Chapter 3

MASTURBATORY HABITS OF TEENAGED GIRLS

Masturbation, despite the so-called enlightened sexual decade of the 1960's, still carries a stigma and its resultant guilt feelings. Once, all sorts of terrible maladies were appointed for the person who masturbated: insanity, anemia, infertility, etc. Generally, the fear was directed to boys, the thought of a girl masturbating being almost too evil to comprehend. But girls did masturbate. They do today. And undoubtedly they will continue in this pattern as long as man inhabits the earth.

But what of the masturbatory habits of the teenaged girls of today? Do they turn to self-love out of need? Curiosity? Is it a therapy that is used to keep a girl from premature sexual relations with a boy? Is masturbation a satisfaction that is demanded from every young body?

The answers to these questions, and many others, are best illustrated through the subjects themselves and the case histories they have contributed to this work on "teenaged sexual habits."

CASE HISTORY

When Amy first experienced a sexual climax as a result of self-masturbation, she pretended that it hadn't happened that she had not felt the sensations that had raked her body. Why the self-deception? one might ask. The answer is simple: Amy thought such feelings issued only from the dirty, the uncouth, and those people who were destined for a life of misery and guilt.

Amy's reactions to masturbation were not much different from those of most of the girls of her age group fourteen. She came upon the experience accidentally. It is worth reciting the exact experience as it was described by Amy to a psychiatric case worker, for from this we see some of the guilt feelings and fear that commingle with a girl's first excitement from a sexual source.

Amy was fourteen when she deliberately masturbated. Before this event there had been some signs of approaching sexual awareness. Amy, along with her girl friends, talked a good deal about boys. And she dreamed of boys and men, too. But the most significant experience to signify the coming masturbatory period of her life occurred when Amy spent a week-end at a girl friend's house. The girls spent a long time in Clara's bedroom. They talked. They laughed and giggled over events that had happened at school. They talked of boys and romance, movie stars and romance, and the thrill of someday having a boyfriend of their own.

Finally, when the conversation had run dry and the girls had showered and made ready for bed, Amy, on impulse, began a wrestling game with her friend. They giggled, trying to muffle it so the adults of the house would not hear. And they rolled all over the room, falling from the bed to the carpeted floor and all over the floor. During the play-scuffle, Amy's pajama top flew open, exposing her bouncing young breasts. The same thing happened to the girl friend, especially when Amy began a heavy assault of tickling at the ribs. Amid their laughter and combat, Clara's leg somehow became jammed between both of Amy's thighs. As Clara tried to wrest her friend from the position atop her, Amy felt the constant, rubbing contact of Clara's knee at the exact point of her own thigh's joining. It was a good sensation. Amy liked it. She even tried to increase it by bringing her thighs together to hold Clara's knee. And the sensation did increase, but not to an end. The girls suddenly rolled apart, gasped for breath and lay flat on their backs. The game was over and so was the sensation that had held Amy so excitingly.

It is doubtful that this event caused any conscious-level effort for Amy to pursue the sensations she had felt to a higher degree. But accident once again brought her the sensations that she was soon to know as a result of a self-masturbatory act. It happened in the bathtub.

Amy enjoyed lounging in a sudsy tub as long as she was allowed. She also enjoyed using a big sponge on all of her body. This particular night she gained a different feeling when she soaped and massaged the area at her breasts. The nipples popped alive and the roundness of her flesh seemed to fill. She couldn't understand it, but she liked it. But this feeling was soon forgotten.

After soaping and rinsing several times, Amy scooted lower in the tub, totally submerging her body except for neck and head. The sponge had escaped her fingers, and she could feel it at the bottom of the tub near her thighs. She opened her legs, attempting to capture the sponge. She missed it. She tried again. Still the sponge eluded her grasp. And then the procedure became a game for Amy. She opened and closed her thighs in quick succession, and just that quickly she forgot all about the game of catch the sponge. A sensation swept her body. Amy recognized it as a feeling similar to the one she had experienced when wrestling with Clara. It was very exciting and seemed to be growing, when suddenly it died. The good feeling was gone. Amy was desperately disappointed.

