First they came for the Fleshlights

Q: How many Men's Rights Activists does it take to screw a Fleshlight?

A: That's not funny!

So what emotion did you feel when Christine O’Donnell's bizarre anti-masturbation video first started popping up on cable news and the intertubes? (If you haven't seen it yet, pop over here and return when you're done.) Did you feel amused, annoyed, befuddled, perhaps concerned that someone so wacky could possibly be voted into office? Did it make you horny, baby?

For the men's rights blogger behind the Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Tech blog, there was nothing funny about the video. "They're Afraid of Men Masturbating," he wrote in a piece also published on the The Spearhead, warning fellow men to beware the dark specter of the mysterious "they" -- he never quite specifies who this is -- trying to get between men and their hands.

Watch the youtube video and take note of the end.  Except for a token guy, it’s a group of women.  O’Donnell even says about her presumably future husband masturbating, “If he already knows what pleases him, and he can please himself, then why am I in the picture?”  This quote exposes the undercurrent behind anti-masturbation attitudes.  It’s not so much anti-masturbation but anti men masturbating.  People against masturbation have a fear that men might actually have an alternative to women.  ...

When it comes to a woman who ... is planning on trying to control a man through providing a minimum of sex, then she has a lot to worry about when it comes to men realizing that their hand will do more for them than a woman will. 

And how will the evil "they" control men? Not by clamping their hapless partners' junk in a stylish new CB-6000 Male Chastity Device. Not by drawing litlte moustaches on all the pictures in their porn stashes. But sneakily, insidiously, through "shaming language." Religious conservatives like O'Donnell will open up their Bibles and start talking about Onan. Others will smirk and call men losers.

"When women use vibrators they are praised for taking control of their sexuality," he complains. "When a man uses a fleshlight he is attacked for being a loser who can’t get laid." The ultimate goal? "[T]o protect the pussy cartel from competition" in the form of fleshlights, virtual reality sex, and the comforts of their own hands and a bottle of lotion.

Yes, he did just use the phrase "pussy cartel." 

So, yeah. Here's the thing. The reason the sex-positive feminists and the Samantha Jones' of the world describe female masturbation as liberating is because, for many women, masturbation is still a source of deep, deep shame, so much so that many are too skittish or uneasy to even try it. While getting reliable info about sexuality is difficult, most studies of the subject indicate that men masturbate far more than women. (No duh.) One 2007 survey found that 95% of men had masturbated at least once in their lives, while only 71% of women had. More than half of men surveyed had masturbated in the week prior to taking the survey; only 18% of women had. Heck, I jacked it twice while writing this paragraph. I'm not afraid!

And here's the other thing. When people call you a loser for shacking up with your fleshlight instead of a warm, living, flesh-and-blood woman, they're not really making fun of the masturbating.

No, they're making fun of you for being so wholly objectionable to any sane woman that you're left alone with only your hands and your sex toys. They're making fun of you for being the sort of person who uses the phrase "pussy cartel." They're making fun of you for being such a crazy misogynist creepazoid that you've actually managed to convince yourself, at least for the amount of time it takes to write a blog post, that your "hand will do more for [you] than a woman will."

Is that shaming language? I suppose it it. That blog post was, well, pretty shameful.

EDIT: Some less-than-careful readers of this piece have somehow concluded that it is anti-masturbation, or at least anti-male-masturbation. It is not. Guys, masturbate all you want. In your bedroom, in the living room, in front of your pets, wearing a hat, wearing a dress. I don't care. Masturbation is healthy, normal, and oftentimes highly entertaining. I have been known to masturbate myself. My critique was not of masturbation but of guys who actually think that Christine O’Donnell's loopy remarks, which even she is backtracking on, mean that a "pussy cartel" is trying to stop men from touching their wieners.

EDIT 2: The target of this piece offers a response that suggests, among other things, that he really can't read very well. But he assures us that he actually is getting laid, so yay for him on that.