Masturbation is healthy — that was the finding of Michelle Sherwood, a family and consumer sciences professor who presented her

study during the Women’s History Awareness Month faculty panel Tuesday evening.

Officially called “Sex in the City… in the Country…in the Mind” looked at many different facets of sexuality in such as masturbation, virginity, penis size and plant sex.

“It’s not new, we have hieroglyphics, we have ancient writings, we have all kinds of material that shows us people have been masturbating for a long time,” Sherwood said.

Sherwood said for a long time, masturbation was seen as a disease that would cause blindness, tuberculosis and acne.

At one point, devices were built to keep both men and women from masturbating; men would wear a sort of choker device around the shaft of the penis to keep it from being erect during sleep to prevent nocturnal emissions.

“It would train them not to have erections in their sleep,” Sherwood said.

In the late 1800s, the term hysteria was used, and this is when vibrators came into popularity for women. They were one of the first uses of electricity in the home, Sherwood said.

Sherwood said people who specialized in family and consumer sciences were employed by electricians to visit rural homes in the United States to teach people how to use electricity and the new “relaxation” device to get women over their hysteria.

Masturbation is often not taught in health courses and has many myths surrounding it, like that females and couples do not participate in the act; however, both have been proven false, Sherwood said.

Sherwood said masturbation is healthy because it can reduce stress, relax muscles and release endorphins.

“Girls do it too, not just boys,” Sherwood said, “It’s really sexually a part of life.”

Don Holly, an anthropology professor, did his presentation on the correlation between penis and wallet size.

Holly showed clips from HBO’s “Sex and the City” about one of the characters from the show complaining about the size of her boyfriend’s penis.

“The human penis is longer and larger than it needs to be,” Holly said.

The average penis length is 3.61 inches flaccid, 5.17 inches erect; the average circumference is 3.67 inches flaccid and 4.59 inches erect, according to a recent study done on more than 15,000 men by Kings College London.

Holly said some cultures make fun of men with larger size penises, and penis and wallet size do not correlate.

Holly said as women earn more money, how a man looks is starting to matter more now than in the past.

Among other topics of the night were discussions on virginity, which showed about 1.1 million men and 800,000 women from the ages of 25 to 45 have never had vaginal sex, as well as a discussion on the amount of issues abortion clinics must go through to be open.

Roberto Hodge can be reached at 581-2812 or rlhodge@eiu.edu.