...In the beginning there was Onan.
Last week I wanted to write about two opposing forces, the religious and the secular, my father and writers like Norman Mailer, and how they seem (in Mailer's case, specifically) to relatively merge on the topic of masturbation. This fascinates me, and as an atheistic agnostic and a lover of literature I feel compelled to dig into masturbation's somewhat infamous literary genesis--to track just one of our many moral constructions based on paper.
Genesis chapter 38, verses 3-10, tells the very short story of two brothers, Onan and Er. Both young men whom, unlike almost any other character in The Good Book that die by divine judgment (angel of death, plague, etc.), actually die directly by God's own hand. First there is Er, the older brother who, apparently, was just no good: "And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD slew him" (38:7 King James).
Not much information really. And then there is the infamous Onan.
A little back-story is in order.
You see, it's very likely that a jealous and hasty God, such as the God of the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh, might realize after slaying Er, that Er had no sons to speak of. And it's also very likely, that this would be a very big deal in a nomadic, patriarchal, monotheistic, and tribal culture, such as that of the ancient Israelite's. The boys continue the line; the line continues the tribe.
So in the event of death before descendants, the brother comes in and marries the wife of the deceased (think Hamlet, although that's not exactly the same thing, is it?). And it's the job of the brother to inseminate the wife. This is referred to as a levirate marriage, and it's still in healthy practice today (see HBO's Deadwood, again, not exactly the same thing). Onan, however, did not want to do the deed. And why? "Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled [it] on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother. And the thing which he did displeased the LORD: wherefore He slew him also" (38:9,10).
Wow. So it seems Onan was whacked by God himself just for pulling out.
One would think things might end here, or, at best, inspire the religiously inclined to swear off pulling out. Maybe even extend this toward the use of contraception, as the Catholics have so creatively done, and announce that God hates condoms? No. Strict rules regarding the "bumping of uglys" (yes, a disgusting term, but it worked in the title pun, so I had to do it) did not inspire sufficiently pious disgust for human sexuality (read: women), so, in addition, one must hate one's very own privates.
Thus "Onanism" was born.
Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, then and now, have oh-so-often claimed that Onan's crime was indeed the waste of semen, and therefore masturbation is a crime.
A crime against God! Against nature! Indeed, a crime worthy of death!
And so began the bloody history of hanging, and burning, and damning boys and girls discovered under sheets, taking too long in the bathroom. Actually the official term, Onanism, was not coined until 1760 when Swiss physician Samuel Auguste André David Tissot authored L'Onanisme, a largely fictional medical treatise that condemned the act of masturbation. It was a hit, to say the least.
But for centuries prior to Tissot, masturbators, young and old, were sent to the gallows, dungeons and blade. Just think of the Spanish Inquisition....
On U.S. soil, masturbation was punishable by death up until 1640. In the nineteenth century, Sylvester Graham, inventor of the Graham Cracker, was as equally famous (and lauded!) for his nationwide campaign against masturbation. In the early twentieth century, John Kellogg, inventor of Kellogg's Corn Flakes (what is it about carbohydrates that inspires such deviant obsessions?), also vehemently pursued a nation free of masturbation. Kellogg recommended anesthetic-free circumcision on older boys, and carbolic acid on the clitoris for girls. A practice that remains alive and well throughout several portions of Africa and the Asia, and has even been "improved" upon by the absolutely insane practice of female clitoral circumcision, which maims and kills thousands of young girls annually. But what better way to avoid a playful tickle than to lop off the clitoris of a young girl completely?
In scientific circles, masturbation has been creatively linked with countless ailments, diseases and disorders. All of which, in part, would have found their ancestry in the groundbreaking work of Tissot: blindness, hairy palms, dementia, etc....
Before long, masturbation was simply considered to be no good because it made you "tired." A direct cause of "neurasthenia," or "chronic fatigue and weakness". The romantic notion of the post-coital glow, apparently, does not apply when one is alone. And the witch-hunt continued well into the twentieth century. In the 1980's, Cindy Lauper and England's Buzzcocks deflowered the ears of innumerable American teenagers with pop anthems that extolled the joys of self-love: "She-Bop" and "Orgasm Addict," respectively. Creepy parents everywhere cried out for justice as they parsed innocuous lyrics to the favorite songs of sons and daughters, looking for possibly dirty words. My father called an emergency family round-table meeting over Quiet Riot's "Cum On Feel the Noize," carefully explaining that "cum" was quite different than "come," and insisting that if we found ourselves in direct aural contact with this particular song, we should run for the hills.
