Summary Of The Great Masturbation Panic

It can be suggested that the ‘Great Masturbation Panic and the Discourses of Moral Regulation in Nineteenth-and Early Twentieth-Century Britain’ was written to offer a different perspective from perhaps two of the most influential texts on the mounting intensity against masturbation: ‘Onania; or, The Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution’ and ‘Onanism; or a Treatise upon the Disorder Produced by Masturbation’. Hunt identifies his article as an anxiety theory; as it explores the anxieties created by the campaign as sexuality, youth, and gender and therefore the presence of these social anxieties identify the specific targets of the campaign.

This article aims to debate the great masturbation panic in nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain,
This evidence includes antimasturbation literature, medical and quasi-medical texts, the works of other critics and pamphlets of the purity campaign. Hunt suggests that he is concerned with the relationship between the anti-masturbation discourses and the social purity movements. He identifies ‘the primary resources on which this article draws are the pamphlets of the purity campaign […]The authors of the great bulk of these pamphlets were themselves directly associated with the organized expression of social purity.’ He argues that the reason he includes these resources is because they promote the idea of salvation through renunciation, unlike the quasi-medical texts, which often promoted popular beliefs and superstitions about the psychological and physiological effects of masturbation in order to make profit. Hunt also focuses on the British anti-masturbation movement and so it can be claimed that his arguments and the sources that he uses are unrepresentative of the anti-masturbation movement as a whole. But he suggests that much of what he includes in the article also applies to the United States. To support this he identifies that ‘the bulk of the evidence I consider was published in England between 1880 and 1914; but examination of similar literature from Australia, Canada, and the United States suggests that, for present purposes, we can assume the existence of a common antimasturbation literature in English-speaking countries, even though there were significant differences between their social purity movements.’ Hunt also uses the work of Frank Mort to reinforce his argument that the masturbation panic was directed at middle and upper-class teenage boys. He suggests ‘Frank Mort is, wrong in claiming that "it was clear that the working class was to be the real target of purity action." He argues that the antimasturbation texts are targeted at the upper and