With the Hand

A Cultural History of Masturbation

Mels van Driel, Paul Vincent

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781861899576
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

People call it everything from "walking your dog" to "scratching your bean." Women usually do it at home. Men, it sometimes seems, do it everywhere. Some people think it's healthy; others think it is a sin that will send you straight to hell. But while many people declare that everyone's doing it, no one actually talks about it—outside the pages of Cosmo, masturbation is among the most taboo of topics, not suitable for polite society or public conversation.

Mels van Driel boldly breaks this silence in order to help the world overcome its diffidence toward solo sex in With the Hand. Consulting everyone from doctors and sexologists to feminists and chauvinists, van Driel explains what masturbation actually is and describes the latest discoveries and developmentson the subject. He also looks to theologians, historians, and philosophers to understand perceptions of masturbation across cultures and religions throughout history. Covering a great number of topics, including age, location, and frequency, as well as the effects of circumcision and the ability to have multiple orgasms, With the Hand also explores masturbation in art, literature, poetry, and music. Addressing the physical, mythical, and mythological, this often humorous and always informative book clears up the confusion surrounding this universal, and universally unmentionable, topic.

1

Introduction

Masturbation refers to the practice of stimulating one’s own genitalia in such a way as to produce sexual arousal and possibly orgasm. In the case of a man this means that his semen is not deposited in the appropriate orifice in a woman’s body. He wastes his seed, in the centuries-old view of many religions and cultures.

Other popular terms for this activity are onanism, autoeroticism, solitary sex and, more recently, sex for one. The phenomenon occurs in humans and animals and in both sexes. ‘Masturbation’ derives from the Latin words mas and turbare, ‘masculine/masculinity’ and ‘move (violently)’. A variant of this etymology interprets the first part of the word as a form of manus, ‘hand’, and the second as stuprum, ‘debauch’. The Latin poet Martial uses the form masturbor, i.e. as a deponent verb, which is passive in form and active in meaning. The active form masturbare is not found.

Slang terms for the practice of masturbation are legion and often very inventive. Besides the familiar British ‘wank’ and American ‘jerk off’, websites like www.nowscape.com yield literally hundreds of picturesque expressions for masturbation, male and female. For men these include: assault on a friendly weapon, being your own best friend, charming the cobra, Custer’s last stand, getting in touch with yourself, one man show, playing the organ, punishing the bishop, roughing up the suspect and shaking hands with Abe Lincoln. Women have a slightly more limited choice (though some examples, like ‘getting in touch with yourself’, are clearly unisex): a general term is ‘fingering (oneself)’, while others include a night with the girls, engaging in safe sex, having sex with someone you love, manual override, parting the Red Sea and squeezing the peach. A possible explanation for this imbalance in terminology is that while the genitalia form an integral part of a woman’s body, the phallus is an external organ, literally and figuratively ‘out on a limb’.

The very first surviving description of female masturbation is by the French writer Restif de la Bretonne, quoted by Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) in The Evolution of Modesty (Part 1 of Studies in the Psychology of Sex, 1897). In 1755 Restif had met a woman, not pretty but well-endowed, who had been brought up in a convent. He saw her becoming excited as she looked lustfully out of the window at a young man:

Her movements became agitated, I approached her and am convinced that she was using terms of endearment; she had gone red. Then she sighed deeply and stood motionless, stretching out her legs, which were stiff as if she were in pain . . .

Today there are excellent non-pornographic sites showing images and sounds of masturbating men and women. My own favourite is www.beautifulagony.com. On payment of a subscription one can see moving images of almost a thousand faces. The precise method of masturbation is not shown. Anyone can send in a digital video, again on payment of a fee. The contributors’ names are withheld, though the exact number of minutes and megabytes taken up by their heavenly experiences are not. Obviously many people have exhibitionistic tendencies, but the site itself could be called prudish, since as was said, no genitalia are on view – not as much as a nipple. A better site for physical detail is www.seemenmasturbate.com. The orgasms on www.beautifulagony.com, unlike those on many porn sites, are real. It is as if that authenticity is the payoff for the absence of breasts, vulvas, buttocks and penises. The high degree of realism excites the curiosity!

