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I Just Couldn't Accept that Sex was Sinful

Mon, 03/19/2012 - 08:27
Submitted by Edgerman58

I completely agree with what Betty and Carlin last posted on their Friday video about the importance of good masturbation= good sex. It does! I especially agreed with their point that religion fucks up the enjoyment of sex! It most certainly does. I know something about this, because I used to be a fundamentalist Christian for quite a long time. Masturbation provided a very important escape route from that.

Betty's book Liberating Masturbation was exactly what it was--- liberating! As I masturbated more and more, I just couldn't accept that sex was sinful, or that sexual pleasure was a tool of the devil. That was just bullshit. I mean, for me, I just couldn't accept that something that could feel THAT good was bad. Come on! Carlin stated it perfectly when she observed that religion commands us to be a certain way that is plainly out of kilter with human nature.

The real reason that we see so many religious figures having sexual troubles is not that surprising. THEY DON'T ALLOW FOR THE NORMAL HUMAN DESIRE FOR PLEASURE. They are desperately trying to ram a square peg into a round hole. It doesn't really work. How can that be healthy? It makes people who internalize that stuff into neurotics. Just look at the field of recent Republican presidential contenders, it you doubt that. Rick Santorum, probably especially so. That guy is really scary!

As I said earlier, as I read Betty's fabulous little book (which I bought on a whim one day while looking for something to read), and I thought about how reasonable she was about the enjoyment of a simple, harmless pleasure such as masturbation, and, the more I masturbated, the more I just couldn't hold on to the deadening ideology that Christianity is (and Islam and Judaism are the same problem wrapped up slightly differently, is all). One day, the thought occurred to me that if I had to make a choice in favor of masturbation, or in favor of Christianity, I'd choose masturbation. There was no choice, really.

When I was struggling with what I would eventually come to realize was my bisexual inclinations, religion played a very painful role in that, as well. So, like Betty and Carlin said: Go masturbate, and have fun doing it! Don't put the burden on someone else for YOUR orgasms. It is not their responsibility. It's an individuals place to take care of that.

We Suggest: 
Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving
Two Views of Woman by Betty Dodson
After Decades Filled with Many Sex Partners I'm Back to Being My Own Lover
"Sex" is an Interconnected Continuum
Betty Dodson's Bodysex Workshop

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Edgerman,I agree!

icyqueen's picture
Mon, 03/19/2012 - 10:59
icyqueen

I think it's important to be able to masturbate without feelings of guilt or shame. Everyone should be able and should have the right to discover his or her own body and sexuality. And I would choose masturbation over Christianity too. Masturbation feels good,so why should it be wrong or bad?

Edgerman and icyqueen, I agree as well!

Mon, 03/19/2012 - 12:43
Patrick_R

Masturbation is the foundation of healthy sexuality. It's how all human beings learn about their normal, pleasurable responses. I had a horrible Catholic upbringing that forbade any voluntary, enjoyable erotic activity whatsoever (until a 'valid' Catholic marriage!). I discovered my body and orgasm at age 11, only to be told that I was a 'mortal sinner' on my way to Hell. I was so terrified that I literally never touched myself again until I was 18 years old.

Like Edgerman, I had to make a choice. I asked myself what sort of God would stand by and allow people to die of things like cancer, but then would torture adolescents for simply developing sexually the way nature intended? A God that heartless and cruel had to go. The scandals in the Catholic Church don't surprise me at all. When a person's normal, healthy sexuality is completely suppressed, all that sexual energy has to go somewhere. And if the normal is absolutely forbidden, what's left but the unhealthy and abnormal?

Masturbation

Mon, 03/19/2012 - 17:02
Liandra Dahl

I remember being told that hair would grow on my hands when I was about 11 and I realised that what I had been doing for years was masturbating. I was terrified as hair was growing in all sorts of new places so this seemed quite plausible that it could happen. I even wondered if the hair coming on my upper lip was because I was masturbating. The lack of information, the deadening silence really, on the normalcy of masturbation for kids leaves them really vulnerable to confusion and shame. 

We're terrified of talking age appropriate information with primary school aged children and so instead they get a truck load of damaging misinformation they have to spend sometimes decades undoing. It's so so so so shit. 

Masturbation---Edgerman, icyqueen, Liandra . . .

Mon, 03/19/2012 - 19:10
Patrick_R

The awful things children are told about themselves, masturbation, and sexuality! When they're told anything at all, it's usually toxic, shaming, or even terrifying and damaging. My life would have been so much happier, so much sooner, if only I'd been able to talk with even one caring adult who could have said, "What you were doing is masturbating. It's normal, healthy, everyone does it, and it's not a sin of any kind. So go enjoy yourself!"

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