Masturbation

Masturbation, although commonly practiced, is a sexual behavior that continues to elicit negative reactions, including embarrassment, shame, stereotypes, and misunderstanding. Indeed, contradictory cultural messages continue to exist regarding sexuality in general and masturbation in particular. While sexologists (sex researchers) and sex therapists describe masturbation as “touching one's genitals in a sexual way” as a means for overall physical, mental, and sexual health, others, such as religious leaders, have described masturbation as immoral (sinful), harmful, unnatural, and dirty. Various research studies focusing on masturbation have found differences in rates of and motivations for masturbation by gender, age, marital status, race and ethnicity, religion, education, and even body image. Further, individuals' use of masturbation may be influenced by prevailing cultural messages about its relative acceptance in contemporary society. Perhaps no other sexual act is both extremely private and publicly ridiculed. Numerous slang expressions are used to represent solitary sex, such as “spanking the monkey” or “dipping into the honey pot.”

Multiple historical records indicate that masturbation has been a consistent part of human existence. Historian Reay Tannahill discusses several ancient civilizations' implicit acceptance of masturbation amid other more regulated sexual behaviors, though masturbation is less accepted for status-conscious men than women. Some Greek women used olisbos, or the ancient equivalent of the dildo, an artificial phallus. However, by the 11th to 16th centuries, many social commentators, mostly religious thinkers, contributed to a discourse that increasingly described masturbation (or any sexual act not leading to conception) as dangerous. These proclamations influenced public opinion to view masturbation the same way. In the early 1700s, masturbation was erroneously called onanism, after Onan of the Old Testament “spilled his seed on the ground.” Religious scholars, though, have since explained that Onan engaged in coitus interruptus rather than masturbation.

[Page 519]In the mid-1700s, Swiss physician Samuel Tissot promoted the idea of “post-masturbation disease,” particularly for children. The alternative, allowing children to engage in autoeroticism (a term used by early sexologist Havelock Ellis), was believed to result in weakness, insanity—or worse, death.

By the 1800s, both religion and medicine attempted to regulate masturbation as part of wider social control efforts over individuals' private sexual behavior. Many doctors recommended parents use implements and “cures” to prevent masturbation. These purported remedies ranged from bland diets and painful implements to prevent nocturnal contact, to circumcision for boys and removing the clitorises of girls. Even after a change in medical opinion around 1920, masturbation was still viewed in psychological terms. Historian Thomas Laqueur argues that this overall “medico-moral” control existed because masturbation contains an element of mental fantasy, which can be kept secret.

Following the mid-20th-century sex research of Alfred Kinsey and the team of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the women's movement in the 1960s and 1970s attempted to change this long-term condemnation of one-person sexual pleasure, especially promoting women to experience clitoral orgasms. There are numerous pioneering advocates of masturbation for women. For example, through therapeutic techniques such as group workshops, Dr. Betty Dodson promotes the idea that women should understand their sexual potential. Popularly known as the “Mother of Masturbation,” Dodson continues to encourage women to masturbate for the ability to be orgasmic; to overcome negative social, religious, and familial messages, such as sexual passivity or denial rather than sexual agency; and for enhanced self-esteem. One study from 2003 found a relationship between women's masturbation and body image. For white women in particular, a woman who perceives she is overweight is less likely to masturbate. For women of color, the proscription to masturbate often comes from religious or social pressures to not appear overly sexual.

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