Despite the common denominator of lip-biting, groaning, etc., there is plenty of variety. Some people run their fingers through their hair, some cry, some yell. There seems to be a preference for as ‘big’ an orgasm as possible: the more exuberant and noisier the better. Goodbye shame.

In the cramped frames on www.beautifulagony.com things occasionally appear that give the orgasms a domestic flavour, for example, shampoo bottles on the edge of the bath and pillowslips with a ship pattern on them. Telephones ring and are sometimes even answered. ‘Hi, Dad.’ It’s hard to imagine a more respectable form of porn!

One journalist counted 965 faces on the website, 1,930 eyes, 965 noses, 1,930 ears, 965 mouths, about a hundred arms, a few pairs of glasses, rather more piercings, two Mohicans and 965 smiles. On the site faces are arranged next to each other like postage stamps, page after page, and they differ as faces always do – big noses, thin lips, pursed lips, laughing eyes, bags, freckles, light skin, dark skin, soft cheeks, moustache, goatee, a resemblance to an actor, an Adam’s apple, a Keith Richards. Yet there has been some pre-selection; it’s not a cross-section of the population. There are no children or elderly people, over-40s are rare, dyed hair normal. They could be passport photos for student cards, in a subject taken by more women than men, say art history or psychology.

Very occasionally masturbation is an oblique issue in politics. In 2009 a joke circulated in England relating to odd expenses claims by high-ranking politicians. What had happened? The husband of the country’s first female home secretary, Jacqui Smith, had rented a number of porn movies, which, it was maintained, had subsequently been inadvertently added to the minister’s claim for internet services. On 29 March 2009 Smith, who had already been severely criticized for treating her actual family house in Redditch as a ‘second home’ and her sister’s London residence as her main base, thus enabling her to claim expenses for the more expensive location, was forced to resign from the government. Subsequently the husband was accused of having ‘ruined her career single-handedly’! Smith loyally refused to condemn her partner’s liking for porn, and instead produced a BBC radio documentary, ‘Porn Again’, examining the state of the industry, highlighting the unprecedented accessibility of pornography today and in the process, she maintained, becoming less judgemental.

Back to our main theme: masturbation is definitely not a standard topic of conversation. Perhaps because there is so little of interest to be said about it? One may even wonder if counts as ‘sex’. In American education programmes for the prevention of AIDS and pregnancy it was fashionable for a while to present masturbation to teenagers as a safer choice than sex – a sop when recommending abstinence.

Of course it didn’t work. One activity bears little relation to the other. Whatever one understands by sex, it is at any rate more social than masturbating. According to some, masturbation is more like picking scabs or squeezing pimples. That, by the way, says a lot about those making such assertions.

Take a party where everyone’s having a good time. Add eight or so bottles of good white wine. A close-knit group of about six friends who have known each other for years and who at the end of the evening are still grouped in a tight circle. Via mortgage interest relief, the new iPod and the holiday in South Africa this kind of birthday conversation naturally gravitates towards more intimate areas: Bill’s calcified nails, Kate’s vaginismus, Harry’s severe constipation and Melanie’s experiments with the pee spout (a cardboard ‘watering can’ for women). And just when you think all inhibitions are gone and anything is up for discussion, the words ‘jerking off’ are used (‘Three times a day, my friend!), and the mood changes. ‘Now, now, Wim,’ says the hostess, ‘that’s enough of that kind of talk.’ Conclusion: masturbation tends to be avoided as a topic of conversation. This involves some strange assumptions: many women think men discuss it among themselves in their macho, bragging, shameless way, while men think women talk about it together, and are much more open about bodily matters than men. In practice we find that both groups are tight-lipped about it, women even more so than men. The only exception is boys in puberty.

A colleague who was at an English boarding school as an adolescent told me about the game of ‘soggy biscuit’. This required the boys to masturbate together around a biscuit. When they ejaculated the aim was to land their sperm on the biscuit. The last one to come had to eat up the soggy biscuit. My colleague refused to divulge any further details, though he did say that many boys at boarding school ejaculate into a woollen sock, to avoid staining the sheets.

