Talk:National Masturbation Day

Claim in article is not supported by reference
Regarding this reversion of a request for citations, in fact I looked at the book on Google books, and the stated reference doesn't support any of the three claims which I asked for citations. Besides which, this claim that "masturbation month is celebrated in Japan" is utterly ridiculous, regardless of what some book might say. JoshuSasori (talk) 12:10, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * According to this, "Surveys indicate that 90 per cent of North American men and 65 per cent of women masturbate, Queen notes". The google book reference can be found here. -- Supernova Explosion   Talk  13:16, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Regarding the "masturbation day being celebrated in Japan" claim - I know this blog isn't a reliable source, but it would seem to do a good job of clearing up the confusion. So it seems that the official day is Marine Day, and has nothing to do with masturbation, and it later became associated with masturbation through a linguistic accident. Now, I think this is enough evidence that we should leave the masturbation day claim out of the article for the time being. However, if we can find a reliable source that states the above, then we could simply cover the linguistic mix-up in the article. How does that sound as a compromise? —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 13:52, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your efforts in finding this link. JoshuSasori (talk) 14:06, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * p.s. The above blog seems to be backed up by my Japanese search for (masturbation day). Alas, though, I only found hits from the vanilla Google search and not from the more reliable end of the spectrum. —  Mr. Stradivarius  ♫ 14:11, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * But what about this book. -- Supernova Explosion   Talk  14:31, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Could you give us the quote from it that you are using for verification? That should help us find out whether this source is reliable for the claim we are looking at. I suppose it's entirely possible that there is a different "national masturbation day" in Japan than for the Marine Day language mix-up thing, so I think our task now should be to find out whether this book is referring to the same thing as the blog post or not. The most helpful things for this would be if we could find out what day it's on, who organises it, and what its name is in Japanese. If we have this information then it should be easy enough to check. Best —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 14:53, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The quote was given by User:Goodvac after a request by me at WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request. See WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Resource_Request. The quote is:

In Japan, there is a national masturbation day. Many websites boast about May being International Masturbation Month in which, among other activities, people are encouraged to get involved in masturbate-a-thons, various forms of self-loving, and mutual sexual play. Additionally, there are a plethora of internationally-based websites that discuss everything from female and male masturbatory techniques to the best kinds of sex toys to use during sexual self play


 * In case of any query, you can contact User:Goodvac. I've informed him about this discussion. -- Supernova Explosion   Talk  15:29, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * There are many links to the 2ch and the related sites on the google search results page above. You can see a lot of "2ch" in URLs. And Nico Nico pedia's this page. See Nico Nico Douga. It looks like a site event at the Nico Nico Pedia. But they don't use the word "national" and it's not May, but July 21. I'd like to know the name of the day in ja. It seems to me that the quote is very vague. Who encourages people to masturbate? In what way? Only through websites? Even if you are on the web, you cannot find anything about the day unless you search masturbation related word. There are many people who are not interested in Internet in Japan too. Personally, I've never heard of the day. Is the day notable enough? The quote reminds me of this talk and the next section. I think more specific information and RS in ja are needed. Oda Mari (talk) 16:38, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Snippet 1 and Snippet 2 should confirm the quote from the book. No comment on whether these claims should be included in the article. Goodvac (talk) 16:54, 21 March 2012 (UTC)


 * What source does the book claim, I wonder?  C üRly T üRkey  Talk Contribs 14:09, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Here's the reference (according to the article): "James W. Howell (2008). The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Courtship, & Sexuality Through History: The modern world. Greenwood Press. p. 152."

Just a little googling of OPACs shows that: (1) The book collects articles by different experts. (2) Howell is the editor-in-chief of the entire six-volume series, and of the first volume (on the ancient world). He's not the editor of volume six, on the modern world (its editor is one James T. Sears).

Two possibilities occur to me:
 * 1) The editor-in-chief (and editor of the book on the ancient world) was sufficiently fascinated by this particular aspect of today's world to write an article about it (an article whose title happened to have been overlooked by whichever WP editor added this factoid).
 * 2) The WP editor who added this factoid never looked at the book and instead depended on Google snippet view or similar.

