MASTURBATION: GUILT FEELINGS
BY EDWARD BRONGERSMA

“Masturbation: Guilt Feelings”, is part of “The Outlets”, the final section of “Boys and their Sexuality”, the third chapter of Loving Boys, the encyclopaedic study of Greek love by the eminent Dutch lawyer, Edward Brongersma, of which the first volume (including this) was published by Global Academic Publishers in New York in 1986.

The illustrations for this article are taken from Pan, a magazine about boy-love (Amsterdam, 1979-85) simply because Brongersma was a regular contributor to it while writing Loving Boys, so it is close to him in spirit.

How terrible these miseries can be we can read in boys’ diaries published in 1955 by a youth leader and clergyman (who wanted to give an edifying example!) named Wolfgang Fischer^[1] and from autobiographies like that of author James Joyce^[2] (which makes us understand why Joyce’s later books deride so mercilessly the religion in which he grew up).

85 A New Zealand boy tells how he was torn apart: “I used to be so worried with guilt because I used to really enjoy pulling myself off. It got compulsive. I just couldn’t do without it. That caused problems. We used to have confession on Thursdays and I’d go and confess all, then try not to masturbate before Sunday Mass. Otherwise I’d have a sin on my soul and didn’t dare to go to communion, and my parents would say, ‘Why aren’t you going to communion?’ Of course I’d never make it through Sunday without wanking. I’d lie in bed in mortal trepidation knowing I’d have to go to communion or my parents would spring me, so feeling as if the lightning bolt was just inches away from my head, I always went to communion.”^[3] 

This text shows clearly how such pedagogics aren’t only disastrous for youthful joy of life, but also for real religious and moral feelings. That they have continued in existence for such a long time is due to that unholy trinity of clergymen, physicians and quacks for whom they provided submissive sinners, patients and buyers of the most absurd medicines to cure the “hidden sin”.

The discovery by a mother that her son masturbates is a test of her own sex life. Where it has been happy and healthy, where she has loved men and been loved by them, she will exclaim, “Thank heavens, we’re finally there! I have produced a man.” And she will let him masturbate as frequently as he likes, without thinking this abnormal or being tempted to intervene.^[4]  Still, there are few parents who “recognise masturbation as a mighty force for independence.”^[5] 

Fortunately, today it is a rare boy who is concerned about sinning or impairing his health this way. Yet 42% of the young Danish men Hertoft interviewed in 1968 told him they had seriously, but vainly, struggled against the habit. In sport clubs, coaches and trainers frequently advise their players not to waste their energy in this useless fight against a natural impulse, but to relieve themselves regularly. In a 1976 German broadcast for schools, a physician advised one boy to masturbate in order to overcome the nervous affliction which had victimised him as a result of his self-imposed abstinence. Physicians also feel it is best that uncircumcised boys rub their penises in order to break up any adhesions of the foreskin to the glans (a not uncommon occurrence). Where the opening in the foreskin is too narrow (as many as 18% of the 15- to 17- year-old boys made this complaint in a NISSO investigation^[6]), its regular retraction over the swollen glans will usually cure the problem, allowing pleasurable penetration in vagina or anus and avoiding surgical intervention. (It is not true, however, that such stretching will always succeed.)

86 (continued from 64) Max learned masturbation from his eleven-year-old brother when he was seven, and practiced it assiduously thereafter – frequently twice a day – and every time he pulled his foreskin back in order to clean his glans. Nevertheless he was forced to have himself circumcised when, at seventeen, he wanted to have intercourse with girls.

Insufficient sexual instruction (where any is given!) can frequently cause worry. A teacher in an American school got from fifth and sixth grade boys questions like, “will playing with yourself cause problems with intercourse?”; “Will it hurt your athletics to jerk off?”; “How many boys do it? How often?”; “Why do some boys masturbate when it’s so easy to get girls to lay? (in our crowd, anyone who masturbates is queer!)”; “When and where can you masturbate safely?”; “Do girls play with themselves or jack off as often as we do?^[7] There are always a few boys who carefully catch their semen and drink it to prevent “waste of energy.^[8] And worry due to sex-negative surroundings certainly diminishes pleasure during masturbation.^[9]

But dangers arise from another quarter, too. It goes without saying that the pleasure boys experience in the act is their main incentive, especially for those who start sexual activity early.^[10] The boy is out to get pleasure from his body, especially from his genitals. There is nothing wrong with this; it is only natural and healthy. This phase is even inevitable if, as soon as love comes his way, he is to give to this emotion its best physical expression. Yet it will deepen not only his sense of humanity but also the pleasure of his lust if he moves beyond sex-only-for-pleasure and can develop those feelings of love which can make sexuality so much more richly coloured and warm.

