You can definitely call the penis a man’s laziest body part. You will ask – why so? It’s simple – while other organs, for instance, lungs, kidney’s or liver are busy all the time, penis his job does on average only 5-15 times a day. What does it need to do? Those are two things – excretion of urine and semen from body. And how can we not call this laziness, especially when IT needs to be “ready”, but he, you see, doesn’t want that! Though, around this organ there always take place the most intimate activities. After all we pay the biggest attention to our “friend” as it’s considered the symbol of manhood.
Girl talks also often are about man’s laziest organ. Without a doubt they have interest in it exactly like men are interested to find out more about women genitals. There are many discussions and talks in mass media about sex, sexual maturity, contraception and many other actual issues but seldom you will hear about masturbation, especially opened talk. Often people avoid this subject as if there were connected some evil spirits with it. And probably you also have heard many statements that masturbation is bad – your spinal cord will dry out, you will have hair growing on your palms, sperm will run out, you’ll become infertile or impotent and so on. Where do these myths come from? Can masturbation harm your health? What consequences can masturbation bring? About these and other questions we’ll talk with dr. Arthur from AIDS portal.
What is masturbation?
Masturbation, onanism, jerking off, spanking the monkey – they all are synonyms for physiological process of self pleasuring, when person is exciting and satisfying himself by exciting his genitals. In medical encyclopedia there has been given following explanation – artificial, mechanic exciting of own genitals to achieve erotic excitement and satisfaction of sex drive.
I have been always interested in question – what is the difference between onanism and masturbation? It turns out that it’s the same, only their origin is different. Onanism has originated from Biblical motives, when God punished Onan for wasting serum of life. In its turn word “masturbation” literally means:”to do something dirty with your hands”. Call it as you wish but further in this text we’ll be using masturbation.
From where do come from assumption that masturbation is bad, that if you practice it you can become infertile and so on?
Masturbation is an intimate process which usually is performed in solitude when nobody sees and knows about that. In 18th century it was noticed that mentally ill people who don’t have self-criticism and who are isolated are practicing self-satisfaction in public. So there was term introduced in medicine: “dementia caused by masturbation”. Such observations were also made in prisons where sentenced people were isolated from others. Conclusion – masturbation is a crime stimulating factor. These and many other preconceptions and myths are passed from generation to generation and even in our days you can often hear older people talk negatively about this fact. Myths about bad influence of masturbation have survived till our days and big part of people (including teachers of health subject) still believe in them.
Still, knowing these myths and attitude of society, teenager develops different complexes – fears, decreasing of self esteem and so on.
In further conversation I would like to find out – Is that bad to masturbate? Dr. Arturs Vavere thinks that it has to be taken positively though it also has its bad sides as well as good ones, or in other words – pluses and minuses.
