Real quick: 100% of my royalties from my book The Porn Myth go directly to Children of the Immaculate Heart—an apostolate that serves survivors of sex trafficking throughout San Diego County.
Isn’t it equally if not more likely that men who have poor mental health, are unhappy or depressed, or who are unhappy in their relationships are more likely to masterbate as a result of these issues, in order to get short-term emotional relief.
Not to be 'that guy', but may I have your citations on the negative physiological effects of masturbation? It's just that I'm trying to find the studies you are talking about, but an overwhelming quantity of literature seems to argue the contrary. Thanks.
I'm actually morally against masturbation. Addictive behaviours lead to idolatry, which is by all accounts abominable; but lying and spreading pretenses in order to fearmonger? Ridiculous. That's the only reason I asked for sources. I hope I am not being taken the wrong way.
If you believe that the human person is merely physical and not spiritual, or that our physical activities have no spiritual impact, than I would assume i’d be hard pressed to make a convincing argument from a purely naturalist lens. Additionally, what reasonable scientist who wants to keep their job would ever endeavor to uncover evidence that indulging in physical sexual urges is bad for your health? Simply because the evidence may not exist (It might, who knows), that masturbation is bad for you, the inverse is not automatically true.
This is the number one most important message you can preach to young men, and you are doing God's work. It needs to be stated in explicit and uncensored terms the extent to which masturbation is poison to the male psyche. It's an uncomfortable and disgusting topic, but it must be stated.
As for the "health benefits" of masturbation put forward by certain vile persons, I am 30 months free of masturbation and I have never felt more energy and more confidence around other people, especially women, than I do now. I like the man I see in the mirror. When I see a hot woman, I don't have the instinct to go home and touch myself. I have the instinct to go and better myself even beyond where I already am.
Stopping masterbation needs a re-working of the marketing.
It is self-mastery, that's really what it is. Developing one's mind so that it is in charge, rather than the body forcibly yanking it around (pun intended).
You introduce yourself as an author of a book that is “a non-religious response to pro-porn arguments”. Yet you spend the bulk of your argument relying on a single Christian apologist and pastor. It seems your actual reason to reject masturbation is the same as all those that came before, religious.
You also perfunctorily claim a litany of health effects that have as much evidence as masturbation making people blind.
First, I loved C.S. Lewis as a kid, and I think he writes genuinely great fantasy. It is somewhat of a shame that so much of modern fantasy descends from Lewis’s contemporary,Tolkien, and not Lewis’s works like Perelandra.
But returning to Lewis’s more direct apologetics, you describe Lewis making the following assertions:
* “man’s sexual appetite is meant to lead him out of himself”
* “with masturbation, the appetite is turned back in on itself”
* Which leads to “the problem with masturbation is that a man comes to prefer the dark prison of his imaginary sexual harem over the repeated intimate embrace that could transform him.”
This is an interesting series of assertions, as far as I can tell, none of them are supported by evidence in the article. But the last assertion, the harm that masturbation is supposed to cause, is actually testable. Does masturbation lead to a decrease in partnered sex?
If this actually occurred, this wouldn’t necessarily be bad. I personally find the amount of partnered sex a person partakes in to be morally neutral. Others like Lewis apparently placed inherent value in partner sex. But on the other side, ascetics like Paul (1 Corinthians 7:8) find it better to abstain from partnered sex, so if masturbation led to a reduction in partnered sex, the masturbation could be a useful tool to reduce partnered sex. But if there is no correlation between frequency of masturbation and frequency of partnered sex, then we wouldn’t need to address Lewis’s moral claim that substituting masturbation for partner sex is harmful.
But anyway, back to testing the hypothesis: does masturbation reduce the rate of partnered sex? It turns out that there is a study that looked into that question. (Waterink, Wim. (2014). In steady heterosexual relationships men masturbate more than women because of gender differences in sex drive. New Voices in Psychology. 10. 98–108. 10.25159/1812-6371/3419.) And it found that there is no relationship between those two. It states in the conclusion section: “Furthermore, due to the fact that no significant negative correlation was present between the reported frequency of partnered sex and the reported frequency of masturbation, it is not likely that for women and men in steady heterosexual relationships, masturbation is a substitute for partnered sex.”
