You are not insane. You are not blind. Your have not grown hair on your palms. You are a completely competent member of society - despite all the times you've done it. Kinsey and the latest Sex in America report show there's a whole lot of shaking going on. Today's sex researchers have come to grips with the fact that masturbation has important physical and emotional benefits for both men and women.

Getting a Grip "Masturbation is a normal, natural activity throughout life," says Robert Pollack, a psychology professor at the University of Georgia. It may even contribute to mental health and not doing it may lead to psychosexual problems.

For men, masturbation is good for the prostate and can prevent painful prostate blockage. It has been shown to have a healthy effect on the immune systems as well as reducing overall tension and helping emotions.

Besides being healthy for the body, a private grope can help a man better understand his own sexuality. If you can learn to lie back and enjoy it and really pay attention to the pleasure it gives your body - no one knows better than you what gives you maximum pleasure - you can share that knowledge with a partner and have more mutually fulfilling sexual pleasure sharing. The self-awareness gained from masturbation makes it a central feature of many sex therapy programs.

Evolution may have even designed us to be masturbators. Notice when you are standing where your hand falls if you hang it in front of you. Apes do it, dogs and cats do it, elephants do it and even porcupines have been observed doing it, probably very carefully. One reason we may be so programmed, paradoxically, is to increase our odds of producing offspring. Older sperm can lose their ability to swim well. A good masturbatory flush guarantees fresh, robust sperm for mating.

Storing seminal fluids for long periods can also cause prostate congestion, which in turn can lead to urinary and ejaculatory pain. Regular ejaculations, either through masturbation or intercourse, can help ward off this condition, also called non-specific prostatitis and , for obvious reasons, "sailor's disease" and "priest's disease."

Masturbation is also an ever-renewable health resource. In fact, the people who start the earliest and do it the most often are the ones who do it longest into old age. So, as with all sexual activity, it's "use it or lose it."

Another potential concern is reliance on masturbation for sexual pleasure to the exclusion of intimacy with another person. But in such cases, masturbation is probably a symptom, not a cause, of larger psychological barriers to intimacy. Most people want relationships. But if you don't want or can't have them, you might stick with masturbation exclusively.

How masturbation got its bad rap First came the misunderstanding of the biblical passage related to Onan whose sin, was not masturbation but not impregnating his dead brothers wife. Then came the twisted Christian tradition that sex was only proper for procreation, not just enjoyment. The stigma was later compounded by the 18th century Swiss physician Tissot who believed that while bood-flow changes during any kind of sex would cause nerve damage and insanity, masturbation was especially hazardous.

Tissot's teachings were picked up by American physician Benjamin Rush. Besides signing the Declaration of Independence, Rush wrote several influential articles on masturbation that helped make it one of the most feared activities in the new United States. Antimasturbatory devices became available, including a tube lined with metal spikes that fit over the penis. Until this century, young men were sometimes put to bed in straitjackets or with their hands tied to bedposts to make sure they didn't do it.

Kellogg, of cornflakes fame, was a virulent crusader against masturbation and invented the cereal as one element of a diet he thought would quench the sex drive. (Mr. Graham came up with the Graham cracker for the same purpose.) For those masturbators whom snacks could not cure, Kellogg suggested circumcision without anesthesia. OUCH!

Finally, around the turn of the century, physicians started to realize that masturbation was not the evil earlier generations thought it was. Still, it was not until 1940 that a respected textbook, "Diseases of Infancy and Childhood," removed its discussion of masturbation from the chapter titled "Functional and Nervous Disorders."

More Detail on the story of Onan In the Jewish Hebrew culture a man achieved immortality through his offspring. For example, Onan practiced coitus interruptus to prevent his deceased brother's wife from conceiving, so the LORD KILLED HIM! The sin was not having sex with dead brothers wife (that was required by law) but the "murderous act" that murdered the dead brothers soul no longer immortal with no children.

Since immortality is passed through the generations, it's clear why the sins for sexual deviation were so savagely condemned. Under those beliefs, homosexual acts, would have been murderous to all of one's forefathers since they did not pass on children to the next generation and jeopardize forefathers afterlife. Adultery was just as bad since it mixed blood lines. Singles sex was seldom an issue since everyone was married (often to many wives) at a young age.

One's state in the afterlife, according to other contemporary documents of the time, was determined by the number of living descendants one had. The more children one had, the more wonderful one's position in the afterlife would be. Hence, it was important to have many children. This may have been why men of wealth had so man wives and concubines

The sin of Onan had nothing to do with masturbation being wrong. Only the sexually repressive Church tried to teach that as one of the many lies about biblical sexuality. Fortunately most Christians have become more informed and even the traditional church has given up on the Onan lie!