We must make a distinction between a sexuality directed upon the body and a sexuality directed upon the person. Rock music, such a marvellous Rosetta stone for deciphering the preoccupations of contemporary youth, has shown – in its presentation, lyrics and the life of its idols – a shift from person-directed to body-directed sex.^[11] At the same time we hear complaints from many sides that sex is degraded to an obligatory performance. Applying this specifically to the boy: the subculture of youth demands that his penis be strong and often erect; he mustn’t hesitate to shove it in a girl’s cunt; the more girls he does it to the better; he must be able to repeat the act quickly… Such demands are in blatant contradiction to those made by the official ruling culture, but they have the same sex-negating effect: many boys become shy and secretive and lose their courage. In the youth subculture hypocrisy flourishes as exuberantly as in the domain of the apostles of chastity: boys boast, with imaginary adventures, of their heartless conquests, of their enormous potency. The old taboos are replaced by compulsive sex (obligatory consumption).^[12]

It doesn’t really matter whether he is deterred by the official sex instructions given him by adults or by the unripe attitudes of his contemporaries, instilling fears about the arduous tasks imposed upon him. The effect is the same: many a boy is constrained for sometime from having sexual intimacy with a partner and is thrown back in solitude upon his masturbation – but now this may be tainted with feelings of guilt, of not doing what is expected of him.

The right information given at the right time may prevent many of these problems. But even this cannot cancel out all misgivings. Orgasm is such a shattering experience, an interruption of consciousness, that it can easily make a boy afraid of insanity or even death.^[13] The masturbating boy abandons himself to mysterious, inscrutable forces.^[14] In his masterly, unsurpassed analysis of pubertal masturbation, Professor Beets shows how a boy at this age may feel that it carries him far beyond his circle of family and friends and transports him into another world altogether. This can give rise to guilt.^[15] The situation gets even more complicated if the boy, without being completely conscious of what he is doing, fantasises persons or images with incestuous overtones and repents of them.^[16] The result is anxiety, even if the boy knows beyond reasonable doubt that masturbation in itself is healthy and meets with parental approval. Hass, questioning 307 teenage American boys, found that 6% thought masturbation unpleasant, 64% rather pleasant, 30% very pleasant; he also records what some of these boys with guilty feelings said.^[17]

And so, in various ways, masturbation can become obsessive, as even Reich feared: to masturbate, he knew, was better than to abstain, but in the long run the absence of a loved object may render it unsatisfactory and guilt-ridden.

Continue to Masturbation: Fantasies, Methods & Frequency

^[1] Dasberg, L., Grootbrengen door kleinhouden als historisch verschijnsel. Meppel: Boom, 1975, 91. [Author’s reference]

^[2] Joyce, J., Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, [Author’s reference]

^[3] Tuohy, F. & Murphy, M., Down Under the Plum Trees. Waiura (New Zealand): Alister Taylor, 1976, 136. [Author’s reference]

^[4] Borneman, E., Lexikon der Liebe, Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1978, p. 489 [Author’s reference].

^[5] Friday, N., Men in Love. New York: Dell, 1981, 43. [Author’s reference]

^[6] NISSO, Onderzoek jeugd en sex. Eerste bericht. 20. Zeist: NISSO, 1973, p. 36.

^[7] Calderwood, D., Differences in the Sex Questions of Adolescent Boys and Girls. Marriage and Family Living 25: 492-495, 1963, [Author’s reference]

^[8] Stoll, O., Das Geschlechtsleben in der Völkerpsychologie. Leipzig: Veit, 1908, 913. [Author’s reference]

^[9] Winkel, C., De sexuele ontwikkeling van het kind. Zeist: NISSO, 1972, 17-18. [Author’s reference]

^[10] Giese, H. & Schmidt, G., Studenten-Sexualität. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1968, 132. [Author’s reference]

^[11] Moore, M. C., Skipper, J. K. & Willis, C. L., Rock-and-Roll - Arousal Music or a Reflection of Changing Sexual Mores? In: Cook & Wilson (Eds.), Love and Attraction. Oxford: Pergamon, 1979, 481- 486. [Author’s reference]

^[12] Wagner, Th., Neue Perspektiven in der Homophilenpastoral. Manuscript, 1979, 108. [Author’s reference]

^[13] Francis, J. J. & Marcus, I. M., “Masturbation - A Developmental View” in Marcus & Francis (Ed.) Masturbation. New York: International Universities Press, 1975, p. 29. [Author’s reference].

^[14] Frenken, J., Afkeer van seksualiteit. Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus, 1976, 93. [Author’s reference]

^[15] Beets 1964, 86-88 [Author’s reference, but it is not clear which is meant of two works listed in his bibliography as published by N. Beets in 1964].

^[16] Pietropinto, A. & Simenauer, J., Gonado (Beyond the Male Myth). Katwijk aan Zee, Servire, 1979, 184-185, 291-292. Sarphatie, H. R., De seksuele ontwikkeling van het kind. In: Wolters (Ed.), Seksueel misbruik van kinderen en jonge adolescenten. Nijkerk: Intro, 1982, 42. [Author’s reference]

^[17] Hass 1981, 100 [Author’s reference, but not identifiable in his bibliography].