Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Kink In Exile tackles head on the masturbation question that’s been percolating around the intertubes (and, obviously, in real life) recently

Someone did in fact ask why it might be hard for some people to orgasm with a partner if most of their orgasms have been through masturbation. I should first clarify that question to say “...if they can masturbate to orgasm successfully.”

...

The way people masturbate is often different from the mechanics of partnered sex. You may have learned to masturbate in an environment of secrecy and so you do it quickly, but find that partnered sex doesn’t allow you to reach that tempo. Or maybe you find an angle from which to approach your own genitals that feels soo good, but is harder to do with partnered sex. Your body gets used to the way you’ve been getting it off and expects that kind of contact; you change things up, don’t go fast enough, or don’t hit the right spots and suddenly it doesn’t work. Keep in mind also that many women can’t orgasm from vaginal penetration alone. So what do you do? Pay attention to how you masturbate, how your partnered sex looks and what physical differences exist there in. You can then try masturbating in a way that is more reflective of partnered sex or adding toys to partnered sex to make sure you’re hitting all the right spots.

She said it here.

There’s been a fair amount of conversation lately about the merits and demerits of masturbation as it relates to partnered sex. Given that masturbation is now effectively mainstream… as is conversation about sexual function and dysfunction… it’s a good time to talk about integrating solo and partner sex competency instead of imagining they are or should be separate.

At least for women back in the 1970s Shere Hite announced a strong correlation between learned masturbation position and, I think, orgasms during intercourse. (Darn it I’m probably going to have to look it up now.) Anyway, I distinctly remember her saying something about women who learned to masturbate in face-down or curled-up, upper-legs-crossed positions having difficulty and thinking yeah, that could be a problem. Although that was so long ago now that rear-entry intercourse was still largely considered a (demeaning, intimacy-avoiding) kink.

I had a little epiphany about sex and masturbation a couple of years ago, based on remarks from someone who said she never got off on intercourse and so she’d wait till her partner was asleep and then masturbate really surreptitiously. That experience was probably more unusual for men but since the advent of Prozac and other anti-depressants many men need a manual override to have orgasms during partner sex as well. There’s also, as you hint, a bit of a subculture among young men (at least) who might fantasize madly about whoever they’re oriented to… but in practice prefer the pace and, possibly, the auto-focus of masturbation. Oh, and finally, there are any number of people in kink who don’t care for or who even actively dislike, say, being beaten black and blue while it’s happening,_ who nevertheless get off hard in anticipation, on recollection, or both. So my epiphany was that we ought to get over the idea that we ought to reconsider not just the 70’s notion of “simultaneous orgasms” as ideal but the idea that intercourse is the “right” way to have orgasms at all.

The key, though — one that Hite missed or disregarded in her post — is that just because you develop one set of neural pathways to orgasm (through this position or that sensation) it doesn’t mean that’s the only way you’ll ever be able to do it. The obstacle, at least physically, is that it can take almost as long to grow the nerve pathways as it did to learn the first way. That’s fine if you mix it up while learning (something Betty Dodson talked about at least in her workshops.) It’s harder if you learn on the sly, if you’re uncomfortable or in denial about doing it at all, or if you get the idea (from porn, say, or bible-study classes) that it’s supposed to be this way instead of one’s own way. Or, preferably, ways.

None of this is to say orgasms during partnered sex is bad (in fact, as they say in the blogosphere, “heh.”) It’s just that as Kink In Exile points out, if you’re pretty good at having them by yourself, and if neither you nor your partner are brow-beaten and/or drum-beaten into being embarrassed that it might be so. And while I’d never make promises, who knows? Given that expectation stress and performance anxiety are major buzzkills, not worrying about it might even improve one’s odds with one’s partners.

See also:

• The Masturbation Industry from Noli Irritare Leones
• Why Am I Boner Kryptonite from The Beautiful Kind
• It Was Bound to Happen from Secret Lovers Lane
• And No, I Accuse! from Skin::filter()

• And most recently, Did You Come? from Calico

If you’re an adult you can click here to see a probably-not-work-safe image.

