Masturbation has been a staple of R or X-rated humor for a long time. Other than that, being a solo activity, it hasn’t had much of a public life — or so I thought until this morning. In keeping with the posts I did about the Bacchanal that San Francisco’s venerable Bay to Breakers race has become (here, here and here), Danny Lemieux sent me a link to a post article about one of San Francisco’s other bids for most debauched City in the Western world. This time, it’s about San Francisco’s annual Masturbate-a-thon:

May 23, 2008
Your Hand-y Guide to Sunday’s Masturbate-a-Thon
(By Joe Kukura)

We just got off the phone with Carol Queen, who is gripped in preparations for this Sunday’s seventh annual Masturbate-a-Thon – where good folks publicly drop trousers and raise money by seeing who can masturbate the longest, climax most often, and ejaculate the furthest. Things are really coming together for Sunday’s proceedings, with your hosts Nina Hartley and SF Boylesque, and live performances by Madison Young, Tom Orr, Sadie Lune, and loads of other local erotica superstars.

The Masturbate-a-Thon is a stand-up cause, raising money for the Center for Sex and Culture’s public library and ongoing curriculum of classes and seminars. “We don’t get any big foundation funding or government grants, so we do rely on our community,” says Dr. Queen, who along with her right-hand man Dr. Robert Lawrence have set up separate male-only, female-only, and mixed-gender areas as well as a live stream of the event for those wishing to catch the webcast. This may not be the most traditional method of fundraising – just looking at some previous years’ world records kinda makes our crotch sore — but as Dr. Queen says, “We’ll try to continue to be as subversive as we can.”

Masturbate-a-Thon // Sunday, May 25 3 p.m. // Center for Sex and Culture (1519 Mission St.) // $20 SFist: Your Hand-y Guide to Sunday’s Masturbate-a-Thon

At Flopping Aces, Marc sums up the problem with this narcissistic little event:

How can anyone bring up children in this type of environment?

It just shows you the dangers in having liberals and leftists running any city and even the country. Moderates, conservatives and the right should be extremely alarmed and concerned about these kinds of unsavory behaviors allowed by out of control left wing politicians.

The situation is actually a little more extreme even than Marc thought.  You see, it’s not just San Francisco that promotes these kinds of affairs (although SF can boast that the event started within its borders).  Masturbate-a-thons have been held in North American in Wisconsin, Boston and Toronto, and they’ve now spread to Europe, with London hosting the European event.

Much as San Francisco likes to think that it discovered sex (a belief that highlights how adolescent the City is), there is, in fact, nothing new under the sun:  sex has existed before, bizarre sex has existed before, exhibitionistic sex has existed before, and group sexual events have existed before.  The only thing that’s different is that the modern Left, with San Francisco leading the way, is the first society since ancient Rome that has taken this behavior out of the (appropriate) privacy of the home and club, and plunked it down in the public eye.  Not only is this unacceptable for those of us who cling to traditional mores, it should put us in mind of Rome.  As you probably recall, when Rome gave itself over to hedonism, its decline and fall were suddenly writ large on the pages of history.