Text By Elle Stanger

May is National Masturbation Month and it’s always a good time to talk about something many of us still struggle discussing: self-touch!

How you feel about masturbation and what you believe is largely influenced on where you live, at what time in history, and related to who your caregivers were and what they were taught. You might mistakenly think that masturbation is bad for a healthy development, can lead to ‘sex addiction’, or that you’ll be punished in an afterlife!

Masturbation was always considered healthy in some cultures. Ancient Egyptian creation myth says that God Atum created the world by jerkin’ it into existence; duties of the pharaoh included ejaculating into the Nile to ensure a good crop for the coming season.

In much of European and American history, genital stimulation for purposes other than child-making have been condemned as witchcraft, or sinful. Catholics and Protestants have long claimed that male masturbation is a waste of semen. In some of the earliest preserved writings of the New Testament, the Saint Paul writings forbade long hair on men, cross-dressing, and masturbation. Eleventh-century churches considered gayness, bestiality, and masturbation to be equally rude to God, because there is no chance to procreate, which they believed was the sole purpose of sex. This is the foundation of many people who are anti-sex before marriage, today. Lesbianism or female masturbation wasn’t often acknowledged by the same religious authorities unless penetration was involved, “female sexuality was not taken seriously except that it...threatened male supremacy or primacy of the male sex organ” writes art historian James Smalls in the book Gay Art. Some Middle Ages midwives and poets acknowledged female masturbation in their writing but still framed masturbation as a weakness.

Puritan-based stigma has maintained over time: A nineteenth century physician Jean-Etienne Esquirol in Paris, said in his classification of mental disorders that masturbation is ‘recognized in all countries as a cause of insanity’. This was an oft-cited belief in American psychiatry until 1972, when the American Medical Association pronounced it to be normal, and diagnostic manuals were edited.

Today’s modern medical research tells us that masturbation is common, normal, and beneficial when done in appropriate contexts. (You wouldn’t do it in the grocery store, right?) Masturbation is good for you, even if you don’t orgasm, even if there's no penetration, especially if you don't have a safe or available partner. Masturbation is the safest sex to be having, during a pandemic or otherwise.

Researchers have learned that one of the best ways to prevent prostate cancer in males is through regular ejaculation, or with regular activity in the genitals and prostate. Blood flow and tissue engorgement, muscle tension-and-release is great for all bodies, and pleasurable penetration actually strengthens vaginal muscles. No matter how you’re built, masturbation can exercise genital tissue, boost immune systems overall, and relieve mental stress.

People typically discover genital touch as children. People in childbirth often self-touch to aid with pain, and masturbation helps soothe menstrual pain for some folks too. Some asexual people (folks with little or no libido) often experience sleep-orgasms or noctural emissions. Bodies naturally want to soothe and regulate themselves, and masturbation is part of that.

Self-touch is older than toy making, which is still pretty old: bronze dildos, strap ons, and jade buttplugs discovered in China were made 2,000 years ago, and archaeologists in Germany found a likely-dildo dating back 30,000 years. In the 1890’s it was possible to purchase a collection of buttplugs from a Sears catalog: some doctors claimed regular use of “rectal dilators'' eased constipation and even bad breath.

Today the internet and IRL offers all kinds of toys, lubes, books, and tools for better, safer solo and partner-sex. Do yourself a favor and skip buying from Wish or Amazon, which often sell knock-offs and rejected or returned items from other sellers. I like SpectrumBoutique.com, LoveCrave vibes, and Unboundbabes.com for well-made toys for all kinds of bodies.

Many folks need better sex education information so that we can all feel better about their bodies and practices. I recommend books like Vic Liu’s “Bang! Masturbation for People of All Genders”, and the classic from Betty Dodson “Sex for One: The Joy of Self Loving” and The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability by Silverberg & Kaufman.

*Feminist sex product shop Good Vibrations created this holiday in 1995 to protest the firing of Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders by President Clinton’s administration, after Elders suggested that masturbation information belonged in youth sex education.

Elle Stanger is a certified holistic sex educator and longtime adult entertainer living in the PNW. Elle has worked as a lobbyist for worker's rights, a facilitator for therapy groups, and produced Strange Bedfellows podcast where she hosted a bevy of diverse guests with backgrounds or affiliations relating to sexuality, politics, religion, therapy, or self care.