A great many cultures and religions have told, and are still telling, people, especially young people, that Touching Yourself is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.
Why? Maybe because some religions prohibit anything that might be pleasurable, including sweets, secular reading, and clothes that let you breathe comfortably? Maybe because, even though it won’t get anyone pregnant, and it can’t be adultery because it doesn’t involve another person, it’s still a sexual act? And for that matter, why were the warnings so often so extreme—not just “Don’t do it” but “It’ll turn black/it’ll fall off/you’ll go blind/you’ll go to hell”?
I don’t know about other religions, but I can offer a practical reason (IMO) why it’s frowned upon in the Catholic Church. And it’s the same reasoning (again IMO) that birth control is frowned upon.
When you masturbate, or use any kind of birth control, you lessen the chances of creating new life that will, by default, probably become Catholic. By masturbating, you lessen the sex drive, and therefore decrease chances of reproducing. Also, the sex before marriage deal helps lock you into a relationship that almost guarantees more and more Catholics.
(I’ve been having a bit of a crisis of faith lately, so don’t take this as any sort of a defacto denial of faith. In the last week I’ve learned of 2 kids taking into CPS care while my wife and I are looking at starting IVF next month. I’m a little bitter.)
I like the way the mormons aproach it. They issue these magic underwear that somehow shield the genitals from wandering hands, or those pesky night time incubus and sucubus visitations.
One of my sisters married a non-practicing Mormon. I always thought he was whooshing me with the magic underwear thing. He alluded to LDS members having to wear them to get to heaven or some such, but never gave enough detail to take him seriously. Now I see this. Is this really something in the Church? Can anyone elaborate?
My opinion which is absolutely, 100% guaranteed correct.
In this ghastly old world there are a few things that make us want to hang on. Sex is one, religion is another. But sex is more than just pleasuring ourselves like denizens of the ape house at the Bronx Zoo. Sexuality in particular and worldliness in general also stimulates some of our greatest creative endeavors, be it racous entertainments like “The Producers” to Boticelli who, admittedly, managed to get both in depending on the occassion.
Religion, unfortunately, can be a jealous mistress who thinks that she has all the answers. What to do about the competition? Stigmatize it, that’s what. Hell, in Catholic World, you’re not even supposed to have standard vanilla sex among married couples (or did this change?) unless it’s to pop one out of the oven. See, sex itself is insufficiently spiritual but the need for the dirty deed is recognized as an unfortunate necessity so they have to dress it up in a lot of joy-killing hoo-ha resulting in an ethos of hold-your-nose lovemaking, praise Jesus.
Take the Virgin Mary. The reason she and Our Savior are supposed to be so freakin’ holy is because she was impregnated without suffering the debasement of enjoying the experience.
Well, if that’s the way they feel, can you imagine what people like that are going to think about whacking off? Jesus!
But sexual relations when you’re single are also bad, saith the Roman Catholic Church. So that argument only makes sense if we’re talking about married people.
For how many decades does one have to masturbate before the sex drive starts dropping off? Just wondering.
This is purly speculation on my part, but it might have something to do with the philosophical view that matter is evil.
Of course Christianity adapted this to a variety of good and bad effects, but they were hardly the first to say that “sex = dirty”. The New Testament had its share of people who withdrew to a life of strict self denial, both among Judaic splinter groups (such as the Essenes) and Hellenistic philosophers (such as the Stoics). It didn’t help that a lot of local fertility cults involved rites with temple prostitutes and the like.
Thanks to Pius XII (out of all the modern popes this one had to do it!) the 1950 papal encyclical entitled “Humani Generis” gave Catholics the freedom to accept evolution.
Ever since 1858, the descent of man from other species was accepted by science as very likely (and lately -by science- as a fact with theories to explain it).
Just recently, masturbation has been found to be a good safeguard against prostate cancer.
Therefore, the Catholic Church at least, will do the right thing; and it will approve of masturbation around the time the Boston Red Sox win another pennant.
I’ve always suspected, in my more cynical moods, that the Church uses guilt to keep people in line. It would work like this:
Label a behaviour as sinful.
It’s got to be something everybody does, yet everybody must think they’re the only ones doing it.
Masturbating, or dirty thoughts, works the purpose just fine. It is done in private and every man thinks he’s the only one who does it. Or, the only one who does it that much. That still applies, even in these modern times. Most of my boyfriends thought they masturbated more then the average guy, and were slightly ashamed of it.
When everybody thinks they’ve got something to be ashamed of, they are easier to be kept in line. Divide 'em and rule 'em. When a guy is singled out for “impurity”, no-one will come to his defense, because everybody feels they’ve got something to hide too and nobody wants to draw attention to their own secretly sinful selves.
The mechanism further perpetuates itself because those who “sin” will try to make up for sinning by fiercely condemning “sinning” in others.
The Church has done this for ages, with, I daresay, results the opposite of what they say they want to achieve. Making sex sinful ensures it has a foremost place in everybody’s minds. It’s basically the “you must not, not think of a purple elephant”-paradox.
Making sex a dirty secret ensures people won’t get informed well, and won’t report abuse.
What’s the region with the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy in the world? A devoutly Roman-catholic country? The USA-Bible-belt? No! It used to be the Netherlands, with its totally permissive, practical young-people-will-do-it-anyway so-here’s-your-contraceptive-and-here’s-how-you-use-it-and-have-fun-now-dears-attitude.
I agree with **Maastricht ** (had to copy and paste *that * name!), I think it’s a form of control. I think if more teens were encouraged to masturbate, they might be getting into sexual relationships less casually, as well as knowing what a healthy sexual relationship is when they do have one.
