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R E C E N T L Y

Strange bedfellows
By Christina Boufis
Does academic life lead to divorce?
(03/24/99)

Who killed Meriwether Lewis?
By Leighton Woodhouse
A forensic scientist has stirred controversy by proposing to dig up the famous explorer's bones to find out
(03/22/99)

Raging against "the Machine"
By Julekha Dash
A Congolese student says death threats accompanied his campaign for U. of Alabama's student presidency
(03/19/99)

Battling stag/nation
By Jill Priluck
Radical hag Mary Daly stands up to Boston College for forcing coed classes
(03/17/99)

Pimps and Ho's
By Isaac Zaur
One college's theme party is another man's ethical dilemma
(03/17/99)

BROWSE THE
IVORY TOWER
ARCHIVE

Is the study of the autoerotic more than just mental masturbation?

BY DANYA RUTTENBERG | What do Pee Wee Herman, George Michael and hermeneutic discourse have in common?

If you ask a member of the burgeoning field of masturbation theory, the answer may be: absolutely everything. Some of academia's finest scholars these days are making serious work out of the study of -- well, diddling oneself.

This brave new academic frontier opened 10 years ago at the annual conference of the Modern Language Association with a panel called "The Muse of Masturbation." There Eve Sedgwick, who has since become the queen of queer theory, delivered her notorious paper, "Jane Austen and the Masturbating Girl." Regarded as proof that the humanities had at last decayed beyond repair, the MLA panel caused an angry ruckus both inside and outside the ivory tower. Every solo-love scholar I surveyed had stories about personal attacks at departmental events, dissertation advisors who wouldn't say the M-word and balking publishers.

When the editors of the 1995 anthology "Solitary Pleasures: The Historical, Literary and Artistic Discourses on Autoeroticism" placed a call for papers, they found that "the mere mention of the word 'masturbation' still raises eyebrows and evokes titters at a time when most forms of sexual activity have been talked into banality." Dr. Vernon Rosario, co-editor of Solitary Pleasures, explains such reactions as a perfect illustration of his work's value. "They're embarrassed by things that they're personally uncomfortable with in an academic setting," he says.

In other words, most people still can't talk about touching themselves.

"No matter how bizarre or complex we make it, sex is really just about a muscle spasm," notes Earl Jackson Jr., professor of comparative literature at UC-Berkeley. "Human beings need constantly renewed meanings." And those meanings, according to these scholars, become the ways by which our culture becomes "socially constructed"; that is, we reinvent our definitions of everything -- food, religion, sex, beauty -- to suit the needs of our particular time and place.

This line of thought transformed the study of sexuality; Michel Foucault's work on the history of homosexual love in the 1970s paved the way for a widely respected field of queer studies. Deconstructing usually began with a look at what once was. For example, in ancient Greece, sexual roles were determined by social status: The "top" was a land-owning male citizen, and the "bottom" was a foreigner, young man, slave or woman. In some Native American cultures, the gender of one's partner was determined by the work he or she did for the community. Today, on the other hand, sexual categories are based on an assumed preference for the opposite or same sex. New ideas, as history goes.

N E X T_ P A G E .|. Emily Dickenson: A creative wanker?