Masturbation: The History of a Great Terror -- A Very Sordid W/O
Written: Jul 15 '02 (Updated Nov 05 '06)
Product Rating:
Pros: A decent piece of academic research.
Cons: Most chapters are extremely dull, others only moderately dull.
The Bottom Line: Probably a key resource for those interested in historic perspectives on masturbation and sexuality. A complete waste of time for a general audience.
lyagushka's Full Review: Jean Stengers, Anne Van Neck, Anne Van Neck - Mast...
This is a Very Sordid Book Review. The contents will likely be offensive (not). You have been warned!
Yes, this review is a contribution to the Very Sordid Book Write-Off. Petra, our lovely hostess, organized this write-off in honor of Sordid-1. My personal interaction with Sordid has been pretty limited; I've just read a few of his opinion pieces. But hey, I'm not one to turn down a chance to legitimize the review of a risqué title.
That's about all the risqué-ness there is to this book though. Masturbation - The History of a Great Terror is a piece of Ph.D. level research, a socio-historic analysis of attitudes towards masturbation in the western world, particularly Europe and the U.S. from the 1700s to the present. Penned by authors Jean Stengers and Anne Van Neck, this book uses textual evidence to document medical, religious, pedagogical and popular opinion on this most ubiquitous of sexual practices. Over the course of ten chapters, the authors follow a trajectory of attitudes towards masturbation that ranged from disinterested neglect in the Middle Ages to frenzied horror in the 18th and 19th centuries and finally to near universal acceptance in the 20th century. This book is actually an updated version of the original publication in 1984. It was translated from the original French by Kathryn Hoffmann.
The overall tone of this book is quite academic, to such an extent as to make it practically inaccessible to general readers. Although the quoted sources from earlier periods can be (unintentionally?) humorous on occasion, for the most part this book is overloaded with the repetitive litanies of a medical profession that had little understanding of mental illness or communicable disease and even fewer resources for treatment. Adding to the academic tone are the numbered endnotes interspersed throughout the text. Furthermore, there are many references to the titles of books, articles and pamphlets published in other languages. These titles are rarely translated into English. I understand that this is the norm in academia, but I doubt that an average reader will have a sufficient grasp of German, Latin, French and Dutch to make such references comprehensible or useful.
In the first few chapters of the books we are treated to the hysterical warnings and vitriolic ravings of "physicians" who earnestly believed that masturbation caused every malady from gonorrhea to tuberculosis, blindness, insanity and impotence. It is difficult to convey the stark terror with which masturbation was regarded during the 1800s in Europe. "This shameful vice which decimates youth" was considered contagious and literally fatal, much in the way the Black Plague was viewed. The authors trace the origins of these beliefs, citing popular pamphlets and encyclopedia entries. They wryly note that by attributing these diseases to the cause of masturbation (which in essence was considered a form of suicide) the doctors of the time were also conveniently absolving themselves of the need to cure these real diseases.
Later chapters deal with the often horrific "cures" for masturbation, the most innocuous of which were bland diets, restrictive undergarments or tying children's hands to the bedposts at night. Though the authors dutifully recite the list of remedies that included clitoridectomy, cauterization (burning) of the penis, infibulation (partially sewing shut the labia or the foreskin) or merely threatening these and other, shall we say, more radical surgeries, there is little exploration of individual cases. While they speculate that these treatments must certainly have caused more psychological trauma than they could possibly have prevented, that was as far as the analysis of treatment went. I was never able to forget that I was mainly reading excerpts from medical journals or letters between colleague physicians. A slightly more social-anthropological approach, focusing on the effects of medical opinion and practice upon individuals would have added a much needed human element.
After this tedious examination of medical opinion and practice, Stengers and Van Neck add a sprinkling of religious and pedogogical information pertaining to masturbation. While these fields could perhaps have yielded enough information and personal narratives to round out the book, the authors' approach makes this data seem "tacked on" to a piece of research which was primarily directed at the medical community. Excerpts from fairly recent Roman Catholic publications serve mostly to illustrate the modern church's simultaneous reluctance to condemn masturbation and inability to condone it due to previous Papal pronouncements. Techniques used by Catholic priests during the 1800's to interrogate young people in the confessional apparently warrant a mention but not exploration.
Likewise the reaction of pedagogy to the issue of masturbation is given short shrift. A few halfhearted attempts are made to include personal narratives, but these are all too brief (usually a single sentence) and never followed up. We learn that one school in France expelled almost 70 students for masturbation, the reasoning being that the expulsion of the infected would protect the rest of the students from contracting the "disease." Again there is no further exploration of personal histories around these events.
There are extensive notes and references for further reading and exploration. In fact nearly 25% of this 239 page book is devoted to endnotes. In other books I might have felt that the subject itself was given short shrift, but in this case I was relieved to find I was finished with the text before the end of the book proper. There are also a few illustrations of garments and horrific looking devices designed to prevent masturbation, as well as some showing the supposed degenerative stages of patients as they succumb to the "effects" of the "disease."
If there is an ounce of titillation to be wrung from this dry tome, I must have missed it. The early chapters were a trial to get through. Certainly the authors were thorough in their research, but they need not have subjected their readers to such a wearying exposition of each relevant text. A good editor might have shaped this book into something with general appeal, but as it stands now it is suitable for only the most determined academic researcher. I happen to enjoy academic texts when they are well written. This one is not; the writing is neither easy to follow nor interesting.
In case you haven't gotten my point by now, I'm not recommending this book for any but the most devoted researcher of human sexuality. In fact, if I hadn't promised to review this for this Write-Off, I'm sure I would have dropped it out of boredom. I wasted my money and time for a good cause: so you won't have to. Please see to it that my sacrifice has not been in vain.
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