Hand shandy...

I thought I’d finished my chapter about gender, sex and sexual identity; it’s certainly long enough. Then, this morning, I realised I’d written nothing about masturbation. I’ve rectified this omission (emission?) with a few extra paragraphs. The solitary vice is not specifically mentioned in the Bible; Onan’s ‘sin’, for which God strikes him dead, is not masturbation but ‘coitus interruptus'. Nevertheless, most religions condemned self-abuse (and still do). Martin Luther was not really out of step with his theological peers in believing that masturbation was a sin worse than rape, which shows how skewed the moral intuitions of the righteous can be whenever they think about sex.

Another uninspiring pic which sold today: St Chad's Church in Rochdale...