DCP probably exchanged texts like these asking young men about masturbation

[Dr. Shades]

Of course you could always ask a close woman friend for an explanation.

Rather than an explanation, wouldn’t it be more effective to ask for a demonstration?

[yellowstone123]

It's a sad post.

Memories of myself at age 13 outside the stake president's office waiting to be interviewed so I could be baptized for the dead is even more sad. First, when asked by the stake president if I did this and that and this I just shook my head and said no. When he got to maturbation I shook my head and said no. He asked me if I knew what it meant and I shook my head and said, no. He seemed to get angry and raised his voice and said, "do you play with yourself?" It startled me and I shook my head and said no.

It would be sort of funny if I asked him for an operational definition of the word and a demonstration but that would be wrong for me to suggest it. Although one might believe it or not the stake president business owner is a non scientist and doing an experiment on a young mind without the minor signing papers and the right to know. Think about it: a man you just see every six months speaking in meetings and is The Stake President, then meeting with him to be baptized for the dead and having him raise his voice and say, "Do you play with yourself?" which is vague like so many LDS male leaders have been historically. It's abuse and almost jurisdiction in juvenile court. Choose your questions carefully LDS leaders.

I did have a bishop tell me to call him if I had the urge. He was actually super nice and his interviews were nothing like people write on the internet. I lucked out with bishops but at the stake level it was a short and a bad experience. In fact, talking with stake leaders was always a bad situation and emotional abuse waiting to happen.

I had a mission president say, "just change your thoughts." It's like saying don't think about the pink elephant.

Today, before the interview, it would be nice to know what food they had eaten the previous 3 hours, allow you to take their blood pressure, and ask if they exercise regularly. It's not warts and all like they are asking but it does give you a little data on how they might respond.

[Rivendale]

It's a sad post.

Memories of myself at age 13 outside the stake president's office waiting to be interviewed so I could be baptized for the dead is even more sad. First, when asked by the stake president if I did this and that and this I just shook my head and said no. When he got to maturbation I shook my head and said no. He asked me if I knew what it meant and I shook my head and said, no. He seemed to get angry and raised his voice and said, "do you play with yourself?" It startled me and I shook my head and said no.

It would be sort of funny if I asked him for an operational definition of the word and a demonstration but that would be wrong for me to suggest it. Although one might believe it or not the stake president business owner is a non scientist and doing an experiment on a young mind without the minor signing papers and the right to know. Think about it: a man you just see every six months speaking in meetings and is The Stake President, then meeting with him to be baptized for the dead and having him raise his voice and say, "Do you play with yourself?" which is vague like so many LDS male leaders have been historically. It's abuse and almost jurisdiction in juvenile court. Choose your questions carefully LDS leaders.

I did have a bishop tell me to call him if I had the urge. He was actually super nice and his interviews were nothing like people write on the internet. I lucked out with bishops but at the stake level it was a short and a bad experience. In fact, talking with stake leaders was always a bad situation and emotional abuse waiting to happen.

I had a mission president say, "just change your thoughts." It's like saying don't think about the pink elephant.

Today, before the interview, it would be nice to know what food they had eaten the previous 3 hours, allow you to take their blood pressure, and ask if they exercise regularly. It's not warts and all like they are asking but it does give you a little data on how they might respond.

I agree those bishop questions are abusive. I know several teachers in Utah's public education system who did jail time for similar types of questions. I am baffled at how bishops have been given a pass on this for so long.

[drumdude]

First, I want you to know this. If you are struggling with this temptation and perhaps you have not quite been able to resist, the Lord still loves you. It is not anything so wicked nor is it a transgression so great that the Lord would reject you because of it, but it can quickly lead to that kind of transgression. It is not pleasing to the Lord, nor is it pleasing to you. It does not make you feel worthy or clean.

