my personal inbox right after I had woken up sent me into somewhat of a panic, and I responded out of feelings of fear and of being threatened. In my response, passages were worded in such a way that made it look as if I was throwing my staff under the bus and pushing the responsibility for the column on them. In no way was this my intent; however, I realize that perception is reality and that such a response makes The Towerlight look bad in the face of the University community.

I understand that my e-mail was just one of several poor decisions made by me regarding “The Bed Post.” Hindsight is 20-20, and, if I ever had the chance to do this all over again, I would have never run the column in the first place. I should have had the foresight to realize what “The Bed Post” would do to the paper and the reputation of both the paper and of Baltimore Student Media.

Oh, I see, Ms. Wood….so the “reputation” of your newspaper is so threatened by the existence of one column that seeks to use humor and mutual consent to promote safe sex practices that you feel the need to resign your post?? I guess that articles on revelations about President Obama’s birth certificate is more acceptable to you than talking honestly about masturbation?? Or, even safe sex??

But, not too much harm to its “reputation”, though, for Wood to bail out completely…she will stay on as a regular columnist there.

Meanwhile, outside of the usual Teabagger/Religious Fundie crowd, the basic reaction from Towson students amounts to: “WTF?!?” This comment generally speaks for the consensus:

[Posted by Gwendolyn Norton on 10/7/09 @ 12:04 PM]  *This* column actually made national news? Seriously, I got here from CNN. What kind of morons run this school? OMG- the kids have figured out a way to have sex that has practical zero risk for STD’s or pregnancy and they’re spreading the word!!! Stop it before the STD and pregnancy rates drop!!!

Kudos to the author and editor, and “you are a total and complete moron” to anyone who purports to have a mission (in fact, paid position) at this school in perpetuating knowledge but would move immediately to squash some of the most important knowledge that can be imparted and punish those who would disseminate it.

But as bad as the actual event was, it pales to how the local media has been reporting all the controversy…with all the usual squemishness about sex (and the prurience included within) that makes our media stand so proud…with their heads firmly placed in the sand. Blogger Amanda Hess of the DC-based blog The Sexist waylaided a particularly sappy attempt by the local ABC-TV news affiliate WMAR-TV to report on the Towson sex column fracus. You’ll have to read the full entry to get the gist of Hess’ comparison/contrast, but her concluding graphs gets to the point:

The Bed Post’s controversial references to self-pleasure have got nothing on ABC News’ edgy decision to misspell Wood’s name, mistype the name of the column (it’s The Bed Post), and misquote Wood. She made “some poor editorial decision”? Which editorial decision was that?

[...]

Yes, the Bed Post got explicit. Maybe ABC News should try that, instead of printing comments about “people” “overreacting” or “supporting” the decision to run “it,” no matter “what people tell you.” Just so we’re clear: THEY’RE ALL TALKING ABOUT MASTURBATION. There. MASTURBATION. That was easy, wasn’t it?

Maybe they should have been talking about trips to Argentina or trysts in public restroom stalls.  That would have been more…acceptable, I guess.