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While Miss Poubelle is quite fond of semen, she has always been puzzled by the notion that there is some virtue in trying to keep it inside the body. This idea goes back at least as far as the Bible, when Onan got zapped for spilling his seed upon the ground. The medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides was particularly explicit about the value of conserving semen. "Semen is the strength of the body, its life and the light of its eyes," he wrote. "If one ejaculates excessively, then one's body and strength will come to an end, and one's life will be lost."

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What will happen if one has too much sex? According to Maimonides, "one will age rapidly, one's strength will disappear, one's eyes will dim, a bad smell will give off from one's mouth and armpits, the hair of one's head, eyebrows and eyelashes will thin, the hair of one's beard, armpits, and legs will grow [a lot], one's teeth will fall out, and many sources of suffering apart from these will befall one."

And if that were not enough, Maimonides goes on to inform us that "one in a thousand die of miscellaneous illnesses, whereas the rest die because of excessive copulation."

This hostile attitude towards sex as a sort of wastefulness is seen in English as well. In typically capitalist fashion, earlier English authors often spoke of spending seed where we would now talk about ejaculation or "coming." In 1662 Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist, confided to his journal that "I went up to her and played and talked with her and Gode forgive me, did feel her; which I am much ashamed of, but I did no more, though I had so much a mind to it that I spent in my breeches."

The underlying metaphor here treats semen as if it were money-- having a premature ejaculation in your pants is like wasting money.

To spend in English has always been a verb that primarily refers to using up money. But spend also shows up early on in the secondary sense of "wasting, using superfluously." An early instance of this sense is found in a 1340 psalter, where we are urged to be good Christians "swa that he spend noght his preciouse bolde in vayn on vs" (i.e. "so that he (Jesus) will have not spent his precious blood in vain on us.").

Although the idea that semen is a precious thing is very common, this is really an absurd notion. Semen is one of the commonest substances in the world. We don't imagine that our urine or our earwax is some mystical substance that we need to keep at all costs. So why this irrational and magical view of semen?

Miss Poubelle believes instead that semen is a substance that we should share as much as possible. The Red Hot Chili Peppers put it very well in their song "Give it away." In contrast to Maimonides, they extol the virtues of free love and sexuality The lead vocalist sings "Realize I don't want to be a miser... How come everybody wanna keep it like the Kaiser?" and raises the same question that puzzles Miss Poubelle. Why should we be misers with love, sex, or semen? Give it away, give it away, give it away now.