Why is masturbation such a taboo topic?

Happy and healthy ... solo sex helps you discover your body.

'Solo sex' is healthy and can enhance your relationships. So why are we still too embarrassed to talk about it, asks sex therapist Matty Silver.

At dinner parties, people tend to talk about anything and everything, but you dont often hear conversations about masturbation or what I refer to as 'solo sex.' It is still a taboo topic that we are just too embarrassed to talk about.

It is easy to explain why. Over the ages religious groups have condemned masturbation, claiming it inhibits self-control and promotes sexual promiscuity. Even today, the Dalai Lama does not approve of it and traditional Catholic, Orthodox Jewish and Muslim doctrine says masturbation constitutes a moral disorder.

Just last week the Vatican condemned an American nun, Sister Margaret Farley, a professor emeritus of Christian ethics at Yale University, for her book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics. On the subject of masturbation, she wrote that many women have found great good in self pleasuring, something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary sexual relations with husbands or lovers." Masturbation, she concludes, actually serves relationships rather then hindering them.

As a relationship counsellor and sex therapist I see many clients with sexual dysfunction and/or psychological hang-ups about sex due to their upbringing. But, all people have sexual feelings and thoughts. If expression of these is not allowed, it can cause frustration, guilt and depression.

I tell my 'religious' clients that I do not believe God would have created men and women with sexual organs that can give them pleasure if they were simply supposed to be used for procreation.

While some people believe that there is no need for masturbation when you are in a relationship, self stimulation allows you to discover your own body and find out what you like. If you know your body and know what excites you then you can communicate that to your partner.

Research in the 1950s by Alfred Kinsey found that 92 per cent of males reported masturbating, but only about 62 per cent females. In my practice, while I have never met a man who does not masturbate, I've met many women who dont.

Again, this is easy to explain. When a boy turns about 12 or 13 he will start getting erections whether he likes it or not. Girls, on the other hand, do not. And before magazines like Dolly or Cosmopolitan existed, they may never have heard of the words masturbation or orgasm. So, it is not easy for women to learn to masturbate and have an orgasm. It is even harder if they believe that it is the job of their partner.

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Why is masturbation such a taboo topic?