As she rested in the tub, recovering from the unknown thing that had risen within her, then left, Amy noticed that she was breathing very hard. And her mind buzzed with thoughts and fantasies, all of which were sexually oriented. Then Amy sought to investigate the origin of the feeling she had known. She reached her hand slowly to her thighs. She touched herself, then investigated more thoroughly. Although the contact felt good, it fell far short of the earlier feeling. But then Amy made a higher touch, and the feeling was there again, bunched as if it waited upon a pinpoint to be jiggled into some torrent of fantastic feeling. Amy sighed. She later described the sound as "the kind I had never heard before not from me or anyone."

Instinct moved Amy when she, without pre-knowledge of masturbation, gently spun her finger in a circle upon the highly-sensitized part of her body. Soon she began gasping and moving in the tub, arching a bit, slightly circling her hips in order to intensify the feeling her speeding hand conveyed, and the sound of the water's splashing was like a giant surf that deadened her ears to all other sounds. And then, suddenly, she had arrived at the crest of the high plateau she had created. She did not want to go on. She was afraid that, if she did, some terrible moment would be upon her that would find her body split in parts, shattered, sent shooting in every direction. But neither could she keep from continuing; she could not deny herself the end to all that her bodily sensations promised. She shut her eyes tight and spun her hand faster. And then climax took over, became her being, soul and all of her as she was racked with the pleasure-pain of immense release.

After the first experience, Amy promised herself that she would never again do such a thing, that she would assert will power and not become a slave to the habit that begged for almost constant attention. Amy, of course, broke every promise to herself. She broke it nightly, sometimes several times in a single day. And she became inventive about her masturbation, devised new methods of performing the act, some simple, many intricately devised, such as causing a friction contact against her clitoris by wrapping her legs around the bed post and exerting herself hard against it.

Amy attempted to find out something about masturbation. She sought books in both the school library and public library on the subject. The file cards indicated that there were such books available; however, they were kept in the "closed shelves" of the public library and were not issuable to under-aged girls. Then Amy sought to talk to her best girl friend about it. When she asked the girl if she had "ever given herself a feeling like making love," the girl looked at her in a horrified way and said of course she hadn't. This ended any incentive to find one to whom she could talk about the problem. And by now it had become a problem, for Amy, raised by unknowledgeable and prudish parents, was riddled with guilt. She was sure that she was "abnormal."

"perverted," perhaps going insane.

Amy's guilt lasted most of her young life. At sixteen, attempting to find a substitute for masturbation, Amy became involved in a series of sexual affairs with boys and older men, some in their middle-years. She did not know the benefit of sexual gratification, however, and returned nightly to her masturbatory habit.

Finally, at age nineteen, Amy married. Sexual intercourse in marriage was no more beneficial than premarital promiscuity. And she could not deny herself the simple means of gratification that were available to her by the uncomplex act of masturbation. She continued her masturbatory practice in marriage until, after five years, she and her husband were divorced. Then, deciding that there was no chance for happiness in her life until she resolved her problems, she sought help through a social agency, was assigned to the case load of a psychiatric case worker, and eventually responded to weekly sessions that gave the young woman considerable insight into her problems. But a new marriage, convenient for Amy's particular psychology, probably must be credited for her eventual happiness even more than her long periods of psychiatric introspection. Amy met and married a man who was different from many. Although he was fond of sexual intercourse, he was also fascinated with the procedure of masturbating his wife. Strangely or perhaps not so strangely when we consider that neurotics attract other neurotics for marriage it was he who, upon their second date, masturbated Amy to a climax, then entered her and knew the gratification of sexual intercourse. This arrangement proved ideal for Amy and for her husband. At last reports, they were living a successful, very functioning life.

CASE HISTORY

Rigidity in upbringing often produces wayward patterns for teenagers. This was the case of Judy S.

Judy's father was a lay minister in a little-known Protestant denomination. He raised his daughter, Judy, and her two brothers with a clinched fist, never hesitating to use it to invoke his will. And Mr. S's will was constant obedience, prayer, and an utter lack of communication for his children with peers except for those children who attended his church. So severe was Mr. S.'s discipline of his children, that except for necessary conversation with teachers, they rarely communicated with an un-church-oriented person, especially young people their own ages. Finally, when Judy was fifteen, she learned that she did not need others for excitement. She found it in masturbation, and eventual incestuous intercourse with her seventeen-year-old brother. In fact, it was her brother who taught her the rudiments of masturbation.

