I bought one of those spray cans that cleans between the keyboard keys. It is true that the academic job market sucks, that graduate school involves pain and that the philosophers of New Puritanism want our hands out of our pants. But despite that, the academic and the autoerotic will continue to be commingled. Both are regarded as self-indulgent and useless, set in opposition to the 'real' world of sex or business. On the other hand, both are certainly becoming more popular, in part because of economic and technological changes.
Most people believe it's difficult to get a decent job without a bachelor's or even graduate degree.
Likewise, fears of HIV, a general turn against casual sex and the availability of e-mail, online porn, video rentals and mainstream erotica mean that masturbation occupies a more prominent role in our culture than it ever has. As we trace the shared trajectory of the academic and the autoerotic, we sift through layers of oppression and repression to finger the hot button of pleasure that defines the self at the heart of the two pursuits. A lot of my impulses were coming together. It was emotional, creative and particularly Jewish. Walt Whitman would say, the song of herself.