BijouBlog

According to the holy haters, the coronavirus lockdown is turning an already sinful nation (its sins are reproductive rights and the fact that LGBTQ persons are allowed to exist, not robbing and cheating the widow and the orphan) in Masturbation Nation (and in their “minds,” that means Pornography Nation).

According to a report in LGBTQ Nation, some denizens at Liberty Counsel and the likes of gay sex-obsessed Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, (the ones who are defending those death cult astors who insist on holding in-person services, are claiming that many are now succumbing to such lustful cravings and are now so, so unhappy.

(Of course the above assume men, and especially gay men, are the “perpetrators,” because I doubt it would even cross their minds that a woman might masturbate or watch pornography, but that’s another blog.)

So, lockdown is making more guys pull their puds and watch porn (probably on their phones). Yeah, right, If you’re a hetero guy locked down in a house with a spouse and kids with Grandma quarantined in the basement, I’m sure you could easily find and a time and place to watch some porn and jerk off. You could escape as many have to the forest preserves, but I’m not certain shelter in place deems this pastoral journey to essential travel.

(Yet these “family men” are many times the politicians who get caught in hotel rooms with underage persons or in public bathrooms, of course.)

So, once again, it’s the gays. Yes, we are now using the pandemic lockdown to indulge even more in nonprocreative sexuality that their God so hates.

What’s so disturbing about this both irrational and psychologically harmful world view is that during the AIDS crisis, gay men actually embraced masturbation, including the director Michael Goodwin in The Goodjac Chronicles and the other movies in his Goodjac series, as a responsible, safe sex practice in order to stay alive and keep from potentially infecting others. Yes, in order to stay alive.

The current lockdown situation is caused by an impersonal virus which does not discriminate (and it isn’t transmitted, according to the haters, by only those who indulge in “dirty” sex or “dirty” drugs, and thus are easy targets for discrimination and scapegoating), because anyone can get it from something as mundane as a sneeze (itself something of a taboo act, which is why we say God bless you, because some believed it could cause the soul to be ejected from the body!).

But yes, even the Bible-toting Southern Baptist Meemaw known for her famous church basement hot dishes lauded by Perkins and his ilk for her virtues can become sick; she can get it, and she can also transmit it to others as well. So, to stay alive, everyone, yes, everyone, has to stay away from everyone else. Alone and yet alive.

But even in this scenario, the haters still need to somehow accuse, scapegoat LGBTQ persons, and in this case, especially gay men, of somehow “desecrating” the lockdown, but at the same time, these are the ones who are complaining about the fact they even have to lockdown, claiming they are forced to do so especially by tyrannical, godless Democrats.

All in all, as usual, these holy haters confuse what being holy really is, and it doesn’t mean hating the world or escaping from it. Some can lockdown voluntarily, in order to find that ineffable “more” than the “I” by becoming monks or nuns. Many are called, few are chosen.

But the majority of humans, everyone, not just specific Christian sects, are now being locked down involuntarily, in order to preserve life, and all that lives is holy, proclaimed the great poet and heretic William Blake. We have to separate now to stay whole in order to preserve life for ourselves as individuals and as parts of communities, now and for the future.

Masturbation may not be an ideal sexual activity on a psychosocial level for everyone, but the act keeps the sex drive alive. Your orgasm literally screams out that you are still alive. Your imagination is thus still creating and by doing so is able to transcend boundaries this non-living virus is both breaking and imposing on its victims.

And who knows, some imaginative person now might be doing some kind of Zoom virtual masturbation session. Just make sure you protect it from the holy haters who would love to bomb this sort of thing, not because they hate it, because they really want to participate in Masturbation Nation.

The circle jerk. Supposedly boys have done it (regardless of orientation) since time immemorial as a ritual of initiation. (I never experienced it, but I do remember pissing contests outside with this one kid I was later forbidden to play with. How did my mother find out?) 

This underground jack off culture was immortalized in the “Four in Hand” quartet, a playlet from the controversial Oh! Calcutta!, an evening of short humorous playlets about sex that opened off Broadway in 1969. The “four in hand” (also the title of a classic Nova porn film) is a knot sometimes used in men's neckties and ends up being a pun for a collective jerk off. It's interesting that the guys doing it in the playlet are all ostensibly straight (women's breasts appear on the screen at one point, because whatever the guys think of shows up via a “telepathic transmitter”). But the guy running the scene is clear that it's a competition to see who cums first. Men will always be at heart (and in their groins) boys.

When gay men began to enjoy the fruits of their sexual liberation, they began to organize formal and informal jack off clubs. Some even became “respectable” and took on the trappings of not for protfit social clubs, with newsletters, weekend retreats, fundraisers, and websites. I would also think they would have become more popular as safe sex became a life and death matter during the height of the AIDS epidemic. The New York Jacks, founded in 1980, are still around. Seems like they've made the transition to the Internet Age (there's a message board and a Twitter account). Though, of course, the point is live cock play … (But given gay gym culture, one can go to the locker room for a jack off and then report about it on craigstlist missed connections!) 
 

The New York Jacks are still bucking these trends, as they still seem to follow the practices of “patch” or leather clubs. There's a membership application one can download, for example (they seem to be up and running in person with vax cards), and an emphasis on both etiquette as well as alleviating anxieties about what to expect at such a function. I guess when all one needs to do is turn on a phone to enjoy a cybersex jack off these days, perhaps social anxiety is more of an issue. I mean, you don't want to be the one who gets the booby prize because he doesn't shoot.

When I was younger, not that much younger, but still, youthful, I remember being invited to the Chicago Jacks (defunct, as far as I know). No, I am not going to divulge what happened to me (and it didn't involve jerking off), but I did return regularly, not so much for the action (interestingly enough, this group, which met informally, allowed oral and anal sex; many groups do not). I enjoyed the company of some hot gay macho-looking guys and also what sometimes happened to me at my place after the meetings if I met a special someone. 

But the air of competition was there, everyone cheering on as the president of the group (God rest his soul) after much jiggling and wiggling finally emitted that gooey string of white stuff. Was it worth it? I feel exhausted remembering the scene. (And I remember that I had smoked a certain substance before attending; I usually did. Not necessarily an aphrodisiac.) 

I also remember they they used to hold meetings at a supposedly secret location. The night of their party, a police raid took place. So much for secrecy. Who told on them? 

I'm going to tell! I caught you! Is there still something of the shame and secrecy surrounding that sin of Onan going on here? Even if one doesn't subscribe to the conventional religious view that is sinful, it's still essentially a private, solo act. Perhaps that's the taboo here: what is private becomes a public competition. But in the midst of the public gaze, the eyes of the masturbator are closed. The private fantasy (maybe even that first image you discovered could make you hard) is still going on, but unlike in the Four in Hand playlet, the images are locked in the imagination and memory. The circle is unbroken. 

Source for some information here: Cornog, Martha. The Big Book of Masturbation. San Francisco: Down There Press, 2003.