Let’s Talk About Self-Pleasure, Baby! (Plain English version)

by S R Shah 

22/03/2020 | academic life-writing 

Sexual pleasure is rooted in the body. I am interested in the fear and paranoia that queer Muslim women experience for their whole lives. A fear of punishment from angels that have seen everything we have done and every thought we have ever had. I see comparisons between us and Winston Smith, the main character of 1984 by George Orwell. In that book, telescreens are televisions, security cameras, and microphones. Telescreens feel like part of normal life for queer Muslim women. People are watching me all the time, ready to punish me at any moment, and to them I say “Fuck you, my headscarf slipped off and I’m not even in Pakistan any more where I feel safe behind the veil. I can do what I want and I don’t care about the consequences.” In the book 1984, the author talks about “thoughtcrimes”. Thoughtcrimes are thoughts that aren’t allowed. I was taught that self-pleasure is a “thoughtcrime”. Even though I say that I can do what I want, I recently realised that the idea of self-pleasure as indulgent and evil is very rooted in my mind. After my first work out at the gym, aged 25, I realised I have not masturbated in over year. 

I was shocked at myself. I felt shame and embarrassment at the idea of masturbation, which was very different to how I presented myself to other people. I presented myself as sexually open, unashamed and afraid.  I even worked as a queer nightclub host. My body is so complicated that it can be nerve wracking to understand it from my own perspective. It’s easier to eat up what other people and society dictate about it.  Even though I rebelled through pre-marital sex, and wearing what I wanted, I could not escape from the fact that the world sees my body as “female”. My body suffers because of inequality from the government, and the expectations of having a nuclear family. (A nuclear family is a man, a woman, their biological children and maybe a dog). My body also suffers living in a world that sees heterosexuality as normal. As a teenager, I was desperate to understand my own body, but the confusion of it all led to abuse and self-harm. When I was 15, I read the French author Albert Camus for the first time and found an idea that I really stuck with me: 

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

I saw the words “deal, free, existence, rebellion” through my teenage angst. I found Camus’ words powerful. I had contempt for this “unfree world”, too. I felt rage, and began to act out. I had been back in London for a few months, after spending a while in Pakistan. My mother had taken me to Pakistan to deal with my “behavioural problems” and I worked as an apprentice in a beauty salon during the day. At night, I would hear boys roaring down alleyways on their motorbikes as I stared angrily at the mind-numbing brick walls. Although I don’t believe everything my mother says, part of me wonders whether my “behavioural problems” actually began after returning to London from Pakistan. The rage that began at fifteen and lasted all the way to university turned my body into a canvas of scars and pain and pleasure and terrible mistakes. 

No matter your race or religion, female bodies and female sexuality are abjectified*. Abjection is a feeling of discomfort and horror when you are confronted by the difference between how you feel in your body (your Self), and how other people experience/see you (the Other). The word was coined by Julia Kristeva, a French-Bulgarian philosopher. This happens through the way we tell stories, and the way we teach and practice medicine and law. When we try and gain control of loving ourselves and appreciating our bodies, we find ourselves in a place of deception, jealousy and gossip. We see horror films that feature convulsing women frothing at the mouth and saying lewd, sexual things (like they are orgasming). We are embarrassed about menstruation. We are taught to fear our bodies. We see ourselves as alien, we see ourselves through paranoid and repressive eyes. James Baldwin writes in Giovanni’s room: 

“His [the drag queen] utter grotesqueness made me uneasy; perhaps in the same way the sight of a monkey eating its own excrement turns some people's stomachs. They might not mind so much if monkeys did not - so grotesquely - resemble human beings.” 

I feel like people see us as animals at the zoo. We are constantly ogled at, and judged for virtually everything. In my community, everyone knows if a new bride has sexually satisfied her husband on the wedding night. Queering normal gender rules turns people’s stomachs because they have to confront their differences and their desires. These desires needn’t be shameful. At the same time, it makes them uncomfortable because it is familiar, like James Baldwin’s description of the monkey eating faeces. We eat these images up like daily meals. We laugh at the menstruating girl and the hormonal woman. I quietly internalised it all. I did this so well that I forgot to inhabit my body. I relate this to French philosopher Michel Foucault’s idea of the panopticon. The panopticon is an idea for a prison where one central prison guard can see every prisoner at all times. Because of this, the prisoners never have a moment of privacy. I feel like I live in a panopticon, but I don’t know whether my prison guard is God, or my mother and her discipline. In real life, the prison guards are whoever peeks out of their curtains as I walk past. They are whoever is driving around town and happens to see me with a man, or holding hands with a woman. Anxiety stems from never knowing who exactly told who, and what they told them. The only certainty is that I will be punished for being seen in these situations. 