"Hi," Judy's brother, Harold, said to her, unexpectedly entering her bedroom one day.

"Hi," she answered, turning from her side to her back in order to see him.

"What'cha doin'? "

"Nothing."

"Me too."

"Not much, is it?" she said, smiling.

"Not nothing," he answered, also smiling.

"Did Ma and Pa come back yet?"

"Nope." He hesitated, then said, "If they were back the old man would be calling for a prayer meeting."

"Harold, you shouldn't talk like that," Judy said.

"Why not? It's the truth."

"But if Pa heard you..."

"He can't. Not unless he's got more 'in' with God than we've been able to discover."

"Harold," she said scolding again.

"Boy, Pa's really got you buffaloed, hasn't he?"

She looked away, then turned quickly and said, "No I just do what he says, that's all."

"And how much fun do you have?"

She lowered her large eyelashes.

"Go on, tell me what you do for fun? Heck, you're pretty enough, and you are fifteen and what have you done for fun. Nothing. That's what."

"It's the same for you."

"Heck it is," he exclaimed.

She looked at him, cocking her head in a quizzical fashion. Then she said, "You mean you do things Pa doesn't approve of?"

He looked around, then at his sister, and said, "Naturally. Heck, Judy, I'm seventeen! That's a man's age."

"Pa doesn't think so."

"That to Pa!" He made an obscene gesture. "Harold!! "

"Ah, I'm just sick of it, Judy, and you should be too. Praying, praying, praying all the time. No friends, no fun, no nothing except what Rev. Stupid says for us to do."

Judy was shocked by her brother's references to their father. She had never heard such anger, such bitterness from him before. Yet a part of her admired her brother's brazenness. A part of her wished that she were that way too.

Harold glanced at his sister, then moved over to her bed and sat down. He smiled again, and this time his eyes flickered over her body, seeing the womanly lines that could not be hidden by the ultraconservative sweater and skirt.

"Did you really mean what you said, Harold?" Judy asked in a soft, secretive voice.

"What's that?"

"About me being pretty. Did you mean it?"

"Sure I did. Heck, you'd have the guys flocking all over you if you ever got to see any of them." He paused, looked around again, then said, "You ought to do like I do. Sneak out to meet the gang, you know, to do things together."

"You don't!" she exclaimed, bringing her hand to her mouth as if she were hearing the most horrible confession.

"I sure as the devil do. Right out my window at night. And sometimes I make up reasons to stay at school, 'cept I'm not really there. Heck, it's the only way. I'm not ashamed of lying to the old man."

"But if he ever found out..."

"I'd have an answer for that too," he said. "The Navy. I'd join the cotton-pickin' Navy if Pa ever gave me a bad time."

"Oh, don't," Judy said. Her voice had changed. Suddenly, she had a very genuine fear of being without her brother Harold.

"Hope I don't have to," Harold said.

They were both quiet for a long time. Then Harold, looking around in a secretive manner as he reached in his hip pocket, said, "Want to see something? I mean, really something!"

"Sure," she answered feeling at that very moment as if she had already committed some horrible sin.

Harold withdrew a folded envelope from his pocket. He grinned, somewhat evilly, Judy thought.

"What's that?" she asked.

"You'll see." He very carefully unwrapped the envelope, then withdrew from it a packet of small-sized glossy photographs.

"Pictures?" Judy asked.

"Yeah. Special ones."

Judy glanced at the door of her bedroom, sensing that what was about to take place was a forbidden act, one for which she and her brother would have to bear the most vile punishment. She finally looked away from the door. Harold, still grinning, handed her the photos. Judy took them, noticing that the palms of her hand were moist.

"Go ahead, look at 'em. They're a bang," encouraged Harold.

Judy looked at the first photo. Then she looked away, holding the pictures outstretched from her body and saying, "Oh, Harold, I can't! They're terrible!"

"Go on. Don't be chicken."

"I can't!"

Exasperatedly, Harold frowned and said, "How in the world do you ever expect to know anything about life if you don't look into it."

"But these..."

"Yeah," he interrupted. "They're dirty. And I say, so what?"

Slowly, Judy brought her hand back to her lap. She lifted the two fingers that concealed the photo. Then she peeked a look.

