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| Copyright 2011 Shilo McCabe |
I masturbate because it feels good, because it's hot, because it's fun, it makes me feel sexy,because it makes me happy,because it's mine and because it reminds me that I belong to me.
I've loved getting off with myself since I figured out how at 13. Masturbation was an important physical, psychological and emotional safe space for me during adolescence,as my early childhood involved a lot of incredibly negative overcultural and intracommunal messages around being a nerdy black boy with multiple chronic health issues. Masturbation let me know it was possible to eventually be the kind of man, the kind of person I wanted to be.
I've loved getting off with myself since I figured out how at 13. Masturbation was an important physical, psychological and emotional safe space for me during adolescence,as my early childhood involved a lot of incredibly negative overcultural and intracommunal messages around being a nerdy black boy with multiple chronic health issues. Masturbation let me know it was possible to eventually be the kind of man, the kind of person I wanted to be.
Masturbation for me has long held elements and ideas of personal and political resistance- resistance against narrow social conscriptions that discourage or deny bodily autonomy and integrity; against cultural nationalist "self-determination" and "liberation" rhetorics steeped in internalized racism,misogyny, and sexual shaming;against a variety of male "rites of passage" ceremonies that involve fearful and hateful misogynist and homophobic contextualizations of joy and the ecstatic as "feminine" and therefore dirty,worthless, undesirable,or simply a waste of time.
Masturbation is part of my ongoing self-care and was my first intersectional advocacy conversation before I had a formal understanding of the concept. Masturbation helps keep me aware, connected and continually working on being a good human. -Juba Kalamka
