Masturbation

Masturbation is the manual excitation of the sexual organs, most often to the point of orgasm. It can refer to excitation either by oneself or by another (see mutual masturbation), but commonly refers to such activities performed alone. It is part of a larger set of activities known as autoeroticism, which also includes the use of sex toys and non-genital stimulation. There are also masturbation machines used to simulate intercourse. Masturbation and sexual intercourse are the two most common sexual practices, but they are not mutually-exclusive (for example many people find the sight of their partner masturbating highly erotic). Some people are able to achieve orgasm only by masturbation and not by sexual intercourse. In the animal kingdom, masturbation has been observed in many mammalian species, both in the wild and in captivity.

Masturbation in history and society

Antiquity

There are depictions of male masturbation in prehistoric rock paintings around the world, though these are all entirely matters of interpretation. Most early people seem to have connected human sexuality with abundance in nature. A clay figurine of the 4th millennium BC from a temple site on the island of Malta, depicts a woman masturbating. However, in the ancient world depictions of male masturbation are far more common.

Related Topics:
Rock painting - Malta

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Male masturbation became an even more important image in ancient Egypt: when performed by a god it could be considered a creative or magical act: the god Atum was believed to have created the universe by masturbating to ejaculation. The ancient Greeks had a more natural attitude toward masturbation than the Egyptians did, regarding the act as a normal and healthy substitute for other forms of sexual pleasure. They considered masturbation a safety valve against destructive sexual frustration. The Greeks also dealt with female masturbation in both their art and writings.

Related Topics:
Ancient Egypt - Atum - Greeks

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Religion

In many religions, such as Catholicism, Mormonism, Judaism and Islam, masturbation is regarded as a sinful practice. The Catechism of the Catholic Church lists masturbation as one of the "Offenses Against Chastity" and calls it "an intrinsically and gravely disordered action" because "use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." It goes on to caution that extenuating factors could exist, such as immaturity, habitual, or psychological problems.

Related Topics:
Catholicism - Mormonism - Judaism - Islam - Sin - Catechism of the Catholic Church - Chastity - Marriage

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There is no unambiguous mention of masturbation in the Bible. The word "onanism" refers to the biblical story of Onan, who was obliged but refused to consummate a levirate marriage with his dead brother's wife:

Related Topics:
Bible - Onan - Consummate - Levirate marriage

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:"And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also." (Genesis 38:7-9)

Related Topics:
Seed - Genesis

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The interpretation of early Christianity is that Onan transgressed by shirking his duty in using coitus interruptus to avoid impregnating his brother's wife. Later Christian interpretation, however, appears to have changed considerably over the centuries to focus on the physical act of Onan spilling his seed. This is also the traditional Jewish interpretation.

Related Topics:
Coitus interruptus - Seed

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The first divergence appears in the early doctrine put forth by St. Augustine, who argued that sexual intercourse for pleasure was an exercise in the sin of lust. Normally a mere venial sin within the context of a marriage open to children, he argued that a contraceptive act rendered it grave and mortal, removing it from the extenuating context of marriage altogether (On Marriage and Concupiscence).

Related Topics:
St. Augustine - Sexual intercourse - Lust - Venial sin - Mortal

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St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians of the Catholic Church, went further and taught that masturbation was a graver sin than rape. In his masterwork, the Summa Theologica, he divides the sin of lust into six categories: simple fornication, incest, adultery, seduction and rape and "the unnatural vice", further subdivided into masturbation, zoophilia, homosexuality and non-procreative heterosexual sex. He then explains that "the unnatural vice," including masturbation, is clearly worse than the other five types of lust-based sins, for it is a sin against both nature and reason, whereas rape is merely a sin against reason alone.

Related Topics:
St. Thomas Aquinas - Rape - Summa Theologica - Fornication - Incest - Adultery - Seduction - Vice - Zoophilia - Homosexuality - Procreative

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The "sin of Onan"—by way of Aquinas and those who followed him—became both synecdoche and euphemism for the many forms of non-procreational sex that were deemed sinful, an association that followed other attitudes toward sexuality across the Reformation and into the Protestant faiths.

Related Topics:
Synecdoche - Euphemism - Reformation - Protestant

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Protestant theologians only began shunning these teachings toward the middle of the 20th century, with some today even taking pro-masturbation viewpoints. Masturbation, however, is still viewed in Catholic dogma and by many denominations as an act of self indulgence and a sin of the flesh, making it a contentious issue to this day.

Related Topics:
20th century - Dogma

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Some scholars of Islam consider masturbation to be haraam (forbidden) in Islam, making its acceptability within Islamic societies uncertain.

Related Topics:
Islam - Haraam

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It has been reported by Rolling Stone http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/_/id/7418688/?pageid=rs.News&pageregion=single1&rnd=1119561057312&has-player=false that a small Christian-right group in America is enouraging people to wear a masturband to indicate a commitment to abstinence from masturbation.

Related Topics:
Rolling Stone - Christian - Right - America - Masturband

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Masturbation as fast-breaker in Islam

Sometimes, masturbation is considered to be something that breaks a fast. For example, according to Sheikh Hamed Al-Ali "Masturbation during the daytime of Ramadan breaks the fast, based on the Hadith that a fasting Muslim gives up eating, drinking, and sexual desire for the sake of Allah. Since masturbation is a kind of sexual desire, a fasting Muslim must avoid it. The Prophet?s mention of 'sexual desire' after 'eating and drinking' is evidence that it breaks the fast if one does fulfill his or her sexual desire during the daytime of Ramadan. Therefore, masturbation does invalidate the fast, as it is one of the sins that if someone does it he or she would be violating the sanctity of this month."