I do realize that this is just one paper. But since you and Lewis are the ones making the assertion of harm, I believe that it is incumbent on you to make the case for harm. Lewis had an intriguing hypothesis, but there just isn’t evidence for his assertion of harm caused by masturbation.
Sex is a powerful motivator, and if you tie it to conditions, you can harness it to achieve those conditions. But it sort of goes both ways--that achievement is then tied to sex. So yeah, sex can motivate me to get out into the world and connect with other people, but I'm connecting with them because I want to have sex with them. In that sort of circumstance, I honestly can't even tell if I like them as a person until after sex, and all too often I find out I don't. So I consider it better to take care of myself and then go out into the world seeking connections. I end up with better connections that way.
There's also just the straightforward notion that "calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and...no woman can rival" is just a way of positively spinning "makes it a lot more difficult for women to sexually coerce men into making sacrifices and adjustments." It's an act of liberation, in that sense. Unsurprising that the people it liberates us from might not like it.
Gay men? Asexual men? Men with hormonal drives that aren't "typical"? Are they controlled by women wanting to have sex with them?
I just flat disagree that all men are lead constantly by their dicks and the notion that you need to wank before stepping out into the world to be a normal human is kind of wild.... Does that set off a timer? How long before you turn back into a beast who only sees sex everywhere and in everything? Reducing people to mere sex objects that you discard in disgust afterwards? Bro... I don't think women are the problem here lol.
Not what I intended to imply--I was responding to the C. S. Lewis quote that asserted you shouldn't wank cuz you'll lose interest, and so was focused on people for whom that might apply and the positive side of losing interest. Didn't mean to imply everyone (even myself) always has to wank just to treat each other decent.
Grelloh you've been disingenuous by strawmanning his argument. You framed it as though he was describing the extreme, when he wasn't, he was simply pointing out the logical considerations of masterbation, and it's social effects. It doesn't mean he's an extreme sexist or sex addict!
I was simply asking you to define what you meant by claiming no ill effects. You don't even know my position. It's not a leading question, it was a request for the defining of terms which is crucial to any constructive conversation. What one man deems an "ill effect", may be viewed by another as a positive or neutral effect. Don't be so easily triggered.
I think Lewis' quote is psychologically astute until he talks about "the little dark prison we are all born in." That's really not the way I look at the beginning of life. No doubt being born is traumatic, and learning to live as beings outside of our mothers is scary, but I don't think babies are in prisons. I think it's a most amazing time of life, when we're learning astoundingly quickly, bonding to our families, absorbing cultures. It's a bright, beautiful awakening. Maybe Lewis is hung up on the idea of babies infected by original sin; if so, his argument about human nature rests on a particular theological view that is not shared by most humans on earth.
I think Lewis may also be referring to the little dark prison that is the world we live in. We have such relative innocence, despite our original sin, as infants, but it is tainted by the world we live in.
Thumbnail checks out. Masturbation is one of those things i dont think we have to look back in the history books about. People been jerkin it and mixing macaroni long before Freuds weird ass put pen to paper. I think theres too much of a focus on self gratification these days. People ironically enter relationships with others solely to make themselves feel better. Which is pretty much just masturbating with an actual person's emotions. To me, self care should be private.
I agree. We really need to drop the liberal ideology of instant gratification being "therapeutic". What we need to start leaning into instead is self-mastery (celibacy, fasting, exercise etc.), not self gratification (hedonism, pornography, sleeping around constantly, etc).
I was shocked to learn that most of my male friends continued to masturbate after marriage. That just makes no sense to me; you've got a real woman there that loves you. Most of them wound up divorced as well. I wonder if there's a connection?
Many relationships have some kind of imbalance in libido. It’s a good way to take the edge off when your partner isn’t feeling it but you are, which is a natural part of any long term relationship. If it’s used to fully substitute for a healthy sex life, than it is damaged, but I see no problem with it as a supplement.
