BBC: Masturbation cuts your risk of prostate cancer. I look forward to the screams and wails from the Anti-Sex League/Defenders of the Hearth and Home via Policing Everyone Else's Bedroom.
What the article doesn't say, but I have often speculated about: *how* the boys might masturbate for best results? Because I'm thinking: besides the fact that ejaculation is good for you (hello), also, anal penetration can be a real effective way to massage the prostate...
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I've never understood why ppl freak out about wanking. Some days, I'm just shocked that after 35 years, at least, of more enlightened ideas, the puritanical streak still persists. *shudder*
I guess we can expect the Republican apology to President Clinton's Surgeon General, Joycelyn Elders, any time now.
I'm just waiting for similar data about women. One study could undercut two thousand years of patriarchal anti-sex fascism!
Oh, who am I kidding, they'd find a way to oppress us with that too. "Wife, have you masturbated today? Well, get to it! And make sure you reach in there real good. The office just slashed our health insurance benefits."
If you're willing to poke around some of the Victoriana dealing with the subject, the loopiness, it is overwhelming. Chastity belts for kids, arguments that touching yourself is a lead-in to homosexuality, or even *is* homosexuality (what's a straight boy doing touching a penis?? the fact that it's his own is NO EXCUSE).
But here, a contemporary godbag will explain it all for you:
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt67.html
""Onanism", the term derived from Genesis 38: 9-10 which in traditional Christian usage has designated both masturbation and unnatural intercourse between a man and woman, is not exactly a pleasant theme to write about. And in a sense, that fact itself is the short answer to those who claim that these sorts of acts are ethically indifferent or innocent. In other words, the spontaneous negative emotional reaction of ordinary, decent people to such practices is really a 'message' from the God who speaks to us in the still, small voice of our moral conscience."
***
In other words, it's just...well, it's ICKY. Everybody knows that. Everyone who's *got* a moral conscience, that is (cough*hellboundheathen*cough).
I call that still, small voice Tony.
REDRUM, REDRUM.
The fear of masturbation is just another one of those old, old laws that have no more relvance. It was the idea that societies had to multiply to ensure their survival, and so masturbating was keeping you from actually screwing someone and making a baby. Just like birth control, homosexuality, and on and on.
Why aren't we moralizing now about how the fact that we've multiplied so much is destroying the earth? I know that the Religious Right has gotten all into environmentalism lately (which is, I guess, good). But why haven't they gotten on the over-population band wagon? If they can switch from saying, "God made the earth and all its riches for man," to, "Contributing to global warming and climate change kills people - it's a right-to-life issue," then why can't they make the same 180s on ridiculous things like this?
The sin of pride, I'd say. You know, God made the world *for us.* Oh, we still totally suck and all, what with the whole Original Sin thing? But at the same time, we're really, really special. So we must make sure there's more and more of us.
And btw, I'm not sure it's "the religious right" that's come around so much as a section of evangelistic Christianity, which is not synonymous with the RRR (though there's a lot of overlap). But roughly, I think what's happened is that some people are reframing environmentalism as "look, God called us to be stewards of this earth, it's His creation, we're just renting." Something like that. The reproduction thing, welll...see, that leads one into the much stickier area of S-E-X. So it may be a while, for some of these basically decent people, on that score.
Ahhh...very good distinction (evangelicals and the Religious Right). We're not supposed to have religion in our politics. I forget that. I've been successfully brainwashed.
I had to correct someone the other day when she said that US troops were hunting the Taliban in Tora Bora. When I pointed out that they were actually hunting out Al Qaeda (terrorists) who had aligned themselves and gotten refuge with the Taliban (a legitimate political regime), she still didn't quite get the distinction. Looks like those Bushies have successfully convinced us all that we are not invading actual countries and toppling actual political leaders - just a bunch of suicide bombers.
Sad, sad, sad.
The issue about chastity belts for kids mostly handles about two subjects:
- Controlling kids maximally
- Making money form mostly fictive needs.
I say mostly fictive, because there can be cases when a similar device can be used for therapy or for helping a kid with his/her bodily needs, but then the purpose shall not be to curbe sexuality.
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