by Zoë Pollock
Anna North reflects on the mission of Dirty Girls Ministries, an attempt to cure women of masturbation or pornography habits:
Dirty Girls appears to draw on a particularly female stereotype — that any sexual thoughts that aren't about penile-vaginal intercourse with a male partner are somehow dirty or warped. Some of Renaud's clients may be gay, some may be bisexual, some may fantasize about BDSM or kink, and some may be quite vanilla but nonetheless feel guilty about the strength or frequency of their desires. In all of these cases, acceptance might allow them to lead satisfied sexual lives. Instead, they're being forced to pit their sexual desires against stigma, shame, and external notions of what it means to be unclean.
Jill Filipovic takes issue with the "treatment" as a way to deal with past trauma:
Most women masturbate. Tons of women who have never survived experienced trauma masturbate. Tons of women who have survived trauma, sexual or otherwise, masturbate — not because they’re broken, but because they’re human beings who feel sexual urges despite having gone through some bad shit. … Capitalizing on trauma — shaming women for natural urges and for enjoying what’s between their legs even after someone did harm to their body and their spirit — is cruel and sick and evil.
In an interview from April, Dirty Girls founder Crystal Renaud levied this charge, which sounds inflated to me:
81% of women, who frequent pornographic websites, will eventually escalate their addiction to in-person encounters because of their desire to be close to someone.
The Dish 