The self-love that normally dares not speak its name has its name invoked in today’s “Doonesbury” strip in the Comics section. I suspect some of the newspaper’s readers will not be amused.
Garry Trudeau, the strip’s author, has his characters discussing a recent Australian medical study that says regular masturbation seems to prevent prostate cancer. Incidentally, a search of The Courier-Journal’s archives shows the newspaper printed 127 stories containing the word “masturbation” since 1988, but we did not publish a story about the Australian study.
The bigger point of today’s “Doonesbury” is how uncomfortable his characters and we are when it comes to discussing sexuality.
Especially this aspect of sexuality.
As if to prove Trudeau’s point, some newspapers have decided not to run the masturbation panel and have instead opted to print a rerun of an old “Doonesbury” strip. The unusual option of offering an alternative was made by Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes “Doonesbury” to newspapers.
In a July 30 letter to subscribers, Editor Lee Salem wrote, “The strip amusingly captures the ongoing confusion in the media and in the culture at large over sexual candor and appropriate language. Nevertheless, we also understand that for some papers, the use of the m-word per se, no matter how deftly it is referenced, may cross the line. …”
In a phone interview, Salem said he wouldn’t know until tomorrow how many of the 750 to 800 newspapers that carry the Sunday “Doonesbury” would opt for the “totally innocuous” alternative. But he figured about half would not print the panel using “the m-word.”
You see it in The Courier-Journal today for a couple of reasons:
* The newspaper does not censor its comic strips, said Features Editor Greg Johnson. He said he does not recall the newspaper ever pulling a strip because of its content; he has worked here for 30 years.
* And Publisher Ed Manassah, Executive Editor Bennie Ivory, Editorial Director David Hawpe and Johnson discussed today’s panel when they received the letter from “Doonesbury’s” syndicate. In Manassah’s words, they “concurred that it was not inappropriate.”
Not inappropriate, maybe, but pretty unusual for the mainstream.
Aside from an occasional joke “Don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love,” from Woody Allen and an even rarer and elliptical gambit in pop music “She-Bop” by Cyndi Lauper this is a subject that isn’t widely bandied about.
As one of the stories printed over the past 15 years in The Courier-Journal noted, “Masturbation is a prevalent activity in American society but one that remains the subject of social and religious opprobrium. A recent survey on sex found that 60 percent of American men and 40 percent of women ages 18 to 59 said they had masturbated in the past year. But the survey authors, noting biblical proscriptions against masturbation as well as modern-day opposition, concluded that `because of masturbation’s legacy and image, it is rarely discussed.’”
And when it is discussed openly, watch out.
You may remember Joycelyn Elders.
For a short while in the 1990s, she was the U.S. surgeon general. Then she spoke the “m-word” in public she said it shouldn’t be excluded from sex education discussions in schools, and in fact 10 of 50 states included masturbation in their studies at the time and was fired by President Clinton, ostensibly for their lack of agreement on policy. In retrospect, she’s June Cleaver to the president’s Eddie Haskell. Her comments were mild in comparison to those found in the Starr Report, which several years later featured the considerable sexual hijinks of the man who unloaded her.
At about the same time Elders was a human pinata for the nation’s swatting, Larry David was writing about what Elders would talk about.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, at least in the eyes of the academy.
For the 1992-93 television season, David won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Comedy Series for what many including me consider the most classic episode of the wildly popular sitcom, “Seinfeld.”
Called “The Contest,” the episode dealt with masturbation without ever mentioning the word; instead, David crafted euphemisms such as “master of my domain.” It was the ultimate storyline for a show about characters who were wholly into themselves.
And that’s sort of the point about this topic.
It is completely about self. It is private.
And, until it is placed into middle-of-the road exposure by “Seinfeld” or “Doonesbury,” that’s where it usually stays. In private.
I called Dr. Thomas Laqueur to ask him about this. The University of California/Berkeley history professor is the author of a book titled Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation. (For what it’s worth, a New York Times reviewer waxed enthusiastic about the 501-page book, calling Laqueur’s scholarship “dense, high-minded stuff.”)
Laqueur said before the 1700s, the act was virtually a non-issue in greater society. But in the 18th Century, tracts about the ill effects of “self-pollution” began to appear. Physicians and philosophers began to take up the issue it was seen as the most “asocial” activity one could engage in, self-indulgence in the extreme and the effects of the crusade began to show up in the unlikeliest of places, including literature and the breakfast table. (If you do some studying on this, you may never again feel the same way about your crunchy granola.)
Laqueur said the issues that were raised about masturbation three centuries ago, the ones that have kept it “the most pernicious” aspect of sexuality, are still with us.
“They represent things we’re still uncomfortable about me-first, doing things on one’s own, self-indulgence,” Laqueur said.
He should know about the comfort level. Since his book has been published and articles about him have appeared in newspapers, he has received his share of hate mail and name-calling.
But a scholarly book is a scholarly book.
Now the subject has popped up in a popular comic strip known for breaking new ground in this case, taking on what Laqueur calls “a primal guilt” and doing so without euphemism.
The Courier-Journal has printed the “Doonesbury” masturbation strip in today’s paper because we don’t censor the words and thoughts of the cartoonists whose work we regularly print. Even when they make us uncomfortable.
And I decided to do a little exploring about this complicated issue here to provide context about the controversy and the contradictions involved in this weighted subject matter. Naturally, some readers will disagree with the publication of the strip and this discussion of the issue.
And that’s OK.
In closing, I’ll quote a newspaper editor who decided not to run today’s “Doonesbury” strip: “Other newspapers may feel differently, and that’s what makes this such a great country.”
Amen to that.