Because most of your friends' wives will not want to have sex as much as your friends do. The reason they are divorced is because the wives were not interested in pleasing their husbands. When most people get married, they agree to only have sex with each other. If one of them unilaterally decides that sex is off the table, the denied partner will often not be happy about that and will look for other outlets, masturbation or cheating or divorce
Imagine if I told my wife that I am no longer interested in sharing conversation with her. That part of my life is over. I am just not into it any more. How long do you think she would stay with me? To men, sex is like conversation
Also consider how common "dead bedrooms" are, and that they are a leading cause of why men go on to cheat, especially following the wife going through menopause and having a significantly reduced sex drive. When you lose Christianity, you also lose that religious commitment to the needs, wants, and desires of your partner, and that goes both ways.
My wife did the exact opposite. Her drive went up significantly after menopause. I think that's part of the “cougar” phenomenon; reduced estrogen leading to testosterone playing a bigger role. I guess I'm just lucky, or weird, lol, but I never felt the need to masturbate after marriage. I've been very happy for 40 years.
The Eastern Orthodox tradition is decidedly negative towards masturbation. ce)
“Masturbation is a sin so abhorrent to God that on account of it He put to death Onan, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, because he was the first to commit the act upon the earth, and it is therefore also called onanism. For the Holy Scripture says in Genesis (38:10): ‘And the thing which he (Onan) did appeared as evil before God: wherefore He slew him.’”
“So then, this sin is like a pestilence and corruption of the human race, and causes masturbators to live here and now a disgraceful and miserable life, and to be tormented eternally in the next life in the fire of hell.”
Frankly, it is somewhat odd that Onan is the go-to example for masturbation being a Biblical sin, since at least by our modern definitions Onan was clearly not masturbating: rather, he was using the pull-out method of contraception while having real, not simulated, sex with his late brother's wife, Tamar (this on account of fulfilling the duty to give offspring to his late brother in the ancient Isrealite custom of Levirite marriage). A much clearer read of the sin in Onan's case was that he greedily refused to give his late brother children by Tamar, because they would not be recognized as his own genealogocally; the passage in Genesis even says as much, "But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother’s wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and he put him to death also." (Genesis 38:9-10). No mention is made of Onan being driven merely by the desire for sexual pleasure, although that he enjoyed himself might go without saying. Still, it seems that the sin which the book of Genesis wants to draw us to see in Onan's behavior was his greed and abandonment of his duty to the family. The Book of Deuteronomy helpfully clarifies that God, or at least Moses, did indeed care about the custom of Levirite marriage, and did indeed command it of the Isrealites (Deuteronomy 25:5-10).
Now to be fair: the phrase "what he [Onan] did" which was wicked in the sight of the Lord could merely have been to spill seed on the ground without any other consideration of motives; yet this would lead us to believe that the reason God killed Onan was not for his intentions, but for the circumstantial outcomes accompanying them. This is unbefitting of the God elsewhere shown in Scripture as reading the hearts of men and showing especial concern for their intentions behind their acts, not just the acts themselves. Further, the rest of the story of Judah and Tamar is centered on the idea that Judah was in the wrong for depriving Tamar of her rightful children by his clan, which he had promised her. ("She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah," Genesis 38:26). So the whole theme of the story is centered on the unrighteousness of Judah and his descendants for refusing to honor the marriage contract which had been agreed upon between Judah's family and Tamar's family. Onan plays a fairly minor part, and it is a stretch even to call his actions masturbation, let alone his sins. His role could be used in terms of Scriptural morality to more obviously condemn, for instance, refusing sex to your spouse or the use of contraceptive methods, since these actions occur within the context of a marriage in which children are the expectation, and they sin because they actively refuse the conception of children, just like Onan. With masterbation per se, it is that in many if not most cases there is no such existing marriage or covenant between spouses which the act of solo ejaculation would violate; not unless you want to stipulate that "masterbation violates the covenant with your future spouse," but this is a different line of reasoning entirely from what we started with, which again is the standing against masturbation on account of it being animal pleasure and thus degrading of the human being, and further that it is not connected to procreation, etc. etc. I don't disagree with these criticisms of masterbation, per se. But I do not see these clearly evident from the reading of Onan in the story of Judah and Tamar. Rather, Greek philosophy and natural law approaches seem much more clearly the source of this condemnation. In light of this, Onan seems not so much the source of the Church's stance against masturbation, as he is an example which a Church already against masturbation went back looking for as bolstering evidence for their preexisting views.
