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Masturbation is the manual excitation of the sexual organs,
most often to the point of orgasm. It can refer to excitation either by oneself or by
another (see mutual masturbation), but most commonly it is
restricted to refer only to such activities performed alone. It is part of a larger set of activities known as autoeroticism, which also includes the use of sex toys and non-genital stimulation. Masturbation and sexual intercourse are the two most common sexual practices.
Etymology
The word masturbation is believed by many to derive from a plural Greek word for penis (μεζεα--
mezea) and the Latin word turba, meaning disturbance. A competing etymology based on a Latin phrase meaning "to defile with the hands" is
regarded by most dictionaries as "an old conjecture". The esoteric and little-used synonym manustupration derives from
this etymology.
The word onanism was formerly used as a synonym because it was linked to a Biblical story (Genesis 38:7-9) in which a man called Onan "spilled his seed [semen] upon the ground" to
avoid impregnating his dead brother's wife (see levirate
marriage) and, because "the thing which he did displeased the LORD", was killed. It is now generally agreed that the passage
refers to the sexual contraception method of coitus interruptus but not to masturbation, and so the term has become
obsolete in English.
Masturbation among human females
Females commonly stroke or rub the vulva, especially the clitoris. Women may also use running water to stimulate the vulva. Many women enjoy stimulation of the
vagina by inserting fingers or an object. Some women can experience sexual stimulation
just by crossing their legs tightly.
Masturbation among human males
The most common form of masturbation in uncircumcised males is gripping the skin of the penis and moving it up and down,
resulting in repeated sliding of the foreskin back and forth over the glans penis (the head of the penis) until orgasm is achieved. Circumcised men, who lack a foreskin, may instead either directly massage the glans
with one or both hands, often with the aid of a sexual lubricant,
or, apparently more commonly, slide the skin of the shaft up and down beneath the glans. Although the skin may in so doing touch
the corona of the glans, in most men, this method results in no direct stimulation of the upper glans surface (as in
uncircumcised men) and ejaculation is achieved almost entirely from
stimulation of the shaft and its contact against the underside of the corona only. Another method is to lie face down on a smooth
surface of comfortable material like a bed mattress and rub the penis against it until orgasm is achieved.
A 1989 Australian survey of 85 men found that nearly two-thirds of circumcised men masturbated with the help of a lubricant,
while almost all intact men used the foreskin and the shaft skin to do so. [1]
More so than in the past, some men use an artificial vagina for masturbation. Men who can reach their penis with their tongue sometimes also
perform autofellatio, in which the man licks or sucks his own penis.
Ejaculation of semen can be messy, but may be controlled by wearing a condom or by ejaculating into an artificial vagina or even into a sock or rag, or it may just
be wiped up with a tissue.
Methods common to both human genders
Ways of masturbating common to members of both sexes include pressing or rubbing the genital area against an object, such as a pillow, inserting fingers or an object into the anus, and stimulating the penis or vulva/clitoris with electric vibrators, which may also be inserted into the vagina or anus. Members of both sexes may also enjoy touching,
rubbing, or pinching the nipples while masturbating. Both sexes sometimes use lubricating substances to improve the sensation available.
Reading or viewing pornography, or sexual fantasy, are common adjuncts to
masturbation in adolescence and adulthood. Various fetishes and paraphilias can also play a part in the masturbation ritual; potentially harmful or
fatal activities include autoerotic asphyxiation and
self-bondage.
It would be incorrect to assume that masturbation begins with puberty. In the book Human Sexuality: Diversity in
Contemporary America, by Strong, Devault and Sayad, the authors point out, "A baby boy may laugh in his crib while playing
with his erect penis (although he does not ejaculate). Baby girls sometimes move their bodies rhythmically, almost violently,
appearing to experience orgasm."
Health and psychological effects
It is being increasingly recognised in mental health circles that masturbation can relieve depression and lead to a higher
sense of self worth. Masturbation can also be particularly useful in relationships where one partner wants more sex than the
other - in which case masturbation provides a balancing effect and thus a more harmonious relationship.