A celebrated sexologist once claimed in an interview that not only did between 90 and 100 per cent of adolescent boys masturbate, but that there was also widespread mutual exploration and horseplay, with a marked competitive element: who’s got the biggest one, who can shoot first and furthest? Fortunately he overstated the situation with the other sex in the opposite direction. ‘Girls in the same age group swoon over Mills & Boon-type fiction.’ The sexologist was the Chief Officer of Health Care for Young People in the Netherlands. Himself a homosexual, his views on the acceptance of homosexuals proved over-optimistic. Sometimes the topics with which this high-profile official concerned himself were relatively innocent, like head lice in schools and vaccination in strictly religious areas, but mostly they were more sensitive, like drug use, paedophilia and homosexuality. One of his actions as Chief Officer was particularly striking. In the early 1970s there was a pop concert in Rotterdam, which the sexologist studied at close range. Afterwards he made a laconic statement about drug use. ‘The problem of alcohol has been hidden under the umbrella of drug use.’ On homosexuality he was progressive, and made it clear that it is not a disease. He was anxious to impress on parents that there was nothing wrong if their child came home and announced that they were gay or lesbian. He adapted a 1970s gay ‘bible’, which described in uncomplicated terms the joys and problems of gay life, and in the preface he expressed the hope that problems like guilt would have disappeared within ten years.

Everything was completely different back in the 1950s. On the cover of Timelessly Old-Fashioned, a book published in 2009 by the Dutch humorist Kees van Kooten (1941) is a picture of the shapely naked figure of Lorraine Burnette, an English glamour model who for years was his favourite ‘wet-dream woman’. It is a photo from the 1950s, the period of romanticism par excellence. A time when life was still manageable and people were thoughtful and spoke nicely. Without the internet, masturbation still required a lot of effort, and there was no sex education of any kind. Van Kooten discovered late that he could take things into his own hands. ‘These days boys can masturbate in comfort, with their mind-boggling array of aids, none of which were available when I was the same age as today’s youngsters’, sighed the writer in an interview.

In any case there is an obvious taboo on masturbation: an authoritative 2003 survey showed that as regards sexual taboos, masturbation is indisputably in first place for both men and women. Erectile problems and sexually transmitted diseases were in second and third place. Women generally enjoy talking, but when it comes to masturbation more of them find the topic difficult than do men (47 per cent as opposed to 32 per cent). The reason? In general men are more familiar with their sexual organs, for the simple reason that from an early age they encounter their penis when urinating. Girls have to conduct an active search to find out what everything looks like down below. That often does not happen, with the result that they continue to regard their genitalia as something dirty and ugly. Boys have their own worries, and when they are older they wonder whether a curved penis comes from too much jerking off. They don’t usually progress to deeper existential questions.

The same 2003 survey included a question on what phenomenon in modern society should definitely cease to be taboo. What was the result concerning the silence surrounding masturbation? Only 8 per cent of women and 16 per cent of men felt that the taboo on masturbation should be lifted. Conclusion: the taboo is unlikely to be abolished. Is that a bad thing? So what if a small amount of seed is wasted by men in masturbation? ‘And don’t forget the trees felled for the millions of paper tissues,’ you sometimes hear said in jest. That is much less applicable to women. True, some women do ejaculate, but compared with men the volumes are negligible.

Does it matter – physically – whether someone masturbates or not? Well, for women it makes little or no difference. They should simply exercise caution with strange objects, and the same obviously applies to men. Apart from that men must be careful not to be too violent, or they risk a penis fracture. This involves not breaking a bone, but rupturing the tunica albuginea, a tight capsule around the spongy body of the penis. Because of the thickness and tightness of this casing of connective tissue the rupture is sometimes accompanied by a snapping sound.

Another problem that can occur is the so-called ‘pipe-cleaner syndrome’. This involves a rather painful subcutaneous strand in the penis, caused by thrombosis in the subcutaneous vein due to masturbation. Fortunately this usually clears up by itself.

In itself it stands to reason that the habit of masturbation can lead to a certain passivity. But what’s wrong with that? For many people an active, mutually satisfying sex life is bound up with self-esteem and hence far from idyllic. All in all, however, it is not a good idea for men to masturbate five times in quick succession. The seminal vesicles empty and finally all that comes out is a little liquid or, in the worst case, blood.

