Is there a moral difference between female and male masturbation?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ATeNumquam
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
A

ATeNumquam

Guest
I am female but am not asking this question to justify self-indulgence, so can we just discuss this on the “intellectual-hypothetical” level?
And please forgive me if I don’t use correct terminology:)

I have often thought about this - that masturbation seems to be mostly discussed in “male” terms.
You read in the Catechism (2352) “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose”.
Well… female orgasm is not an intrinsic part of, or essential to, the sex act or to procreation, unlike for a man, where orgasm necessarily involves ejaculation of sperm, which is geared towards procreation. Could you not say that female orgasm doesn’t have an “essential” purpose in the sex act, and is therefore not so morally “disordered”?
Yes, the pleasure aspect may encourage women to have sex, accept a male for sex and thus have children, but many women have sex and have kids and never experience orgasm.
It’s a kind of optional extra!
Anyone think it could be considered less “gravely disordered” (Catechism) for women to masturbate?
 
Thanks for asking this…I have wondered the same thing. Why is it wrong for you women?
Seems like scratching an itch to me…

Will be watching this thread to get a (hopefully) coherent answer.

🍿
 
That which is not ordered to the absolute perfect good is disordered. He Is the reader of hearts.

peace
 
hazcompat said:
That which is not ordered to the absolute perfect good is disordered. He Is the reader of hearts.

peace
Click to expand...
Then Time magazine and Coffee are sinful. DANG!! Every indulgence taken for pleasure is sinful?
 
Well, any purposeful sexual stimulation that involves both body and soul of one’s spouse are immoral and unnatural (so thinking about your spouse while doing the act doesn’t make it less wrong). Sexuality cannot be viewed reductively; its twin, inseparable purposes are unity and procreation. This rather excellent blogger tells it like it is (from bonald.wordpress.com/in-defense-of-patriarchy/6/#family4):🙂
Let us now consider the act so associated with the marriage bond that it is called the “conjugal act” or the “marriage debt.” Here we must confront the modern tendency to reduce all of nature—in this case one’s body and that of one’s partner—to raw material to be manipulated to serve one’s will. Modern men believe that everyone is free to assign his or her own meaning to the sexual act, so they make of it a meaningless recreation, a means to “empowerment”, or a sign of uncommitted affection. However, human sexual nature is not a collection of facts that have no meaning until we freely assign them one. Sexual intercourse has a natural teleology; it is ordered to procreation. This natural end provides a context which itself assigns a meaning to the sexual act. This meaning is “natural” in the sense that it “presents itself” to the mind of a sufficiently intelligent participant without requiring any decision on his or her part. If I make love to a woman, it means “I choose you to be the mother of my children.” This, and only this, is directly and naturally signified by intercourse. However, for an intelligent being, able to consider the future, it has profound implications. Children require a family, so the sexual act implies an irrevocable commitment; it initiates a new society consisting of the spouses and their prospective children. In the conjugal act, the spouses pledge their allegiance to this society—this also is virtually contained in the act’s one natural meaning. It is a grave mistake to think that the conjugal act has two independent natural meanings: a “procreative” and a “unitive” meaning, so that one can frustrate the first while still affirming the second. Sex has one meaning, and that is procreation which implies unity. Without its procreative telos, sex could only signify love by convention, and conventional signification is a much weaker thing than natural signification. In any case, the natural context is inescapable. If one wickedly frustrates the sexual act through contraception or sodomy, one does not simply take the natural meaning of sex “off the table”; one actively rejects it. Unnatural sex acts themselves carry a natural meaning, namely the rejection of what would be positively affirmed by natural sex. “I reject you as the mother of my children.” To add a conventional meaning of “I love you”, but the action itself speaks against it.

Sexual morality is more than just avoiding evils like birth control and fornication. There is also the positive virtue of chastity. To be chaste is to be alive to a whole world of value and beauty in the relations between the sexes. In a way, it resembles the aesthetic sensibility which allows one to appreciate art, and a man without this sensibility should rightly be an object of pity, because his cynicism has made him blind to a thing of great beauty. Thus, it is not quite accurate to say that conservatives want to teach teenagers abstinence. A married woman who refuses to sleep with her husband out of mere squeamishness would hardly meet with our approval. What we want to teach is chastity; we want our children to hear the body’s own language and to see their bodies as more than just raw material. We would even say that there is value in this appreciation even for those who, out of weakness, surrender to lust at some point in life. A man who fornicates and then feels guilty for desecrating a holy thing is living on a far higher plane of spiritual existence than a man who fornicates without guilt and without thought except for how to gratify his lust in the future.

