Let’s Talk About Self-Pleasure, Baby!
by S R Shah
22/03/2020 | academic life writing
image by @nidachudraws
A version of this article in plain English is available to read here.
The sexual act of pleasure is rooted in the body. I am interested in the flat-pack paranoia that Muslim women (specifically queer Muslim women) consume as a daily medication for the rest of their lives. I have only just begun to unpack the fear of an ever-present punishment via angels who have recorded our every deed and thought. I see Winston Smith of 1984 in all of us. The telescreens are a part of normalcy. In a hyper-policed community I act defiantly in public and say “Fuck you, my headscarf slipped off and I’m not even in Pakistan anymore where I feel safe behind the veil. I can do what I want and I don’t care about the consequences.” But the “thoughtcrime” of self-pleasure has become so deeply ingrained in me that I realised, after my first ever work out at the gym, aged 25: I haven’t masturbated in over a year.
This stunned me because the self-shame and embarrassment contrasted with my perceived sexual liberation and openness, my unabashed modes of expression, and even being a queer nightclub host. I look at my body and start deconstructing its significance in “the real world,” as it’s too soon to delve internally. Even though rebellion came in the form of pre-marital sex, I carried with me the “truth” of a woman’s body. It is only a tool for the pleasure and re/productive labour of the patriarchal systems of government, family, and religion. The pubescent confusion of craving a self-hood yet not understanding self-hood became a minefield of abuse and self-harm. When I was 15, I read Camus for the first time and an idea resonated 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.
The words “deal, free, existence, rebellion” were things that crystalised on the television screen married with teenage angst. Its glorious command and contempt for this “unfree world”, ignited in me a rage that manifested in acts of resentment and explosive pleasures. I had been back in London for a few months at that point, after spending a good chunk of time in Pakistan. My mother had taken me there to deal with my “behavioural problems” and I worked as an apprentice in a beauty salon during the day. During the night, I’d hear the whoops of boys roaring down alleyways on their motorbikes as I stared sullenly at the mind-numbing brick walls. Although I lack the omniscience of a mother, a strange feeling stays close behind me that perhaps there is the tiniest possibility my “behavioural problems” truly began after returning to London. The rage that I fully embodied from the age of fifteen all the way to my time at university transformed my body into a canvas of scars and pain and pleasure and terrible mistakes.
Irrespective of race or religion, the feminine form and sexuality are abjectified by cultures of story-telling, medicine, and law. To control it, to beat out the self-love and ritualistic tenderness and appreciation of our bodies, we find ourselves in a funhouse mirror of deception and jealousy and gossip. From horror films featuring the convulsing woman frothing at the mouth uttering lewd sexual remarks (not unlike an orgasm), to the embarrassment of menstruating, we are conditioned to fear our bodies. To see our Self as the Other, our eyes are borrowed from a hereto-patriarchy operating on paranoia and repression. 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 often think about how our bodies are ogled at, like animals in a zoo.To be constantly ogled at and judged on virtually everything. In my community, everyone knows if a new bride has satiated her husband's sexual appetite on the wedding night. How closely does the queering of gender norms turn peoples stomach, having to confront the Other, the Thing that resembles them and their ID so closely? We eat these images up as if they are our daily meals. We laugh at the bleeding girl, the hormonal woman. I had the pleasure of internalising it all so silently and so skillfully that I managed to forget that I inhabit a body. I think of Foucault's panoptic prison, yet I do not know if the guard is God or the figure of Mother and discipline. The prison guards that pull day or night shifts are whoever is peeking out of their curtains as we walk by, or whoever happens to be driving around town and sees us with a man or holding hands with a woman. The Foucauldian anxiety is birthed by never knowing who exactly told who or what, yet the only certainty is that you will be punished for it. Thus, I have been Defined and Conquered.
When an aunt found a little bullet vibrator in my bedside drawer, she threatened to slit my sixteen-year-old body right through the middle. In the flair of Urdu, we make “I’m gonna slit you from your cunt up to your throat,” a more poetic threat where the nuances of violence are embellished with vague gestures to our genitalia and sexuality. You don’t have pre-marital sex, you just know them “as a spouse.” You don’t have extra-marital sex. You’re either a man with specific needs, or a woman who should be exiled immediately, or killed.