Related Topics:
Fast - Ramadan - Hadith - Muslim - Allah - The Prophet - Sins

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Philosophical arguments regarding masturbation

Immanuel Kant notoriously regarded masturbation as a violation of the moral law. In the Metaphysics of Morals (1797) he made the a posteriori argument that 'such an unnatural use of one?s sexual attributes' strikes 'everyone upon his thinking of it' as 'a violation of one?s duty to himself', and suggested that it was regarded as immoral even to give its proper name (unlike the case of the similarly undutiful act of suicide). He went on, however, to acknowledge that 'it is not so easy to produce a rational demonstration of the inadmissability of that unnatural use', but ultimately concluded that its immorality lay in the fact that 'a man gives up his personality ... when he uses himself merely as a means for the gratification of an animal drive'.

Related Topics:
Immanuel Kant - Metaphysics of Morals - 1797 - A posteriori - Suicide

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Subsequent critics of masturbation tended to argue against it on more physiological grounds, however (see medical attitudes).

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Medical attitudes

The first use of "onanism" to consistently and specifically refer to masturbation appears to be Onania, an anonymous pamphlet first distributed in London in 1716. In it was a bombastic but novel tirade, drawing on familiar themes of sin and vice, this time in particular against the "heinous sin" of "self-pollution". After dire warnings that those who so indulged would suffer impotence, gonorrhea, epilepsy and a wasting of the faculties (included were letters and testimonials supposedly from young men ill and dying from the effects of compulsive masturbation) the pamphlet then goes on to recommend as an effective remedy a "Strengthening Tincture" at 10 shillings a bottle and a "Prolific Powder" at 12 shillings a bag, available from a certain shop in London.

Related Topics:
Impotence - Gonorrhea - Epilepsy

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One of the many horrified by the descriptions of malady in Onania was the notable Swiss physician Samuel-August Tissot. In 1760, he published L'Onanisme, his own comprehensive medical treatise on the purported ill-effects of masturbation. Citing case studies of young male masturbators amongst his patients in Lausanne, Switzerland as basis for his reasoning, Tissot argued that semen was an "essential oil" and "stimulus" that, when lost from the body in great amounts, would cause "a perceptible reduction of strength, of memory and even of reason; blurred vision, all the nervous disorders, all types of gout and rheumatism, weakening of the organs of generation, blood in the urine, disturbance of the appetite, headaches and a great number of other disorders."

Related Topics:
Samuel-August Tissot - 1760 - Lausanne - Switzerland - Gout - Rheumatism

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Though Tissot's ideas are now considered conjectural at best, his treatise was presented as a scholarly, scientific work in a time when experimental physiology was practically nonexistent. The authority with which the work was subsequently treated—Tissot's arguments were even acknowledged and echoed by luminaries such as Kant and Voltaire—arguably turned the perception of masturbation in Western medicine over the next two centuries into that of a debilitating illness.

Related Topics:
Conjectural - Kant - Voltaire

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This continued well into the Victorian Era, where such medical censure of masturbation was in line with the widespread social conservatism and opposition to open sexual behavior common at the time. http://www.noharmm.org/paige.htm There were recommendations to have boys' pants constructed so that the genitals could not be touched through the pockets, for schoolchildren to be seated at special desks to prevent their crossing their legs in class and for girls to be forbidden from riding horses and bicycles because the sensations these activities produce were considered too similar to masturbation. Many "remedies" were devised, including eating a bland, meatless diet. This approach was promoted by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (inventor of corn flakes) and Rev. Sylvester Graham (inventor of Graham crackers). The medical literature of the times describes procedures for electric shock treatments, infibulation, restraining devices like chastity belts and straitjackets, cauterization or—as a last resort—wholesale surgical excision of the genitals. Routine neonatal circumcision was widely adopted in the United States and the UK at least partly because of its believed preventive effect against masturbation (see also History of male circumcision). In later decades, the more drastic of these measures were increasingly replaced with psychological techniques, such as warnings that masturbation led to blindness, hairy hands or stunted growth. Some of these persist as myths even today.

Related Topics:
Victorian Era - Conservatism - Dr. John Harvey Kellogg - Corn flakes - Rev. Sylvester Graham - Graham cracker - Infibulation - Chastity belts - Straitjackets - Cauterization - Excision - Circumcision - United States - UK - History of male circumcision

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Medical attitudes toward masturbation began to change at the beginning of the 20th century when H. Havelock Ellis, in his seminal 1897 work Studies in the Psychology of Sex, questioned Tissot's premises, cheerfully named famous men of the era who masturbated and then set out to disprove (with the work of more recent physicians) each of the claimed diseases masturbation was purportedly the cause of. "We reach the conclusion," he wrote, "that in the case of moderate masturbation in heatlhy, well-born individuals, no seriously pernicious results necessarily follow."

Related Topics:
20th century - H. Havelock Ellis - 1897

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Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, incorporated a passage in the 1914 edition of Scouting for Boys warning against the dangers of masturbation. By 1930, however, Dr. F. W. W. Griffin, editor of The Scouter, had written in a book for Rover Scouts that the temptation to masturbate was "a quite natural stage of development" and, citing Ellis's work, held that "the effort to achieve complete abstinence was a very serious error."

Related Topics:
Robert Baden-Powell - Boy Scouts - Scouting for Boys - F. W. W. Griffin - Ellis

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Over the course of the next three decades, medical opinion of masturbation began to change, with many authorities abruptly reversing—often inexplicably—their condemnation of it. Today, modern medicine recognises that there is no significant harm (short term or long term) caused by the practice of masturbation and regards it as a normal part of human sexuality.

Related Topics:
Medicine - Sexuality

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