Soc 345 Exam 2 Lect 7

Front 1

Solitary sex

Back 1

is the idea that you are alone

Front 2

Once again, the thought that young
people might be having sex before marriage, or on their own, upset what/who?

Back 2

the
social conventions both medicine and society felt obliged to protect
and enforce.

Front 3

Masturbation became an increasingly pressing source of concern in
the

Back 3

19th century!
particularly for those people whom society con'
idered incompetent to take care of themselves: children, women, and
the mentally ill. Immature, feeble, fragmented, and volatile, members
Jf these groups were ideal subjects for a medical profession seeking to
~xpand its power by enforcing social norms.

Front 4

stuff prior to 19th century

Back 4

Retention of Liquids: In Medieval society, up to the 18th century, physicians and the clergy were not so concerned with the masturbation act in itself but with the excessive retention or the loss of any body fluids, whether it be blood, lymphatic juice, bile, urine, perspiration or semen.

A Delicate Balance: For both men and women, health was a delicate balance between the production, retention, and excretion of the precious fluids. Excessive retention could putrefy (decay or rot) and poison the body and excessive seminal loss could deplete the organism of vitality (the state of being strong).

The Story of Onan, in Genesis, tells of how God Struck him dead for spilling his seed. Jewish and Christian sages alike feared that ejaculated semen would breed devils. “To spill semen” was tantamount to losing portions of your soul.

Front 5

Created the greatest upheaval about masturbation

Back 5

But it was the publication of an English pamphlet, Onania, or, the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, in 1715, distributed gratis by its author, that created the greatest upheaval in Western Europe and the colonies.

Front 6

stuff on gonorhhea

Back 6

At the heart of this concern, however, was a crucial ambiguity. Men
could lose sperm in a number of ways, the ancient physicians believed.
Excessive sexual intercourse was one; nocturnal emission (and perhaps
masturbation) was another. But equally dangerous was what the Greek
doctors called "gonorrhea" ("flow of seed"). For centuries, priests and
physicians did not clearly distinguish the venereal disease we now know
by that name from the spontaneous nocturnal emissions experienced by
postpubescent males who have no other sexual release. This confusion,
joined with a tradition of moral anxiety, led the medical profession to
lump venereal disease and masturbation into one single pathology until
the twentieth century.

Front 7

definition of masturbation by Onania

Back 7

“That unnatural practice by which persons of either sex may defile their own bodies, without the assistance of others. Whilst yielding to filthy imagination, they endeavor to imitate and procure for themselves that sensation, which God has ordered to attend the carnal commerce of the two sexes for the continuance of our species.”

Front 8

science and the hegemony of medicine

Back 8

The scientific search in the body as a method to explain differences and justify inequality. Nature as source of truth; nature as punisher.

THE SINFUL BECOMES THE PATHOLOGICAL..the physician as a priest

Front 9

Masturbation destroys (7 things)

Back 9

humanity
race
the american race
manhood
heterosexuality
stunts growth
morality