\u201cIf I\u2019m bored or feel the urge, I will do it a couple of times a day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chatel, who lives in New York, gamely confesses to a fickle fondness for masturbation \u2013 which she calls \u201ca woman\u2019s best friend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the heart of her narrative \u2013 as its title implies – concerns her experiences during extended periods when she doesn\u2019t masturbate at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She attributes these weeks of abstinence to a number of things. Sometimes, she says, an orgasm is simply the farthest thing from her mind \u2013 as is often the case when she has just gone through a breakup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there are those times when she stays over at her parents\u2019 house, where, she admits:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t feel comfortable, for whatever reason, so I just don\u2019t do it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"\u201cI](\"https:\/\/espressoblues.comm\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2020\/12\/MASTURBATION-Oneras-wallhere.com_.jpg\")
An Unspoken Guilt<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
One might wonder how Chatel could feel uncomfortable about masturbating in her childhood home even as she quite unblushingly writes about the subject for Bustle\u2019s 80 million readers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She herself ponders over the question, writing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI do spend some time wondering why I can\u2019t bring myself to masturbate at my parents\u2019 house, especially since that\u2019s where I masturbated for the very first time when I was teenager.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chatel never explains the reasons for her discomfort. In the end, there is little need for an explanation. The average reader understands \u2013 at least on a purely intuitive level \u2013the guilt and awkwardness she might attach to the mostly solitary act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Masturbation… not quite a dinner table topic yet!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, even talking about masturbation can prove thorny for many people. However liberal our views on sex might be, we generally don’t talk about masturbation as casually as we talk about \u2013 say – eating, sleeping or even, politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The extent of our discomfort over such a mundane subject can even be laughable:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2013, Swedish authorities arrested a 65-year-old man on charges of sexual assault<\/em> after police caught him masturbating openly on a Stockholm beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bewildered by the rationale behind the seriousness of the charge, a magistrate promptly cleared him of the crime \u201cbecause he was not pleasuring himself towards a specific person.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The assault charges against the Swedish man so tickled the European press that his acquittal made the news worldwide<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s all well and good for much of the world, of course, but few would have seen anything humorous about the situation just a few hundred years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The anonymous author of the pamphlet, Onania<\/em>, which first saw print in England in 1716, most certainly saw masturbation as a criminal act. And it seems that most of people alive during the European Enlightenment agreed with him… at least publicly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201cshameful vice<\/em>,\u201d the \u201csolitary act of pleasure<\/em>,\u201d was something too terrible to even describe in print at the time. The pamphlet\u2019s author nonetheless saw no reason for reticence when it came to cataloguing \u201cthe frightful consequences of self-pollution<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n These consequences, he said, included – but were not limited to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The author of the Onania<\/em> makes it clear that he is well-aware that the sin of Onan refers to the superfluous spilling of male seed. But women are – apparently – just as easily lead to depravity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The full title of his pamphlet was Onania: Or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, and all its Frightful Consequences (in Both Sexes)<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh no… not my virginity!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems that women who masturbated could expect diseases of the womb, hysteria, infertility and the loss of \u2018that valuable badge of their chastity and innocence<\/em>\u2019 \u2013 their virginity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fortunately for many generations, masturbation hasn’t always been the object of such horror and derision. In more ancient times, masturbation was either not much mentioned or \u2013 at most – regarded with cheerful humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Middle Ages, and for much of the early modern period, masturbation, while widely viewed as sinful and perverse, was not treated with such importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When did things change? In the West, apparently, it wasn’t until people started believing that the soul was present in semen! Whoa!<\/p>\n\n\n\n This notion remained prevalent among religious Europeans up until the 19th<\/sup> century, according to the historians Jean Stengers and Anne Van Neck in Masturbation: The Great Terror <\/em>(2001).<\/p>\n\n\n\n There were exceptions, though \u2013 especially toward the late 1800s, when medical professionals began opposing masturbation for more \u2018enlightened\u2019 reasons of self-control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Neither the plague, nor war, nor smallpox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of Onanism.<\/p>Dr. J. H. Kellogg<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In 1877, the American physician, J H Kellogg, claimed that \u201cneither the plague, nor war, nor smallpox, nor similar diseases, have produced results so disastrous to humanity as the pernicious habit of Onanism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kellog was both a doctor and a health-food pioneer. His development of dry breakfast cereals was largely responsible for the creation of the flaked-cereal industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Corn flakes… the anti-masterbation diet!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFew of today\u2019s eaters of Kellogg\u2019s Corn Flakes know that he invented them, almost literally, as anti-masturbation food,\u201d the psychologist John Money once pointed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How deeply such harsh views on masturbation affected people in the 1800s is anyone\u2019s guess. We can reasonably assume that \u2013 at least in the beginning – they felt much the same way Chatel feels after a few weeks of self-denial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chatel says she typically feels perfectly fine throughout the first week of self-imposed restraint. But by week two, she notices a jangling in her nerves like an inexplicable itch she can\u2019t scratch<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn fact, it\u2019s not just that I can\u2019t scratch it, but it also feels like I\u2019m not even sure where that itch is,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unlike Chatel’s strange itch, however, some of the more palpable consequences of previous public policies against masturbation are still with us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, male circumcision originated in part with a 19th-century idea which associated the foreskin with masturbatory practices, say some researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/espressoblues.comm\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2020\/12\/sex-penis-gun-weapon-anatomy-pistol-655305-wallhere.com_.jpg\")
Epileptic Fits and Gonorrhea<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"Europeans](\"https:\/\/espressoblues.comm\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2020\/12\/EPILEPSY_Wellcome_images-wikiL0005934.jpg\")
Breakfast for Your Soul<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/espressoblues.comm\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/12\/2020\/12\/MASTURBATION-Angelo-Nairod-Wallhere.jpg\")
(Photo: Angela Nairod\/Wallhere)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe Itch You Can\u2019t Scratch<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/espressoblues.comm\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2020\/12\/MASTURBATION-WALLHERE.jpg\")