Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Something I’m moderately sure of is that May is National, maybe International, Masturbation Month. All ny sources seem to agree on that. From the current version of Wikipedia:

The first National Masturbation Day was observed May 14, 1995, after sex-positive retailer Good Vibrations declared the day in honor of Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, who was fired in 1994 by President Bill Clinton for suggesting masturbation be part of the sex education curriculum for students.

International Masturbation Day has since been expanded to include the entire month of May as International Masturbation Month

(Note both vaginal and phallic symbols.)

Already there’s a question: why May 14th, back in 1995? Then things get quickly complex: an earlier version of the Wikipedia article, which I posted about here in 2013, identified Masturbation Day as May 7th (a date apparently selected by Good Vibrations in 1999) in the US, May 28th in some other countries. (Other US sources say May 28th is Masturbation Day.) Meanwhile, the current Wikipedia article says with great assurance that Masturbation Day is July 21st. The Wikipedia sources are in no way authoritative: they just assert dates. Thanks to the earlier Wikipedia article, I have May 7th on my calendar as National Masturbation Day, but now I’m all at sea. The 7th, the 14th, the 28th, or July 21st? And why? Why, in fact, May for the Month?

I’d hoped that something about Jocelyn Elders would provide a clue, but no cheer on that front. Nothing relevant in May (or July, for that matter), according to her Wikipedia article:

Dr. Minnie Joycelyn Elders (born Minnie Lee Jones; August 13, 1933) is an American pediatrician and public health administrator. She was a vice admiral in the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and the first African American appointed as Surgeon General of the United States. Elders is best known for her frank discussion of her views on controversial issues such as drug legalization and distributing contraception in schools. She was forced to resign in December 1994 amidst controversy as a result of her views. She is currently a professor emerita of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.

Born in August, fired in December.

There are other notable months. In particular, Black History Month — February because it’s the month that has both Abraham Lincoln’s and Frederick Douglass’s birthdays in it — and LGBT Pride Month — June because it has Stonewall Day in it. Women’s History Month is March, for no reason that I can discern, except that that’s what the National Women’s History Project asked for. There’s nothing wrong with picking a month out of a hat, of course. Or a day, for that matter. I just wonder who gets to do the choosing.

So, for the moment, I’m sticking with May 7th as the Day and May as the Month, and I’ll just refer you to my 2013 posting and a follow-up in 2016 for encouragement to self-pleasuring. The month is only half over!

This entry was posted on May 13, 2017 at 2:29 pm and is filed under Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Language of sex, Phallicity, Vaginality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.