What a fascinating comment to leave! I wonder if you realized that I agree, I do not condone masturbation, nor do I masturbate. If you had read what I wrote, you would have realized that my point was not that masturbation is good, but that the biblical story of Onan is not on it's own a sufficient proof text on which to base the idea that it is wrong. Masturbation is wrong because it gives oneself away to animal passions and foils the natural plan of God regarding procreation! I agree! I hope you will be more charitable next time.
Meaningless hairsplitting, and of course I didn't read all that. Nor will I read your next wall of text. Saints for two thousand years have called masturbation "Onanism" which is perfectly fine.
Hands off dicks is the message here, not your smart boy theological treatise.
You calling an established Saint and father of the Church “some guy” proves that you are not, in fact, Orthodox. Either that or, I assume, you just didn’t pay attention in Church. Probably both.
Wow! I've read many of the comments and I'm a little shocked by their content. Some seem to come from a guilt-ridden, perhaps addicted, perspective. Others not only they accuse you of coming from a religious point of view, but also reveal a lack of moral standing in order to justify their practice. It doesn't take religious morality to help you discern right from wrong. Pornography is intrinsically wrong. It is heart-breaking, soul-crushing, self-defeating, humiliating, degrading...in other words, Evil. Just look at how it has filtered into our society and continues to normalize sex outside of marriage. Also, can anyone excuse how it is produced? How, like any other business, its goal is to addict you to their product so it becomes insatiable? So much so that it that leads to extremes.? Can the depravity and enslavement of sex-trafficking, child-porn, adult-child sex, rape, bestiality, and other "accepted" forms of sexual acts be excused? Not to mention the preying on the vulnerable who "act" in films as their way out of their current plight. Yes, men and women who participate in the promotion of this scourge should be ashamed. It is not just a moral issue, it is also a psychological issue that if allowed to grow, it will make sex obsolete rather than the wonderful gift it can be within the relationships of consenting men and women.
I wish you well with this book and hope many read it before making assumptions.
Wow! I've read a lot of these comments and I'm a little shocked from what I read. Most of the responses seem to come from a guilt-ridden perspective--perhaps addictive--that excuses their lack of resistance to self-indulgence. Other accuse you of bringing your religiosity into the subject which, for some unexplained reason, nullifies your arguments. When did morality become a non-participant in the discernment of what is right and wrong? Even if you don't look at this from a moral perspective, pornography is intrinsically wrong. How it is produced, how it is distributed; how it often involves children or young adults who are desperate about their situations; how it diminishes the worth of men and women and children by selling them as a tool to gain pleasure. Furthermore, when we look at society today, the sexual depravity that has filtered into normalcy was once unimaginable: Sex trafficking, child pornography, minor attracted persons, etc., etc. All these and more, destroy relationships, create the opportunities for abortion, and bring men and women into another addiction that, like many addictions, can become insatiable.
I wish you well with your book and people read it before making assumptions.
Great article Matt! Ultimately, it’s an inward expression of what is designed to be an outward action - which can be an elaborate and addictive trap of self- gratification.
Been at it for 30 yrs and still have perfect vision. Those lying bastards.
Correlation is not causation.
Isn’t it equally if not more likely that men who have poor mental health, are unhappy or depressed, or who are unhappy in their relationships are more likely to masterbate as a result of these issues, in order to get short-term emotional relief.
Not to be 'that guy', but may I have your citations on the negative physiological effects of masturbation? It's just that I'm trying to find the studies you are talking about, but an overwhelming quantity of literature seems to argue the contrary. Thanks.
I doubt there are any studies that back up those claims. I wouldn’t waste my time looking for them.
Stuart Brody, “The Relative Health Benefits of Different Sexual Activities”, Journal of Sexual Medicine 7, no. 4:1 (April 2010).
Seething gooners
I'm actually morally against masturbation. Addictive behaviours lead to idolatry, which is by all accounts abominable; but lying and spreading pretenses in order to fearmonger? Ridiculous. That's the only reason I asked for sources. I hope I am not being taken the wrong way.