Chaste man and woman will feel awe that their bodies are capable of expressing in the body’s own language the momentous pledge of lifelong fidelity in the marital bond, and they will approach this act with due reverence. Above all, they will recoil from approaching it in the infernal spirit of calculation which seeks to use the act for pleasure, power, or any other private end. Here we see starkly the existential choice between liberal and conservative. Either our acts are meaningless so we are free to do as we will, or our acts do have meanings which must guide us.
Click to expand...
 
ATeNumquam said:
Well… female orgasm is not an intrinsic part of, or essential to, the sex act or to procreation
Click to expand...
The point is not whether orgasm is needed for procreation or not.
The point is that if you use the sexual faculty deliberately (whether to achieve orgasm or not) outside of the conjugal act in marriage (which is supposed to be an expression of love between husband and wife whether it achieves orgasm or not) then you are using it against its purpose and that is what makes it gravely wrong.

I agree with you in that the dispersion of the sperm makes male masturbation a graver thing. In Genesis 38:8 God actually strikes Onan dead for that sin. Nevertheless, any masturbation is gravely disordered.
 
I would apply the same principle to both male and female. Orgasm outside of an act that is open to procreation is sinful. It seems the church has spoken on this issue for men but not explicitly for women. Why not apply the same principle to both genders?
 
ATeNumquam said:
I am female but am not asking this question to justify self-indulgence, so can we just discuss this on the “intellectual-hypothetical” level?
And please forgive me if I don’t use correct terminology:)

I have often thought about this - that masturbation seems to be mostly discussed in “male” terms.
You read in the Catechism (2352) “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose”.
Well… female orgasm is not an intrinsic part of, or essential to, the sex act or to procreation, unlike for a man, where orgasm necessarily involves ejaculation of sperm, which is geared towards procreation. Could you not say that female orgasm doesn’t have an “essential” purpose in the sex act, and is therefore not so morally “disordered”?
Yes, the pleasure aspect may encourage women to have sex, accept a male for sex and thus have children, but many women have sex and have kids and never experience orgasm.
It’s a kind of optional extra!
Anyone think it could be considered less “gravely disordered” (Catechism) for women to masturbate?
Click to expand...
It takes both male and female to procreate. Therefore, female masturbation is removed from procreation just as much as male masturbation is. Just because we don’t have semen, does not mean our sexuality is removed from being procreative.
 
YES I THINK THE MATTER DOES APPLY TO BOTH SEXES REGARLESS OF GENDER BUT WHAT SHOCKS ME ARE THESE RECENTS FACT THAT I FOUND ON WIKIPEDIA. Alongside many other factors, such as medical evidence, age-inappropriate sexual knowledge, play, or aggression, and precocious or seductive behavior, excessive masturbation may be an indicator of sexual abuse.

Which is understandable given the fact that with the Catholic sex abuse scandle still affecting the whole world today, here’s one more shocker that I was not even aware of .

The first National Masturbation Day was observed in 1995.Till 2001, NMD was celebrated on May 7, but in 2005 NMD was celebrated on May 28. I had no idea this was happening here in the US.

So IF there are any Catholics struggling with this Sin Please pray for others who were abused as children and for other catholics who suffer this way.🙂
 
Stimulation of the genital organs of single persons is always a sinful act.
It does not matter if one is male or female. Whether or not it is a mortal or venisl sin should be determined with the assistance of one’s confessor.
 
ATeNumquam said:
I am female but am not asking this question to justify self-indulgence, so can we just discuss this on the “intellectual-hypothetical” level?
And please forgive me if I don’t use correct terminology:)

