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Jul 16
2010
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Ann Landers: The sage of masturbationPosted by Scott Grunow in newsfeed, humor, gay sexuality, gay history, blog, article |
Who would have thought your "bubby" or "granny" or "nana" would condone masturbation? Much less even say the world, or even think about that "act" (definitely sinful "self-abuse," and so much more secret than that dreaded yet sinless marriage act that in order to endure one "should close one's eyes and think of England"). Everyone's Jewish grandmother, Ann Landers, whose popular columns often mirrored changes in social attitudes and norms, took a progressive stance in the late 70s.
By that time, the medical and psychological experts has pretty much adopted less judgmental and restrictive views about something that everyone, especially males, did. Anyone who denied pulling his pud ever would pretty much be outed as an obvious liar. Still, even if the more intellectually sophisticated classes would come to believe that masturbation was a healthy, even spiritual practice, most Americans could honestly call it the "act everyone does but no one speaks of." (Like the "[homosexual] love that dares not speak its name?".) Thus, as late as 1993, Ann, by that time an iconic figure in American culture, citing experts to back up her views, felt the need to really tell Americans to "wake up and smell the coffee" on this issue. 
In 1974, besides President Nixon's resignation over the Watergate scandal and the making of the vintage porn classic Morning, Noon & Night (available only through Bijou Video), women were writing openly about their orgasms, and men were trying to be both macho and sensitive. The emphasis: a return to (really a reinterpretation of) of the "primitive" or "native," often associated with traditions outside of Western culture, as a source of self-healing and interpersonal interaction. A couple of Playgirl magazines from that year illustrate some of these cultural trends.
With the growth of nationalism (which in this period also meant one state, one church), sodomy became an official civil as well as a religious crime "against nature" and the established social order. The philosopher Michel Foucault called this period a time of "confinement" or "enclosure." The new nation-states and a Church threatened by the effects of the Reformation thought it necessary to either imprison, exile, or eliminate whom they perceived to be threats. This was the period of the enforced confinement of the Jews in ghettos, the mandatory cloistering of often educated and powerful nuns, and the witch trials.