Apart from that, after fourteen days of complete abstinence – no masturbation or coitus – the sperm cells will find their own way out via the urine. This is necessary, since in a healthy young man some 1,500 cells per second are produced.

‘Can masturbation do any harm? No. Does it do any good? For a brief moment, but apart from that it’s a rather daft activity,’ a columnist once wrote. ‘Daft – the way you down a chocolate éclair or two hotdogs by yourself, and call it supper.’ Who would want to contradict her? Well actually, I would. Perhaps many people masturbate with their loved one’s image in front of them. So isn’t that love? A lesser kind of love? What is ‘love’? For many people masturbating may be a way of loving themselves, but that has not yet been researched. Of course, if a person can share sexuality with someone else that is a bonus, but the chance of finding someone with whom you can get on well in that area for a lifetime is less than that of getting on with yourself. And you cannot argue that someone does it by himself because he or she is not capable of forming relationships. Who says that assertion is correct? We should stop reacting with supposed shock when masturbation comes up in conversation. Perhaps we should encourage it, since for many people it is just as enjoyable and healthy as those hot dogs! Moreover, many people are unaware that masturbation, like coitus, is a good cure for hiccups (Peleg and Peleg 2000)!

I am convinced that many people, old and young, educated and uneducated, still suffer from the taboo on masturbation. On Friday 9 January 2009 the Dutch Society for Sexual Medicine held its annual general meeting, which proved a memorable occasion. Its theme was ‘Sex and Science’. The last speaker was Professor Wubbo Ockels, the first Dutch astronaut, whose topic was ‘sex in space’. The audience was spellbound. The professor omitted to mention ‘Rocket Man (I Think it’s Going to be a Long, Long Time)’ by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, which among other things describes how astronauts pass the time (Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone . . .). However, he did demonstrate that astronauts cannot possibly have sexual intercourse. Only at the end of his talk did he mention the special space sleeping bag, his own personal design, ‘which the Russians still use’, ‘in which your hands had some freedom of movement . . .’, and as a finale he confessed that he had once ‘done it’. The M-word did not pass his lips, though he did remark that in space ‘you had to be careful with liquids . . .’ Some poets express themselves in the same way, as if their bodies ejaculate litres of sperm, and they might bring about a deluge!

After hearing Ockels I decided to write this book. Perhaps I might be able to put paid to the taboo on masturbation. Or at least put paid to all kinds of nonsense about masturbation. I began by reading bulky works by historians and sociologists. What a disappointment! I found that one of the historians ended his book, dry as dust and hundreds of pages long, with the conclusion that he didn’t know the answer and that the question of why masturbation was a taboo should be left to the psychologists. That doesn’t get us very far. What is the solution? To extract a few pages from my book Manhood, surf the internet and explore libraries to consult theologians, historians, classicists, doctors, sexologists, art connoisseurs, artists, philosophers, poets, musicians and feminists, and to weld everything into a narrative. It starts off cheerfully, but unfortunately ends in a minor key. The chapters on writers, poets and artists are intended for true culture lovers of both sexes.

2

Ages, Locations and Frequencies

Does everyone do it? Or has every one done it? The answer is yes! For some people, masturbation is actually the high point of their day. The celebrated gynaecologist Hector Treub put it succinctly: ‘We’ve all masturbated and those who say they’ve never done it, are still doing it!’ His pronouncement was undoubtedly inspired by two famous German psychologists. Professor Berger had written long before: ‘Masturbation is such a widespread activity that 99% of young men and women indulge in it on a temporary basis and the hundredth, the pure person, is hiding the truth.’ Moll’s comment was: ‘Those who deny they have ever masturbated, have often simply forgotten.’

Small children

It is not only the sexually mature who masturbate: small children also stimulate themselves. Two-year-olds often do it by rhythmically tensing and relaxing their closed legs. Hands are sometimes also used. The Danish researchers Hansen and Balslev analysed video footage of two boys and eleven girls and observed them exerting pressure on their nappies, sometimes with their hands and sometimes with toys. Small children are sometimes quite wrongly referred to a children’s neurologist because of suspected epileptic attacks, when the movement pattern indicates masturbation, often combined with sweating, flushing and hyperventilation. This activity peaks around the age of...