For any of you who haven’t heard the myth about hairy palms, let me explain. People have long frowned upon masturbation (stimulating your genitals until you have an orgasm), and in ancient times viable reasons existed for this attitude, besides the fact that no one had yet invented Vaseline.If people, particularly men, masturbated, then they wouldn’t have sex with women as often. And, in the early days of mankind, when infant mortality was high and life expectancy low, making babies was important for the survival of the species.
The elders of the tribes disapproved of masturbation because they believed that each man was born with only a certain amount of sperm, and if he wasted that sperm masturbating, he’d have none left to impregnate a woman. (I wonder what their attitude would have been if they’d knownthat a man can make 50,000 sperm a minute. Let the good times roll?)
The story of Onan
The early Jews certainly were against the spilling of seed (an old-fashioned term for mas- turbating). You can read about their concern in the story of Onan in Genesis in the Bible, out of which came the word onanism as a synonym for masturbation. Actually, Biblical scholars now believe that, rather than masturbating, Onan practiced coitus interruptus (withdrawing before ejaculation) so he wouldn’t impregnate his brother’s widow, as customs and religious law dictate he do. If Onan had known what everyone who’s reading this book knows about the sperm in pre-ejaculatory fluid, he would have stuck to the original version and masturbated instead.
Over the years, society never completely lifted this ban on masturbation. During the Victorian era in
Worse than the supposed symptoms of the Victorian era were the methods that parents used to try to curb their children’s masturbatory activities. These included restraints of all kinds and medical procedures such as circumcision, castration (removal of the testes), and clitoridectomy (removal of the clitoris) — a terrible practice that is still widely used throughout Africa and performed on millions of women, not only to curb masturbation, but all sexual pleasure.
But, whether cultural or religious beliefs caused the ban on masturbation, the elders knew (from their own experience, no doubt) that young boys and girls don’t always listen to their elders (surprise, surprise). Therefore, they invented some myths about masturbation that would have the persuasive powers that laws wouldn’t.
Many of the myths against what people labeled “self-abuse” were based on the notion that the consequences of masturbating included a physical signthat revealed to the world that the individual was a masturbator. This threat of public exposure was supposed to coerce potential “self-abusers” to keep their hands away from their genitals. Among these scare tactics was the mythof the hairy palm, but, because the possibility of having to comb your palm every morning wasn’t always scary enough, the elders also threw in things such as going blind or insane.
Neither the bans nor the myths have stopped in the new millennium. Many religions forbid masturbation, and the ad agency for an acne treatment got into the picture and suggested that masturbation causes pimples. (“Oh no, a zit, now everyone at school will know why I close the door in my room!”) All these myths are, of course, nonsense.
Avoiding Too Much of a Good Thing
Okay, so how much masturbation is too much? People often ask me that question, but I can’t answer it directly. You see, you really have to turn this question around to get the right answer. In other words, if you live a satisfying life, if you have friends, do well at work or in school, are in a loving partnership with someone, and you’re both satisfied with your sex life together, then how often you masturbate really doesn’t matter. On the other hand, if you’re lonely and out of sorts, and you rely on masturbation to make yourself feel better instead of going about the business of making your life work the way you want it to, then you may be masturbating too much, no matter how rarely you actually do masturbate.
Masturbation is a good form of sexual release, but sometimes you need that sexual tension to get you going, to give you the incentive to find a partner, seek out new friends, look for a new job, or whatever. So, if you need to get your life in order and do masturbate a lot, I suggest you cut down. You don’t have to stop altogether, but if you can reduce the number of times you do it, you may find that you can begin to add some other positive aspects to your life.
What you’re looking for is a happy medium. If you’re single and actively seeking a partner, then masturbating to keep yourself from feeling sexually frustrated is fine. Just don’t do it so much that you wind up being more attached to your genitals than to the world outside. And, of course, masturbation is a lot safer than a one-night stand in terms of protecting you from catching a sexually transmitted disease.
If your partner is satisfied with your sex life, and you would like more orgasms than the two of you have together, then masturbating when themood strikes you is okay. But make an effort to see if your partner would be willing to engage in sex with you more often. Don’t be lazy and rely on masturbation to satisfy all your sexual needs because a sexless relationship is not fulfilling and will likely not last very long.
