About Masturbation

If that title didn't make it clear enough, this entry is NSFW.

It shouldn't be, but it is.

I just found out about Matthew Burdette, the 14-year-old who committed suicide last November after he was secretly videotaped masturbating in a bathroom stall at his public school. The video went viral, of course, and Matthew was relentlessly bullied, of course, and he killed himself because he "had no friends".

 Of course.

The kid who took that video (who incidentally needs to be charged with something that carries enough of a sentence that he'll know what he did was wrong)? I guarantee he masturbates. The kids who watched that video, and shared it, and taunted Matthew until he took his own life? I guarantee every last one of them masturbates. I'll further guarantee that at least one of them has locked himself in a bathroom stall somewhere and masturbated. I'm sure people are uncomfortable with that thought: at school? Seriously? They've forgotten (or maybe never knew) what it was to be a 14-year-old boy, replete with hormones, suffering unwanted, unreasonable, often painful erections that demand to be dealt with. Matthew did so, and he did it responsibly, in a bathroom stall where he had every expectation of privacy.

I was pretty lucky growing up: I didn't get the full-on "this is going to rot your soul and send you to Hell" sermon that still gets laid on little boys (and girls) when they're discovering their bodies. But I did pick up, by cultural osmosis, that masturbation is wrong, sinful, and that it would have dire (if unexplained) consequences. You could go blind. (As some comedian notes, no problem, I can still find it.) You could grow hair on your palms. (Wouldn't that just make it feel better?) That was almost forty years ago. Not much has changed. Perform the standard zeitgeist test and type "masturbation" into Google to see what it autocompletes. You get one result, and only one result: "...is a sin".

Really? Playing with the body God gave you is a sin? The Catholic Church considers masturbation to be a "grave moral disorder", an "intrinsically and seriously disordered act"--although there is nothing in the Christian Bible on masturbation. Not a word. (The sin of Onan, which is commonly taken to be 'self-abuse', was actually coitus interruptus and the refusal to fulfil his Levirate obligation.) St. Thomas Aquinas actually put masturbation on a par with things like bestiality and pederasty. It's ludicrous, when you think about it: only one seed is needed for fertilization, which means every single ejaculation contains a "wastage" of nearly four hundred million potential lives. And they picket abortion clinics? Go figure.
(I won't even consider how many lives get snuffed out by menstruation--which is a natural and therefore supposedly God-given process that is considered unclean in the Bible. comically so.)

The (mostly unspoken, sometimes very much spoken)  masturbation taboo convinces most kids that their bodies are dirty, bad, even evil. Don't think for a second this doesn't translate into adulthood and manifest in various sexual hangups, causing untold misery. Though to be fair, most of that misery gets visited upon women, not men.  To this day the way most sex education is taught is profoundly misogynist: there is rarely any mention of sexual pleasure for women at all, almost as if women aren't supposed to feel good. So you get women in their thirties and forties who have never even tried to have an orgasm. I find that heartbreaking.

 Then there are women who actually believe male masturbation is akin to cheating. I'll let you in on a secret: often times, for men, masturbation isn't the slightest bit sexual. It's a release valve for pressure that builds up; the release just happens to feel good. Ever have to sneeze for about half an hour, and for some reason you just can't, and then you do? Same principle, only more so. How is that cheating? It's a bodily function.

Am I suggesting that people should just whip it out and play with it any ol' time? Of course not, don't be absurd. There's nothing shameful about masturbation, but that doesn't mean it should be for public consumption. Is going to the bathroom shameful? Do you do that in public? I rest my case. Matthew Burdette masturbated in what he thought was private. He did nothing wrong. The person who recorded it, and everyone who shared it and laughed at it, each one of them has his blood on their hands.

In a sane society, nobody would have laughed at that video, much less shared it. Our society is not sane. That's something I've been harping on for ten years now. It's getting better, yes, but there is still such a long way to go.

While repeating that the sin of Onan was not, in fact, masturbation, I will close with the following poem

Amour Propre by "Solomon Solomon"

Mrs. Dorothy Parker, whom I recommend you read,
Called her budgie Onan,  for he always spilled his seed.
And ever since his namesake in the Bible soiled the ground,
Finger-wagging strictures in the scriptures have been found
Counselling against such spillage in the noonday sun.
Pay them not the slightest mind, lads! Masturbation's fun!

Now, there are folks with outlooks that are puritan and bleak,
Folks who call it self-abuse and say it makes you weak,
Folks who say the practice is a ticking, potent bomb,
Sure to make you addled and grow hair upon your palms,
Folks who say your hand should never venture near your lap,
Say you must conserve each drop of nature's precious sap.

Lend an ear to Solomon and he will set you right,
Put to rest the bleatings of the clinically uptight.
If you look me over, I can guarantee you'll find
My palms are smooth and blameless and I haven't yet gone blind.
The proof is in the pudding, and I'm very pleased to say
I practise what I'm preaching, and I practise every day.

Listen not, good fellows, to that tight-lipped, touch-not spiel!
Have they ever tried it? Don't they know how good it feels?
Would God up in His heaven have installed within our loins
All those tickly sensors if he meant us to enjoin
Against their stimulation? Sure as weasels root for grubs,
I feel quite sure he wouldn't! Aye, and therein lies the rub!

So if the spirit moves you -- and I rather think it might --
If you want, at noontime, or when you're at bed at night,
Or first thing in the morning, or when you get home from school,
Or when you're back from swimming in the teeming public pool,
Do not stop or hesitate! Go on, strike up the band!
And strum your ukelele with a warm and open hand!
--Bill Richardson, Bachelor Brothers Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book