Why Masturbation Is Not Self-Abuse

Masturbation has long been a target of legalism, misrepresentation, and gratuitous anxiety.  One of the most pathetic charges against it is that it amounts to some form of self-abuse.  This absurd mischaracterization has nothing to do with reality, as two refutations of this nonsense demonstrate.  Simple masturbation is not and cannot be "self-abuse," and each refutation is sufficient to undermine the claim on its own.

I have already addressed one of these points before: the pseudoscientific, fallacious idea that masturbation causes mental illnesses and physical deformities [1] has nothing at all to support it.  Prevalent in previous generations, this stance has largely died out due to its enormous evidential flaws.  Reason undermines it, and so does information gathered through the scientific method.  There is no logical or empirical connection between masturbation itself and any mental or physical illnesses.  These alleged negative consequences of self-stimulation have absolutely no evidences to affirm them.

Unless a person is forced to masturbate against their will, there is no abuse involved in sexual self-stimulation (and even then the abuse would only be on the part of the aggressor).  Thus, since nonconsensual sexual behaviors constitute sexual abuse, there cannot be anything abusive, degrading, or violating about voluntary masturbation in itself, since it is by nature done by a person to himself or herself with his or her own consent.  The very phrase “self-abuse” is a misleading euphemism that misrepresents the moral and physical nature of masturbation.  On its own, bringing one's mind pleasure by the manual stimulation of one's genitals is not abuse of one's body.  If a person chooses to masturbate in a manner free of actual addiction, then it is not self-abuse, but self-pleasure.  Even rough, passionate, aggressive forms of masturbation are not abusive by nature.

An ascetic discomfort with the human body and natural sexual physiology is behind the mislabeling of masturbation as self-abuse.  This asceticism is the same reason why some people feel uncomfortable even discussing the topic--it is not because there is anything shameful or harmful about the subject, but because of personal or conditioned anxieties.  Treating nonsinful activities as taboo conversation topics is partly why some people might harbor such irrational attitudes towards them, and masturbation is no exception to this.  Fallacies can thrive when they are accepted as a result of widespread silence.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-lunacy-of-historical-anti.html