A Stigma Around Masturbation

Humans can be very paradoxical beings, and their attitudes towards sexuality in particular often involve a rather great degree of nuance.  For example, people who are otherwise quite open about their attractions to certain individuals or their desires for sexual activity might have difficulty admitting to others that they enjoy stimulating their own genitals.  This paradoxical attitude is, in many cases, seemingly the result of myths about masturbation or societal discouragement of overt acknowledgment of select sexual behaviors.

Perhaps it is due to misconceptions about how masturbation is what people who are unable to find a partner resort to, as if masturbating is a private admission that one is incapable of entering into a mutual romantic or sexual relationship.  It is no such thing; someone can be in a fulfilling, committed sexual relationship and still thoroughly enjoy self-stimulation.  Nothing about either excludes the other.  Likewise, the idea that one's partner will inevitably be offended if one masturbates is asinine.

What is more likely in many cases, instead, is that social mores selectively suppress certain forms of sexual expression, or at least acknowledgment of those forms of expression.  Since masturbation, on its own, is an act involving only one person, people might gratuitously feel awkward about admitting their indulgence (though it is fallacious to say that everyone masturbates, contrary to some jokes) because of the way that masturbation is treated as a very personal, private thing.  But sexuality itself is not awkward; this does not stop some people from perceiving it through a lens of anxiety.

With sexuality, as with other matters, I have found that those who are willing to openly share information about themselves are likely to have their vulnerability and boldness reciprocated to some extent.  If society at large is to embrace a relaxed, consistent stance towards nonsinful expressions of sexuality, someone needs to start by modeling openness in discussing sexual habits and feelings.  There is nothing shameful or reprehensible about appreciating or discussing impulses that God implanted with the majority of humankind.

I am transparent about the fact that I enjoy masturbation, simply because it is a thing that I subjectively find very pleasurable, even as an asexual [1].  Though people are free to refrain from sharing details about their sexuality, there is nothing "indecent" or shameful about doing so.  And in doing so, people can attain a level of comfort with their bodies and the functions of their bodies that far exceeds what is otherwise the status quo.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/09/can-asexuals-masturbate.html