Or how choking the bishop might just save the world.
When I was a kid, there was a statistic floating around that Toronto was the world’s second largest Italian-speaking city. I don’t know if the statistic was true, but given the composition of my neighbourhood, it seemed probable. One result was that there was (and still is) a lot of Italian TV programming which I would sometimes watch. I had a theory that, between friends teaching me how to swear in Italian and watching Italian TV, I could learn another language. I remember a scene in a movie starring Sophia Loren as a harried single Catholic mom (widower of course) who was trying to feed breakfast to her many children. She was scolding her oldest boy for masturbating too much and the dialogue went like this:
Mother: You masturbate too much. You need to stop.
Son: Why?
Mother: It’s not good for you; you might go blind.
Son: Who says?
Mother: Our priest.
Son: Who? The blind one?
There are all sorts of religious prohibitions against masturbation. In Catholic circles, myths about blindness almost count as a teaching of the magisterium.
Section 2337 of the Roman Catholic Catechism speaks to the virtue of chastity. “Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.” Fair enough, but section 2396 says: “Among the sins gravely contrary to chastity are masturbation, fornication, pornography, and homosexual practices.” This, of course, raises the obvious question: how on earth can men who profess to be celibate have sufficient experience to offer any useful advice about matters of sexuality?
In more severe Protestant fundamentalist evangelical sects, the Genesis story of Onan dominates thought about masturbation. While, technically, Onan committed coitus interruptus, the fact that God killed him for spilling his seed on the ground should be a lesson for us all. If you believe this story, then an interesting logic takes hold:
- God punishes us for our sins.
- But God is just.
- Justice includes the idea of proportionality. The severity of the punishment is proportional to the severity of the sin.
- Masturbation receives the worst possible punishment.
- Ergo masturbation must be the worst possible sin.
The result of this logic is that you can commit genocide and get off more lightly than someone who, uh, gets off.
The masturbation taboo is not unique to the Judeo-Christian heritage. Writing from the Buddhist perspective in The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Yukio Mishima tells of an acolyte who both masturbates and has nocturnal emissions. The young man experiences these as matters of shame and refers to them, much like the Old Testament writers, as “pollutions” and “self-abuse.”
While we tend to associate the masturbation taboo with Old Testament myths, Jesus offers an indirect prohibition which may, in fact, be more influential. In the Sermon on the Mount, he tells followers that sin involves not only what you do, but also what you think: “You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Note that women are off the hook, except, presumably, lesbians.)
Given that masturbation is almost always coupled with fantasy, the potential for adulterous “sin” is enormous. “So what do you think about?” asks my wife. “I don’t know,” I lie. “Me, right?” “Sure,” I lie. The trap is set and I get caught in it every time. There is no way to answer this line of questioning without being accused of something wrong. You’re either an “adulterer” or a “liar.” Which illustrates why most people have no use for traditional religion—they take it as implying that normal healthy people ought to feel bad about being normal and healthy.
Twentieth century sexology offers some hard evidence on the matter, especially around the issue of prevalence. Virtually every able-bodied male of every cultural group and ethnicity masturbates. (Scholars wonder what Jesus was doing from the age of twelve to thirty, but the answer should be obvious.) And while masturbation amongst women is not universal, it’s still the rule rather than the exception.
The fact is that even before masturbation is possible, young children have a fascination with their own bodies and find it pleasurable to touch their genitalia. Virtually all of us can offer anecdotal evidence to support this. I still smile when I recall how, in my own household, there came the fateful “masturbation call” from school. We tried to keep a straight face while the child care worker laid out the gory details of the incident. I concluded that masturbation was a misnomer. Our four-year-old had simply whipped it out for a bit of exploration, and isn’t that what education is all about? Getting to know your world—even the world between your legs? The interview revealed nothing new about our son; what it revealed with absolute clarity was the extent of the child care worker’s anxiety.
At the same time as we have exposed the prevalence of masturbation, recent discoveries of cellular biology render ludicrous the notions of wasting seed or degrading its efficacy. Men have these little spermatozoa factories that go on manufacturing the tiny guys throughout most of adulthood. And a spermatozoan is a spermatozoan is a spermatozoan. Doesn’t matter whether it’s been hanging around inside a pair of testicles for fifty years or fifty seconds, it has all the genetic material it needs to get the job done.
