Woman / Her Sex and Love Life

by William J. Robinson

Definition of Masturbation—Its Injurious Effects in Girls as Compared with Boys—Married Life of the Girl Masturbator—Necessity for Change in Injurious Attitude of Parents who Discover the Habit—Common-sense Treatment of the Habit—How to Prevent Formation of Habit—Parents' Advice to Children—Hot Baths as Factor in Masturbation—Other Physical Factors—Mental Masturbation and Its Effects.

Masturbation or self-abuse is a term applied to a bad habit which consists in handling and rubbing the genitals. It is a bad habit because it is apt to injure the health and future development of the girl. The more frequently it is practiced, the more injurious it is. It is more injurious than when practiced by boys, because the effects are usually more permanent. Girls who indulge in the habit of masturbation to excess not only weaken themselves, become anemic and get a dingy, pimply complexion, but they lose their desire for normal sexual relations when they grow up, and are unable to derive any pleasure from the sexual act when they get married. In fact, many girls who masturbated excessively get a strong aversion to the normal sexual act, and their married life is an unhappy one. Their husbands often have to ask for a divorce. Fortunately, the habit is much less widespread among girls than it is among boys. While about ninety per cent. of all boys—nine out of every ten—masturbate more or less, only about ten or at most twenty per cent. of girls are addicted to this habit. But whatever the percentage may be, the habit is an injurious one, and if you value your health, your beauty and proper growth and mental development, you should not indulge in it. If you are already indulging, if you are used to handling your genitals, if a bad companion has initiated you into the habit, you should give it up. And mothers should watch their children, guard them against developing the habit, and do everything possible to cure them of it, if prevention comes too late.

But while as you see I do not deny the evil effects of masturbation, it is necessary to state that a great change has taken place in our opinions on the subject, and it is but right that parents should know of this change of opinion among the medical profession, particularly among those who specialize in sexology.

Wrong Behavior of Parents. When parents make the "awful" discovery that their child is fondling its genitals or is indulging in masturbation, they feel as if a great calamity had befallen them. They could not feel worse if they learned that the child was a thief or a pyromaniac. Imbued with the medieval idea of the "sinfulness" of the habit, as well as its injuriousness, they begin to scold the child, to frighten it, to make it believe that it is doing something terrible, that it has disgraced them and itself; and they try to persuade it that, unless it stops immediately, the most direful consequences are awaiting it. The results of this mode of procedure are disastrous—much more so than is the masturbation itself.

Often the scolding and the exposure of the child are done in the presence of others. This implants in the poor girl a sullen resentment that only makes it more difficult for it to break the habit. When the child is brought to the physician, you can see by its behavior, by its downcast looks, by its sulkiness, by its attempt to refrain from tears, and other signs, that it regards the physician in exactly the same light as a youthful criminal regards the judge before whom he has been brought for trial.

It is time, high time, that this silly and injurious attitude toward a practice, which is very common, be radically changed. It is time that parents and physicians learn that the injuriousness of the habit has been greatly, grossly exaggerated. It is time that they know that the vast majority of boys and girls get over the habit without being much, or any, the worse for it. The knowledge of this fact will not only save them and the children much needless anguish and suffering, but will make it much easier to deal with the latter, make it much easier to get them divorced from the habit.

If we look at the matter in a sensible, common-sense way, and do not tell the child caught in the practice that it has done something disgracefully vicious and criminal, but speak to it kindly and tell it that it is doing something that may injure it greatly, that may interfere with its future mental and physical health and development, then we shall have far greater success in our endeavors to break the boy or the girl of the habit of masturbation. As I have said in another place:

"In my opinion, stigmatizing even the most moderate indulgence in masturbation as a vice has a deleterious effect upon the people who so indulge and makes it harder for them to break off the habit. Every thinking physician and sexologist can tell you that picturing the masturbatory habit in too lurid colors and stigmatizing it with too strong epithets has, as a rule, the contrary effect to the one expected. The victims of the habit consider themselves degraded, irretrievably lost. They lose their self-respect, and it is, on account of that, harder for them to break themselves of the habit."

We shall accomplish a good deal more with our youthful and older patients if we leave alone, altogether, the moral side of the question—if there be any moral side to it—and emphasize the physical injuriousness of the habit. We do not want to diminish the self-respect of our boys and girls, we want to increase it; and we can not do this if we make them believe that a masturbator is a vicious criminal. Inspire your patients with confidence, tell them that indulgence in the habit jeopardizes their future growth, both physical and mental, their health and happiness, and you will find them easier to control.

I am not trying to minimize the danger of masturbation, for, if indulged in from an early age and to great excess, the results may be disastrous. But, even if I were to minimize the evil consequences, that would be less of a sin than to exaggerate them the way it has been done for so many years, by so many people in the profession and out of it. The evil results of exaggerating the influence of masturbation have been so great in the past that, if now the pendulum were to swing to the other extreme, I am sure it would not be a bad thing at all.