If you are among those who believe that masturbation is enjoyable, natural and healthy, then join those of like minds masturbating for the Masturbate-a-thon on May 28, 2008 in San Francisco. This event is a fundraiser for the Center for Sex and Culture which is dedicated to supporting sex education and sexual safety.

An event for men and women, this year celebrates the Masturbate-a-thon’s tenth year. What started out as a small-scale pledge drive has blossomed into an event that attracts people from around the world. The event was an instant success and continues to be popular. According to the Masturbate-a-thon website,

It started as a weekend long pledge drive that operated on the honor system. Participants got their pals to promise money for each minute of masturbation. As Carol Queen said then, “who’d want to cheat? It’s so much fun to masturbate, it’s not like you won’t do it and then say you did.” In the first year the Masturbate-a-thon raised $8,500 for good causes. In the years that the Masturbate-a-thon operated as a do-it-yourself event it raised over $25,000, distributed 66,000 pledge forms, had 1700 pledged participants from six different countries.

Does it all sound exciting? Think you want to fly up to San Fran and try your hand, metaphorically speaking? Well, if you plan to do any record-breaking, here’s what you’re up against

Time Records:

• Female: 6 h, 30 min (Norine Dworkin, San Francisco, 2004)
• Male: 8 h, 30 min (San Francisco, 2006)
• Trans/Genderqueer: Yet to be set!

Most Orgasms:

• Female: 49 (London, 2006)
• Male: 6 (London, 2006)
• Trans/Genderqueer: Yet to be set!

The good news is you don’t have to break any records. Just go to have fun, learn and love more about yourself, and support a super creative way to support a very good cause.

For more information, visit the Masturbate-a-thon website at http://www.masturbate-a-thon.com/.

There is an interesting discussion on Yahoo Answers that explores the ways in which male masturbation is characterized (in contrast to female masturbation) and the Victorian-style repression that is, unfortunately, still part of the age-old controversy.

Listen, folks, every man I know masturbates or has masturbated at one time or another. It is a healthy and natural part of human sexuality. Here’s another shocker. Women masturbate too for the same healthy, natural reasons born of the same human need. In fact, even in prehistoric places where masturbation is punishable by death, people masturbate anyway so it never ceases to amaze me that there is still so much controversy and shame.

For my part, people who view masturbation as ’sinful’ or ‘base’ are usually sexually repressed, uptight, unhappy people. Why? Because at the core, to take such a rigid position (pun intended) inherently denies that human beings have the right to pleasure themselves. After all, we pleasure ourselves in so many other ways like eating our favorite foods, going to see a good movie, taking a walk in the park. How is masturbation any different at its core? We can look at our primate cousins for empirical proof that masturbation has been around for a hell of a lot longer than our limited and relatively new capacity for language that has allowed us to label it ‘bad’

Check out the full post on Yahoo Answers.