Both from the standpoint of avoiding unwanted pregnancy and that of avoiding
sexually transmitted diseases,
masturbation is the safest of sexual practices. There is no credible scientific or medical evidence that manual masturbation is
damaging to either one's physical or mental health. Contrary to popular myth, it does
not make the palms hairy, cause blindness or genital shrinkage. The only side-effects recorded are that repeated masturbation may
result in tiredness or soreness, which tend to make repeated masturbation self-limiting in any case, and that the volume of
ejaculate is temporarily reduced in men after multiple ejaculations until normal seminal volume is regained in a day or so.
Nevertheless, people from a socially conservative or religious background may experience attendant feelings of guilt during or after masturbation.
Solitary masturbation carries no risk of pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. Masturbation with a man and a woman can
result in pregnancy only if semen contacts the vulva. Any masturbation with a partner can
theoretically result in transmission of sexually transmitted disease by contact with semen or female sexual fluids, and such
contact should be avoided with any partner whose disease-negative status you are not sure of. Objects inserted into the vagina or
anus should be clean and of a kind that will not scratch or break. Care should be taken not to fully insert anything into the
anus - any object used should have a flared or flanged base; otherwise retrieval can require a visit to the emergency room. Most
modern dildos and anal plugs are designed with this feature.
On July 16, 2003, an Australian research
team led by Graham Giles of
The Cancer Council
published a medical study which concluded that frequent masturbation by males may help prevent the development of prostate cancer, and that it would be more helpful than ejaculation through
sexual intercourse because sex can transmit diseases which can increase the risk of cancer instead.
Masturbation in history and society
As noted above, modern medicine recognizes that there is no significant harm
(short term or long term) caused by the practice of masturbation, and regards it as a normal practice. In past times, however,
some medical professionals taught that all sorts of deleterious effects could occur as a result of masturbation. Since the 18th
century, many "remedies" have been devised for masturbation, including regularly eating corn flakes, physical restraint, electric shock, treating the genitalia with stinging nettles, or surgically removing them entirely. In later decades, the more drastic of these measures were
increasingly replaced with psychological techniques, such as telling children they will get hairy hands or that their face will
turn green from masturbating. In the United States and other English-speaking nations, routine neonatal circumcision was widely adopted in part because of its believed preventive effect
against masturbation.
Many conservative religious groups teach masturbation to be a sinful practice. The
Catechism of the Catholic
Church, paragraph 2352, lists masturbation as one of the "Offenses Against Chastity" and calls it "an intrinsically and gravely disordered action" because "use of the sexual faculty, for
whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." It
goes on to caution that extenuating factors could exist, such as immaturity, habitual, or psychological problems.
St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians of the
Catholic Church, went so far as to teach that masturbation is a graver sin than rape. In
his masterwork, the Summa Theologica, he addresses the sin
of lust under the heading of "Secunda Secundae Partis, Question 154 ." Under Article One, he divides the sin of lust into six
categories: "the vice against nature," simple fornication, incest, adultery, seduction and rape. Under Article Eleven, the Angelic
Doctor divides "the vice against nature" into four sub-categories: masturbation, bestiality, homosexuality and non-procreative heterosexual sex. Finally, under Article Twelve, he explains that "the
vice against nature," including masturbation, is clearly worse than the other five types of lust-based sins, for it is a sin
against both nature and reason, whereas rape is merely a sin against reason alone. (See also II-II 153 .) This hierarchy of sin was repudiated by the Catholic
Church fairly recently; Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903) praised Aquinas'
"invincible" arguments in his 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris, claiming that "reason, born on the wings of Thomas, can
scarcely rise higher, while faith could scarcely expect more or stronger aids from reason than those which she has already
obtained through Thomas."
