By Fingersmith
I saw my first clitoris last week at the age of 35.
It wasn’t even a real clitoris but a 3D print out. An article in The Guardian mentioned that it was going to be used in sex-ed classes in France to teach children about female pleasure.
‘So this is what it looks like.’ I thought, gazing at the little pink creation, not unlike a Play-Doh person one of my children might fashion. And then, ’Where is this again?’
I’ve been masturbating since the age of 12. I can’t remember how I knew that that was something I could do. No one had ever told me about it. I had never read about it. I just started one day.
I went to an all-girls school in Madras, and the only time we ever spoke of sex was when we learned about the reproductive system in biology. Or when someone sneaked in a magazine with the exploits of a Swamiji, jailed for having sex with his followers splashed on its covers. Self-pleasure though was never spoken of. Shrouded in our thick, cotton, Ujjala rinsed uniforms, our bodies were meant to be hidden, not just from the questing eyes of the opposite sex, but even from ourselves. Bra, slip, shirt, pinafore, layers and layers of cloth between our skin and the air. If we could not see and feel our bodies underneath all those pleats, perhaps it did not exist.
But my fingers knew something my mind didn’t. They went seeking and found what they were looking for. And what a revelation that discovery
was. (Looking back though, I realise how pedestrian the fantasies that fuelled my teenaged trysts with my clit were. They were built on very little knowledge of actual carnal love. On the other hand, it took so little to get off back then.)
I got married at 23. Marriage. That ended the need for self-pleasure I thought. Legal sex! No shame! No stigma! You aren’t a slut if it’s your husband after all. So for the first year and a half there was no self-love. Then I realised I missed masturbating. Not the orgasm itself, because yes, we figured out how to make that happen eventually, but the fantasy. The fact that I controlled what I saw, who I saw and what they did. I could be as perverse as I wanted with as many partners as I chose. My fantasies which would be construed as obscene were they to be disclosed publicly were fine in the walls of my mind. In bed though I was shy. I flushed every time I had an orgasm
with my husband. I couldn’t bring myself to ask for oral sex until I was 30. Saying ‘Ummm, could you kiss me down there?’ was one of the hardest things I had ever done. It was easier to be wild and sticky in my head. I couldn’t let go of who I was or perceived to be in real life.
(The funny thing is, for all the attention my vagina has received undercover, I’ve rarely ever looked at it. The last time I’d taken a mirror down there I was pregnant and terrified how I would push a human being out of something so small. After a few minutes I was convinced all was not ok, and that I had a Bartholin Cyst. I rushed to my doctor terrified. She examined me and gently explained that it wasn’t a cyst but actually my vagina.)
When Sex and the City (oh yes, that cliche) hit our television screens, it put sex on the list of things you could talk about with your girlfriends. I was a Charlotte: I never spoke of my sex life. To speak openly of it seemed a betrayal to my husband somehow. But at one gathering of women, a few drinks down, I asked, “Do any of you use a vibrator?” The responses were enthusiastic and varied as rabbit eared, spiked and neon hued editions were recommended with authority. I realised I had missed the boat entirely on this. I was still dependent on my poor fingers, while clearly there were other objects more qualified for the job.
In the years since that drunken conversation, I have had two children, moved cities and made new friends to whom too I have asked drunken questions. I’ve become bolder in opening the conversation about sex. It is couched in jokes, innuendoes and double speak. (I still giggle remembering a WhatsApp conversation about Ai Pasi Pournami where someone’s auto-correct changed to Ai Pussy Pournami)
A friend shared photos of a bumper crop of massively sized, organic cucumbers on a WhatsApp group which let off an avalanche of jokes
about ‘school-girl experiments’ and ‘it’s cold down there when they’re fresh from the fridge.’ Yet, the same group of women were visibly uncomfortable when I once said that we should want our daughters to have consensual, protected, sexual adventures before marriage so that they knew their bodies and their appetites. So that they knew what pleasure was. The statement was met with silence and hesitant chuckles. “It’s easy for you to say, you have two boys,” one of the women remarked. “Then I would want my sons to know how to pleasure a woman.” I replied, refusing to back down.
I wish I could say that seeing my first 3D clit has changed my sex life drastically. Or that I’m enjoying masturbation more. Neither have happened. But I have book marked that Guardian article, and once in awhile, I like to go and look at that little pink, Play-Doh person like thing and take comfort in its presence in the world.
As mothers, even though we have been through sexual journeys that are often solitary, bewildering or just non-existent, we don’t seem to think it’s important to tell our sons and daughters that sex is about pleasure. Sex-ed classes today are all about the mechanics of intercourse, menstruation, STDs, pregnancies and protection. We tell our 3-year-olds about good touch and bad touch. These are important conversations that we must have to ensure that our children are safe. But equally important are conversations about pleasure. Female pleasure. The double standards that permeate society filter all the way down to the bedroom. Why are our needs and wants less somehow? Even in our own minds? But, to be able to do that confidently we should ourselves be able to take our own pleasure in our hands. Literally.