If you believe that the human person is merely physical and not spiritual, or that our physical activities have no spiritual impact, than I would assume i’d be hard pressed to make a convincing argument from a purely naturalist lens. Additionally, what reasonable scientist who wants to keep their job would ever endeavor to uncover evidence that indulging in physical sexual urges is bad for your health? Simply because the evidence may not exist (It might, who knows), that masturbation is bad for you, the inverse is not automatically true.
the lack of evidence means that it isn’t good or bad for you. You can assume that it has little to no (permanent) effect.
Great article. Porn is a modern day scourge along with masturbation, and it does eventually become a prison for a lot of men.
Incredible words from Lewis there
This is the number one most important message you can preach to young men, and you are doing God's work. It needs to be stated in explicit and uncensored terms the extent to which masturbation is poison to the male psyche. It's an uncomfortable and disgusting topic, but it must be stated.
As for the "health benefits" of masturbation put forward by certain vile persons, I am 30 months free of masturbation and I have never felt more energy and more confidence around other people, especially women, than I do now. I like the man I see in the mirror. When I see a hot woman, I don't have the instinct to go home and touch myself. I have the instinct to go and better myself even beyond where I already am.
Stopping masterbation needs a re-working of the marketing.
It is self-mastery, that's really what it is. Developing one's mind so that it is in charge, rather than the body forcibly yanking it around (pun intended).
It was as simple as two things for me
(1) the deep realization that it is poisonous and uncool
(2) private accountability to another man whom I looked up to and didn’t want to have to describe my latest whack session to.
You introduce yourself as an author of a book that is “a non-religious response to pro-porn arguments”. Yet you spend the bulk of your argument relying on a single Christian apologist and pastor. It seems your actual reason to reject masturbation is the same as all those that came before, religious.
You also perfunctorily claim a litany of health effects that have as much evidence as masturbation making people blind.
Good use of perfunctorily. What did you think of Lewis' argument at the end of the article. Any merit to that at all, or none?
First, I loved C.S. Lewis as a kid, and I think he writes genuinely great fantasy. It is somewhat of a shame that so much of modern fantasy descends from Lewis’s contemporary,Tolkien, and not Lewis’s works like Perelandra.
But returning to Lewis’s more direct apologetics, you describe Lewis making the following assertions:
* “man’s sexual appetite is meant to lead him out of himself”
* “with masturbation, the appetite is turned back in on itself”
* Which leads to “the problem with masturbation is that a man comes to prefer the dark prison of his imaginary sexual harem over the repeated intimate embrace that could transform him.”
This is an interesting series of assertions, as far as I can tell, none of them are supported by evidence in the article. But the last assertion, the harm that masturbation is supposed to cause, is actually testable. Does masturbation lead to a decrease in partnered sex?
If this actually occurred, this wouldn’t necessarily be bad. I personally find the amount of partnered sex a person partakes in to be morally neutral. Others like Lewis apparently placed inherent value in partner sex. But on the other side, ascetics like Paul (1 Corinthians 7:8) find it better to abstain from partnered sex, so if masturbation led to a reduction in partnered sex, the masturbation could be a useful tool to reduce partnered sex. But if there is no correlation between frequency of masturbation and frequency of partnered sex, then we wouldn’t need to address Lewis’s moral claim that substituting masturbation for partner sex is harmful.
But anyway, back to testing the hypothesis: does masturbation reduce the rate of partnered sex? It turns out that there is a study that looked into that question. (Waterink, Wim. (2014). In steady heterosexual relationships men masturbate more than women because of gender differences in sex drive. New Voices in Psychology. 10. 98–108. 10.25159/1812-6371/3419.) And it found that there is no relationship between those two. It states in the conclusion section: “Furthermore, due to the fact that no significant negative correlation was present between the reported frequency of partnered sex and the reported frequency of masturbation, it is not likely that for women and men in steady heterosexual relationships, masturbation is a substitute for partnered sex.”
I do realize that this is just one paper. But since you and Lewis are the ones making the assertion of harm, I believe that it is incumbent on you to make the case for harm. Lewis had an intriguing hypothesis, but there just isn’t evidence for his assertion of harm caused by masturbation.