I think we can pretty easily trace the link back to the troubled mind of Boyd Packer. Who taught that masturbation is literally a gateway to being rejected by God. How incredibly harmful the misguided ideas of one man have been to so many…

[huckelberry]

First, I want you to know this. If you are struggling with this temptation and perhaps you have not quite been able to resist, the Lord still loves you. It is not anything so wicked nor is it a transgression so great that the Lord would reject you because of it, but it can quickly lead to that kind of transgression. It is not pleasing to the Lord, nor is it pleasing to you. It does not make you feel worthy or clean.

I think we can pretty easily trace the link back to the troubled mind of Boyd Packer. Who taught that masturbation is literally a gateway to being rejected by God. How incredibly harmful the misguided ideas of one man have been to so many…

Well there were precedents.
https://www.mimimatthews.com/2016/05/17 ... turbation/

During the Victorian era, masturbation—also known as self-pollution, self-abuse, or onanism—was believed to be both a moral and a physical evil. Medical manuals of the era address it in the most severe terms, blaming male masturbation, and the resulting depletion of the body’s vital humors, for every imaginable illness, from blindness, impotence, and epilepsy to chronic fatigue, mental derangement, and even premature death. Many of these beliefs can be traced back to two 18th century books, the most significant of which was Samuel Tissot’s famous 1760 medical treatise On Onania: or A Treatise upon the Disorders Produced by Masturbation, which asserts:

“Frequent emissions of semen relax, weaken, dry, enervate the body, and produce numerous other evils, as apoplexies, lethargies, epilepsies, loss of sight, trembling, paralysis, and all kinds of painful affections.”

By the 19th century, concerns about the evil effects of masturbation had risen to epic proportions. The solitary vice was being discussed in medical texts and religious treatises. And the Victorians—who ascribed moral value to self-discipline and restraint—were driven to devise various means of discouraging and controlling it.
The Crime

According to physicians R. and L. Perry in their 1847 book The Silent Friend: A Medical Work on the Disorders Produced by the Dangerous Effects of Onanism:

“The practice of the solitary vice, onanism, manustupration or masturbation has been condemned by all writers, whether medical men, philosophers, or divines, from the earliest ages of mankind. One of its names, onanism, is derived from the saddening example of Onan the second son of Judah, who was struck dead by his Creator for the commission of this heinous sin.”

etc..

“When once the vile habit has become confirmed, the young libertine runs the risk of finding himself, a few years later, but a debauched old man.”

Brodie is equally severe. He blames self-abuse on “licentiousness and unrestrained indulgence of the passions,” writing:

“Sages and moral writers of every age, have described in glowing terms the direful and awful result of Masturbation a passion that captivates the imagination of its victim imperceptibly, step by step, till every moral feeling is obliterated, and all the physical powers destroyed.”

The Consequences

According to many moral and medical texts of the Victorian era, not only did masturbation weaken the mind and body, it also weakened the soul. As Brodie explains (quoting M. Hoffman):

“We can easily comprehend, how there is so close a connection between the brain and testicles; because these two organs secern from the blood the most subtle and exquisite lympha, which is destined to give strength and motion to the parts, and to assist even the functions of the soul. So it is probable, that too great a dissipation of these liquors may destroy the powers of the soul, and body.”

,,,,, “…masturbation is often followed by loss of appetite, indigestion, headach[sic], vertigo, tinnitus aurium, rigors, flushings, constant clamminess of the hands, want of sleep, signs of congestion or chronic inflammation of the brain, apoplectic symptoms, palpitation of the heart, and emaciation, leading to a suspicion of phthisis. Palsy and insanity are not unfrequent consequences of masturbation.”

Inst, and extend himself as if he were lying in his coffin. Let him endeavor to think of himself as he will be one day stretched in death. If such solemn thoughts do not drive away evil imaginations, let him rise from his bed and lie on the floor.”

