87242 - Masturbation

[Cognoscente]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/87242/
Link to cited FMH article: http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org ... turbation/

Since this is the "Board Apostasy Board" I'm gonna go ahead and speak my mind. I disagree strongly with a lot of the points made in these two answers and with the Church in general on masturbation. This should probably go to the "Soapbox" section but whatever.

I'll grant that the Law of Chastity proscription on premarital sex does some good. There's a lot of baggage that comes with it, but it can protect single members and encourage broader relationships during courtship. However, there's no benefit or "protection" from telling people not to masturbate. It's literally the safest form of sexual release out there. And it's something that pretty much every person will have experience with post-puberty. Lectures about the perils of masturbation do nothing but serve to give people guilt complexes and sexual disfunction. Not to mention all the terrible issues inherent in making it something vulnerable people (especially women and girls) have to confess to a male authority figure with very little accountability.

And don't even get me started on "it has been revealed to modern day prophets and apostles. When a prophet speaks as God's mouthpiece it is basically God speaking to us, so in my opinion, I would say God has spoken plainly on His viewpoint of masturbation." The Miracle of Forgiveness is out of print and leaders are encouraged not to give it out any more. President Kimball was not speaking for God when he wrote that masturbation turns you gay–if it did, mankind would die out as a species. Apostles and Prophets have been wrong, and should be allowed to be wrong, and members do themselves a disservice by consistently bolstering the narrative that they should be followed even if they're completely and obviously wrong.

You are not broken or evil or sinful if you masturbate. You're human. Until you decide to have a sexual relationship with another person, your sexuality belongs to you and to no one else.

Sorry if I stepped on anyone's toes, but I had to overcome years of guilt and shame on my own for no other reason than I read Packer's hideously awful To Young Men Only when I was 17. I refuse to be silent if there's a chance someone else is also struggling with insurmountable feelings of inadequacy.

[Emiliana]

Ditto all of that, except from an evangelical instead of Mormon background.

Also, the wife who wants sex 5-6 times a week and the husband who wants sex 1-2 a week......Yeah, a lot of *that* could be mitigated with masturbation, too.

[Shrinky Dink]

Waaaaay too many of the lessons on chastity completely forget about this thing called the atonement.

[Portia]

Sorry but I believe in the One True Prophet, the corn flakes guy.

If tying up kids' hands, punitive circumcision, and carbolic acid applied to girls' genitals and other forms of torture is good enough to prevent the idea of "self-abuse" that he made up, it's good enough for me, woooooo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harv ... prevention

[Shrinky Dink]

Yeah, my husband doesn't really understand why I don't want to circumcise our hypothetical future sons.

This podcast from This American Life really solidified my feelings on the matter. This podcast discusses sexual intimacy, and female genital mutilation. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-a ... -are?act=1

[Portia]

Yeah, my husband doesn't really understand why I don't want to circumcise our hypothetical future sons.

This podcast from This American Life really solidified my feelings on the matter. This podcast discusses sexual intimacy, and female genital mutilation. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-a ... -are?act=1

Thanks for sharing. It does seem like a very American, 1980s thing, besides its history in Judaism, of course. From what I've read, male infant circumcision, while still prevalent, is on the downswing.

Having done some rather extensive research about the history of the Honor Code, I feel confident that the anti-masturbation hysteria simply wasn't a Thing until quite recently in human history. It makes me roll my eyes that this would be considered "among the gravest of 'sins.'"

For one thing, privacy wasn't a Thing either, especially for young people, except among the very well-off (who have often had more libertine mores than the bourgeois. Just look at Pompeii's pornography).

[Cognoscente]

For one thing, privacy wasn't a Thing either, especially for young people, except among the very well-off (who have often had more libertine mores than the bourgeois. Just look at Pompeii's pornography).

Here's an interesting and well-sourced historical discussion of how that evolved in Western Europe: http://www.annalspornographie.com/sex-b ... f-privacy/

[Portia]

For one thing, privacy wasn't a Thing either, especially for young people, except among the very well-off (who have often had more libertine mores than the bourgeois. Just look at Pompeii's pornography).

Here's an interesting and well-sourced historical discussion of how that evolved in Western Europe: http://www.annalspornographie.com/sex-b ... f-privacy/

Thanks! When I'm off work I'll check it out. I remember discussing what pioneer sex in small cabins must have been like. I wonder if privacy also led to the social evolution of people being uber bothered by sex noises.