Somehow the latter seems more likely. -- Hoary (talk) 00:45, 24 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's number two. This becomes clear if you check the resource request link that SupernovaExplosion linked above. (Not that there's anything particularly bad about that - I think snippet view is fine for things like verifying simple, uncontroversial facts.) Thanks for digging up the extra info, by the way! I have one thing to add to it - seeing as the snippet is from halfway through the book (page 152 of 315), and that the entries are organized alphabetically, it seems likely that the name of the entry is "masturbation", or at least starts with the word "masturbation". Obviously, being able to see the whole book, plus the sources cited for this statement, would be best. However, I think we can also get a slightly better idea of what's going on by just looking at both of those snippets. For convenience, here's the whole thing:
 * ... Elders, former United States Surgeon General, was fired in the 1990s for suggesting that children learn about masturbation in their sexuality classes in public schools to help prevent sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, and to stem the tide of unwanted teen pregnancies. There are, however, many present-day international efforts to celebrate masturbation as a viable, healthy, and pleasurable sexual outlet. In Japan, there is a national masturbation day. Many websites boast about May being International Masturbation Month in which, among other activities, people are encouraged to get involved in masturbate-a-thons, various forms of self-loving, and mutual sexual play. Additionally, there are a plethora of internationally-based websites that discuss everything from female and male masturbatory techniques to the best kinds of sex toys to use during sexual self play. In the United States there are sex clubs that cater to masturbation such as the San Francisco Jacks, international icon and masturbation advocate Betty Dodson, who wrote ...
 * From this, I get the impression that "In Japan, there is a masturbation day" is just one item in a list of examples of international efforts to celebrate masturbation, and that "Many websites boast about May being International Masturbation Month" is a separate item. In other words, there is no relationship between the Japanese masturbation day and International Masturbation Month, other than the fact that they are both examples of celebration of masturbation outside the United States. This interpretation also fits with the websites we have found about the unofficial Japanese masturbation day being on July 21, and with the lack of other information about the day in other sources. Does this sound like a reasonable conclusion to everyone? —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 05:56, 24 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I've removed the Japan claim for now. I also removed the part about International Masturbation Month - I got the impression that it is being confused with the National Masturbation Month mentioned at the top of the article. —  Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 07:16, 24 March 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the research. -- Supernova Explosion   Talk  07:28, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

I've heard that some people celebrate this holiday every day of the year, LOL! 74.90.57.148 (talk) 01:10, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Move to International Masturbation Month?
Shouldn't this be moved to International Masturbation Month, since it is now known as that? Otherwise, shouldn't International Masturbation Month redirect to this page? 93.128.23.135 (talk) 21:27, 5 May 2014 (UTC)


 * As much as I personally want to push people towards preferring the international to the national, it seems to me that Wikipedia is not a place for prescriptivism. I gather from Wikipedia rules that moving the page depends on "majority use" of the terms. I understand that we are permitted to move this page if we can prove that "International Masturbation Day" is used more (or equally??) commonly as "National Masturbation Day". Google Trends shows that they are used with comparable frequency, but that "National" still dominates currently. I added the redirect from "International Masturbation Day" to here because without it the search was more annoying and confusing. Karland90 (talk) 12:04, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

What date?
Can anyone give me a reliable source as to what date it will be celebrated on yearly? Asarelah (talk) 15:01, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

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When was the date changed to May 7th?
As far as I am aware, the of National Masturbation Day date has always been May 28th. I even have a screenshot from this page from last year which I had posted on Discord as a joke stating this date. Looking at the references, only 1 of the 3 references used to cite the date shows May 7th, while the other 2 show May 28th.

What nation?
You cant write an article about a national day without specifying the nation. 2001:A61:1033:4A01:B804:3FBA:B417:B21B (talk) 18:13, 3 May 2023 (UTC)