Tag Archives: jacking off

You don’t know jack(ing off)…the sequel

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smiley-face.jpgSo, I was checking out various Internet searches that have led people to this blog, and checked one out related to masturbation being a rejection of Jesus’ atoning death or something along those lines. Not surprisingly, it had led someone to my post a few days ago about masturbation.

So, in using the same search terms on Google, I quickly found a Catholic site that thoroughly lambasted masturbation as a terrible sin. I spent nearly an hour going through this incredibly long discussion thread on the subject and was simultaneously amazed and dismayed. I’m not saying it was all horseshit; the discussion board manager and some other rabid anti-jacking folks had some valid points. But by and large, I was amazed at how doggedly some people stick to the notion that masturbation is always and necessarily a sin.

Here’s the gist of what I got from the anti-jacking-off side of the argument:

Non-procreative sex is a sin

OK, this is a really popular one with the Catholic church in particular. If you have sex, even as a married couple, and the two of you are fertile, don’t you dare do anything to prevent pregnancy. Be fruitful and multiply. Birth control is as evil as abortion.

Wow! Really? I can’t just enjoy sex with my wife. I’ll admit that sex outside of marriage is a sin, and one that I’ve committed myself. But the notion that using a condom or having relations that don’t involve penetration and potential insemination is a sin is ridiculous.

I guess God gave women the clitoris, a part of the body that serves no purpose other than to grant feelings of pleasure, just to tempt them or to keep them in the bed long enough for a guy to get them knocked up. God doesn’t want us to enjoy sex at all. Nope. Just procreate, guys. Not like the earth is already overpopulated and you’re using up all the resources I gave you. Just keep popping out as many kids as you can.

Aside from the fact I have a really hard time seeing masturbation as (a) a form of sexual intercourse or (b) a means of inappropriate birth control.

I just don’t know what else to say on this one. Oh yeah, I do: Horseshit!

Masturbation involves impure thoughts

OK, on this one I may have to cop to some valid points and admit that there are limits. Looking at a porn video or skin mag while masturbating probably isn’t really part of God’s ideal design. First, you’ve supported the porn industry, which does a lot of harm to the people who work in it and which creates a lot of imagery in society that encourages promiscuity. And my apologies for my part in supporting it in the past.

Second, it is true that sinning in one’s thoughts is still sin. One could argue that by looking at the image of some man or woman other than your spouse, and getting off on that, could be construed as a form of mental adultery. I don’t know if I agree with that in the case of using porn or imagining Angelina Jolie and/or Brad Pitt or something like that, because this isn’t a person I’m ever going to meet (maybe not even a person who really exists if it’s purely imaginative), and I suspect Jesus’ warnings about mental sin (lust or violence, for example) pertained more to people we actually see around us in regular life.

Third, a point was made that you are objectifying a person (or people) in said porn images who is a child of God and was not created for your amusement. Again, not a completely crazy point, though it’s on thinner ice than the previous point.

But here’s where it got wacky on the discussion I was viewing. Someone asked, “Well, what if I’m masturbating to images of my spouse, either actual photos or mental images?” The chief poster in the discussion, whom I believe was also a site admin or owner, actually said that is still a sin because you are sexually objectifying your spouse solely for your own amusement. And lust is a sin.

(stunned silence)

I’m sinning if I feel lust toward my wife? If I desire her because she’s sexy and I want her, that’s bad? So what, I’m supposed to hold her hand, give chaste kisses and, when she’s fertile, have sex just on the hope we’ll end up with a child?

The Bible has established that sex between spouses is more than just about procreation. It’s part of how we bond. And frankly, if you’re jacking off to thoughts of sex with your own spouse at those times you cannot enjoy sex with said spouse, I think that’s a damn good sign you are well attached to that person.

And even if it isn’t my wife I picture in my mind all the time, so what? Am I really sinning and committing adultery if I make up a person in my mind? Or how about if someone is using erotic literature or sexy short stories as the stimulus? If that’s a sin, I guess I’ve committed murder every time I read about someone committing murder. I’m not saying we should wallow in mental images of sex, violence or anything else. But short of being Jesus himself, how am I supposed to keep a head full of nothing but thoughts of flowers, sunshine and helping orphans?

Yes, we can control our impulses and yes, we can mitigate our thoughts. But to throw masturbation into the pile as some heinous sin simply because is ridiculous. Yeah, if you can’t put down your equipment now and again, you have a problem. If you turn to yourself instead of your spouse because it’s easier or more fulfilling to you, that’s a problem (either with you, your spouse, or both).

I certainly don’t think God looks down and says, “nice ejaculation with that one, son.” But I also don’t think He’s wrinkling his nose at every act of self-pleasuring. Because frankly, I doubt God looks down and smiles about a lot of other things we do as part of life that are just part of life. Oh, say, eating, drinking, walking, breathing, shitting. I mean, if you think God is looking down at you on the toilet or at the dinner table thinking to Himself how wonderful you’re doing that activity, you have a pretty dim view of God. I think He has a lot more to be concerned with than our bodily functions. Like, say, the universe and our souls. Just a theory, ya know.

