Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation

At a time when almost any victimless sexual practice has its publicadvocates and almost every sexual act is fit for the front page, the easiest, leastharmful, and most universal one is embarrassing, discomforting, and genuinelyradical when openly acknowledged. Masturbation may be the last taboo. But this isnot a holdover from a more benighted age. The ancient world cared little about thesubject; it was a backwater of Jewish and Christian teaching about sexuality. Infact, solitary sex as a serious moral issue can be dated with a precision rare incultural history; Laqueur identifies it with the publication of the anonymous tractOnania in about 1722. Masturbation is a creation of the Enlightenment, of some ofits most important figures, and of the most profound changes it unleashed. It ismodern. It worried at first not conservatives, but progressives. It was the firsttruly democratic sexuality that could be of ethical interest for women as much asfor men, for boys and girls as much as for their elders.The book's range is vast. Itbegins with the prehistory of solitary sex in the Bible and ends with third-wavefeminism, conceptual artists, and the Web. It explains how and why this humble andonce obscure means of sexual gratification became the evil twin -- or the perfectinstance -- of the great virtues of modern humanity and commercial society: individual moral autonomy and privacy, creativity and the imagination, abundance anddesire.