The fact that a whole month is devoted to self-pleasure raises two important questions: Who decides these things, and what are people meant to do over the 11 months from June through April?On the former question, it seems that anyone can declare that a day, a month or even a year be dedicated to a particular cause. The UN endorses some of these. For example, last year, 2013, was both the International Year of Water Cooperation and the International Year of Quinoa. Oh, yes, it was!
Perhaps I needn’t say it, but International Masturbation Month has not been recognized by the UN… yet.
Like many ideas surrounding sex, Masturbation Month is American. Formerly “National Masturbation Month,” it did not require Republicans and Democrats working “across the aisle” to enact a special law. It only took a unilateral declaration of self-service by Good Vibrations sex shop in response to the firing of U.S. Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders.
Elders’ dismissal followed comments at the UN World AIDS Day in 1994. Asked whether promoting masturbation might discourage school-aged children from riskier sexual activity, Elders agreed, noting that children should be taught that masturbation is a natural part of human sexuality.
Conservatives, already outraged by her progressive views on abortion and drugs, construed her as saying masturbation should be taught in schools. An embattled President Clinton, whose own seed-spilling later sucked the life out of his presidency, saw this as a step too far.
So, in Elders’ honor, Good Vibrations says:
We started National Masturbation Month — now International Masturbation Month with people celebrating across the globe! — to raise awareness and to highlight the importance of masturbation for nearly everyone: it’s safe, it’s healthy, it’s free, it’s pleasurable and it helps people get to know their bodies and their sexual responses. Of all the kinds of sex people can have, masturbation is the most universal and important, yet few people talk about it freely — worse, many people still feel it is “second best” or problematic in some way. Masturbation Month lets us emphasize how great it is: it’s natural, common and fun!
Politics of the Pull
The U.S. political battle over masturbation that led to Elders’ firing nearly two decades ago represents one minor shift in a centuries-old ideological tug-of-war over self-pleasure.
The history of attitudes toward masturbation — from the ancient Egyptians, whose creator god Atum masturbated the universe into being and then generously continued to control the Nile’s flooding by his ejaculations, to the ancient Indians with their rather athletic how-to instructions in the Kama Sutra — makes for fascinating reading.
The Judeo-Christian tradition has usually not embraced, and occasionally condemned, the solitary vice. But things got seriously weird in the 18th century, when masturbation attracted the blame for all manner of evils and ailments. One early pamphlet, published anonymously, really says it all in the wonderfully descriptive title: Onania, or the Heinous Sin of self-Pollution, And All Its Frightful Consequences, In Both Sexes, Considered: With Spiritual and Physical Advice To Those Who Have Already Injured Themselves By This Abominable Practice.
Nineteenth-century quacks such as Rev. Sylvester Graham lectured against the dire health consequences of “venereal excess” and the corrupting evils of self-pollution. Today much of his health recommendations look like common sense: exercise, bathing, brushing teeth, drinking clean water and consuming a diet of mostly vegetables and whole grains.
Visionary as he was, he is remembered because the bland diet he promoted, and the whole-wheat Graham cracker he invented, were designed to dampen libido. Likewise, the equally odd Dr. John Harvey Kellogg proclaimed, “If illicit commerce of the sexes is a heinous sin, self-pollution is a crime doubly abominable.” Masturbation is worse than sex? Not as good, maybe, but worse? Kellogg’s lasting contribution to suppressing libido was the insipid corn flake.
And it wasn’t only the self-abuser who was in line to suffer. In “What a Young Woman Ought to Know,” Mary Wood Allen counseled young ladies to consider the fate of their as-yet unborn offspring. Does this sound familiar?
The results of self-abuse are most disastrous. It destroys mental power and memory, it blotches the complexion, dulls the eye, takes away the strength, and may even cause insanity. It is a habit most difficult to overcome, and may not only last for years, but in its tendency be transmitted to one’s children.