Masturbation is when someone touches their genitals with their hands (or other equipment) for sexual pleasure. It is a normal part of your natural sexual development. In fact, some research has shown that even babies masturbate inside the uterus (although some other research tends to disagree).
Basically, we’re quite enthusiastic about getting our rocks off. Human beings have been masturbating since the very dawn of time; we even have 30,000-year-old cave paintings to prove this. At some point in human history though, we decided that masturbation was a bad thing. For most of history, we haven’t had such few and such healthy children; most babies would die earlier—in miscarriages, in childbirth, during infancy, and during childhood. In times of high infant mortality, when babies were dying left, right, and centre (yeah, history isn’t quite as romantic as it may seem), wasting semen wasn’t seen as a very intelligent decision.
Semen was precious and important. We simply didn’t know much about reproduction, since we still hadn’t discovered the egg and the sperm, and that led to all kinds of bonkers ideas about boinking for babies. Some people believed there were tiny ‘animalicules’ living inside semen, some thought there were some strange vapours inside semen that made women pregnant, and some even assumed babies were made by men and transferred into women during sex! Because of such ideas, people thought semen was sacred and special.
In their mind, semen had magical lifegiving properties! (But vaginal discharge is bad, y’know, patriarchy tells us). So, for most of history between the ancient world and our modern world, masturbation was demonized. What was historically treated as a magical act at best and a slightly vulgar joke at worst, soon became taboo. ‘Spilling the seed’ was forbidden, and masturbation was thought to lead to all kinds of ailments, from causing hairy palms to blindness! It was only in the 1800s that the actual science behind babymaking was born (pun intended), and as you will see, all these concepts about the ills of masturbation are from before the 1800s.
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Science showed us the way, and debunked some of the bunk from before. Some of the Victorian bunk said that epilepsy, tuberculosis, insanity, and a variety of other maladies were linked to masturbating your vital energy away. People started making a variety of contraptions and devices to stop themselves from getting turned on. Chastity belts, which were specially designed clothes with an actual physical lock on them, were worn by people to stop them from touching their genitals. Some inventively wore a spiked ring on their penis that would dig into the penis each time it became bigger in size, with an erection (the spikes were on the inside! Yikes!).
In fact, our humble cornflakes were designed as an anti-masturbation food. A certain old-timey doctor believed that eating flavourful foods like meat and spices would make you super-duper turned on. Eating plain, bland food was the way to douse the horny hellfire inside your genitals, and so he came up with a dry, sugarless, flavourless food that decorates our breakfast tables to this day. The doctor and his brother worked at a health resort where they started offering their newly minted cornflakes to the in-house patients.
The cereal was a hit, but the brother wanted to add some good ol’ sugar to the mix. The doctor disagreed; so the brother launched his own company to make the sugary breakfast cereal, and the most famous brand of cornflakes was born! In the meanwhile, the doctor continued to work prolifically as a doctor (a pretty good one at that) and continued his anti-masturbation crusade. The dude hated sex and masturbation so much that he even encouraged threading wires through the foreskin or rubbing carbolic acid on the clitoris to stop people from touching their sexy bits. He famously never consummated his marriage, spending his life writing about the dangers of masturbation, and adopted eight children.
Up until the late nineteenth century, anti-masturbation panic ran rife throughout the world. The twentieth century witnessed massive leaps in science, and our understanding of the human body. This led to a change in the way we view and understand sex, sexuality, and sexual health. We began to study and research sex, and found that, curiously, it was quite good for health!
Masturbation is a very safe way to enjoy sexual pleasure, free from the risk of pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, and completely in your hands (pun fully intended). It lets you learn about your own body, your likes and dislikes, and what turns you on. There are SO many benefits to orgasms (through masturbation or sex), that I’m gonna have to make a (nonexhaustive) list of some of the coolest health benefits:
- Helps lower blood pressure
- Can help relieve stress (much better than a sutta break)
- Reduces the risk of prostate cancer (yepp, really)
- Makes your skin glow (the American cosmetic brand NARS has a best-selling blush called ‘Orgasm’ for good reason)
- Can help delay ejaculation for people with premature ejaculation
- Exercises your pelvic floor muscles, which makes them healthier and helps prevent erectile dysfunction
- Releases feel-good hormones such as endorphins, oxytocin, and dopamine, which also help you feel more connected with your partner
- Releases sleepy hormones like prolactin
- Releases hormones that also reduce your perception of pain
- Has been shown to relieve hiccups that absolutely won’t stop
- May help relieve nasal congestion, according to a 2008 study
Basically, the consensus of the medical field is that masturbation is totally safe and harmless, and is good for your health.
This excerpt from Dr Tanaya Narendra’s ‘Dr Cuterus: Everything Nobody Tells You About Your Body’ has been published with permission from Penguin Random House India.