I wanted to slam the MacBook into the ground, shatter the screen with a baseball bat, douse it in gasoline and light it on fire. I read the screen again, my cheeks red hot — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security had fined eighth-grade me $100,000 for illegally downloading child porn. I had to pay it upfront, and I had no other way of leaving the page.

I was dead meat.

Since the pop-up told me I would likely be going to jail, I had no choice but to sheepishly show the computer to my mom. Maybe she would understand and scrounge up some bail.

“Did you watch porn?” She stared at me with a stone-faced expression.

“Yes,” I barely eked out, wanting to evaporate.

“Don’t do this again.”

My mom did some research on her phone, learned this was a common porn site virus and disabled it on the laptop. She lectured me on a million and one reasons why watching porn is bad for you, which included rotting my brain with depravity, leading to homelessness, incarceration and ruined career prospects. My mom drove me to a dentist appointment right after. It was the most tense and silent car ride, with me stewing in shame and her stewing in anger. We didn’t exchange any words, but the message was clear: Self-pleasure was an arrestable offense, and I would not disappoint my mother like that.

Everyone gets aroused. Masturbation is one of the best ways to learn about your sexual preferences and take care of yourself. But if you’re anything like me, masturbation is an awkward thing to talk about, more so than crushes, kisses and hookups — the quintessential elements of a gossip session with friends.

“Masturbation is such a scary, huge word,” says Vic Liu, author of Bang! Masturbation for People of All Genders and Abilities. “But at the end of the day, it just means touching yourself. Like that’s the least scary, chillest part of sex, and yet we’re more OK with talking about hookup culture than we are about masturbation, which is so weird to me.”

Masturbatory shame can stem from a variety of sources, including religious stigma, outdated scientific studies that claim masturbation “wastes” sperm and makes men weaker and a general culture that doesn’t talk about it much.

When I was a 10-year-old boy, sex was the butt of every joke. My friend Edwin would run up to people on the playground in fifth grade, screeching “do you MASTURBATE?!?!?!” He would do this for the entire 30-minute recess period, and if you got hit with an Edwin-attack, the best course of action was to shake your head vigorously and deny the allegations until he left. I think all of us were left scandalized by the thought of touching your private parts because it meant you were a lonely, laughable loser who had nothing better to do with your time.

In September 2021, British girl group Little Mix released “Love (Sweet Love),” a lead single about masturbation for their greatest hits album Between Us. I remember feeling confused about why anyone would sing about masturbation for the general public. The topic seemed unrelatable, unglamorous and overtly intimate. “I been spendin’ time on everybody else/It’s time I did for me/Love, sweet, love, oh, baby,” the lyrics read.

When I look back, there’s nothing scandalous about these lyrics. Perhaps what scared me most was how vain solitary self-pleasure seemed. I didn’t think it was something to be proud of.

Growing up, I used to elevate partnered sex as the symbol of “making it,” especially as a gay Asian American teenager who jealously watched my straight white friends tear through relationship after relationship in high school.

But jerking yourself off isn’t a lonely, sinful or incel activity. It’s powerful. In a world that encourages you to find your “soulmate” amid a flood of love songs, rom-coms and dating apps, I believe finding your own pleasure is an equally valuable pursuit.

Cecilia Villero is a Filipina American sex educator and pleasure activist. She says though her immediate family wasn’t religious, her parents raised her with “traditional” values influenced by Catholicism. She was also discouraged from talking about sex because she grew up with the view that the things you talk about represent and reflect your family.

“One of the things I was told as a kid is you’re not supposed to date until you’re 18, and then from there it’s essentially like you’re trying to get married,” Villero says. “That certainly affected how I learned about my body and how I learned about pleasure. The omission of information can lead to misinformation and shame.”

Liu says her parents were culturally conservative and never had any conversations about sex. “It’s not like they were like ‘We believe in Jesus in this household, and that’s why we will never masturbate!’ I don’t think they ever said the word masturbate to me,” Liu says. “But it was implied.”

But Liu’s parents have turned around. When Liu fundraised on Kickstarter to launch “Bang!” their publisher had reward tiers with different sexual names. She was pleasantly surprised to find her dad donated to the “orgy” tier, which involved buying 10 copies of the book to give away.

My pornography-near-arrest story is the only time I ever breached the conversation of sexuality with my parents. At the time, I felt my slip-up jeopardized my family’s future for generations to come.

It blew my mind to learn that most people masturbate. For people aged 20-24, 85.5% of respondents reported masturbating in their lifetime, while 62.8% of male and 43.7% of female respondents reported masturbating in the last month.

Masturbation is not a symptom of lonely person disease. It’s actually a better way to get to know yourself, your likes and dislikes, and can also lead to better partnered sex, though that doesn’t have to be the primary goal.

“We’ve been taught that your job is to pleasure your partner. But that’s 100% not true,” Villero says. “They’re not in charge of your pleasure. We’re in charge of our own pleasure.”

For Villero, one way to take charge of your own pleasure is by looking at your body in a mirror and observing what you love. She says she still gets insecure when she does the activity, but she has learned to block out criticisms other people have told her about her body.

“I’ve worked on turning those messages around and thinking, ‘Bitch, you’re so cute,’” Villero says. “Focus on one thing you like about yourself and focus on saying those positive things to the rest of your body. It doesn’t have to be a big thing. And it can be a lifelong thing.”

In my fourth year at Northwestern, I think I’m finally getting there. I used to hinge my worth on validation from others and the ways I could satisfy them, be it with my personality, sense of humor or what my body has to offer.

When I started therapy a year ago, I connected the dots between my personal and professional life and recognized my incessant desire to satisfy someone else while forgetting to listen to what my body was telling me. I found my way back to myself by making lists of things I’m good at, making lists of doing things I liked and then actually going out and doing those things.

I believe everyone needs to intentionally carve out spaces for themselves where they are the sole object of their affection. For me, this looks like buying a bouquet of $5.99 fuchsia roses every time I’m at Trader Joe’s or lighting my candle and journaling at night, writing down what I did during the day that makes me proud. Sexually, this looks like trying new things when I masturbate, whether I’m reading something, watching something or just using my imagination. It means learning new tricks in books or on the internet and experimenting with duration and touch and other toys to figure out exactly what I like. When I catch myself in the mirror these days, I find myself sexy. Tell me that at any earlier point in my life, and I would’ve straight up laughed at you.

Masturbation is so wonderful because it’s a moment I have all to myself. I get to indulge myself, take care of myself. I know I can count on me every single time, and I know I’m going to deliver exactly what I want because I’m the best at it. That confidence is hard to shake.