Over the past decade or so, I have discovered just what a powerful aphrodisiac chastity can be – just not in the way I had previously thought.

When I was young, I assumed that it was only female chastity that set a chap’s heart racing. After all, I spent much of my teens hearing the blokiest of blokes in the playground, the pub and the pulpit preach that only the most innocent, sexless, blank page of a girl would be up to the job of lover, wife and mother to his children. It’s what society tells a man he is supposed to desire – a woman with no desires of her own.

However, since growing up and immersing myself in BDSM, I’ve discovered that things aren’t nearly as simple for real people. Chastity is a complicated thrill. There are many aspects that sexually excite, but they are rarely the most obvious. One in particular, and one I’ve encountered many a time, is the illicit frisson many gents get when told not to fiddle with themselves.

We’ve all been taught that when a girl says no to sex with a boy, he tends to want it all the more because he can’t have it. Yes, it’s about chastity, but it’s more about his chastity than hers. BDSM takes this and makes it explicit: When a dominant woman tells a susceptible submissive that he can’t have her, it can be maddeningly arousing for him, but when she tells him that he can’t have himself either, he can be walking around with a torturous tent in his trousers for days on end.

If you order a human being not to think about sex, it’s the first thing they think of, just like ordering a smoker not to think of cigarettes and – in this case – ordering a wanker not to masturbate. And much as we’re not all smokers, the vast majority of human beings are wankers. It’s a natural urge.

So anyway, I wasn’t surprised to hear of the sudden political success of Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell. From nowhere, this right-wing lunatic took 53% of the Republican primary vote in Delaware. She would have been almost indistinguishable from the other gun-toting, gay-hating, evolution-bashing rabble of proto-Palins, were it not for her telling the men of America, in a soft, seductive voice, not to masturbate. That’s right. The thing O’Donnell is most notable for is her stance on wanking. During the ’90s, she was president of Christian group, “Saviors Alliance for Lifting the Truth” (SALT) which campaigned for abstinence, specifically teaching people that masturbation is a sin.

“The Bible says lust in your heart is committing adultery,” she said on an MTV interview in 1996, lips painted a shade of deep red. “So, you can’t masturbate without lust. The reason that you don’t tell [teenagers] that masturbation is the answer to AIDS and all these other problems that come with sex outside of marriage is because again it is not dressing [sic] the issue.”

Gentlemen, put that in your pipe and refrain from smoking it.