MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Office of Medellín's Mayor launches masturbation-awareness campaign

Colombia's second-largest city has made the headlines for its “disruptive” policies

The Office of the Mayor of the Colombian city of Medellín has launched a most unusual campaign on social media to rid masturbation from the moral prejudices surrounding it.

Medellín's Youth Secretariat has put the issue of masturbation under discussion, saying the matter is about the subjects' connection with their own body, with their mental and physical health, with social morality, and with individual enjoyment.

“Despite the moral limitation by some cultures to talk about the subject, in terms of health, according to the data collected by research, masturbation has many more health benefits than risks or problems,” said the Secretary through a release from an allegedly scientific approach.

The document cited several studies and works by Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault, among others, to discuss both the physical and mental benefits of such practices, which the Secretariat maintained were historical and human.

¿Sabías que la masturbación es fuente de salud mental y emocional?

El orgasmo libera endorfinas, serotonina y oxitocina: hormonas de felicidad que pueden hacer de un día malo uno para no olvidar.

¡Dedícate este momento íntimo! #HazteElAmor

https://t.co/bjF4WmKjIZ pic.twitter.com/fglwn3yN8T

— Secretaría de la Juventud (@JuventudMed) March 15, 2022

“It is a public health approach founded on scientific facts,” Medellin Mayor Daniel Quintero said on Twitter.

Youth Secretary Santiago Bedoya explained that the campaign was a part of other initiatives that seek to improve sexual and reproductive health, particularly of young people. “It is a campaign to recognize a human practice that has been stigmatized,” the official added in statements to local media.

“Sexuality, while an act of intimate development, has effects on health and public relations,” Bedoya argued.

The campaign has been planned for about three months by members of that Secretariat and “has only shown, for now, its female face”, but it is a matter of days before the issue will also be addressed to men.

For Bedoya, this type of initiative seeks to encourage “uncomfortable conversations to society and the city.” He also stressed his Secretariat was “disruptive,” “progressive” and has a “liberal look”, while Medellín has been a conservative and traditionalist city.

(Source: ANSA)