[sudo-discuss] Erotica: superiority and inferiority: hands vs.partners:

[GtwoG PublicOhOne]

Yo's-

So let's talk about the reasons we might prefer partners and the reasons
we might prefer hands:

Anyone who's grown up with popular music knows the ideal of Romantic
Love:  The perfect relationship, each person fully attuned to the
other.  Great sex all the time, and great conversation all the time,
though not necessarily both at the same time.  Hearts & flowers until
death do us part, whether or not the state or one's employers recognizes
the relationship. 

But for the most part, reality doesn't work that way, as the divorce
rate demonstrates.

A hand is always preferable to an abusive partner. 

A hand is often preferable to playing HIV roulette, and nowadays,
massively-drug-resistant gonorrhea roulette, not to mention hepatitis C
and other life-threatening diseases, some of which can even be caught
from a (slurpy) kiss.

A hand may be preferable to the competitive game-playing of the sexual
"marketplace," where commodification is often the rule, particularly in
a culture where "revenge porn" has become commonplace (posting nudes of
one's former partners and "conquests" online for all the world to see,
against their will) and cruel gossip spreads at the speed of recycled
electrons. 

For that matter a hand or two might be preferable to a partner who's
sexually inept, or of the opposite political or philosophical persuasion
than oneself, or who isn't strong, smart, creative, empathic, or
otherwise capable in at least one way that matters to oneself.

After a particularly painful relationship breakup, a hand may be
retrospectively preferable to the wild ride that ended with the
going-insane feeling of being dumped or betrayed. 

And it's probably arguable, as a generalization, that a hand that meets
a basic physical need, is far better all round, than letting the need go
unmet to the point where it builds relentlessly, thereby infecting one's
every glance at another person, and one's every conversation.  In other
words, masturbation is not only a personal good thing but a social good
thing when it enables one to keep his/her objectivity rather than
viewing others first and foremost as possible sexual outlets. 

Let's hear it for using our hands and keeping our objectivity!

-G.