Taking Matters Into Your Own Hands - Pt. 1

All of your life you have been told that God is perfect, but you have also been told (probably by the same people) that your body was designed with parts that are ‘dirty’ or ‘evil’ and ‘sinful’ and that you should not touch them. If you then touch the wonderful parts of your body that give you sensual pleasure (which you will), you are made to feel ashamed for enjoying the sensations that you created within yourself. If everything has a purpose, then why would a perfect God design an imperfect body with extra parts that you are not supposed to use? Why would this God make the touch feel so good if you were not supposed to enjoy it? If God/Spirit is perfect, and I believe that he/she is, then it makes sense that Spirit also gave you these wonderful tools for a reason.

Many conservative religious groups still teach that ‘self gratification’ is a sinful practice even though even though every biblical scholar that I have talked with reported that they could not find anything in the Christian Bible that mentions that Masturbation is wrong. But this fact didn’t stop The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 2352, to list masturbation as one of the ‘Offenses Against Chastity’ and calls it “an intrinsically and gravely disordered action” because “use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose.” The Catechism goes on to caution that extenuating factors could exist, such as immaturity, habit, or psychological problems. Why is it so important to the Catholic Church and many Christian religious leaders to make their followers feel bad about this wonderful gift that their perfect, wise and loving God gave them?

In the last couple of years, doctors and celebrated professionals are starting to present empowering information about ‘self gratification’ through guest spots on popular television and radio shows and in best selling books. What has changed in our society lately to make masturbation such a popular topic? In our very recent past, most medical professionals taught the public that numerous negative effects could and would occur in a person as a result of masturbation. Since the 18th century, many strange remedies have been devised to deter one from masturbating. Some well-known solutions included regularly eating corn flakes, physical restraint, electric shock, treating the genitalia with stinging nettles, or surgically removing the offending body parts entirely. In later decades, the more drastic of these measures were increasingly replaced with psychological techniques, such as telling children they will get hairy hands or that their face will turn green, or they will go crazy from masturbating. In the United States and other English-speaking nations, routine neonatal circumcision was widely adopted in part because of its believed preventive effect against masturbation.

THE DIFFERENCE A FEW YEARS WILL MAKE

For a very short time from 1993 to 1994 Dr. Joycelyn Elders was our United States Surgeon General. In 1994, Dr. Elders was invited to speak at a United Nations conference on AIDS. She was asked whether it would be appropriate to promote masturbation as a means of preventing young people from engaging in riskier forms of sexual activity.
“In regard to masturbation,” Elders replied,
“I think that is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.”
This remark caused great controversy as you can imagine. The resulting pressure from parent and Christian organizations prompted President Clinton to ask for Dr. Elders resignation. She complied.

Fast-forward now to early April 2009… sex expert, Dr. Laura Berman is talking with Oprah (and her millions of viewers) about teaching parents how to talk to their daughters about sex. During the show she encouraged moms to discuss the importance of pleasure, masturbation, and believe it or not, the purchase of vibrators.

The whole point of the show was that kids are learning about sex in other places anyway, so parents should take the responsibility to ensure that their children are getting accurate information. This was all wonderful, and extremely good, but the most important information that Dr. Berman shared with Oprah and her legions of viewers was about the importance for girls to not only know about their own bodies, but to understand what it means to reach an orgasm. Because if they know what an orgasm is, and that they can do it for themselves, then they can own it, and they will know that they never have to depend on another person to make them feel that way. They had the power!

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Tags:

catholic church, dr joycelyn elders, dr laura berman, god, goddess, masturbation, oprah, plan be, self gratification, sexuality, spirit, spirituality, u n and unesco