Sex is a powerful motivator, and if you tie it to conditions, you can harness it to achieve those conditions. But it sort of goes both ways--that achievement is then tied to sex. So yeah, sex can motivate me to get out into the world and connect with other people, but I'm connecting with them because I want to have sex with them. In that sort of circumstance, I honestly can't even tell if I like them as a person until after sex, and all too often I find out I don't. So I consider it better to take care of myself and then go out into the world seeking connections. I end up with better connections that way.
There's also just the straightforward notion that "calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and...no woman can rival" is just a way of positively spinning "makes it a lot more difficult for women to sexually coerce men into making sacrifices and adjustments." It's an act of liberation, in that sense. Unsurprising that the people it liberates us from might not like it.
Gay men? Asexual men? Men with hormonal drives that aren't "typical"? Are they controlled by women wanting to have sex with them?
I just flat disagree that all men are lead constantly by their dicks and the notion that you need to wank before stepping out into the world to be a normal human is kind of wild.... Does that set off a timer? How long before you turn back into a beast who only sees sex everywhere and in everything? Reducing people to mere sex objects that you discard in disgust afterwards? Bro... I don't think women are the problem here lol.
Not what I intended to imply--I was responding to the C. S. Lewis quote that asserted you shouldn't wank cuz you'll lose interest, and so was focused on people for whom that might apply and the positive side of losing interest. Didn't mean to imply everyone (even myself) always has to wank just to treat each other decent.
Also, fwiw, I'm gay. Bro.
Grelloh you've been disingenuous by strawmanning his argument. You framed it as though he was describing the extreme, when he wasn't, he was simply pointing out the logical considerations of masterbation, and it's social effects. It doesn't mean he's an extreme sexist or sex addict!
I mean I guess I could have been clearer that when I said "the people it liberates us from" I was talking about theologians.
I’m gonna keep masturbating happily
May God save you.
He already has 😇
Time to destroy your argument: men in healthy sexual relationships masturbate.
Frequently.
No ill effects.
Define “ill effects”.
Know anyone, outside of nuthouse residents who died of masturbation? Well then.
Besides, ya’ll gotta figure out how your junk works and aside from someone teaching you…
What, I have to describe ill effects to your leading question that was not thought out well? Ill health, disease, deep psychological trauma.
Oh, I’m sure you can bring up some numbers from an obscure report, but not enough to justify your position.
I was simply asking you to define what you meant by claiming no ill effects. You don't even know my position. It's not a leading question, it was a request for the defining of terms which is crucial to any constructive conversation. What one man deems an "ill effect", may be viewed by another as a positive or neutral effect. Don't be so easily triggered.
Also define whether there would be any positive effects if they didn't masturbate while in relationships.
I think Lewis' quote is psychologically astute until he talks about "the little dark prison we are all born in." That's really not the way I look at the beginning of life. No doubt being born is traumatic, and learning to live as beings outside of our mothers is scary, but I don't think babies are in prisons. I think it's a most amazing time of life, when we're learning astoundingly quickly, bonding to our families, absorbing cultures. It's a bright, beautiful awakening. Maybe Lewis is hung up on the idea of babies infected by original sin; if so, his argument about human nature rests on a particular theological view that is not shared by most humans on earth.
I think Lewis may also be referring to the little dark prison that is the world we live in. We have such relative innocence, despite our original sin, as infants, but it is tainted by the world we live in.
Thumbnail checks out. Masturbation is one of those things i dont think we have to look back in the history books about. People been jerkin it and mixing macaroni long before Freuds weird ass put pen to paper. I think theres too much of a focus on self gratification these days. People ironically enter relationships with others solely to make themselves feel better. Which is pretty much just masturbating with an actual person's emotions. To me, self care should be private.
I agree. We really need to drop the liberal ideology of instant gratification being "therapeutic". What we need to start leaning into instead is self-mastery (celibacy, fasting, exercise etc.), not self gratification (hedonism, pornography, sleeping around constantly, etc).
I was shocked to learn that most of my male friends continued to masturbate after marriage. That just makes no sense to me; you've got a real woman there that loves you. Most of them wound up divorced as well. I wonder if there's a connection?
Many relationships have some kind of imbalance in libido. It’s a good way to take the edge off when your partner isn’t feeling it but you are, which is a natural part of any long term relationship. If it’s used to fully substitute for a healthy sex life, than it is damaged, but I see no problem with it as a supplement.
