1/11/2020 Is masturbating in public a laughing matter?

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Is masturbating in public a laughing matter?

Holly Baxter

Sweden says it's OK to masturbate in public, so long as you're

not doing it at any one in particular. But society lets the al
fresco onanist off at its peril

• Masturbation laws around the world: the penal code

Fri 20 Sep 2013 12.21 BST

148 808

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S
lightly inconveniently, society is often divided over what counts as
acceptable behaviour in public. Eating in the street, for instance: I found to
my dismay that this is considered rude in polite (southern English) society
while wrestling a Greggs cheese pasty into my mouth on a London high
street in front a horrified university course-mate, circa 2007. Doing your makeup:
another activity I didn't know was frowned upon in communal areas, until I was
enlightened by Celia Walden's Telegraph article on the matter (in which she
described the very idea of a woman dolling up on the train as "mesmerisingly
awful".)

I dread to think what the hyperbolic Walden, who suggested a complete "ban on
public grooming", would have to say about a Swedish court's recent decision that it
is "OK" (the technical term, from a court prosecutor) that a man masturbated on a
crowded beach because he wasn't aiming his lust at one particular person. I bet
she'd renege upon her statement that "there is nothing more indecent than a half
made-up face" pretty fast. Try a middle-aged man pleasuring himself over a freshly
built sandcastle, Cece. Lipstick doesn't look so bad now, does it?

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If that story's left you wanting more – and why wouldn't it – then let's not forget the
pensioner who made the Bedfordshire On Sunday newspaper for ostensibly
shampooing his "privates" on a bus in the previously respectable home county. His
excuse, when rumbled by a woman and her young son, was that he'd been having
some problems downstairs and was attempting to soothe them. Vigorously. "I was
treated like a hardened criminal," he complained (with a surprisingly straightfaced
use of the word "hardened"), having been fined £75 and then let go. Clearly the legal
profession is slacking in its prosecution of serial murderers and the like.

Of course, the lawmakers themselves aren't entirely averse to getting out their
todgers, if the case of Donald Thompson is anything to go by (arrested for exposing
himself and "using a penis pump" during court sessions in 2006, since you asked.)
And that was a few years before the serendipitously named American politician
Anthony Weiner reminded us once again that a high-powered job is no guarantee of
knowing what to do with your penis, through his "sexting" use of Twitter (Snapchat
hadn't been invented yet.)

Finally, there's Paul Reubens, known to most as disgraced kiddie show host and
public masturbator Pee-Wee Herman. Reubens was caught treating himself to a
hand shandy in the back of a cinema showing "adult films" and subsequently torn
apart by the baying dogs of the media. Yes, the press had a predictable field day:
everyone worried openly about the children for their allotted word count in national
publications.

According to a People interview done years afterward, "Paul was very hurt" that
he'd been "crucified in the press", despite the fact that he received thousands of
letters in the wake of the incident, "98% of them supportive". Reubens' later, wildly
successful return to Celebville proved that "the world had become a more tolerant
place", People suggested. Perhaps the "censorious American public" so scandalised
by his slapdash approach to self-love had untwisted their knickers and got on with
their lives, they went on. And that's where my amusement ends.

Although there is something delightful about an editor at the leading Bedfordshire

local newspaper being able to legitimately type the words "semi-erect OAP" into a
headline, our collective response to these cases leaves something to be desired. In a
so-called post-ironic world, we're all supposed to respond to such news with a shrug
and a giggle. Meanwhile, media reports give a lot of time to the complaints of people
failing to keep it in their pants and getting severely reprimanded for the crime: they
were "treated like criminals", "crucified", "hurt" by an intolerant public. It just wasn't
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fair. As a society, we have an increasing problem with sexual offences – specifically,

in not taking them seriously.

A report by the government investigating sex crime this year found that only 15% of
those who had been victim of a serious sexual offence report it. One of the most
commonly cited reasons for not reporting such crimes was that the incident was
presumed to be "too trivial" for police to waste their time on it. That's unfair.

When we explain away seemingly minor infractions of public decency like

masturbating on a bus, beach or at the back of the cinema, we contribute to a
culture that calls sex crime "trivial". This is the same culture that says women
should be "complimented" by catcalls and should "expect" to be harassed when
wearing short skirts on nights out, who should "laugh it off" if they are. It sees male
sexuality as uncontrollable, exposing oneself as a "laddish prank", those who
respond unfavourably to such advances as "hysterical" and "over the top".

Elsewhere in Sweden recently, two underage girls pressed charges when a teenage
boy exposed himself to them at a lake. The court decided, despite the victims'
testimonies, that the offence was "not of a sexual nature" and dismissed it. But I'm
guessing the girls didn't push for molestation charges because they were censorious
prudes who would grow into knowing how to take such behaviour on the chin –
they felt genuinely threatened, they took their concerns to court, and they deserved
more than being told that they'd misread the situation all along.

To me, a wanker is a wanker is a wanker. Perhaps Sweden – and People magazine –

should take note.

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Topics
Sweden Opinion
Europe / Women / Sex / Rape and sexual assault / comment

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Guardian Pick
Most of the time I think "Sweden, I admire your whole-hearted commitment to liberal values".

But sometimes I think "Sweden, put it away".

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Benulek
20 Sep 2013 6:29

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