Onan, don’t they make generators for RV’s?

The Straight Dope folks at www.StraightDope.com had a bit this week on the Onanism. You remember Onan? He was the biblical fellow who got in Dutch with God for spilling his seed on the ground. I certainly always thought that meant he was masturbating, apparently as do most folks.

Nuh-uh! It turns out that old Onan was merely practicing coitus interruptus, i.e., normal old heterosexual sex except pulling out at the last moment and ejaculating elsewhere. It turns out that God had killed off Onan’s brother because Onan’s brother had displeased God, and Onan was biblically required to impregnate his brother’s wife. Don’t you love those Old Testament folks? But I digress - Onan apparently didn’t mind making the beast with two backs with her, but didn’t want to get her with child. The result, God was pissed at him also and killed him off - but he got a sin named for him. (Of course I’ve got a cattle disease with my name: Brucellosis, but that’s not as cool as having your own sin).

At any rate, the Straight Dope folk go on to teach you and I lots of nifty stuff about sex and masturbation:

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) wrote extensively about sexual subjects; his thinking dominated Christian teaching for centuries. First, he taught that any sexual activity that did not lead to procreation was deviant, even within marriage. Sex without procreation was lust, directed solely at venereal pleasure. [Yo, Tom - lighten up, youse guys didn’t even have late night TV back then, what else were you supposed to do?]

Then, he set up a category of four "sins against nature" or "unnatural vices.” These are considered more sinful than illicit sex, because they violate the laws of nature as well as the laws of society and the Church. In order from least to worst sinful: ejaculation without coitus, i.e., masturbation; deviation from the "natural position" (face to face contact, female on her back); or copulation with an "undue sex" (i.e., homosexuality). Finally, we’ve got the dreaded copulation with non-human creatures, i.e., bestiality.

Thank goodness, that he considers choking your own chicken a lesser sin than doing it with someone else’s chicken.

S. A. D. Tissot wrote a monograph on masturbation in 1758 in an early "scientific" effort to interpret sex and religion. Tissot said that seminal emission could cause serious health problems. After all, a boy's sexual maturation coincided with the deepening of his voice, the growth of body and facial hair, increased height and weight, and other signs of masculinity. Castrated eunuchs produce no semen and are not masculine. Hence, clearly, loss of semen weakened masculinity. Frequent intercourse was dangerous, but loss of semen through "unnatural means" like masturbation was VERY dangerous.

Tissot's text didn't reach America until 1832, but his influence was widely felt. According to Tissot, masturbation led to fuzzy thinking and insanity. [There's about a bazillion fuzzy thinking adolescents out there - that’s the reason, huh?] Madhouse inmates sat around jerking off; ergo, masturbation caused madness. Similar bizarre reasoning led to the belief that masturbation also caused decay of bodily powers, coughing, and consumption (tuberculosis). Female masturbators were prone to hysterical fits, jaundice, or violent cramps.

In the 1800s, onanism and masturbation were tied to homosexuality. Sodomy was a catchall phrase for such practices as masturbation, anal intercourse, and bestiality. Sylvester Graham (1794-1851), inventor of the Graham cracker, taught that the loss of an ounce of semen was equivalent to the loss of four ounces of blood, reducing the life force and exposing the body to disease and even death.

Oh-ho, so Jack D. Ripper wasn’t kidding about the importance of preserving his “precious bodily fluids” in Dr. Strangelove.

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