They say masturbation can cause insanity and blindness… Hmmm… I always thought the opposite was more likely to be true… NO, not insanity and blindness cause masturbation… 😉
Rather, that no masturbation is more likely to cause insanity!
I wonder where that idea came from? Was it from the same people who attempt to make people feel guilty for doing so?
Anyway, since the imagination is quite obviously used a great deal in the process of masturbation and the brain is undoubtedly the largest sex organ we have, I think there is much self-hypnosis occurs around the subject… Let me explain, I have much more to get off my chest…
I recently saw this piece of research at LiveScience website… Which I guess was conducted by an early Victorian Catholic priest school master! It is entitled “Masturbation May Increase Risk of Prostate Cancer.” But the headline misrepresents the study being reported — and doesn’t even accurately summarise the content of the story… Why might that be? Is it influenced by a seeming inherent strange attitude towards the subject of masturbation?
In fact, with this study, all the researchers concluded was a preliminary suggestion of some remote correlation between frequency of masturbation among a few men in their 20s and higher occurrence of prostate cancer later in life. Correlation, not causation, I hasten to add!… Ok, enough with the big words today…
Logic would lead one to think that some men might masturbate more than others because they have a higher sex drive, which would likely be related to higher levels of testosterone and related hormones, no?
The science around the relation between male sex hormones and prostate cancer is unclear. A number of studies have found no relation at all, while others (like the study cited above) have found that higher levels of these hormones appear to indicate increased risk of developing prostate cancer later in life. There are many reports on these contradictory studies found all over the internet.
I even tracked down a piece of research whereby a team of Australian researchers, had found that men who had ejaculated more than five times per week between the ages of 20 and 50 were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life.
So the message being sent by the headline, that masturbation could cause cancer, may well be not only wrong, but destructive… Because it could be yet another reason for young men to fear masturbating and starting to become even more paranoid about it!
The paranoia and functioning of fear in the brain is some powerful self-hypnosis that can contribute to all kinds of unwanted thought processes potentially harmful to the individual as he embarks on his sexual life…
Well, anti-masturbation paranoia is nothing new. While the anti-masturbation frenzy has roots deep in Western history… There are teams of anti-masturbation people out there who continue to attempt to find medical support for the work of Simon André Tissot, who published A Treatise on the Disease Produced by Onanism in 1758… Hahahaha… Masturbation causes and is a disease according to this publication!
The people who read and believe in this stuff are surely the same people trying to ban swear words in the UK at the moment (as per my blog yesterday)… If these people do not masturbate and swear out loud soon (could actually work well in combination!), they might all start to spontaneously combust, grow extra limbs or worst of all… Keep bleeting on self-righteously to the rest of us happily swearing and masturbating!
Hahaha…
A century later, in 1858, a highly respected British gynaecologist named Isaac Baker Brown (president of the Medical Society of London at the time), proposed that most women’s diseases were attributable to over-excitement of the nervous system, with the pudic nerve, which runs to the clitoris, being particularly culpable… You know what I am about to say next, don’t you? This is incredibly ridiculous, yet it went on within the official medical circles…
Brown listed the eight stages of progressive disease triggered by masturbation: first comes hysteria, then spinal irritation, hysterical epilepsy, cataleptic fits, epileptic fits, idiocy, mania and finally, death….
DEATH?! ?
Any women reading this? Are you now terrified?
… because that is what they want! I am getting paranoid myself now…
Baker Brown performed an unknown number of clitorectomies in his clinic (The London Surgical Home) before finally being disgraced and expelled from the London Obstetrical Society for irregularities in obtaining consent from his victims… Ahem… I mean, patients.
As is well documented, Baker Brown subsequently went insane… Was that because he masturbated too much himself, then? 😉
From then on though, clitorectomy was promptly discredited in British medical circles… Phew… I can uncross my legs again and think of something else…
I will jsut add though, that the damage his work did still affected many official circles… As late as 1936 in the US, Holt’s Diseases of Infancy and Childhood, a respected medical-school text, recommended surgical removal or cauterization of the clitoris as a cure for masturbation in girls!
The craziness around masturbation would be amusing if it hadn’t led to so much suffering… I bet that several people reading this right now are perhaps a tad uncomfortable or unable to discuss this subject matter intimately with friends or family, am I right?