One of my aunts found a little bullet vibrator in my bedside drawer. She threatened to slit my sixteen-year-old body through the middle. In Urdu, we make the words “I’m going to slit you from your cunt up to your throat” sound more poetic. The violence of the threat is decorated with vague references to our genitalia and sexuality. We avoid saying things exactly as they are. You don’t have pre-marital sex, you just know that person “as a spouse”.  You don’t have extra-marital sex, a man who has extra-marital sex is just seen as a man with specific needs, and a woman who has extra-marital sex should be exiled immediately, or killed. 

When I was eleven years old, I was given new rules with no explanation. I had to cover my newly growing breasts with a scarf, even if I was wearing baggy clothes to hide them. The scarf represents Muslim womanhood. Womanhood is defined by men, because I only had to do it when men were around. This created a feeling of terror and embarrassment at my body. The terror came from my existence being sexualised for the first time, and the fear of being raped because of it. My body had to be monitored at all times. I was a walking bomb. At that time, I thought that if girls didn’t wear the scarf, they would be immediately vulnerable to their male relatives. I was forbidden to be alone in the house when builders or family friends worked in the garden. Why? I was told that without protection, men could be dangerous to vulnerable women. They will beat you, rape you and kill you. At least, that’s what I was taught. “Vulnerable” meant “without a man to protect you”. The idea that men are naturally violent went hand in hand with the idea of male superiority. The rules of masculinity that created kings, emperors, police officers and the patriarchy also created a power we had to obey. My eleven year old mind wondered at the contrast between violence and respect.

I can imagine a personal timeline of my sexual development and all my sexual hangups. Maybe it would be good for all of us to do this. My body became distant and alien to me after experiences with sexual abuse and a disregard for my sexual needs and boundaries. It was constantly rejected and insulted, and this led to embarrassment, shame, and anxiety. The organised religion I grew up with brainwashed me into forgetting that it existed. But religious teaching around sex stayed with me. I was taught “You can never say no”. Fine, I thought. I’ll have sex with everyone I can. But I can't touch myself. I can’t bear to touch myself because my body needs to be hidden from sight! After living life without any control of my body, suddenly having control is terrifying. I ran away from home to take back control. But how do I keep this motivated if my whole life I’ve been told that control is the one thing I do not have? We lack control of the universe, but we have certain types of power we can play with.

In this example, power could be a “sexually free woman” who masturbates freely and has amazing casual sex because she knows exactly what she wants. I thought I was sexually powerful from a young age but I still experienced trauma and unfairness with reproductive rights. If power is knowledge, I urge all Muslim parents to speak openly to their children about sex. I am waiting for a world which does not hate the queer body or the female body, but which accepts those bodies as places of self-pleasure. Removing self-pleasure from life makes space for violence to happen. This violence is culturally accepted. Marital rape and being sexually assaulted when you are passed out, for example. The right to self pleasure goes beyond sex or orgasm. I cannot be satisfied by the promise of paradise. 

We accept that some people in the world are allowed pleasure. People with six figure salaries can have expensive sex parties and private jets. But people who earn minimum wage jobs must justify why they want a break. Do not assume I mean orgasm when I say pleasure, desire, or even sex. I also mean the solace found in hearing the birds sing. We all deserve the simple pleasures of rest and clean air, and having free time. I imagine a utopia where brown women make love, relax, raise animals, and read books just for enjoyment.

Historically, in the Western world, this kind of freedom is unthinkable. If a woman feels for the sake of feeling, that is a betrayal of gender roles. As women, I believe we are taught to numb ourselves to pain, and we absorb more pain as a result. We earn pleasure by being “the good wife”, and on Mother’s Day, we are “allowed” a day off from full time work. Audre Lorde wrote an essay called ‘The Erotic as Power' which influenced a lot of her later work. It is one of my favourite of her essays. In it, she describes the erotic as: 

“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognising its power, in honour and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves,” and then continues to say “of course, women so empowered are dangerous.” 

I am a strong believer in all of my own power, even the power I haven’t understood yet. I believe it exists because that’s what feels natural to me. The self-denial I was raised to feel will never be stronger than the signals my body sends to me after years of repression. My hope for sex positivity is stronger than shame. So many Muslims, especially queer Muslim women, struggle with their identities in secret. This has terrible consequences like unwanted pregnancies and STIs. It also leads to weak communication and bad boundary setting skills. We should teach young Muslims that they are allowed to say no, and that they are allowed to explore their bodies. We should teach them that they are not dirty. If we do these things, I am certain we will raise a healthier generation of Muslims and redefine Islam. 

S R Shah (they/them/theirs)

S R Shah is a London based poet, essayist, and club night host. They have had their work showcased at VFDalston, The Turner Contemporary, and have woven performance stories in anarchist spaces in Barcelona. They host a quarterly night centring underrepresented writers in London called Untitled. They are compiling a poetry book for the 87Press due for release in September.