Four Pointed Urethral Ring for the Treatment of Masturbation, 1887.(Image via Wellcome Library CC BY 4.0)

Four Pointed Urethral Ring for the Treatment of Masturbation, 1887.
(Image via Wellcome Library CC BY 4.0)

For desperate cases, doctors sometimes recommended desperate measures. There were cordials and various patent medicines (Brodie’s medical practice sold Cordial Balm of Zeylanica). There were also more invasive types of “cures” such as spiked rings or electric shock devices for the genitals. According to the book Sexualities in Victorian Britain, by the 1850s some doctors were even beginning to recommend circumcision as a treatment for masturbation.
But What About Women??

Most of what was written about the dangers of masturbation in the Victorian era was directed at men. However, women were not entirely exempt. According to author Joan Perkin in her 1993 book Victorian Women, some doctors believed that masturbation caused “increasing numbers of hysterical cases among girls.” While others said that masturbation caused “certain forms of insanity, epilepsy and hysteria in females.”
Dr. Isaac Baker Brown, 1851.

Dr. Isaac Baker Brown, 1851.

At its most extreme, the cure for the solitary vice in women was grim. Perkin mentions a gynecologist named Isaac Baker Brown who ran a clinic in London during the 1860s. He called masturbation in women “anti-social behavior” and, as Perkin reports:

“His treatment was removal of the clitoris.”

Brown was not the only doctor during the Victorian era to perform clitoridectomies on girls and women, but the practice, as a whole, was extremely controversial. Perkin points out that the total number of females operated on “must have been very small.” As a side note, Brown was ultimately expelled from the Obstetrical Society
A Few Final Words…
///or on the other hand.///
Opinions on the physical and moral dangers of the solitary vice did not change rapidly. Even today, there are some for whom the subject is still a controversial one. However, rather than address modern day arguments, I will close this article by taking you back to the 19th century. In his 1872 book on Male Continence, American preacher John Humphrey Noyes addresses masturbation in one particularly hilarious paragraph, writing:

“…it is obvious that before marriage men have no lawful method of discharge but masturbation; and after marriage it is as foolish and cruel to expend one’s seed on a wife merely for the sake of getting rid of it, as it would be to fire a gun at one’s best friend merely for the sake of unloading it. If a blunderbuss must be emptied, and the charge cannot be drawn, it is better to fire into the air than to kill somebody with it.”

Perhaps this explains a bit about the broad role prostitution played in 19th century America.

I might also wonder about the distribution of such attitudes.

[yellowstone123]

*Angle with a drawn sword appears*

"Oh, those who live under illusions that they are chosen to represent their God views."

"Oh God, forgive those who are saved by grace despite all that they say and do."

"Oh, the bullies - they are everywhere!"

AI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Young_Men_Only

*poof*

[Dr. Shades]

A.I.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Young_Men_Only

That’s from Wikipedia, not A.I.

[yellowstone123]

A.I.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Young_Men_Only

That’s from Wikipedia, not A.I.

Absolutely true. My error.

[Dr. Shades]

Well there were presidents.

Yes there were. . . 46 of them, to be exact. . . But what do they have to do with masturbation?

[Chap]

One of its names, onanism, is derived from the saddening example of Onan the second son of Judah, who was struck dead by his Creator for the commission of this heinous sin.”

May I just mention that Onan's offence was not masturbation, but the practice of coitus interruptus when it was his religious duty to beget a child on his deceased brother's wife (the so-called 'levirate' rule) so that the previously childless brother might have an heir. By failing to do so, he ensured that he got his brother's estate. Not nice of him! Hence Yahweh was upset, and killed him.

Genesis 38:

1 And it came to pass at that time, that Judah went down from his brethren, and turned in to a certain Adullamite, whose name was Hirah.

2 And Judah saw there a daughter of a certain Canaanite, whose name was Shuah; and he took her, and went in unto her.

3 And she conceived, and bare a son; and he called his name Er.

4 And she conceived again, and bare a son; and she called his name Onan.

5 And she yet again conceived, and bare a son; and called his name Shelah: and he was at Chezib, when she bare him.

6 And Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn, whose name was Tamar.

7 And Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord slew him.

8 And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother.

9 And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.

10 And the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also.