This week’s Hot Sox podcast was actually supposed to be posted last week, but computer sabotage (meaning my computer controlled my ability to edit the podcast) stopped me from putting it up.

So now I present to you, with limited interruption, the podcast run-through for last week’s Mindshare event. I recorded this just hours (more like a half-hour) before I went to do the real thing in front of actual living, breathing human beings and one Sinthetic doll named Celeste.

The date was 2.17.11. The event: Mindshare LA. The talk was on masturbation, from the history to the hysterical, or from obscure vice to sexual superstore (a Thomas Laqueur quote, he wrote Solitary Sex : A Cultural History of Masturbation). It’s quite interesting the whole hysterical build-up around the subject of solo sex. Masturbation didn’t become a sexual vice until 1712, when it went from a solitary sex act to a physical ailment. It was a result of the publication of an anonymous pamphlet called (long breath), Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution and All it’s Frightful Consequences (in Both Sexes) Considered: With Spiritual and Physical Advice to Those Who Have Already Injured Themselves by this abominable Practice.

Fast forward.

I also talk about Pee Wee Herman, who in a 2010 interview with Playboy tried to prove he didn’t masturbate in a theater because sex researchers Masters and Johnson say that people masturbate with their dominant hand, and the police report said that Pee Wee was caught masturbating with his left hand when he’s clearly right handed. And don’t forget A FEW MONTHS BACK, when Taylor Momsen was quoted as saying that her best friend is her vibrator, because that freaked people out too.

There’s more. From Seinfeld to Jocelyn Elders, whether you’re the master of your domain or not, this masturbatory run-through delves into the history as well as the positive (and negative) effects of masturbation, toys for boys, toys for girls and how doctors alleviated anxiety through medicinal vibration.

Listen now.