I mean, did you know, for example, that Graham crackers were invented as a way to discourage boys from polishing their rockets? Bland foods were thought to dampen the flames of libido, so Graham and Kellog invented their nearly tasteless foods to help boys control their urges!
It is like something from the brilliant spoof book ‘Road to Wellville‘… Yet when this stuff seaps unnecessarily into the lives of others, it can start them thinking that it is wrong to do so, and that it is harmful and do we really need that attitude towards ourselves or towards sex?
To end this week on a lighter note, and in keeping with yesterdays foul-mouthed theme… I want to leave you a humourous quote:
By TouRhett Butler
“Frankly my dear, I don’t fucking give a bastard damn!”
I’ll be back to my usual, puritanical self next week, now I have all this out of my system… This is supposed to be a blog about hypnosis and personal development after all…
If you want more fuel for your evidently fevered mind … look into this: Mucaura’s Pulsocon Circulator. This was a tool used in Victorian days to “cure” the very hysteria you’re talking about.
Those attitudes and misapprehensions about the effects of masturbation and sex, btw, largely came from the Victorian era, I believe. And it stemmed partly from the religious belief of the time and partly from the medical philosophy at the time (I believe they were still in the four humors period then).
Anyway, have a good weekend, Adam.
Joshua
Thanks Josh… I have had many, many similar comments emailed, at facebook and elsewhere with that opinion… I appreciate your comments.
Amazing how taboo it all still seems…
Josh, always great hearing from you, thanks – you have a fab weekend too, A.
Sex education at my school wasn’t great. Probably why my first time with a girl included a moment where she put her hands on her hips and exclaimed: “Now come on, Marty! Does that look like it goes in there?” There was also a lot of falling over and goodness knows how we got anything done. Incidently, I learned through experience. I’m not some kind of sexual Frank Spencer falling about the place and muttering: “ooh, Betty!”
At high school, they sat us in a room where the sex ed teacher told us about the different “contraception tools” that he and his wife did or did not use. To avoid this, we convinced him we hadn’t seen a video we’d seen forty times. In this video, a very bad actor went through scenes featuring all the dangers of unprotected sex and then, for some reason, a load of kids from the 1980s had a debate with some “experts” on masturbation. I ask you: who on earth would put “expert on masturbation” on their C.V.
The debate opened with the question: “Is masturbation wrong?” The panel then acted as if they were on Question Time and started going on about the pros and cons which, I am almost sure, included the merits of hiding the mags and porn collection if you hear your Mum coming up the stairs. One of my friends at school would constantly do the Beavis and Butthead laugh every time someone said any word that even sounded slightly sexual so, as you can imagine, he enjoyed this video debate very much.
Sex is a powerful force. Sometimes it sits with love and love is always more powerful than it but sometimes sex does its own thing. It can be both casual and meaningful.
The routes of this paranoia over masturbation do not lie in the Victorian era. Sure, such paranoia was rampant back then but Mr and Mrs upper class didn’t come up with such paranoia whilst having a cup of afternoon tea. The routes of such paranoia extend much further back than the Victorian era. Sure, you had blatant sexism masquerading as science back then but that was just a desperate attempt to find hard evidence for long standing religious and moral views.
Look to the suppression of the female divine and you’ll discover where a lot of the masturbation paranoia comes from. Ah, I’ve used the word “come”. I can hear my old school friend laughing his Beavis and Butthead laugh now.
Incidently, sex for me no longer involves falling over or any Frank Spencer moments. The better half and I explore our desires in a fun way. Her best trick was promising me a wonderful night of hot sex but only if I sat through Sex and the City the movie on DVD and 27 dresses. If I complained once, I was sleeping alone that night. I tried but I just couldn’t do it.
Well. What a week it has been on Adam’s blog. At least the grand finale does presuppose that it is more a question of a woman’s relationship with her….well, with her”self” shall we say, that is the main factor in the quality of her orgasm, and that therefore the size of the wallet or whatever of the man that she is or isn’t with is pretty irrelevant to how she comes 😉
The Chinese say that to live long and prosper a person needs to look after their Kidney chi, and that either too much or too little sexual stimulation/activity can be damaging to Kidney chi. So it’s again a case of “everything in moderation including excess.”
And I’m sure I once leafed through a fascinating tome called “the multiorgasmic man” or something that explained how a man can wank, and not ejaculate, but instead redirect his chi in a way that makes him come like a girl. Now there’s a thought to play with!