The only thing that has remained unchanged in the lore of masturbation is the “release factor.” In ancient times there were prohibitions against sex and masturbation for soldiers on the eve of battle. This was viewed as a way of enhancing aggression. The practice persists in pro sports before important games.
Notwithstanding new knowledge and its greater availability, discussions of masturbation still remain taboo. In pop culture, there’s only a handful of references. There’s Led Zeppelin’s “Lemon Song” and a reference to mutual masturbation in “In The Car” by the Barenaked Ladies. There’s a Seinfeld episode, a shower scene in American Beauty, and Limp Bizkit is named after a somewhat gross masturbation game. But not much else comes to mind.
Given the relative scarcity of masturbation in pop culture, it should come as no surprise that masturbation conversation is virtually absent from religious dialogue. Have you ever heard a sermon devoted to masturbation? Have you ever had a discussion group? What about your communicants or catechumens? They’re right at that age when sexual awareness is exploding in all kinds of awkward ways. What could be more timely? “Yes, it’s normal. No, you won’t wear it out. Yes, it’s OK to enjoy your body. No, you won’t go blind.” One exception I’ve encountered in the religious context is a course called “Good Sex” taught by Marilyn Legge at Emmanuel College. But don’t get all excited. The “Good” refers to sexual ethics, not technique.
There are two religious justifications for prohibiting masturbation that I’m willing to entertain (though unwilling to practice). The first is found, for example, within Buddhism and the Catholic practice of the celibate priesthood. This is the notion that there is a spiritual reward inherent in self-control. While I admire people who undertake this discipline with an integrity of motive, I have difficulty with the way it is often presented. Religious celibacy is a vocation, not a requirement. Most people feel no calling to religious celibacy. So it shouldn’t be held up to typical religious masturbators like me as an ideal against which we have fallen short. That’s like the coach at a track and field tryout who sets the bar at a hundred meters and tells the athletes they can’t join the team unless they make the jump. You can trivialize virtue by making a task too easy; but you can also trivialize it by making it too hard.
The second justification has to do with sanctity of life, and bears an affinity to Catholic arguments around birth control and abortion. It reflects a concern that if people are too callous about masturbation and the life-giving nature of semen, this will desensitize them in their reverence for life. The most obvious response is that only a man could think up something like this and forget to exempt women. Nothing is lost if a woman masturbates, and the world is probably richer for the pleasure she experiences. As for men, see my comment above about the tiny spermatozoa factories that dangle between our legs. Again, nothing is lost and the world is probably richer for the pleasure we experience.
The “reverence for life” justification should be turned on its head. The best way we can express our reverence for life is through the experience of pleasure and the celebration of our bodies. Joy is a virtue—not the furtive secretive pleasure of a sensation we’ve been duped into feeling guilty about, but the full-on delicious unabashed joy that comes from savouring the experience of embodiment.
I also believe it’s possible to move by analogy to a global experience of joy in embodiment. The Romantic poets knew this intuitively when they expressed their rapture at beauty in the natural world. But we’ve lost that feeling. The attitude that finds in embodiment “pollution” or “self-abuse” has, in its orientation to the world at large—to Gaia—taken literally the notion of “pollution” and “self-abuse.” Gaia has offered up stolen pleasures and we’ve thrown back land-fill dump sites, and toxic aquifers, and an atmosphere overloaded with carbon dioxide. If we cultivated that full-on delicious unabashed joy, we might find ourselves celebrating our global embodiment in ways that are healthier.
To put it bluntly: masturbate; it’s good for you; and it’s good for the world.
I leave you with an image of a mayoralty candidate who ran for office here in Toronto several years ago. I think his name is Kevin Clarke. He ran on the masturbation platform. He wanted Canada to be a masturbation nation. I voted for him. He was right. If there was more masturbation, crime rates would drop, drivers would be more courteous, and people would smile at one another on elevators. Overall, I think Mr. Clarke had an excellent civic plan. Maybe next election.
