Masturbation taboo led Catholic children to redirect compulsive self-soothing into substitutive behaviors

Evidence

Like many little girls who hid their hands beneath their covers to touch themselves, I knew it was way too risky and would guarantee a trip straight to hell before dawn, so I sought another handy activity above the sheets to lull me into slumber. I’d lie in bed in the dark and with my right hand I’d pluck the cotton tuffs out from my floral chenille bedspread. This went on for several nights until mom finally noticed that half the flowers were missing on my side of the bed, leaving a gigantic hole in the floral pattern of the pretty pink and baby blue bedspread. Mom consulted with my aunts, who had the good sense to suggest I needed a distraction to occupy my hands. — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs, 74

Categorization

• CANDY: A girl plucking tufts off her bedspread to avoid the hell-guaranteed alternative is an absurdist, tweetable image.
• XREF: connects to: Repressing childhood sexuality produces neuroses more harmful than sexual play itself — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1977; Culturally puritanical societies develop obsessive cleanliness as displaced sexuality — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239

Broader Connections

• Culturally puritanical societies develop obsessive cleanliness as displaced sexuality #exemplifies (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1239
• Repressing childhood sexuality produces neuroses more harmful than sexual play itself #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1977