Boys Wanking & Girl Periods (Claire)

I found myself intrigued by this line in Norwegian Wood on page 77 of my copy.

"Girls have periods and boys wank. Everybody."

I found this line funny at first, but then something that Prof. Elliott said in class made me rethink 
the purpose of the line. When she mentioned that Naoko referenced this later and referred to getting
ejaculation out of Kizuki as "getting rid of it," these lines struck me as having a strange sense of parity. 
Girls need to have periods to get rid of menstrual tissues as a necessary biological function. Murakami
seems to paint wanking in a similar light as a necessary biological function, in that boys need to ejaculate
also to get rid of something else.

It seems that what Murakami is drawing attention to is that periods and wanking are ways of flushing
impurities from within. Midori mentions that sanitary napkins must be burnt by the janitor, suggesting
that these objects must be completely destroyed instead of existing as trash. Wanking comes up as
something boys do relieve themselves, such as the one boy who does it before every date to relax. It’s
interesting to draw similarities between the two acts as purification rituals when they’re both so different
and brings to my mind the idea of perhaps sex as a purification ritual, and maybe that’s why everyone
thinks about sex all the time in this book. Or at least Toru.