Does masturbation make you go blind?
Dear Dale:
I go to a Christian high school. I took Jesus into my heart and know I’m saved but the devil comes to me at night gives me dirty thoughts and makes me play with myself. I’m so ashamed. I confessed everything to my pastor and he said Jesus forgives me but if I don’t stop I’ll go blind. Is that true?
Signed,
Hands on
Dear HO:
Hell no! Masturbatory blindness is an old wives’ tale — like cats steal babies’ breath, chewing gum stays in your stomach for years on end and Australians celebrate Christmas in summer.
Truth is, we men are always making sperm and if you don’t release it on a regular basis, you can catch a serious disease: Deadly Sperm Buildup (DSB).
May sound funny but it’s not. You’ll be sitting in class looking at a pretty girl when suddenly… BOOM! your testicles explode, rendering you a eunuch.
And that’s if you’re lucky. The morgue is full of young guys with no balls who bled out while waiting for an ambulance. Just ask any coroner. They’ll tell you.
So, far from self-abuse, masturbation is a form of maintenance — like shaving, brushing your teeth or combing the crabs from your crotch.
So why would your pastor expose you to such danger? Well, part of it is the pleasure. For some reason, Christians really don’t like to see people enjoying themselves. If it feels good, don’t do it seems to be their motto.
But it’s more than that. Like a lot of foolishness, it’s based on something from the Bible: the story of Onan.
(No, not the movie with Schwarzenegger.)
His brother, Er — strange name, I know — died childless so Onan’s dad told him to sleep with his sister-in-law so she could have a kid.
But Onan didn’t want to do that.
(I understand his feeling. I have no desire to bang my brother’s wife. Despite being a Christian, she’s ugly as sin.)
So, instead of doing his duty, he spilled his seed before going to bed.
(That’s Christian for “choke the chicken.”)
But God didn’t like that so He killed him.
(God was pretty strict back then.)
And ever since, society has frowned upon spanking the monkey. All because of one paragraph in the Bible.
To a certain extent, I understand: there weren’t a lot of people back then and sperm, like deodorant, was a valuable commodity, not to be wasted.
(A lot of things that made sense to them are questionable now — like telling the truth, respecting your parents and slicing off a piece of your pecker.)
And, for centuries, religious leaders devoted themselves to finding ways to prevent young dudes from pulling their pud: locking them up in chastity belts, sticking them in asylums and forcing them to eat Graham wafers.
That and scare them with horror stories, claiming that beating your meat will lead to nausea, epilepsy, pimples, impotence, paralysis, madness and suicide.
(Even now the myth of masturbatory blindness lives on. As you well know.)
All to no avail. Because a guy’s got to do what a guy’s got to do and, one way or another, the hand inevitably found what it was looking for.
So much so that, in the end, society gave up. Common sense, along with Kinsey, showed that it was actually the opposite, that people who play with themselves are happier and more well-adjusted than those who don’t. All those stories you read about priests fondling little boys… you think they’d do that if they could celebrate Palm Sunday from time to time? Probably not.
(We Protestants have produced our crop of perverts and philanderers: people like Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard and Bill Clinton.)
It also makes us less aggressive. Don’t believe me? Just look at a map of the world. The most dangerous places are always the most religious and sexually repressed: Iraq, Central America and the Deep South.
(Just imagine how violent the world would be if no one could rub one out. It’s all that stands between us and anarchy.)
So go ahead. Rub it raw. You’ll be glad you did. Because not only are you celebrating the wonders of your body, you’re also, in a small but very real way — much more so than standing on the street protesting — helping to bring about world peace. All I am saying, is give come a chance. Hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Dale
Hi. If you’ve made it this far, you probably liked the story. So why not check out some others at my Medium page? https://medium.com/dear-dale
