MASTURBATION
This file is about ways of sexual pleasuring with yourself and with
others, that use the hands and penis. This is masturbation (jacking
off), always popular, and surprisingly varied in the world of
nature and humanity.
Captive apes and monkeys, as well as other animals, have been seen
fondling their penis with hand or foot (or even taken into the
mouth). In one study, young male chimpanzees were noticed handling
each other's penis. Other limbs can be used to, such as with
free-living spider monkeys and baboons, who use their tails. And
elephants sometimes employ their trunks.
A curious scientist watches a porcupine:
His excitement was evidenced by...holding a long stick in his fore
paws and straddling it as a child does a broom-stick. The stick
was held so that his genitals were stimulated by the contact, and
the wood soon accumulated odor from the urine and glandular
secretions absorbed. In consequence, it was a natural source of
sexual stimulation.
Dolphins can be seen rubbing their erect penis against the tank
floor, and one individual had the habit of holding his in the jet
of the water intake. In addition, larger males will attempt
masturbation against the flanks of smaller ones. Perhaps the most
unusual way of masturbating is found among red deer:
This act is accomplished by lowering the head and gently drawing
the tips (of the antlers) to and fro through the herbage. Erection
and extrusion of the penis from the sheath follows in five to
seven seconds...Ejaculation follows about five seconds after.
Masturbation has always been common among humans. In some ancient
western cultures, it was connected with religious worship. For
example, in Egyptian mythology the god Orisis "creates all living
creatures by an infinite act of masturbation." This was also seen
as the source of the Nile river, and the cause of its annual
flooding, which was the backbone of life in Egypt. The ritual
developed of pharaohs masturbating before the god's image a the
time of their enthronement. This led to public masturbation during
religious worship, "to expel evil and honor the gods of
generation," and became a part of an ancient Egyptian, and also
Phoenician, Babylonian and Assyrian, sacred ceremonies.
Masturbation was also don for its own sake, without any sacred
meanings; the Bible gives us several instances of this )the
"spilling of seed").
The Greeks and Romans thought masturbation was invented by the god
Hermes (Mercury in Latin). The Greeks called it thrypsis, "the
rubbing," and in Latin it was masturatus. People doubtless
masturbated together at times, as well as doing it by themselves,
in these ancient cultures, even though we have no records of this.
The ancients were generally very relaxed about male sexual
expression. However jacking-off was later frowned upon thoroughly
by the Christian Church.
In the middle and far east, attitudes toward jacking-off have not
changed from ancient times. In most eastern cultured, Arabian,
Indian, Chinese, and Japanese, masturbation was allowed at an
early age, and at times even encouraged. For example, Ibn Kemal
Pasha, in On the Lengthening and Thickening of the Rod quotes old
Arabian doctors in saying that "rubbing and constant handling both
make the virile member longer and thicker." Masturbation was
sometimes used on babies to quiet their crying and Bernard Stern
noted that in Arabia it (jacking-off) "has become almost the
custom of the land." Two scholars noted that Muslim and Jewish boys
who actively and exclusively engaged in solitary and/or mutual
masturbation, did so on the average of three to five times per
week during the ages of eleven and eighteen.
In Arabian slang the act was known as jeng, jelq, jerk, and musht-
zeni, jerking, flipping, juggling and fist-beating respectively,
referring to the different techniques. In Turkey it was called
istimney-bilyet ("the practice of self-control of the stalk"),
while in Persia it was called maulish-e-zubb ("shampooing the
cord"). Masturbation was especially popular in public baths, where
you and/or a friend, or a masseur and/or a prostitute, could
engage you in the practice, "Mutual or one-sided, as desired."
Some ribald poetry survives, such as two lines from "The Fabulous
Feats of the Futtering Freebooters:" "Felah and Negro did jerk off
his yard/For all of a week; hashish kept it up hard." And from the
Persian poet Abu Nuwas:
. Are not this child's eyes all fire?
. O Desire,
. Feel the flush of the eggs
. Between his legs!
. Dearest, seize what you can seize,
. If you please;
. Fill your boyish fist with me
. And then see
. Will it go a little way,
. Just in play?
In India, masturbation has a long history, going back to ancient
Hindu mythology, In one story, Lord Shiva was "masturbated by
Agnee the Fire-lord who, bearing his precious semen across the
Ganges, accidentally dropped it and witnessed the miraculous birth
of Kartikeh (or Koomareh) the misogynist war-god." Krishna, as god
of Self-Contemplation, became the symbol of jacking-off and "the
favorite Hindoo youth. His practice, hautrus (manual orgasm)...was
deified as ritualistic." It was also called panimathana ("hand
churning") and "was relished extensively."
In China, Dr. Jacobus reports, young men would get together to
smoke opium, and then "abuse their generative organs for hours at
a time in a frenzy of mutual masturbation and anal copulation."
Along the same lines, one report explains that the Cossacks, who
lived on the middle Asian plains were more excited by self and
mutual masturbation than in sex with women, "having from infancy
identified sexual pleasure with masturbation alone."
Among other cultures, masturbation was often allowed or encouraged.
Of special of interest are cultures allowing the act to be shared
between males. These include the Hopi in Arizona, Wogeno in
Oceania, and Dahomeans and Namu of Africa. In certain Melanesian
communities this was expected between boys, and between boys and
married men, although no other king of gay male sex was allowed.
In the Cubeo tribe of the Amazon mutual masturbation was "semi-
Public." Among the Tikopia of the South Pacific, men masturbated
themselves as other men watched.
(Next Posting: Techniques of Masturbation)
