Is masturbation by women prohibited anywhere in the Bible? There’s no Onan involved.
How about the Talmud, the koran, or the Torah or other holy writings, but especially the Bible.
Peace,
mangeorge
I mean “masturbation”.
Fixed thread title.
I don’t know of any specific prohibition aimed at female masturbation. However, I would think it would be considered a sin because anyone who is masturbating is also acting on feelings of lust. I’m pretty sure lust is considered a sin in the religions you mentioned. But like I said, I don’t know of anything addressing the act itself when done by a woman.
The sin of Onan wasn’t masturbation, either. It’s that he was failing in his duty to impregnate his brother’s widow. If he had done that and also spent some “alone time” on the side, there would have been no problem.
(I almost said “no issue” in that last sentence, but I’m pretty sure that would have been a triple-entendre).
Lust is okay within the bounds of Catholic tradition. I think. Jews too, I think.
It’s one of the joys.
But we’re looking for sins, not joy. 
No, and it isn’t for males either. Onan’s coitus interuptus is not masturbation.
I know, but some religions blame their prohibition on Onan. They (we) call it “onanism”. Some say that withdrawal is effectively the same thing.
Technically that’s correct.
But
Mangeorge’s link takes you to Merriam-Webster’s definition, and distinctions among masturbation, coitus interruptus, and self-gratification. The Google Ad that came up was Ask an Onan Technician. Clicking on that leads to a small-engine forum. The Onan company makes small engines. :smack:
Well, who needs a big engine for solo work?
Bible does not explicitly mention either male or female masturbation. The (hard to enforce) prohibitions against both of these were arrived at by analogical reasoning and reflect the general dogmatic principle that all sexual activity is supposed to happen within marriage. Another such example would be prohibition of gambling in some religions - there is no mention of gambling in the Bible either. Not to mention things that simply did not exist back then, e.g. there were no narcotic drugs in Israel so the closest Biblical injunction would be one against alcohol abuse.
I would be stunned if there were no narcotic drugs available to the writers of the early Abrahamic works: opium poppies have been used and abused since at least 4000 BC; they’re mentioned in Sumerian texts of that era as already being well known.
Exactly. The authorities decided that Onans early withdrawal showed that he was having sex for pleasure rather than procreation. God’s anger at this was interpreted to mean that sex was for reproduction, not fun. They extended this to all sexual pleasures including masturbation.
well, perhaps “Israel” is the key word here? Let’s say marijuana has always been a part of Indian culture, much like alcohol in the West. So we might expect to see condemnations of excessive marijuana abuse in literature of that part of the world, whereas Western literature, Bible included, concentrates on the more socially relevant alcohol abuse problem.
In Jewish law, it is considered “immodest” but is not a punishable (by a Jewish court) prohibition.
There is archaeological evidence that opium and hashish were produced, traded and used all over the ancient middle east from great antitquity, including the Biblical eras of Israel. Those drugs are believed to have been mostly used medicinally, though, not recreationally.
If seed spillage is the sin, that leaves women out.
Onana’s sin wasn’t really even the spillage, per se, it was disobedience to God and refusal to fulfill his brotherly duty.
Lust is a mortal sin according to this entry in The Catholic Encylopedia. The Wikipedia entry indicates it would be a sin for Protestants, Jews and Muslims as well. After all, it is one of the seven deadly ones, right?