LODER: Erotic self-stimulation to orgasm, masturbation, is clearly a built-in component of human sexuality. It's something that everyone has done at least once and even have pet names for. Masturbation's bad press dates back at least to 1741 when a Swiss physician named Tissot and a book called L'ONANISME claimed that the practice drained away precious bodily fluids and made enthusiasts more susceptible to disease. By the 19th century, a device, designed to prevent masturbation among both boys and girls, were being marketed and in this country. J.H. Kellogg, brother of the Michigan cereal king, came up with a list of thirty-nine tell-tale characteristics of the chronic masturbator and even announced a convenient cure. More corn flakes! Not a word of truth was uttered by these or the many other anti-masturbation activists and yet similar myths persist to this day.

WEBB: Well I heard the most genius rumors about masturbation when I was growing up.

DAVE MATTHEWS, Dave Matthews Band: Everyone hears the same ones, that you're gonna get hair on your palms, you're gonna lose you hair.

WEBB: If you did it enough, you could star in your own science-fiction movie.

COKO, SWV: I know it's a sin.

JOHN NORWOOD FISHER, Fishbone: I heard that you would go to hell.

DAVID CHOKACHI, actor: The rumor that stuck with me the most was that I would go blind. Where are you guys?

LODER: Just for the record, hairy palms, insanity, blindness, baldness, and warts are not side effects of single-handed sexual gratification and these and other actual facts about the practice are now being taught in some public schools.

Clip: "MTV's Beavis and Butt-head, No Talking"

LODER: In the end, masturbation is a classic case of an alleged vice that actually injures no-one, not even the practitioner, and in fact, serves a useful purpose.

LELEE, SWV: There's nothing wrong with masturbation. That is the safest sex in the world. Masturbation.

ELDERS: I think masturbation is important in self-stimulation and it gives people a satisfaction they can do it anytime they like as long as it's in the privacy of their own room. And it's never gotten anybody pregnant, never given anybody a disease, never caused anybody to have AIDS.

JOHN NORWOOD FISHER, Fishbone: Let a man have his time in the bathroom, let a girl have her time under the sheets, you know. Buy a dildo, you know, whatever it takes and it keeps down the spread of sexual diseases. So I'm for masturbation.

ANGELO MOORE, Fishbone: That's right, get your nut, get it on, get your meganut on!

LODER: When we come back, we'll take a closer look at the conflict between masturbation and morality and check in on the vast industry that's sprung up around human sexual self-satisfaction.