To understand the church teaching on such topics.
I’m sorry but you’re being vague. There is no authoritative Church teaching on the exact question of “can a woman stimulate herself to orgasm if not done by the husband”.
There’s a teaching that masturbation is wrong (grave matter), which is authoritative. The reason is not spilling seed so much as closedness to procreation and focus on one’s own pleasure as opposed to the true purpose of sex.
From what teachings exist, it can be inferred with reasonable certainty that stimulation must take place in some context of marital embrace (not necessarily to follow within a short time and not meaning that any activity must stop precisely at ejaculation either).
It can further be inferred that it would be selfish for a man not to neglect his wife’s different sexuality and the different curve of arousal (as a rule slower to happen and slower to go away), and it might even be an offence against justice for him to deny her that natural pleasure from intercourse.
But I can’t see how a construed “right to orgasm” could waive the prohibition against self-stimulation. I have no problem with the idea that various forms of foreplay or even “afterplay” may be licit. But one’s sexual partner is always one’s spouse. We are married to a husband or wife but we are not married each to ourselves. It is not allowed to bring pornographic material into the act for stimulation because it involves a third party, who is not a part of the marriage. How then should self-stimulation be allowed? One’s marital partner is husband or wife, not oneself. The way I see it, any auto-erotic act is sexual interaction with oneself (as in interacting with one’s own body to obtain that stimulation), not with the husband or wife.
(From now on things may get graphic. I apologise for the need to do so and I wish I could avoid it. Please do not read if prone to be offended or scandalised. The details are inevitably needed to explain my point.)
I repeat, I have no problem with the “after”, or with the idea that the female climax should happen and can be obtained in some other way at at some other time than the ejaculation in the vagina.
But the whole argument typically comes down to justifying a way of bringing that female climax about. It misses the fact that a man can be manually or otherwise stimulated just as much as the woman, and that there could be ways for him to do so. There are no questions asked if e.g. a man can stimulate himself with his hand until he’s ready to ejaculate and then ejaculate in the woman’s vagina. But that too would be happening “within the context”. So I think the argument is ignored by some form of compassion that loses sight of other important considerations and does not hold water logically.
Also, the argument about the wife’s right to a climax is built on marital love and self-giving, requiring the man to try and bring his wife to climax. I agree up to that point. But to infer from that mutual self-giving a right to self-stimulate, now that would be inconsistent in my book. And what “context” is there if e.g. the husband is already sleeping (let’s even suppose that he was a culpable swine in so doing) and the wife may even be in a separate room altogether? That context and that opportunity are, in my view, absent and absent due to the husband’s fault (or ignorance, possibly, maybe even likely culpable), but that injustice (which is injustice) which the woman is suffering does not bring about an entitlement to procure climax by self-stimulation.
In short, no instance of particular sexual activity that doesn’t involve the spouse as a participant, is objectively moral in my opinion. For example, in a hypothetical situation where both spouses masturbate not even looking at each other until the point the man is ready for ejaculation, that kind of behaviour is not something I would call proper and allowed. Precisely for the reason that each of them then, in my opinion, takes the role of both husband and wife (as if he or she were his or her own sexual partner, since the pleasure does not involve the spouse other than providing that “context”) until that decisive moment of ejaculation in the vagina happens.
Please note I’m not referring to the technical aspect of some movements that a psychologist could analyse as bringing about pleasure (or we’re going to make a sin of patting one’s own thigh for reassurance) but about the notion that the partner can be removed or replaced or is otherwise non-essential in bringing about the natural pleasure of the sexual act, or that a partner is better prepared or equipped to give himself or herself that pleasure than his or her spouse is.
I am in no way seeking to imply a subjective culpability in anybody actually finding himself or herself in a situation that involves this question and I’m sincerely sorry for anyone who feels that he or she needs to resort to self-stimulation, but I’m addressing the “matter” part. I sincerely hope I haven’t offended anyone and it was not my intention to offend anyone or cause any emotional suffering. I realise I’m not a theologian, nor a philosopher, nor an ethicist and do not claim to be any of the three. It’s possible that I’m wrong, although, subjectively, I don’t see that possibility as being strong (as much as not all points of my logic will be seen as solid by everybody else).
I agree totally with what you wrote, and I have actually never seen this idea in any other teaching. I will recheck Popcak, but I think he says that “self” stimulation post relations is not permitted.
I cannot see how it could be.
Thank you for solidarity. I tend to be alone or close to in this view.
I cannot see how it could be permitted even before, not only after, as I said.