When I was eleven years old, I had an onslaught of new rules given to me with no explanation. I had to begin covering my just-starting-to-show breasts with a scarf. The scarf is an essential signifier of Muslim womanhood. Womanhood that is defined by another. I only had to do it when other men were around, creating a new signifier of terror and embarrassment of my body. The terror coming from a new sexualisation of my existence and the chance of being raped because of it. My body had to be monitored at all times. I was a walking bomb. I thought then that if girls didn’t wear a scarf they could be at the mercy of their fathers or brothers. I remember that it was strictly forbidden for me to be alone in the house as builders or family friends toiled in the garden. Why? Because without protection men can be wild 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 protecting you.” Hand in hand with the concept of intrinsic male violence was the nobility of masculinity. The parameters of masculinity which accounted for kings, emperors, police officers and patriarchy. Simply put; a power we are just fundamentally obedient to. My eleven-year-old mind would wonder at the stark contrast of violence and respect.
A timeline can be laid out, and perhaps it would do us all a world of good to create a timeline for ourselves to observe the calcifying of our sexuality and sexual hangups. Child molestation, drinks being spiked, a disregard for sexual needs accumulate into the body becoming an alien. Persistently having my body rejected and vilified, and seen as a cause of embarrassment, lead to self-projections of shame and anxiety. So artfully constructed, the organised religion brainwashed me into forgetting its existence. But the teachings of sex - “you can’t ever say no” - stayed with me. 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! Control of the self is terrifying after living a life with an utter lack of it. Running away from home is taking back control, but how do we continue the momentum of that after being told our whole lives that control is just the one thing we do not have? We lack control of the universe, but there are varying degrees of power we play with.
Power in this sense can be a “sexually liberated woman” who masturbates freely and engages in amazing casual sex because she knows exactly what she wants. I thought I was powerful in promiscuity from a young age but I was still subject to the traumatic abortions and miscarriages of reproductive-physical justice. If power is knowledge, I urge all Muslim parents to speak to their children openly about sex. I look to a world which regards the queer or feminine body not as a monstrosity, but accepts it as a site of self-pleasure. Self-pleasure being removed leaves open caverns where violence can take place. Violence which is culturally coded as passable. Marital rape and being sexually assaulted when one is passed out. This right to self-pleasure expands far from the act of sex or orgasm. I cannot be satiated by the promise of paradise.
We are satisfied with who is at liberty to extract pleasure from the world in which we live. Those that earn six-figures can partake in the expensive sex parties and private jets. But those working minimum wage jobs must give proof and justify why they would like a break from the toxic city. To assume orgasm when hearing the word pleasure, desire, or even sex erases the fundamental pleasure points in our brains which find solace in hearing the birds sing. We all deserve the simple pleasures of rest and clean air, of having disposable time. I imagine a utopia of brown women making love, intoxicated, feeding animals on pasture, reading books with no social value.
But historically in the western world, this is unthinkable. For a woman to feel for the sake of feeling is a betrayal of gender roles. As women, I believe we are conditioned to numb ourselves from pain, taking on more of it. We earn our pleasure by playing “the good wife” and on mothers day where one is “allowed” a day off from full-time work. In Audre Lorde’s seminal essay, The Erotic as Power (and also one of my favourites) she described the erotic as such:
“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 my power, even that which I haven’t been able to unlock. I believe it exists because that’s what feels natural to me. The social conditioning of perceived self-denial will never be stronger than the signals my body sends to me even after years of repression. My hope for sex positivity is stronger than shame. So many Muslims, especially queer Muslim women, struggle with their identity in secret causing disastrous consequences ranging from unwanted pregnancies, STI’s, and weak communication and boundary-setting skills. If we teach young Muslims that they are allowed to say no, that they are allowed to explore their bodies, that they are not inherently dirty and indeed reflections of God then 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.