Medicine and morality
Sir: There are several points in Miss Valerie Riches' letter responding to my comment on Dr John Linklater's article of November 17 which I should like to answer.
First, Miss Riches seems not to have recognised a fairly simple literary device. Dr Linklater had written a vitriolic, emotive article devoid of useful argument. I replied with a letter written in the same manner. It is not unusual for a correspondent to indicate dislike of an article by parodying it!
Miss Riches goes on to use out-ofcontext quotes from the Radio Times — not a journal noted for careful and accurate reporting — to castigate me. I will forgive Miss Riches her naivety and simply confine myself to pointing out that I cannot be held to account for words I have not written.
I can now go on to comment on the quote taken from material I did write. Miss Riches asks for the medical sources upon which I based the statement "Masturbation is not only harmless but considered by many doctors with wide experience of dealing with people's sexual problems to be an essential part of sexual development; they say that a person who had never masturbated would find it difficult to adjust to a sexual relationship later on."
Two of these are gladly provided:
1. Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin and Gebhard. Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female published Saunders, US 1953. Chapter 5. 2. Masters and Johnson, Human Sexual Response Published Little, Brown and Co, US 1966. Chapter 9.
There are other sources which are too'numerous to list here. These I have selected, it will be noted, are based on sound research. (The Kinsey Report alone was based on investigation of 8,000 women.) They are not the comments of GPs untrained in psychosexual matters who choose to offer as fact subjective opinions drawn only from empirical experience in their own practices. • Miss Riches's views on masturbation could be laughed at as quaint if they weren't so dangerous. She sounds like a nineteenth century moralist solemnly assuring us all that masturbation leads to madness. She'll be telling us next that it also causes blindness and hair on the palm of one's hand. Surely, these ludicrous old wives' tales don't still have any credence? Reading Miss Riches' letter, one wonders.
She also seems to think that the practice of masturbation is limited among boys, rare among girls, abnormal among adults. I can only refer her to Kinsey who actually took the trouble to find out. Study of his report will show that it is non-masturbators who have rarity status in both sexes and at all ages. Perhaps Miss Riches and her friends would be acting rather more "responsibly" if they took the trouble to seek information and then formed their opinions on the basis of it, something they clearly do not do in matters pertaining to sex. In this context their assumption that they enjoy a monopoly of "responsibility" is arrogant, to say the least.
I will repeat my views on John Linklater's original article. His attitude to sex education as displayed in his rejection of the scheme designed by the Medical Officer of Health, Denbighshire, to provide young people with much needed information on sex (and I agree with Sir George Godber; it is young ignorance which is the major problem, not young
curiosity) is based on his ignorance of facts (how does Linklater know it is
true that "never have the young known more about sex. Nor have they ever been more promiscuous" since there is no hard evidence as opposed to emotional guesses that this is so?) and his desire to be a moral arbiter of others' actions.
still pity his patients.
Claire Rayner, SRN 7 Pasture Road, North Wembley, Middlesex
Previous page
