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Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation

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Masturbation began in 1712. This is the surprising assertion compendiously documented in _Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation_ (Zone Books) by Thomas W. Laqueur. Of course, that's an exaggeration, because since our primate cousins masturbate, we probably did so from our earliest beginnings. But in 1712, there was a shift in thinking about masturbation which brought it to the forefront of reform by moralists, physicians, and other do-gooders. Laqueur's book scrupulously documents the writings on the subject before, during, and after the big change. He admits, "Potentially autarkic solitary sexual pleasure touches the inner lives of modern humanity in ways we still do not understand." This may be so, but this large and yet sprightly history must increase the understanding of a covert but universal activity.

The ancients were nearly silent on the subject. Galen said that masturbation was a method of simply getting rid of excess sperm. In Jewish law, spilling seminal fluid was much debated by the rabbis. The only reference in the Bible that could relate specifically to masturbation does not. Christianity has sometimes used Onan's crime as an injunction against masturbation, although the wiser commentators note that masturbation was not Onan's violation (coitus interruptus, and thereby refraining from being fruitful and multiplying, was). Early Christian teaching was that masturbation was nonreproductive, and was thus to be avoided, but it was not a big source of worry. But then John Marten produced his masterwork; his authorship is revealed here for the first time. Marten was a quack who had written on venereal disease and had been clapped in irons for such an obscenity. In 1712, he published _Onania; or, The Heinous Sin of Self Pollution and all its Frightful Consequences_, and masturbation was never to be the same. Marten's book was a big advertisement for Marten's potions, which would cure the horrid vice. Marten's new anxiety filled a need, which Laqueur shows was due to the philosophy of the enlightenment. It was not until well into the twentieth century that physicians stopped blaming masturbation for all sorts of illness, and now it is advocated as part of self-discovery. The famous sex shop Good Vibrations declares every May to be National Masturbation Month, and the poster last year had the slogan, "Think Globally, Masturbate Locally."

Those who want warnings on the evils of the practice can still find many religious leaders who will oblige them. Laqueur closes this comprehensive study, which is academic but entertaining, with the incident of Joycelyn Elders, who was surgeon general until 1995, when she answered a reporter's question saying that sex education should include teaching about masturbation. In the minds of some moral persons, this seemed equivalent to teaching techniques of masturbation. She had not previously pleased them with her outspoken views on AIDS or pre-marital sex, but she used the M word, causing a rift with that moral beacon, President Clinton, who said that her view of the benefits of masturbation reflected "differences with administration policy." While it amused many that there was an administration policy on masturbation, Elders was out, and the two century legacy of quack John Marten continued.

If you can have sex by yourself, and you're not either procreating, or making money at trying to arrest or rechannel such behavior, you pose a threat -- or at least you did back in the 17th and 18th centuries. Heck, even the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Exploring how masturbation was viewed in different eras according to the ontological horizon of each era, LaQueur gives a kind of x-ray of the politics, morals, and economic assumptions of each age. In the early Enlightenment days when Bentham's utilitarianism held sway, for instance, there could be no justification for solitary sex as it did not lead to anything "productive"(except, of course to pleasure). Four hundred years later, it is still policed as a "guilty pleasure," but since pleasure has been liberated as a virtue unto itself in the consumption society, thus masturbation has been transformed. And if it has not been fully transformed into a social good, then it has been been promoted as a valid personal choice, though still suspect. Well and simply written for an academic title with great illustrations.

I read the 2008 German edition of the 2003 book written in English.

This is a more elaborate scholarly work than the previous Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror. In contrast to the latter, Thomas W. Laqueur dares to identify the anonymous author of the infamous "Onania", written around 1712, as the quack John Marten. Before that fatefull book, which single-handedly changed the attitude of stroking boys' penises to either make the latter grow or to keep the kids quiet to the notion that masturbation would be worse than suicide.

The book presents us with the history of the diverse anti-masturbatory reasonings from Classical Greece to the 1990s career killers of famous Americans. It also touches upon general sex hostilities in the West: Sexuality in marriage being considered a mortal sin, if practiced for any other reason than procreation. Marital sex for fun getting called sex against nature. In that context, masturbation was believed even by French anarchists to lead in logical consequence to bestiality.

To get a thorough impression of the subject matter, the before mentioned book may be read as well, even though there is a bit of overlap. For masturbation accounts themselves read First Person Sexual: Women & Men Write About Self-Pleasuring. An interesting coffee table book is Sex Machines: Photographs and Interviews. If you want to do something medically BENEFICIAL, get informed with Prostate Orgasm, Prostate Cure.. But read AYOR, I only recommend this booklet for current lack of anything better.

I like reading about cultural backgrounds of sex topis, such as impotence and masturbation. This book provides a very fascinating and informative account of how masturbation has been vilified and denigrated over the ages, and can, will and should go very far in helping people overcome inhibitions and culturally negative and unhelpful attitudes. Masturbation can be very constructive and helpful towards teaching and helping people have orgasms in sexual relationships. Masturbation should not be an either/or, related to intercourse or interpersonal sex. It should be thought of as a person can eat alone, or eat with others.

I'm a mature student of gender studies in Adelaide Australia, and was set this book as a required reading text. Laqueur - tough guy to spell, much tougher to read - seems to know his stuff so far as I can tell, but writes like a man wearing boxing gloves. After ploughing through these hundreds of turgid, pompous, pretentious, unfocused, downright awful pages, I'm sorry to say I don't have a clue what's going on. I fear the great Prof's thought processes may be equally fuzzy. Somebody get the guy an editor - which funnily enough, is what I do for a living. To other students faced with scaling this Everest of type, my condolences.

i can't think when I read a book that was so stimulating...