I was being my usual hypochondriac self today, perusing the WebMD site for new information on my numerous symptoms, when I got caught up in a trail of articles on men‘s reproductive health. That, in turn, led to an article that said there was a relationship between prostate cancer and masturbation!
First, the article states that there seems to be a correlation, and the nature of that correlation is age-dependent - in other words, the age of the person engaging in self-pleasuring is a controlling factor in whether masturbation seems to have a positive or negative effect on the risk of developing prostate cancer. On the surface, it appears that young men who masturbate frequently (which for this group, is defined as 2 to 7 times per week) appear to have an elevated risk of developing the cancer, while older men who masturbate frequently (more than once per week) have a decreased risk!
The article then goes on to mention confounding factors, such as the fact that high levels of testosterone have also been connected with increased risk, and that young men tend to have astronomically high levels of testosterone as compared with older men. Oddly enough, it has been documented in other studies that sex drive in men is also related to testosterone levels. The more you have, the more you want, it would seem, regardless of age. So, do the younger men really elevate their risk by jacking off too frequently? Or is it simply that they have high testosterone levels, and thus have both a greater risk of prostate cancer, and a greater, but unrelated, likelihood of masturbating frequently, in order to control their libidos?
Initially, it would appear that the article validates the contentions of the more puritanical components of our society. You know the ones - they seem to feel that anything that is fun or feels good is wicked. Those components posit that masturbation in all forms must be eliminated, maintaining that it is a sin against God, and pointing to the (relatively obscure, Old Testament) story of Onan as justification. A closer examination of the story, however, shows that this is all just self-righteous posturing.
Onan “spilled his seed.” Since people can’t admit to any other possible outcome for masturbation, it follows that every time a boy masturbates, he “spills his seed.” To those who believe that Onan was punished for wasting his gametes, it’s a no-brainer that God wouldn’t be happy about masturbation.
The fact is, though, that God’s anger at Onan was actually a reaction to his refusal to impregnate Tamar. According to custom, with his older brother recently dead, any child that Onan planted in Tamar would have been considered to have been fathered by the dead, older brother. The scripture says that Onan actually had sex with his sister-in-law, but having no desire to beget a child that he couldn’t claim as his own, he interrupted the process in order to avoid impregnating her. He spilled his seed on the ground, and God terminated his lease on life. It didn’t say how, just that it happened; and ever since then, certain elements of our religious communities have seized upon that very short story to justify making people feel fearful and guilty about masturbation.
The fact is, Onan didn’t masturbate. He actually had sex with Tamar. He simply refused to do his duty according to the customs and mores of his people, and he died as punishment for that. Furthermore, after Onan died, his father Judah knew that he was supposed to give Tamar to his only remaining son, Shelah, in order to allow Tamar to conceive. He didn’t, and eventually ended up impregnating Tamar himself, as an indirect result.
The reason that the extended story is important to this discussion, is that it is necessary in order to understand what really happened, and why. According to custom, Tamar had every reason to expect Onan to give her a baby, even though the child would not have been “legally” his own. He refused to do it for purely selfish reasons, and that was cruel to Tamar. Cruelty makes God angry. Read the prohibition against “seething the kid in its own mother’s milk.” Why would that matter? The scripture says it is cruel, that’s why!
Add to this the fact that one of Tamar’s sons was actually an ancestor of King David, and by extension, Jesus of Nazareth, and you begin to see that God’s antipathy for Onan had roots in things other than whether or not someone plays with themselves.
Think about this: there are two types of people, where masturbation is concerned - those that have done it, and those who lie about it. People have been masturbating since long before Onan. They don’t die because of it. If God were that concerned about masturbation, he would have weeded out the tendency long before now.
Cheers.
Mariner
February 09, 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment