IStock Photo 1820949 © Viorika Prikhodko

“The thought of it is so revolting that even calling such a vice by its proper name is considered a kind of immorality.” - Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals

“Hey, don’t knock masturbation, it’s sex with someone I love!” - Woody Allen, Annie Hall

The sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s changed a lot of attitudes. But somehow, masturbation, the least social form of sex, is still controversial, more than 60 years after the Kinsey Report and two decades after the Divinyls' hit “I Touch Myself.” Especially when it comes to women.

Psychoanalyst Joyce McFadden’s Women's Realities Study collects online data about women’s perspectives on many issues. She reported in 2008 that out of 63 different questionnaires, the one on masturbation gets the third-most responses. She found that 1 in 1.43 (70%) of respondents felt guilty about masturbating, and fully 1 in 1.25 (80%) did not grow up regarding it as a normal aspect of sexuality—even though most were young enough to have been raised in the post-feminist era.

And it’s true that a lot of single women don’t do the solitary deed: The odds a never-married and non-cohabiting woman 18 - 59 will not masturbate in a year are 1 in 1.93 (52%). Married women are more likely to refrain than singles, but not by all that much: The odds a married woman 18 - 59 will not masturbate in a year are 1 in 1.59 (63%).

Bachelors have few qualms about doing it for themselves. The odds a never-married and non-cohabiting man will masturbate at least once a week are 1 in 2.42—and even married men are more frequent masturbators than single women: The odds a married man 18 - 59 will masturbate at least once a week are 1 in 6.06, as compared with 1 in 7.87 never-married and non-cohabiting women.

In real life, compulsive masturbation can cause isolation, anxiety, relationship problems, and even difficulty with concentration and memory, according to the Sexual Recovery Institute. But to a large extent, the old warnings about madness, blindness, or hairy palms have lost their teeth, although men’s health advisors continue to report receiving the occasional anxious query.

Influential thinkers through the ages have voiced strong opinions on the subject of masturbation:

• C. S. Lewis warned that a man who masturbated created a “harem of imaginary brides… [who] can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival.”
• Immanuel Kant called it an “unnatural” lust, “wanton self-abuse,” and “a violation of one’s duty to himself.”
• Health crusader John Harvey Kellogg (of cereal fame) advocated circumcision of small boys without anesthetic, and for females, application of carbolic acid to the clitoris, to discourage masturbation in both sexes.

Maybe it’s actually because of today’s freer sexual attitudes that masturbation continues to cause cultural anxiety. Referring to a story in the literary quarterly Granta’s new sex issue, commentator Chris Cox put it this way: “In 2010, the only sex that’s truly dangerous and unbounded is solitary.”

Masturbation’s actual risk factor (the occasional injury) is quite low compared with, say, unprotected sex. But however society may evolve, solitary sex will probably always have a touch of the clandestine. Even the word “masturbate” has its secrets—its origin is a mystery.