Editorial from The Guide	Editorials Archive

Nowadays, almost anyone calling masturbation "self abuse" does so for comic effect. Only a few religious zealots continue to promote the idea that masturbation constitutes literal abuse, leading to insanity, infirmity, and­ eventually­ eternal damnation.

But not so long ago, "self abuse" was what many called masturbation. Religious leaders were joined by medical "experts" in warning of masturbation's ills. Those who defiled their bodies through self abuse were told to expect feeblemindedness, impaired vision, a host of nervous disorders, persistent fatigue, and even cancer. For treating their God-given bodies with disrespect, self abusers would also suffer divine retribution, condemned forever to Hell for their mortal sin.

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If indeed masturbation caused physical damage and eternal alienation from all that was good, then "self abuse" would be an appropriate term. But of course, solo sex does not result in such harm. "Self abuse" was a term of propaganda reflecting anti-sexual attitudes. It did not describe acts that themselves were destructive. In fact, by aiming such misinformation at adolescents (those most likely to engage in the "vile practice"), crusaders against masturbation were themselves doing harm. By branding the nearly-universal practice as monstrous abuse, generations of teens were terrorized into thinking that their natural responses to their own maturing bodies marked them as irredeemably sick sinners. The harm from self abuse came from those who used the term, not those who engaged in the practice.

Though self abuse may now seem an archaic phrase, many today have again appropriated "abuse" as an expression of sexual propaganda, not a description of real harm.

News reports are full of stories about scoutmasters and priests who've supposedly "abused" adolescents in their charge. Psychologists and therapists now supply the litany of evils that inevitably accompany such "abuse." We are told that a teen receiving a blowjob has been emotionally scarred for life and that lifelong depression and inability to form intimate relationships follow those who jacked off with a priest. Some even claim adolescent sexual expression constitutes "soul murder."

Like their anti-masturbation antecedents, today's "sexual abuse" crusaders are the ones doing the real harm. Adolescents are warned that any sexual expression with an older person, even that which is mutually desired and pleasurable, in fact results in permanent psychic damage and constitutes a grave crime. Astonishingly, even adolescent peer/peer sexual expression is now frequently judged criminal, and kids are being prosecuted for "abusing" each other!

Many people find it profitable to peddle such nonsense. Therapists claim that adolescent sexual expression demands endless (and expensive) sessions with them to find "healing" and "recovery." Police and prosecutors build careers and justify inflated budgets by creating crimes where no harmful actions have occurred. And lawyers, whose settlement fees are contingent on demonizing a "perpetrator," routinely pervert affection into abuse.

As gay people, we know what it's like to have sex described in propagandistic terms at odds with reality. We've worked hard to force society to recognize that "homosexuality" does not equal "sick and criminal perversion," that in fact sickness and criminality themselves spring from destructive anti-gay attitudes.

We need to fight the same fight against branding all adolescent sexual expression as "abuse." Our attitudes and laws, if they are to be moral, must distinguish between actions that are genuinely harmful (involving violence or coercion), and those that offend some people's notions about "proper" sexual expression. And we'll know the battle's won when anyone equating adolescent sexual expression with "abuse" sounds as loony as those who preached against self abuse.