Judy has never been able to accurately describe her introduction to pornographic photographs. She recalls nothing about her feelings at this time; however, she remembers in rather vivid detail the words that passed between her brother and herself. (Judy's analyst ventured the speculation that Judy's mind worked overtime recording the dialog between her brother and herself, and that it did this as the rather complex system of the mind sought to save her from remembering her feelings, feelings that were no doubt erotically aroused by the pornographic photos, for which she felt a horrible guilt.)

The first photo that Judy viewed was that of a man and woman having anal intercourse. It confused her.

"Go on to the next," her brother urged.

"But but what are they doing?" she asked, holding the first photo out.

"You must be kidding," he exploded. "I'm not Harold."

"My God, you're worse than I thought you'd be," he said.

Then, sitting closer to his young sister, and, it has been observed by Judy, acting very much like a teacher giving special instruction to a backward pupil, he leafed through the photos, commenting in candid terms about the action that had been recorded by the photographer.

Commenting on the experience years later, Judy has stated that there was only one photograph that truly excited her. Of the half-dozen pix exhibiting various poses of intercourse, cunnilingus, and fellatio, there was one of a young girl masturbating. The pose had been closely photographed, showing the minute details of the self-love act. And Judy saw that the girl's eyes were closed, that there was an erotic expression on her face that told of some unseen, and yet unknown, glory. The model's anatomy and her own action upon it were vividly outlined.

"But this is different," she said to her brother. "It's not like the others. There's no man. What's she doing, anyway?"

Harold reached and took the photographs from her. He returned them first to the envelope, then to his pocket. Then he looked at his sister and shook his head.

"What's the matter?" she asked. "You look well, mad or disgusted with me, or something."

"Nothing's wrong, kid," he answered. "I was just surprised at your question, that's all."

"Well tell me what she's doing. Then I'll know we'll both know."

Harold seemed a little tongue-tied when it came to an explanation of a masturbatory act. But he finally said, "Well, she's making out with herself."

"Herself?"

"Yeah."

"But how in the world can she ever do that? There's got to be a boy."

"Not for this, there doesn't," he explained.

Judy shook her head and repeated, "To herself." Then she added, "Gee, she must be crazy or something."

"Naw, she's not," Harold said defensively. "All the girls do that. And the fellows do, too, but in a different way."

"You do, too, Harold?" she asked, aghast.

He nodded.

"And girls do that? All the girls? The kids in school and everything?"

"That's right. They get a charge out of it."

"A charge?" she questioned.

"Yeah, kicks. A bang. You know, it's-fun."

Judy wanted to ask more questions, but at that very moment she and her brother heard the front door open and they knew that their parents had returned home. Quickly, Harold jumped up from the bed and took a position by the door. Then, when his father called, he left the room, patting his hip pocket as he moved, assuring himself that his pornographic pictures could not be viewed.

Judy remained quietly in her room for a long time. She kept thinking of the films, the way the men and women had looked without clothes, and especially the way the girl had looked as she masturbated.

That night, alone in her room and safely beneath the bed covers, Judy felt a restlessness that had never before been with her. She rolled and tossed and could not get comfortable could not coax sleep to come and take her into darkness. Again and again an image of the picture of the girl stimulating herself crowded into Judy's mind. She tried to rid herself of the thought, even covered her head with a pillow, much as if this would make the thought go away. But it did not. A clear image of the obscene photo persisted. And with it, there came Judy's first urgings toward her own body.

She rolled on her back and stared at the ceiling. Even the darkness seemed to form images for Judy to view, all of them vile and from the creation of the photos she had viewed earlier that day. And she became acutely aware of her breathing, which had become labored, of that and the way her belly indented dramatically with each breath, forming a kind of slide from her young breasts all the way to the place where her thighs joined. Soon, Judy reached behind her and lifted the curtain of her window. Moonlight gleamed upon her, framing her for an unusually, and unusually attractive, self-view of her body and the way it crinkled the bed clothes. Judy threw off the covers and stretched her body long and straight. Then she looked at herself again. She was suddenly tantalized with the temptation to lie naked in the moonlight. For awhile, she resisted the thought, but finally she could not withstand the urge any longer. She sat up in bed. Then she gathered the hem of her long, heavy wool nightie in her fingers. She pulled it upward, over her head and free from her body. It was like a revelation to her. She felt cool and refreshed and very attractive. She hid the nightie beneath the mattress, then glanced downward at her young breasts. They were rising, much as if they asked for a kiss from their maiden. And then Judy looked lower, saw her belly pinched tightly with lines showing some strain, then stared at the thick panties she always wore beneath her night dress. They seemed disgusting and a disfigurement to her beauty her natural beauty that was revered by the moon and the night. Moving slowly, as if she were making a most important unveiling, Judy brought her hands downward to her side, rolled the panties down a bit. then rapidly pushed them from her body and off the tips of her toes. And now she was free naked and free, and more delightful than she had ever imagined herself to be.

