“It’s My Body and I’ll Show It If I Want To”
51
Goldberg’s critique of the Clinton administration’s and the public’s disdain for
Surgeon General Elders’s recommendation that masturbation serve as a conduit
to safe sex reminds us that the Puritan principles of the seventeenth century still
govern America’s stance on sex in the twentieth century. Her assessment of the
public’s reaction to the Surgeon General’s recommendation as well as her
conclusion that we “owe” America’s youth another possible choice for selfgratification, campaigns for the public to consider America’s youth as a group
worthy of real dialogue. It is easy to encourage an adolescent to just say no to
sex; masturbation takes sheer courage to discuss on a national level since the act
comes historically charged with negative connotations. Goldberg declares that
“[w]e still carry a lot of fucked-up Puritan baggage about. . . masturbation”
(140).
The diaries of Puritan Michael Wigglesworth reveal his anxieties over
his desires to masturbate and those uncontrollable night dreams. He laments, “I
find such irresistible torments of carnal lusts or provocation unto the ejection of
seed. . . The last night a filthy dream and so pollution escaped me in my sleep
for which I desire to hang my head with shame.. .”(4). Major minister and
personality of the Puritan era, Cotton Mather, warned adolescents against
“unclean” behavior: “Beware of having light thoughts about some sorts of
Uncleanness wherein many young people have been so infatuated as to excuse
themselves. There are abominable self-pollutions . . (Elliott 36).
The language of these Puritan authors illustrates that Goldberg rightly
detects that the Puritan legacy of attitudes on sex inhibits our ability to have an
open discussion about masturbation. Masturbation bears a negative linguistic
history; it is an abominable unclean self-pollution performed in private. For
Goldberg, Elders’s recommendation to the nation in public brought up these
Puritan beliefs. Yet, even though Mather deems masturbation obscene, Emory
Elliot (literary critic of Puritan literature) notes, “[t]he very fact that Mather felt
free to speak out openly on the subject and even to preach an entire sermon on it
at a later date indicates a more open atmosphere of discussion of the problem
that in itself probably helped young people” (37). Goldberg suggests Elders’s
public support for educating young adults on the benefits of masturbation is her
gesture (like Mather’s in the pulpit) to have that “open atmosphere of
discussion” of the problem of teenage pregnancy. In Goldberg’s estimation, the
“shit” Elders took and her subsequent dismissal closed down the opportunity for
real and honest dialogue with America’s youth about alternatives to sex.
Goldberg, indeed, revels in the discussion of sexual politics, yet she is
also unequivocal in her rhetoric on politics and race relations. The riff “Trust”
forms a link with the political climate of the 1990s and Bill Clinton's
presidency. “Trust” also queries the public’s preoccupation with the alleged
sexual exploits of America’s past presidents at the expense of more important
aspects of the president’s overall performance:
I don’t care how many people our presidents have slept with.
It doesn’t take away from who they are or what they’re about