Christianity: Masturbation

By Kristen S.

When you think of the word “masturbation” what do you think of? I noticed that I always thought of it pertaining to male masturbation. I was confirmed by this thought when the host blogger said that she was trying to think of an image to use for her blog post on masturbation. I thought of a banana because it’s the safe image you can post. Again, that’s referring to male masturbation.

I was raised in a conservative evangelical Christian home. I grew up in the time when purity culture was a huge thing. It was mostly advocated by my youth group. It was largely influenced by the Joshua Harris books like “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and “Boy meets Girl: Say Hello to Courtship” or “Every Young Women’s Battle” or “Every Young Man’s Battle.”

I didn’t know about masturbation until I was in my teens. I didn’t know that guys can get “hard” by masturbation until I saw an MTV show that made a reference to that activity. That was in my early twenties. I knew that masturbation had a bad rap because it’s usually in reference to males jerking off to pornography or thinking of their significant others. Even though they’re not doing sexual intercourse, the THOUGHT of it was sinful. Not only that, it was sinful to encourage the sexual side of themselves.

I thought there was something wrong with me for years in my late teens and early twenties because I had a sex drive. The message I was getting from purity culture was that girls/women are relationship-driven and boys are visual. Boys/men struggle with their sex drive because they are visual creatures and can’t help themselves. Female sexuality was not talked about. Male sexuality was ALWAYS talked about. Women had to take actions to help curb their male peer’s sex drive.

I thought there was something wrong with me because I wanted a loving, committed, life-giving relationship AND a fun sex life. But in my mind at that time, women didn’t want to have sex. It wasn’t until later in life that I learned from my women peers that they DO want to have sex but often are quiet about it because it’s very hush hush. For years, I thought of sex life as giving my future husband pleasure through penetration. I never thought about my own sexuality and pleasure in a future marriage. I thought the women got pleasure by doing the “normal” sex.

I had a vague idea of what female masturbation was in my teen years after I read one of those purity culture books. It probably was Every Young Women’s Battle. But my knowledge at that point was thinking it was just pushing the lips of the labia majora up and down. But I didn’t know that it was more to it until I read a book about how to make love shortly before I got married. I wanted to learn more about having sex so that I wasn’t clueless on my wedding night. A friend recommended me to read the book less than 4 weeks before the wedding so that the temptation isn’t too strong after learning new things. She recommended “A Celebration of Sex for Newlyweds” by Dr. Douglas E. Rosenau.

It was reading that book that I learned about the clitoris and g-spot for the first time. So I knew about the opposite sex’s “sweet spot” far before I knew about my body’s “sweet spots.” I didn’t know all the sensual zones for the woman’s and man’s body until that book. It wasn’t until that book when I learned that that couples can give each other sexual pleasure through masturbation. It was the first time that masturbation was presented in a positive light. It went in more detail on how to give the female orgasm through simulations and movements in ways that I didn’t know until I was 24 years old.

I didn’t know that women had a faster recovery time than a male does until I read the book.

I knew what an orgasm was for a male (aka ejaculation) but didn’t know what a female orgasm was until I watched an episode of Big Bang Theory about a year prior to reading that book. I can’t remember which episode. But the character Amy is a scientist and she saw a cute boy that she found attractive. She confided in Penny that she didn’t know what was happening to her – her heart beated faster, sweaty palms and involuntary muscle spasms was happening between her legs. Penny told her “oh, you’re experiencing an orgasm.” At that moment I was like “OOOOOOHHHHHhhhhh so that’s what those are!”

After I got married, I realized that what Hollywood and culture taught me about sex was inaccurate. It’s very unlikely that a woman has an orgasm by penetration. In heterosexual sex scenes, they always end with the male having an orgasm and make it seemed like a woman was getting one too. They rarely ever show the man giving pleasure to the woman after he gets his. That created an expectation in me that sex is going to be pleasurable for both partners but the male will achieve a high in pleasure than a woman will never match.

I remember in pre-marital counseling classes, the male pastor told me to always be ready to bring pleasure to my future husband even when I’m not in the mood. It’s the wife’s duty to make sure that his sexual needs are being met.

Thankfully, my husband and I thought that notion was ridiculous. If we make sure both parties are satisfied sexually every time we make love… guess what? We’re more likely to do it more! If you make sex a one-sided thing, it may make the other partner not want to do it as much.. Which means less sex!

I’m still exploring my sexuality as a female. I think purity culture caused me to suppress my sexuality to the point that I saw every sexual reaction that my body made before marriage as a sinful thing. I’m still trying to figure this out. Because the notion that your worth is determined by how much you kept your sexual desires under lock and key (until marriage) is ridiculous. God has created us humans and one side of us is our sexual nature. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a natural thing because without that, there would be no procreation. I think our sexuality and sexual pleasure is another one of God’s many gifts to us.

I don’t think masturbation itself is sinful. I think it has to do with the context that it’s being done in. I’m not sure what the right context is. I’m hoping to look in a local seminary’s library and research masturbation within the bible and Christianity. There probably won’t be much on the topic because most them will say “OF COURSE it’s sinful, you thunk it, then you get hard, then orgasm. VERY VERY BAD.” And there are even LESS resources that talks about female mastrubation and female sexuality in a positive light.

I’m pretty sure an old man mastrubating while looking at a woman on the bus is sinful because it reduce her to a sexual object and makes her feel very uncomfortable. It’s not consent, that’s a form of sexual assault.

I’m still trying to figure stuff out. So any input from y’all would be great.