So, yeah, maybe that subscription to Hustler isn’t something you should renew. And you probably shouldn’t be thinking about the pool boy when you’re taking care of your personal needs. But frankly, if we didn’t have so many hang-ups about sex, particularly in the Catholic church (and I’m not a Catholicism hater…just a guy with some serious reservations about how it’s led at the top), maybe we’d have more stable people in church leadership all the way around. Looking at Catholicism, for example (since they do an awful lot of the hating toward masturbation) I’d love to see more priests jacking off and, even better yet, being able to get married, and fewer of them getting hauled away for diddling children in the congregation. I’m not for promiscuity and allowing everything, but rampant repression doesn’t do us much good, either.

You don’t know jack(ing off)

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semi-smile.jpgOK, it’s been two weeks since my last post directly related to the carnal pleasures that help keep porn sites in business—time to sex it up again. Otherwise that whole Deacon Blue thing is gonna become irrelevant. And I notice traffic picks up here when sex is involved. Yeah, big surprise there.

But this time, instead of exploring whether God cares what you do between the sheets, we’ll be taking a firm hold on the ever-pressing, explosive (OK, enough puns) issue of whether He cares what you do with your right hand. Or left hand. Or the little cordless hand-held vacuum. Or the wheel-and-pulley system you created so that you can keep your hands free to work the computer or turn the pages of your favorite centerfold pictorial.

Yes, folks, it’s time to talk about one of the old favorites: Masturbation. Choking the chicken. Slapping the salami. Jacking off. Need I say more? (OK, I do need to say more…ladies, why aren’t there any good slang terms for you? Frigging is just too British to have universal appeal, and I know y’all are helping yourselves out, with and without battery-operated aids. Must we be so formal? Come up with something. The best I can think of is exploring the delta—and that isn’t all that catchy.)

From parental threats that God will send you to hell for masturbating to saying this activity will cause hair to grow on your palms (again, there is a gender bias here; how come girls never got a similar threat? Honey, your finger will shrivel and fall off if you keep sticking it in there…), this has been one of the oddest areas for attack by ultra-right-wing God-fearing Christians and even some in the middle of the road. Somehow, self-pleasuring got labeled as self-abuse.

What am I…raping myself? Defiling the holy temple of my body? Fornicating with myself?

Nonsense.

Some would argue that masturbation robs one’s spouse of “natural affection.” In other words, if you’re doing yourself, you ain’t doing your significant other enough. Again, nonsense. Yes, it is possible to rob your spouse of affection, but unless you’re hiding behind masturbation all the time to avoid sex with your spouse, that doesn’t apply here. Women can explode over and over (and it’s a good thing men can’t or you’d never get us out of our rooms) and men, well, let’s put it this way: Most couples don’t go at it every day, or even every other day or so. No matter what anyone says, most couples are lucky if they do the do once a week after they’ve been married more than a couple years. Frankly, I think it’s a service to one’s wife to keep the package in regular use. Otherwise, you go several days or a week or two (depending on what’s going on) between sex, and then we men are going to be blasting off into space before we’ve even gotten you women to the pre-launch procedures.

Religious obsessions with masturbation even gave us the term onanism as a synonym for masturbation, named after a guy named Onan whom God killed for jacking off. Well, sort of. See Genesis chapter 38 for the whole story, and there’s an interesting Wikipedia piece on Onan too.

Onan did something more to piss God off than just jack off (or perform a little coitus interruptus, depending on how you read the story). Much like Jonah got some wrath handed down on his ass when he refused to do something big for God, I imagine the problem with Onan was that God had made it pretty clear that he was supposed to get Tamar in a family way. Why? I don’t know. God works through people and circumstances and over the long run most of the time. Maybe through her some generations down the road someone critical to God’s plans was supposed to be born—and Onan’s disobedience set that back by centuries. Point is, apparently Onan knew what he was supposed to do and not only told God “no” but decided to metaphorically rub God’s face in it by essentially saying, “Oh, and by the way, I’m going to empty my ball sacks just to show you I’m the boss here.” Bad move to waggle your dick in the creator’s face, dude.

I mean, if God was so down on masturbation, he would have killed a whole lot of other MoFo’s in the Bible. As much as God doesn’t like homosexual sex, I don’t recall Him killing off any gay folks. Sodom and Gomorrah don’t count, by the way, even though we get the word sodomy from one of those towns. The problem wasn’t that guys there buggered other guys on the regular. Problem was those cities were just plain depraved. A hell of a lot more than man-on-man action was going down. Any place where it is a common and accepted practice for folks to wander around in groups and gang-rape people who are new to town is a place I want God to wipe off the map, thank you very damn much.

Some argue that masturbation is a form of unnatural birth control or argue that every sperm is a potential person. Well, first off, that means you can’t knock women for masturbation because they don’t eject their eggs when they do it. And as for men, the sperm get old, die and are recycled constantly anyway. They go to waste if we don’t have any kind of release, so by the “birth control” or “life killing” logic, we sin as men if we don’t have sex starting as soon as we hit puberty, and have it every day. Anyone on board for requiring every 12-year-old male to get married and have lots of kids?

Didn’t think so.

I think we have this issue in hand now…er, under control now. Back to your stations.

(Image from www.freeimages.co.uk…like I was gonna put an erect dick or something else up there for this post. You wish, ya dirty minded freak.)