Judy leaned back, settling her head into the pillow. Her breathing quieted. A long time passed. And then she was asleep, naked beneath the moon in her bed within the privacy of her room, and asleep, dreaming dreams that never merged to consciousness at any time of the future. But, while sleep possessed her, demons played their tunes within her subconscious, urging her to action, to self-expression in love through masturbation. And the demons were determined to corrupt, according to the dictates of every adult Judy S. had ever known. And corrupt, they did.

Judy, crying a soft, sleep-filled sound, rolled from her back to her side, then to her back again. Slowly, her legs raised, knees separating, feet planting firmly into the bed. And then there was another movement: Judy's hand wandering from breast to ribs to waist, and last to that unsullied temple of promises. The girl's hand caressed, indented, moved again, pushed a bit and finally arrived at an auxiliary position of sensitivity, a plateau from which the sleep-drenched girl of fifteen could leap to the plunging thrill that orgasm offered.

Judy pretended sleep to herself all through the act. But even self-deception must meet discovery, and so it was with the strict pastor's daughter. Her breathing increased and she tried to stifle it. She could not. It was then that she allowed herself to recognize that she was truly awake erotically awake and masturbating. She buried her face into the pillows, being very careful not to make a break in either her posture or the ever-speeding rhythm that she played upon her body. And when, involuntarily her hips began a spinning and arching that forced creaking sounds from the bed springs, Judy tried to subdue this sound too. But she could not. Nor did she could she now care, for her entire body stammered as if she were the captive of some horrible machine that shook her, trembled her entire body, rippling her with excitement and the fear of what that excitement would cause.

Judy bit hard into the pillow just before she brought her hand to a halt. She felt the dryness of the material and knew that it was no dryer than her mouth, for she was as if she had been rung dry with emotion, as indeed she had.

Quickly, much as if she wished to continue or re-establish the disguise of unconsciousness, Judy returned to sleep. But upon awakening the next morning, she investigated her naked body, saw that she was unchanged, then remembered again the delightful feelings that she had accomplished by herself. She felt as if she had the most profound secret, a happy discovery that allowed her feelings and emotions and thrill, without the risk of her father's wrath. All that was necessary was to keep her secret activity that way in every respect.

Judy did suffer severe guilt feelings; however, she was, it was later discovered, able to rationalize them: Her father, who was an authority on sin, never mentioned this particular sin; therefore, it could be considered acceptable. And she doubled her other efforts to please her parents: She prayed harder and longer, became more active in church activities did all these things as she longed to be alone in her room, naked between the sheets, and spinning herself into a delirium of sensations that she guessed must be akin to the heavenly rewards her father so often mentioned.

By the time Judy turned sixteen, she had become a habitual, and proficient, masturbator. She has estimated that for two years she failed to masturbate nightly not more than five or six times. She even remembered the situations that kept her from the act. Visiting relatives were staying at the house. During the visit, one of the young girls about her own age shared her bed. She could not risk discovery, and subdued the urgings that came upon her in regiments of strength.

Although Judy and her brother, Harold, never again mentioned the pornographic photos he had shown her, they did from that day grow closer. Judy never confessed her masturbatory habits, although she has stated that she was tempted to do this on one occasion. Harold, on the other hand, confessed all sorts of secret, lurid details of his life, all of them accomplished behind his father's pious back. Judy was proud that her brother trusted her so thoroughly. She wished that she might bring herself to share her own secrets. But she could not, at least not until the two of them had broken the ages-old taboo of incest. Then she had a secret to share. It was Harold's secret, too.