I have often thought about this - that masturbation seems to be mostly discussed in “male” terms.
You read in the Catechism (2352) “The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose”.
Click to expand...
That ought to have included in it bold, shouting letters that say “as defined by the Church, and all that that implies.”
Well… female orgasm is not an intrinsic part of, or essential to, the sex act or to procreation, unlike for a man, where orgasm necessarily involves ejaculation of sperm, which is geared towards procreation.
Click to expand...
That is a very popular misconception. There is at least one learnable technique that allows the male to experience orgasm without ejaculation, and so “keep going” without the usual fatigued rollover/fall asleep ending. look up “male multiple orgasm.” Or read The Mulit-Orgasmic Male by Chia and Abrams.
Could you not say that female orgasm doesn’t have an “essential” purpose in the sex act, and is therefore not so morally “disordered”?
Yes, the pleasure aspect may encourage women to have sex, accept a male for sex and thus have children, but many women have sex and have kids and never experience orgasm.
It’s a kind of optional extra!
Click to expand...
Agaain, it is an easily learnable extra, if it is lacking. See Slow Sex by Nicole Daedone. Ought to be required reading for males!
Anyone think it could be considered less “gravely disordered” (Catechism) for women to masturbate?
Click to expand...
The whole “gravely disordered” thing as such is really up for questioning. And you make some excellent points. I’d say you are right.
 
Armor_of_Light said:
Then Time magazine and Coffee are sinful. DANG!! Every indulgence taken for pleasure is sinful?
Click to expand...
No. Jesus Christ shows us the perfect good. To do the will of our Father and to please Him is the proper order of creation. Don’t fret. Don’t give love due God to things. Give gratitude to God for things.

For Loving things I should only use, and using those I should only love, forgive me O Lord.

deep peace
 
Gaber said:
That ought to have included in it bold, shouting letters that say “as defined by the Church, and all that that implies.”
That is a very popular misconception. There is at least one learnable technique that allows the male to experience orgasm without ejaculation, and so “keep going” without the usual fatigued rollover/fall asleep ending. look up “male multiple orgasm.” Or read The Mulit-Orgasmic Male by Chia and Abrams.
Agaain, it is an easily learnable extra, if it is lacking. See Slow Sex by Nicole Daedone. Ought to be required reading for males!
The whole “gravely disordered” thing as such is really up for questioning. And you make some excellent points. I’d say you are right.
Click to expand...
YOU can question it all you want, but your statement implies that this is up for questioning by faithful Catholics. As long as the Church calls it gravely disordered, that’s good enough for me.
 
nagyszakall said:
The point is not whether orgasm is needed for procreation or not.
The point is that if you use the sexual faculty deliberately (whether to achieve orgasm or not) outside of the conjugal act in marriage (which is supposed to be an expression of love between husband and wife whether it achieves orgasm or not) then you are using it against its purpose and that is what makes it gravely wrong.

I agree with you in that the dispersion of the sperm makes male masturbation a graver thing. In Genesis 38:8 God actually strikes Onan dead for that sin. Nevertheless, any masturbation is gravely disordered.
Click to expand...
I talked to a priest of 25 years about this and while he said it was considered less of a grave matter but that it can become an addiction. He said that it was considered much less sinful than male masturbation years ago and that the current teachings weren’t the norm mostly because women really didn’t talk about this issue much.

I’m not married (so I’m not impacting a marriage) and while I try to follow the church’s teachings in this regard I don’t see it as a mortal sin and the priest I’m with confers although I do go to weekly Confession and want it out of my life. I feel that it is not conducive to holiness and growing closer to God because of the addiction potential.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
YOU can question it all you want, but your statement implies that this is up for questioning by faithful Catholics. As long as the Church calls it gravely disordered, that’s good enough for me.
Click to expand...
That’s fine, as this isn’t addressed to you.
 
Yep, mortal sins if done outside of marriage/foreplay, although culpability can be variable depending on the presence/level of addiction.

Consider this in the discussion: men who are sterile still have orgasms, making their orgasms similar to womens in the respect that their orgasms happen independant of fertility. An exception, yes, but morality needs to consider all the possibilities.
 
I suppose I understand the question, but I’m shocked at the dissenting voices. Clearly it is an equally culpable sin.
 
Irishgal49 said:
it was considered less of a grave matter but that it can become an addiction. He said that it was considered much less sinful than male masturbation years ago and that the current teachings weren’t the norm mostly because women really didn’t talk about this issue much.
Click to expand...
Either your confessor or how you perceive what he says sounds wrong to me. What you wrote is very confusing. The current teachings are the norm. Whether women talk about it or not (and I think they do, but then perhaps I live in a different culture) does not make a difference.
Masturbation is an act of utter selfishness and opposes the plan of God for human sexuality.
As for being more or less sinful the catechism says that **“one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety or other psychological or social factors that lessen, if not even reduce to a minimum, moral culpability.”
**Among these gender is not listed.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top