Masturbation and circumcision
It has been argued that the practice of circumcision for non-religious reasons, still wide-spread in some countries, arose
originally as one of the most popular remedies against masturbation. See circumcision and female circumcision for a
detailed discussion. Extreme male circumcisions, where much of the penis' skin is removed, are in fact effective against
masturbation because erections can become very painful, severely restricting the sexual use of the organ. Such circumcisions
would today be referred to as malpractice in a medical context, but are
sometimes practiced in a religious one.
As noted above, even routine male circumcision complicates masturbation, because the glans penis, which is keratinized and
less sensitive in circumcised males, cannot be massaged with the help of the foreskin. Masturbation becomes more difficult to
learn and may be experienced as more troublesome. Several surveys indicate that uncircumcised men and boys masturbate earlier and
more frequently than circumcised men. [3] A survey in the United States has indicated the
opposite [4] , but that has been attributed to strong
sociodemographic difference between the two groups of circumcised and uncircumcised men in that country in particular. Even in
pro-circumcision circles, the negative effect on masturbation, through the painful aftereffects of the operation and the
complication of the process, is sometimes cited as an advantage. [5]
Circumcision opponents like Paul M. Fleiss [6] also refer to the over 20,000 nerve-endings in the removed
tissue, which are believed to contribute to a loss of pleasure. While foreskin restoration can alleviate keratinization and make masturbation using the foreskin possible,
it cannot regenerate the lost nerve-endings.
In males with phimosis, frenulum
breve and other similar rare conditions of the foreskin, however, circumcision alleviates painful erections (if present) and
therefore increases the likelihood that masturbation would be pleasurable, as would successful foreskin stretching, frenoplasty,
or frenectomy.
Masturbation in animals other than humans
Masturbation is said to be common in many species of animals, including deer, monkeys, kangaroos, and iguanas, according to
some scientific studies.
Law
Masturbation tends to be legal, even by children, as long as nobody else is involved and no image is made.
Masturbation in a public place and in cases where somebody else is
unexpectedly confronted with it, is indecent exposure.
Laws may vary for masturbation as part of a
performance, as visitor of a live or screen performance, as participant in a sex
party, etc.
Euphemisms
Because masturbation is often an uncomfortable topic among peers, a huge variety of euphemisms and dysphemisms have been invented to describe it.
Some of the more common ones include wank, jerk off, jack off, pull off, whack off,
spanking the monkey, and choking the chicken.
Humor and masturbation
Masturbation, mainly male masturbation, has long been the subject of humor. Even in the early Twentieth Century, Mail Pouch Tobacco advertisements in some
cases featured a boy baby reaching into his diaper, with the caption, "He's found his mail pouch."
In 1879, Mark Twain gave a humorous
talk at the Stomach Club in Paris entitled Some Thoughts on the Subject of Onanism, which concluded with the thought "If
you must gamble your lives sexually, don't play a lone hand too much." This talk was not published until 1943.
Some famous wits have commented on masturbation, as in P. J.
O'Rourke's quote: *"Sophisticated persons masturbate without compunction. They do it for reasons of health, privacy, thrift
and because of the remarkable perfection of invisible partners."
Humorous songs have been written about masturbation, such as Chuck Berry's
hit song, My Dingaling. This song has no sexually explicit lyrics, but is clearly intended as a double entendre. Also note the song "I Touch Myself" by DiVinyls, sung
in one of the final scenes in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
There are much older songs on the subject, including this old parody on a classic operatic tune (sing to the tune of
Funiculi, funicula):
- Last night, I lay my head upon my pillow,
- But stayed up late, to masturbate,
- Last night, I lay myself upon my bed, but
- I stayed awake, for pleasure's sake.
- You should see me working on the short strokes,
- It's really grand, I use my hand;
- You should see me working on the long strokes,
- It's really neat, I use my feet.
- Smash it! Bash it! Pound it on the floor!
- Smite it! Bite it! Ram it through the door!
- Oh, it's so neat to beat your meat while sitting on the toilet seat,
- Isn't life divine,
- Funiculi, funicula.
In recent years, there have been many masturbation jokes in movies, such as in
American Pie, where the pie (more or less of the title) is used as
a masturbation object to generate humor.
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