They were alone in the house. They felt free, for it would be hours before their parents returned from the church where they were attending a funeral. The incest began innocently enough began with an excuse for a rough house game; then the game brought Judy to her back upon her bed with her brother perched at her flapping, fighting thighs.

Suddenly Judy's resistance stopped. Harold loosened his hold upon the girl, but she did not move to take herself away from his embrace. They looked into each other's eyes. A silent message was conveyed. Judy, sighing, moved slightly. Her brother brought a hand to her hip. He closed his fingers on the skirt that held her. She did not flinch. Nor did she protest or seek to escape this evil thing when her brother's hand moved to the hem of her skirt, lifted it, then wandered to the panties, which he quickly separated. Harold's eyes blazed. They held surprise as much as passion. And they continued to hold on a line with Judy's while he withdrew his hand, made a rearrangement of his clothing, then brought both his hands beneath his sister's skirt to swoop upward, grip her hips, then flatten them as she arched to meet him.

At the beginning there was difficulty, and at the end, for Judy, there was disappointment. The act of intercourse had failed to bring about a climax, something with which she was already dramatically familiar. There was an exchange of words between brother and sister following the incestuous act. Each tried to reassure the other that the fault was their own. But there were no vows of abstinence, and there was none until quite unexpectedly, Harold, following an argument with his father, carried out his vow and enlisted in the Navy. Then Judy was completely alone.

Although Judy never received a climax through the means of sexual intercourse with her brother, she did submit even encouraged the act many times. That she did not become pregnant is one of the mysteries of physiology. Inquiring as to why she submitted to her brother when she did not really enjoy the act, Judy has replied that she wanted her brother to like her, that she didn't want to disappoint him, that she feared if she did he might take revenge by informing upon her, even at the risk of his own discovery, and that she constantly hoped that she might reach an orgasm, know the same spine-tingling thrill she had accomplished by herself.

Judy continued to live at home with her parents until she was twenty years old. Then she married a boy of her parents' choice, a member of the same community and church in which Judy had been raised. After ten years of married life, Judy consulted a physician regarding her apparent infertility. There was nothing organically preventive of child-bearing. But during the conversation, Judy felt the urge to ramble on about her life, her past, even the incestuous affair she had fulfilled with her brother. The physician rather casually suggested that a psychiatric review of her life might lessen some emotional block to pregnancy. Judy complied with the suggestion and sought psychiatric counseling.

Unfortunately, it is not known how Judy S. would have responded to therapy, for after the initial interviews, which have provided the basis for this case, she and her husband were killed in an automobile crash on a busy city freeway.

Guilt has always been synonymous with masturbation, and it is within this sphere that the act can, and does, harm those who practice it. From medical records, it appears that boys are far less-likely to be bedeviled by their adolescent habit of masturbation, than girls. But generally it is accepted that boys are less traumatically inclined in regard to early sexual experiences of any nature. Girls, very-likely because there is a much more involved investigative need in order to find that of their anatomy that provides sensation, sometimes carry the guilt of masturbation for years. Sometimes it is even carried into marriage, a status that is meant to gratify the sexual needs of the partners. Many girls who were early masturbators have, through their early, intensive acts, relinquished the right to a sexual climax by the natural means of sexual intercourse. This is particularly true if the clitoris has been the exclusive point of the girl's sensitivity. In such cases, it is not unusual that the glorious point for masturbation becomes the retarder in marriage. In such cases, too, compromises, either spoken or unspoken, are worked out by husband and wife, often providing the husband with the duty of masturbating his mate. Some doctors feel that this is the only basis upon which a successful sex life can be established in marriage for the early, excessive masturbator. Many husbands accept this duty without complaint. Some do not. And most psychiatrists and doctors feel that when a man does not willingly, even lovingly, accept this responsibility, he is bound to be the long-term loser.

"Love is expressed in many ways between married people," says Dr. Robert Erskin, gynecologist at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. "And truly, it does not much matter how it is expressed, just so long as it is conveyed. There is a vital need for this between a man and his wife. I have seen married couples who have passed their silver wedding anniversary, still acting like newly-weds. Some of them I know. Some I know have worked out a mutually gratifying and successful love-life between them that, to some people, would seem to disobey all the rules in all the books. But they are happy. They are in love. They have community and communication. These things, I think, are far more important than the compliance with a code that cannot apply to all people."