I've been lurking here for a week or so, trying to collect material for an article, and actually registered so I could reply to this thread. I doubt that I'll say much more, but I really wanted to say this:
I go through Lent every year, so I can relate to wanting to stop something for a while, especially when that something is a bad habit, but ask yourselves this: is masturbation a bad habit? Or are you carrying around a lot of baggage left over from medieval Catholicism?
One of the things I love about being a woman is that whacking off doesn't have any strings attached. It's just an orgasm or two. I can even use any applicances I want without anyone thinking that I'm a freak, or at least without anyone thinking that I'm a freak in a bad way. I have no sense that masturbation drains energy or vitality, and I have no sense that it decreases my sex drive. I have no guilt about it. I even have no guilt about my smut consumption, and no sense that it infringes in any way on my sex life. In other words, I can masturbate with impunity and simply bask in the resulting good feelings.
Now, it wasn't always this way. I've read a lot of posts here where men are slamming feminism, but one of its more positive side effects was that women started asking questions about the cultural constructs that defined female sexuality. Women weren't supposed to want sex. Women weren't supposed to come. Women were only supposed to come through pen*le penetration (impossible for around 90% of us if one wants it consistent and without any grinding of the man's pubic bone against the cl*toris), or cl*toral orgasms were "immature." Absolutely, women weren't supposed to masturbate. Women were biologically programmed to be faithful 'till death did us part and only want sex within marriage, and then we were only supposed to want it on the bottom, under the blankets and in the dark. There were only two kinds of women, and one single slip-up tossed you forever into the wh*** category. Being pregnant or having kids should automatically kill one's sex drive. The list goes on ad nauseum, but the bottom line is that feminism included a reclaimation of female sexuality that is still incomplete, but still making progress.
Now, male sexuality isn't really fully realized, either. I can go into the history at considerable length, but what the part that's relevant here boils down to is the notion that the only acceptable venue for male orgasm is the female body. We call masturbation "onanism" because of the mistaken belief that God struck Onan dead for it, but what God was actually upset about was the fact that Onan was refusing to impregnant his brother's wife, an act that would have disinherited his own children. It had nothing whatsoever to do with masturbation, but it got hooked into it by people who decided that any form of non-reproductive sexual expression was a sin and that reproductive sex was a necessary evil. St. Jerome in particular found sex vile and disgusting, "an experiment of the serpent," and called women even worse for inspiring desire. Marriage (read: culturally sanctioned reproductive sex) was a "foul and polluted way of life."
This means that if you're going to be true to the core values behind the idea that male masturbation is bad, then you shouldn't be ejaculating at all, and if you're so spineless and wimpy that you must, it should be into an unprotected vag*na. Period. Think about it, and decide if you really buy this.
Here's another thought, too. In a rush to define "masculine" as merely "the opposite of feminine," we may be returning to Jeromish thinking where male sexuality is concerned. Now that women are free to masturbate whenever they want and with anything they want, are we going to define "manliness" in part as an absence of masturbation? Am I the only one who thinks this is completely insane?
Short of a behavioral addiction, which can develop around anything that feels good, there isn't a thing wrong with masturbation. It simply decreases tension, although exactly how varies in men and women because orgasm has completely different effects on male and female brains. Masturbation is a way of coping with our constantly-on sexuality, which is a side effect of the fact that we have no mating season. Nothing more. The whole notion that male masturbation is "pathetic" is a cultural construct along the lines of the notion that orgasm in women is a sign of mental illness.
In the case of a behavioral addiction, it's best to address the underlying issue. Trying to stop the behavior without doing so is like putting a butterfly bandage over a severed artery. If masturbation is interfering with the rest of your life, get help and from a reputable therapist, not from Christian websites.
Testosterone and sexual tension aren't bad things in and of themselves, but in combination and excess they have at least one negative side effect. They not only give your temper an unpleasant edge, they also give that temper a very short fuse. I would not want to share space with a guy who was that ragged, much less a guy whose frustration level was so high that I became little more than a pressure valve. The mere, physical act of f*cking doesn't have the same built-in, biochemical rewards for women that it does for men (we have them, they're just different), so the sort of sex machine this is going to turn you into is unlikely to appeal to anyone sane. It's also not going to help your performance in bed. Women are far, far, far more likely to get off before your d*ck goes in. A man too frustrated to tolerate foreplay isn't going to be much of a lover.
So have fun, guys, but stay the heck away from me until it's over!
Persephone