Thank goodness for the rare and honest human like Mark Twain who, in his hilarious speech, "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism," called the act nothing less than an "art." In fact, an art responsible for much of history's greatest artwork; "old masters," remarks Twain, "is an abbreviation, a contraction." Ha!
And, of course, let us not forget the great Dr. Betty Dodson, who in 2005 declared the very first National Masturbation Day, May 7th, fully embracing the notion of embracing one's self. Point being this: since time immemorial there has been the other half (more often the losing half) that celebrates the Self. In Egyptian antiquity, the god Atum was believed to continuously bring the world into being by masturbation. And the Nile River -- well, you can imagine, I'm sure.
A few thousand years later, in 1986, Dr. I. Meizner captured, for the first time, sonographic footage of in-utero masturbation (the first of countless unisex observations since). Yes, a twenty-eight-week-old male making use of his alone time, proving once and for all that self-love is a healthy, normal biological function.
Now, I would love to be able to announce that since that seminal day in 1986 humans have a much healthier attitude toward the art in question, and toward sex in general. Sadly, as we all know, this is not the case.
In fact, it seems as if we are currently regressing exponentially. Soap-box lovers everywhere declare a morally depraved society, and demand a return to the black-and-white values that are available, right there, in black and white in your Bible. It seems the motels and hotels lining the highways and streets of our great nation, sheets soiled with the sins of adulterating politicians (Craig! Haggert! Spitzer!) in hiding, and late night pay-per-view solo sessions, hold the universal key to moral ambiguity in the top drawers of their bedside tables.
And here, my friends, is the crux of the matter. I'm not some sweaty mouth-breather holed up in his study for hours on end with gummed magazines hidden under floorboards savoring the chance to even write about masturbation. I promise.
I am interested, however, in moralities and how we humans construct them.
As a young boy, my father shared the story of Onan with me and tattooed his interpretation of it on my tiny brain. The story's repercussions rebounded in my head, and I wondered, if there is a God, was he watching me that first time on summer vacation? I was in the lake, far from shore, and I'd never seen a bikini before....
But as I grew older I became even more fascinated with his older brother Er. What did this poor sap do? According to scripture, he was "wicked." Well, that doesn't really do a person any good, now does it? Tell me why, and maybe I'll learn something. What was Er actually guilty of? Murder, rape, incest, adultery, theft, lying, jealousy? Well, so are practically all of God's chosen throughout the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Bible, some mistakenly refer to these as Old and New Testaments (this seems a fun time as any to point out that the words testament and testicle do have the same etymology).
In some cases, Yahweh is guilty of such things Himself!
And yet Er is slain, presumably, for one (or more) of these crimes while others remain untouched, even blessed. The lesson here is that to err is human, and yet Er is slain for being just that. It made very little sense to me then. The only understandable message was this--there exists both evil and righteousness. Good and Bad.
And God knows which is which.
Since then I have busied myself with the works of philosophers and the fictions of writers like Mailer, trying to make my own sense of Good and Bad. Fundamentalists and, I would argue, all religious adherents continue to mistakenly make this distinction based on textual interpretations of texts that were written with close to no understanding of the true nature of the human condition. As Sam Harris has put it, and I'll summarize, any studious twelve-year-old knows unspeakably more about the biology of the human body and the workings of the cosmos than any handful of great thinkers throughout the ages.
Nevertheless, the evidence is in.
Onanism, auto-eroticism, masturbation, self-love, wanking, whatever you want to call it, is in the cards, kids. It's part of who we are. I mean come on, it's on sono-graphic videotape.
In fact, some contemporary Biblical literary scholars, like Leonard Mars, argue that Onan's crime was not primarily a sexual one, if at all. Mars argues that Onan's crime was murder. And not the murder of some unborn child, but the murder of his brother Er, by way of ending Er's lineage and therefore erasing Er's name (all of enormous and equal value in ancient Judaism). Which of course also well-illustrates the dubious nature of moralities based on the written word.
Who knows how many have suffered and how many continue to suffer (Shame! Guilt! Exorbitant DVD costs!), and all based on the erroneous reading of an obscure Biblical passage?
Unfortunately, there are entire systems of religious and political thought (Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Unites States, etc., take your pick) based on such erroneous readings, resulting in some profoundly destructive behavior. I mean Er could not have been all bad. Is there anything that is all bad? Even Hitler had to have had, at the very least, gray beginnings--although Mailer would likely disagree, considering his last novel The Castle in the Forest which posits a young Hitler directly steered by demonic forces.
And then again some things do seem all good. That, or they just feel really, really, really good.
Right?