The case for shameful fantasies:
It's National Masturbation Month, which feels like it should be worthy of comment -- especially given that I'm on the "sex beat." But writing in defense of masturbation is so incredibly passe; it hardly seems a practice in need of month-long activism. Most of us have left behind the pathologizing Christine O'Donnells of the world and abandoned the mythology of hairy palms and blindness. Pornography, the No. 1 sign of solo loving, is in no short supply -- and for the very low price of free. Even the title, National Masturbation Month, sounds like a relic from a priggish past -- one before the Rabbit became a household name. Cheap vibrators are now stocked at neighborhood drug stores and diamond-encrusted numbers are available in boutique sex shops. Porn and dildos have been democratized -- power to the people!