CarnalNation

My dog woke me up with his masturbating this morning. Though he's fixed, he wakes up with little boners. It seems he's gotten frustrated with me not helping him out with them. While I'm still figuring out if fondling my dog is evil, he's decided to take things into his own, well, tongue.

There's probably a sizable selection of dog masturbating videos on YouTube. I've stumbled across plenty that show other animals masturbating—at the zoo alone or with one another, usually with the videotapers “eww”ing or laughing. One shows monkeys in a zoo. One of the monkeys keeps inviting, encouraging—or is it insisting—another to suck him off. In a different clip, a man is narrating a documentary when a kangaroo starts wanking center screen behind him.

Masturbation appears throughout the animal kingdom, and humans, as mammals, enjoy it immensely. And what's not to love? All of the things our bodies do out of Mother Nature's necessity feel good: eating, drinking, sleeping. A strong, timely bowel movement can be so satisfying that I've heard a (yes, straight) man say that a really good one feels better than sex. Unflattering conclusions about his sex life aside, it's safe to say that the physical sensations associated with answering nature's call can sometimes border on the ecstatic.

Just saying that a bowel movement can feel good elicits an “Eww!” from some folks, though maybe not many reading this column here. That's probably because most of our bodies' natural processes have been maligned along with our sexuality. Religious institutions seem to have a habit of concluding that if something feels good, there must be something wrong with it.

We've previously discussed spiritual routes to the divine and how pleasure and sexuality can be either paths or obstacles to enlightenment. Those seeking spiritual accomplishments have their own reasons, but how did masturbation become a no-no for the rest of us?

Those who claim the Bible as their source for prohibition of masturbation usually refer to the Old Testament story of Onan and Tamar. It's a twisted story, as are many of them in the Good Book. But the ways it's been used by generations of proselytizers is even more twisted.

In the book of Genesis, Onan's older brother was killed by God, so Onan was told to impregnate Tamar, his brother's wife, in order to give her an heir. It's not a big stretch to understand why Onan, being second son, might not want Tamar to produce an heir for his older brother. But his father told him to, and besides, it was the law of the land. It kept social order by taking care of women. Women didn't count for much without children and widows probably counted for less.

Genesis says that Onan “spilled his seed on the ground” and was struck dead by God. This is the bit that is often quoted to show God's disapproval of sexual acts that don't create baby humans, from homosexuality to masturbation to just plain fun, anything that wastes valuable “seed.” (Do I hear strains of Monty Python music?) The verses in question clearly state, however, that the reason God slew him was because of disobedience.

Nonetheless, Onan got the sin of “self-pollution” named for him by Balthazar Bekker in a pamphlet published at the beginning of the 1700s. Bekker's title kind of says it all: "Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, And All Its Frightful Consequences, in both Sexes, Considered: With Spiritual and Physical Advice To those who have already Injured themselves by this Abominable Practice." Decades later, a Dr. Tissot published his own medical document warning of the many diseases caused by masturbation, and setting off a flood of similar claims and horrific treatments that continued for a couple hundred years. Opinions—or at least published ones—started to change in the 1900s but it's a safe bet that masturbation itself wasn't unheard of in the intervening years.

During this entire span of time, as well as for centuries before it, masturbation has been considered a valuable part of sexual rituals in less conventional spiritual traditions. In sex magic, it's a way to raise the erotic energy to be used for the magical intent. In healing circles, masturbation serves the same purpose. Once the energy is high, it is dedicated to healing those in the circle and others named.

Today, even though masturbation is losing some of its bad reputation, Onan is still being used as the poster child for bad sexual behavior. As for Tamar, she finally got her child by tricking her father-in-law into having sex with her by pretending to be a whore. And Adonis, the young rescue dog of our household—who came already bearing that name, by the way—is still trying to convince me that big brown wiener-dog eyes are proof of informed consent.