Because most of your friends' wives will not want to have sex as much as your friends do. The reason they are divorced is because the wives were not interested in pleasing their husbands. When most people get married, they agree to only have sex with each other. If one of them unilaterally decides that sex is off the table, the denied partner will often not be happy about that and will look for other outlets, masturbation or cheating or divorce
Imagine if I told my wife that I am no longer interested in sharing conversation with her. That part of my life is over. I am just not into it any more. How long do you think she would stay with me? To men, sex is like conversation
Also consider how common "dead bedrooms" are, and that they are a leading cause of why men go on to cheat, especially following the wife going through menopause and having a significantly reduced sex drive. When you lose Christianity, you also lose that religious commitment to the needs, wants, and desires of your partner, and that goes both ways.
My wife did the exact opposite. Her drive went up significantly after menopause. I think that's part of the “cougar” phenomenon; reduced estrogen leading to testosterone playing a bigger role. I guess I'm just lucky, or weird, lol, but I never felt the need to masturbate after marriage. I've been very happy for 40 years.
That's fine, but I've been married for 40 years and I’ve never considered my wife a “cum dumpster” or myself as unable control my sexual urges.
To each their own, and I wish you many more years of happiness together.
The Eastern Orthodox tradition is decidedly negative towards masturbation. ce)
“Masturbation is a sin so abhorrent to God that on account of it He put to death Onan, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, because he was the first to commit the act upon the earth, and it is therefore also called onanism. For the Holy Scripture says in Genesis (38:10): ‘And the thing which he (Onan) did appeared as evil before God: wherefore He slew him.’”
“So then, this sin is like a pestilence and corruption of the human race, and causes masturbators to live here and now a disgraceful and miserable life, and to be tormented eternally in the next life in the fire of hell.”
— Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite, On Masturbation
Frankly, it is somewhat odd that Onan is the go-to example for masturbation being a Biblical sin, since at least by our modern definitions Onan was clearly not masturbating: rather, he was using the pull-out method of contraception while having real, not simulated, sex with his late brother's wife, Tamar (this on account of fulfilling the duty to give offspring to his late brother in the ancient Isrealite custom of Levirite marriage). A much clearer read of the sin in Onan's case was that he greedily refused to give his late brother children by Tamar, because they would not be recognized as his own genealogocally; the passage in Genesis even says as much, "But Onan knew that the offspring would not be his. So whenever he went in to his brother’s wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the LORD, and he put him to death also." (Genesis 38:9-10). No mention is made of Onan being driven merely by the desire for sexual pleasure, although that he enjoyed himself might go without saying. Still, it seems that the sin which the book of Genesis wants to draw us to see in Onan's behavior was his greed and abandonment of his duty to the family. The Book of Deuteronomy helpfully clarifies that God, or at least Moses, did indeed care about the custom of Levirite marriage, and did indeed command it of the Isrealites (Deuteronomy 25:5-10).
Now to be fair: the phrase "what he [Onan] did" which was wicked in the sight of the Lord could merely have been to spill seed on the ground without any other consideration of motives; yet this would lead us to believe that the reason God killed Onan was not for his intentions, but for the circumstantial outcomes accompanying them. This is unbefitting of the God elsewhere shown in Scripture as reading the hearts of men and showing especial concern for their intentions behind their acts, not just the acts themselves. Further, the rest of the story of Judah and Tamar is centered on the idea that Judah was in the wrong for depriving Tamar of her rightful children by his clan, which he had promised her. ("She is more righteous than I, since I did not give her to my son Shelah," Genesis 38:26). So the whole theme of the story is centered on the unrighteousness of Judah and his descendants for refusing to honor the marriage contract which had been agreed upon between Judah's family and Tamar's family. Onan plays a fairly minor part, and it is a stretch even to call his actions masturbation, let alone his sins. His role could be used in terms of Scriptural morality to more obviously condemn, for instance, refusing sex to your spouse or the use of contraceptive methods, since these actions occur within the context of a marriage in which children are the expectation, and they sin because they actively refuse the conception of children, just like Onan. With masterbation per se, it is that in many if not most cases there is no such existing marriage or covenant between spouses which the act of solo ejaculation would violate; not unless you want to stipulate that "masterbation violates the covenant with your future spouse," but this is a different line of reasoning entirely from what we started with, which again is the standing against masturbation on account of it being animal pleasure and thus degrading of the human being, and further that it is not connected to procreation, etc. etc. I don't disagree with these criticisms of masterbation, per se. But I do not see these clearly evident from the reading of Onan in the story of Judah and Tamar. Rather, Greek philosophy and natural law approaches seem much more clearly the source of this condemnation. In light of this, Onan seems not so much the source of the Church's stance against masturbation, as he is an example which a Church already against masturbation went back looking for as bolstering evidence for their preexisting views.
