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The below post from X user @hood_grimes has been shared almost ten million times since it appeared on August 25 (I saw it on Snopes):
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That AI-generated kid in a baseball jersey is laying out some pretty serious medical consequences of “frequent masturbation,” including brain damage, acne, and “P*nis shrinkage.” On the other hand, my own (admittedly anecdotal) study that includes “everyone I have ever met” suggests many healthy people enjoy masturbation with no negative physical side effects. So who’s wrong this week? Let’s look at the evidence.
Masturbation: friend or foe?
The specific claims made on the X post are false. There is no scientific research to support the idea that masturbation causes back pain, lowers testosterone, or has any of the negative effects listed in the meme (beyond number 11, which is subjective). Instead, research indicates masturbation is (marginally) good for you. In men, high ejaculation frequency (whether from masturbation or sex) correlates to decreased risk of total prostate cancer. For women, research suggests potential benefits of masturbation for dealing with “psychological distress and for enhancing general well-being.” And masturbation seems to help everyone sleep better.
To be fair to the “masturbation is harmful” people, excessive masturbation can have (limited) negative physical effects. It could cause skin chafing and irritation, though this is more a “common sense” thing than “supported by research.” Masturbation can play a role in anorgasmia (inability to achieve orgasm despite adequate sexual stimulation) but it doesn’t seem to from how often you masturbate, but how you masturbate. Research supports a link between habitual, highly specific masturbation styles and anorgasmia—in layman’s terms, if you do something unusual to get off by yourself, and you do it a lot, you may have trouble finishing in conventional ways with someone else.
Weighing the evidence (while giving all possible benefit of the doubt to the “masturbation can hurt you crowd”) makes it very clear that masturbation is way more likely to be physically beneficial than physically harmful.
What is “frequent” masturbation, anyway?
Masturbation is awesome, case closed, right? Not totally. Masturbation isn’t going to shrink your body parts, but, like anything, it can become mentally unhealthy if it starts to take up too much of your time, gets in the way of relationships, or becomes a compulsive coping mechanism. Same rules apply to video games and working out, by the way.
If you feel masturbation is negatively affecting your life, it’s worth paying attention to, but the definition of “harmful” is subjective, and it’s possible that what feels like “harm” is actually inherited guilt from what your great-great-great-grandparents thought about sex.
What do you think so far?
Victoriana re-born!
As I was researching the medical claims on this meme, it became clear that all of baseball-boy’s talking points have their roots in earlier ages. Like Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” and nowhere is this more true than masturbation hysteria (and racism, I guess). Strip away the modern AI imagery, and this meme reads like it was lifted straight from a 19th-century medical pamphlet warning against the dangers of “self-abuse.” Like this early entry in the genre: “Onania: or, the heinous sin of self-pollution and all its frightful consequences (in both sexes) considered with spiritual and physical advice to those who have already injured themselves by this abominable practice” from around 1716, or this one from 1838, “A Treatise on the Diseases produced by Onanism, Masturbation, Self-pollution.”
You could take find a similar passage in Victorian anti-masturbation literature for almost all of the meme’s 11 points. “I have violent pains in my stomach, arms, and legs; and sometimes in the kidneys,” reports a chronic masturbator in Treatise. “I feel great pains from my kidneys downwards, and particularly in the small of my back,” agrees another onanist from the earlier work. A doctor describes a self-polluter thusly: “The individual becomes feeble, is unable to labor with accustomed vigor, or to apply his mind to study; his step is tardy and weak, he is dull, irresolute, engages in his sports with less energy than usual, and avoids social intercourse; when at rest he instinctively assumes a lolling or recumbent posture.”
All that’s missing from the earlier works is the bit about masturbation shrinking the penis. Even the Victorians weren’t that dumb.
Not all Victorians, however
There’s no point without a counterpoint. Even in the Victorian age, people like pioneer sexologist Havelock Ellis took a scientific look at sex and devoted an entire volume of his Studies in the Psychology of Sex to masturbation, concluding it was normal and healthy. So did Richard von Krafft-Ebing, whose 1886 book Psychopathia Sexualis still defines how we think about sex. Even occultist Aleister Crowley made self-pleasure part of his magical practice. So the next time someone shares a viral meme, remember that you’re picking sides in a 300-year-old culture war, and all the cool Victorians were pro-masturbation. Be team Ellis, not team Onanism: the evidence and history are on your side.