{"id":37834,"date":"2017-03-26T03:00:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T07:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37834"},"modified":"2017-03-24T12:20:25","modified_gmt":"2017-03-24T16:20:25","slug":"its-that-old-self-love-double-standard-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/03\/26\/its-that-old-self-love-double-standard-again\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;It\u2019s that old self-love double-standard again&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/life.spectator.co.uk\/2017\/03\/sexual-double-standard\/\" target=\"_blank\">Julie Burchill<\/a> on the recent boom in public applause for female masturbation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There\u2019s a bit in the Cate Blanchett TV commercial for a scent called Si that never fails to make me snigger smuttily. (Admittedly not difficult.) After we see the Radiant One being life-affirming in the rain (\u2018Si to life!\u2019) and with a Significant Other (\u2018Si to us!\u2019) she wanders off alone and, looking particularly glowy, stares into the camera: \u2018Si to myself!\u2019 It\u2019s tragic, but what was clearly intended as an oath to empowerment always strikes me as a reference to onanism. I spit out my Malibu every time.<\/p>\n<p>Mind you, I could be forgiven for my immature interpretation. In recent years, female masturbation has gone from being the love that dare not speak its name to the one that can\u2019t stop moaning, gasping and screaming it \u2014 and then making pop videos about it.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re encouraged to admire these finger-happy females, but what would our reaction be if male crooners started singing about self-abuse and, even better, filming themselves pretending to do it in order to flog their music? I suspect the reaction might not be a million miles from one long collective \u2018Ewww!\u2019 But why is a masturbating man the subject of amusement and\/or contempt while a masturbating woman is some sort of heroine? Logically, it doesn\u2019t make sense. A woman can always get sex, whereas men often have to chase it, pay for it or go without it, so they\u2019ve got a lot more reason to be interfering with themselves.<\/p>\n<p>But now it\u2019s the ladies, Lord love \u2019em, who are paying for the pleasure right through the nose, with the unstoppable rise of sex aids. And yes, that <em>was<\/em> a snooty judgmental tone you thought you heard there. I refuse to use the approved term \u2018sex toys\u2019 because it brings a creepy air of infantilism to this most adult of pastimes (an unnerving number of sex aids are made in the style of children\u2019s playthings). I don\u2019t know what I find more pitiable, two people, presumably equipped with the usual supply of hands, mouths and sex organs, setting about each other with bits of garishly coloured cut-price plastic to reach the realms of ecstasy, or a woman with more money than sex paying \u00a312,000 for a vibrator that the <em>Sunday Times<\/em> described thus: \u2018An 18ct-gold-plated gilded pebble\u2026 five vibration patterns with customisable levels of intensity\u2026 comes in an artisanal wooden box with gold trimmings.\u2019 Be still my beating heart!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julie Burchill on the recent boom in public applause for female masturbation: There\u2019s a bit in the Cate Blanchett TV commercial for a scent called Si that never fails to make me snigger smuttily. (Admittedly not difficult.) After we see the Radiant One being life-affirming in the rain (\u2018Si to life!\u2019) and with a Significant [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,57,28],"tags":[987,480,255],"class_list":["post-37834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-humour","category-media","tag-feminism","tag-hypocrisy","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9Qe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37835,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37834\/revisions\/37835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}