Response From A “Doctor”

This is in response to the answer you have given to the 19-year-old girl about masturbation in the Indian Express last Saturday. I was really horrified with your nonsensical answer. You wanted her to do masturbation more than two times in a week and to enjoy it more. The girl herself feels that such a habit is wrong and wants to come out of it. She knows that it is unhealthy but she is addicted to it. When you answer these types of questions I request you to be completely sure about your answer. The answer given by you was wrong and encouraged immorality in public.

If you were really so courageous you could explain your surprise that her frequency was so low because you do it many more times than her and that you keep healthy mentally, physically and morally, too.

Please note that masturbation is a weakness. If you have done it you know it that is totally unhealthy (morally, physically and mentally). The Creator has given the means of attraction to the opposite sex for procreation only. After procreation is completed, this power is gradually withdrawn by nature itself and one is not supposed to assess the opposite sex or their spouse on their sexual ability. Similarly, many youths and unmarried healthy people face temptation for sex and it is your duty to save them falling to it when they have approached you for counseling.

Masturbation is, of course, unhealthy physically, mentally, and also morally. Why didn’t you make this point to that girl? While she should not feel guilty about it, she should try to avoid it as far as possible.

I shall tell you in another mail about the bad effects of masturbation, if I know your response to this.
–A Healthy Man and Doctor

Thank you for helping me to see the light, sir. I realize now, after reading your letter, how wrong I was in my advice to the girl from last week. After all, why should any woman be allowed to enjoy her own desires, have a sense of empowerment about her sexuality, or really feel any kind of ownership over her body at all? Tell you what, I’m going to revise my advice to that girl here and now: wear a chastity belt, lock yourself in the kitchen, and pray to the Creator for forgiveness of your sins, you disgusting whore.

Or maybe I should just tell you to go screw yourself, AHM. Literally.

It is not at all uncommon for people like you to use pseudo-scientific “evidence” in order to buttress arguments in favor of repressing sexuality (particularly the sexuality of women.) In fact, many scientists themselves often use fake science to lend an air of legitimacy to their misogyny. Frederick Suppe is a professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Maryland and has done groundbreaking work on the philosophy of science and gender, and he has this to say on the subject: “There is, in fact, good reason to suspect that the classification of sexual paraphilias as mental disorders (or illnesses) is the codification of social mores. The historical record clearly shows that in issues such as masturbation, abortion and contraception, venereal disease, and the inferiority of women and blacks, physicians have generally supported the prevailing mores, presenting research that gave credence and medical-scientific legitimacy to social prejudices” (1991). In fact, as early as 1917 German psychiatrist Wilhelm Stekel published his study of masturbation, Autoeroticism, which made clear that there was no scientific proof of the “dangers” of masturbation and that the it was, in fact, societal and parental inference with that practice that could potentially lead to guilt and trauma, not the act itself. I mean, this was early on in the practice of psychiatry as a field, and already people were beginning to point out the pitfalls of using the authority of science, “normality”, and psychopathology as rationalizations for social prejudice. Like I said, there is no legitimate scientific proof that masturbation is unhealthy, be it physically, mentally, or morally (as you’re so fond of saying). The only evidence that’s out there is the kind of trumped-up nonsense that so frequently makes people (like that girl who wrote to me last week) feel needlessly ashamed of their bodies and their desires.

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