Blah blah blah. Get your hand off your dick. I haven’t whacked off in 30 months. It can be done. Stop making lame excuses.
Dicks go in vaginas, not male hands. Cum goes in women, not dirty socks..
What a fascinating comment to leave! I wonder if you realized that I agree, I do not condone masturbation, nor do I masturbate. If you had read what I wrote, you would have realized that my point was not that masturbation is good, but that the biblical story of Onan is not on it's own a sufficient proof text on which to base the idea that it is wrong. Masturbation is wrong because it gives oneself away to animal passions and foils the natural plan of God regarding procreation! I agree! I hope you will be more charitable next time.
Meaningless hairsplitting, and of course I didn't read all that. Nor will I read your next wall of text. Saints for two thousand years have called masturbation "Onanism" which is perfectly fine.
Hands off dicks is the message here, not your smart boy theological treatise.
People read shit on substack, stop being a frustrated retard. Great that you stopped masturbating, but now you clearly need to get laid.
You can’t have reading comprehension if you don’t read to begin with 😁.
You calling an established Saint and father of the Church “some guy” proves that you are not, in fact, Orthodox. Either that or, I assume, you just didn’t pay attention in Church. Probably both.
Hey Matt!
Wow! I've read many of the comments and I'm a little shocked by their content. Some seem to come from a guilt-ridden, perhaps addicted, perspective. Others not only they accuse you of coming from a religious point of view, but also reveal a lack of moral standing in order to justify their practice. It doesn't take religious morality to help you discern right from wrong. Pornography is intrinsically wrong. It is heart-breaking, soul-crushing, self-defeating, humiliating, degrading...in other words, Evil. Just look at how it has filtered into our society and continues to normalize sex outside of marriage. Also, can anyone excuse how it is produced? How, like any other business, its goal is to addict you to their product so it becomes insatiable? So much so that it that leads to extremes.? Can the depravity and enslavement of sex-trafficking, child-porn, adult-child sex, rape, bestiality, and other "accepted" forms of sexual acts be excused? Not to mention the preying on the vulnerable who "act" in films as their way out of their current plight. Yes, men and women who participate in the promotion of this scourge should be ashamed. It is not just a moral issue, it is also a psychological issue that if allowed to grow, it will make sex obsolete rather than the wonderful gift it can be within the relationships of consenting men and women.
I wish you well with this book and hope many read it before making assumptions.
Hey Matt!
Wow! I've read a lot of these comments and I'm a little shocked from what I read. Most of the responses seem to come from a guilt-ridden perspective--perhaps addictive--that excuses their lack of resistance to self-indulgence. Other accuse you of bringing your religiosity into the subject which, for some unexplained reason, nullifies your arguments. When did morality become a non-participant in the discernment of what is right and wrong? Even if you don't look at this from a moral perspective, pornography is intrinsically wrong. How it is produced, how it is distributed; how it often involves children or young adults who are desperate about their situations; how it diminishes the worth of men and women and children by selling them as a tool to gain pleasure. Furthermore, when we look at society today, the sexual depravity that has filtered into normalcy was once unimaginable: Sex trafficking, child pornography, minor attracted persons, etc., etc. All these and more, destroy relationships, create the opportunities for abortion, and bring men and women into another addiction that, like many addictions, can become insatiable.
I wish you well with your book and people read it before making assumptions.
Great article Matt! Ultimately, it’s an inward expression of what is designed to be an outward action - which can be an elaborate and addictive trap of self- gratification.
The bait becomes the master.