Honey Glazed Donuts made a reappearance during our freshman year of high school. 

We’d matured, albeit slightly, so the frequency of whispers reduced, as did the awkwardness. We laughed as we struggled to haphazardly fit an oily condom onto a cucumber, cracking jokes and making plans to go to CVS for our scavenger hunt; for some of us, the trip would be our first ever glimpses at condoms, birth control pills, Plan B’s — terms that had started to feel less foreign. 

And yet, still no mention of female masturbation. 

Three years had passed since the word had first started floating around in our fifth grade hallways, but surely the rules hadn’t changed — girls still weren’t allowed to do it, right? 

But adhering to these “rules” didn’t eliminate our incessant curiosity about masturbation. If we were to, say, break these rules, what would we even do? We considered asking in the Anonymous Question Box sitting atop the front table of our biology classrooms, even jotting down these questions — quickly, of course, so no one would see — and walking down the aisle ready to drop it in. 

Only we didn’t. We changed our minds, crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it away. 

Isn’t that what they call the persistence of internalized misogyny?