“Talk about masturbating? Please!”: Solo Sex and Sexual Regulation within New York’s Charedi Communities

• In Event: 40820 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 15: Sex and Sex Work

Abstract

Within Charedi Jewish Communities, sexuality is mediated by strict interpretations of Halacha (religious law), tightly controlled access to information, and rigid gender norms. This regulation is enforced at the interpersonal, communal, and institutional levels. Drawing from an ethnographic study on marital, sexual, and reproductive self-determination among Charedi Jews in New York, this paper explores masturbation within the Charedi social ecology of sexuality. Charedi men and women are equally subject to the regulation of sexuality as part of a larger set of strategies enacted to ensure religious continuity. Both genders face substantial pressures from religious institutions, families, and communities to reproduce according to certain values and rules. Within this context, structures of male privilege contribute to a broader narrative that men are sexual agents and women are not, shaping expectations about sexual desire that can differentially impact experiences with sex and Halacha. Our findings included numerous cases of sexual violence shaped by a nuanced combination of interpersonal and community-level forces. Highlighting the complex relationship between sexual violence and sexual pleasure, this paper aims to interrogate the connections between masturbation and the broader Charedi context. Masturbation reveals an instance in which men’s sexuality is perhaps more restricted than women’s; “spilling seed” is strictly forbidden and the stigma around the act contributes to significant distress and shame, while there is a relative silence around women’s masturbation. In an environment that facilitates many forms of sexual and gender-based violence, both through silence and explicit regulation, the invisibility of women’s sexual agency seemingly creates space for the cultivation of pleasure. Our data demonstrate that within stringently observant contexts, pockets of ambivalence pertaining to certain sexual practices can provide pathways for curiosity and subversion of constraints, and that there are instances in which men’s social privilege may not automatically translate into greater embodied freedom.

Authors

• Gloria Fortuna, Columbia University

• Alicia Jen, Columbia University

• Jessie Ford, Columbia University

• Jennifer S. Hirsch, Columbia University