Photo by Flickr user amanky. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Jessica Valenti of Feministing rightly mocks an “ex-masturbator” clothing line from a group called Passion for Christ Movement. (They also have shirts and sweatshirts that say “ex-slave,” “ex-diva,” and “ex-fornicator.”)

From their promotional material a testimonial from one of the ex-masturbators begins…

Two things I’ve come to know about masturbation is this:
1. It brings shame, and…

Read the quote in context, and follow the links, here.

It doesn’t really matter much what number 2 is. In recent decades both a) not wearing fur and b) wearing fur have brought shame. In recent decades both a) nursing an infant and b) not nursing an infant has brought shame. Shaving one’s body hair brings shame. So does not shaving one’s body hair. Same with gastric bypass surgery(?!?) Same with having a cell phone. Definitely same with cunnilingus (compare the 1960s and 70’s) and fellatio (compare the 1970s with the 2000s.) Mental illness used to be dreadfully shameful, not just to the individual but to their entire family. Now it’s not. Cancer, for reasons that escape me, used to be almost as shameful. It hasn’t been for years. Soap companies want to make it shameful that you don’t use their soap. Teeth-whitener companies shame you for not whitening your teeth. It used to be shameful to have ring around the collar… and for all I know may still be. Before the great depression it “brought shame” for women to work outside the house… then through World War II it wasn’t… and then it was… and now it isn’t. Heck, until Inauguration day 1961 it was shameful for a man to go outside unless he was wearing… wait for it… a hat! And as recently as Sept. 1, 2008 it was shameful for one’s daughter to have a baby out of wedlock… until the people most inclined to shame out of wedlock birth decided it was hunky-dory and maybe even lucky, plucky and heroic.

And what do all those things have in common? All those things were shameful till someone decided they weren’t. And in all those cases shame was what? A social construct. And no, not the post-modernist/deconstructionist construct I mean constructed construct: a collective and alterable public decision.

So… should anyone feel ashamed about masturbation? Duh, no. Should anyone feel ashamed for not masturbating? Duh, no. Just like stupid is as stupid does (gee, why did that aphorism come to mind?) so shame is as shame does.

Does anybody who says yes to either of the above have a shred of moral authority? Duh, no.

The sin of pride being no less deadly than the sin of gluttony it’s hard to ascribe moral authority for anyone claiming that salvation lies only through mortification… let alone bragging about it.

Megan of Jezebel says

Via néojapanisme comes the somewhat amusing history of prostitution in Japan where, in the early 1930s, anti-prostitution advocates pressured the government to outlaw its brothel licensing system in the hopes of eliminating prostitution. One member of the Diet, Yamazaki Dennosuke, spoke out vociferously against eliminating prostitution arguing that, since a man needed to get his rocks off no matter what, prostitution was safer than jerking off, because masturbation causes upper respiratory infections. That, obviously, was a bigger danger than STIs or getting caught by your wife. Cough

She said it here.

Yes, almost 100 years later this sounds completely lame, but from at least the early 1800s to well into the 1900s it was a generally-accepted medical belief (backed up, no less, with all kinds of “studies”) not only that masturbation caused insanity, tuberculosis, and hairy palms but that ejaculation itself (“even in marriage”) was as “devastating” to the body as losing a pint of blood. Ejaculating “as often as” twelve times a year was widely considered, among doctors and their patients, to be a sure path to an early (I mean early as in one’s 30s or 40s) grave.

Masturbation, a.k.a. “self pollution” at least for men (authorities were silent on its effect on women, which they might not have believed in anyway, until further into the 1900s) was about as bad as it got. Thus the twisted-to-us logic of preferring the risk of infidelity fallout and STIs.

One of the biggest lessons, by the way, isn’t so much that people will say anything to justify their sexual behavior (or, too often, their opposition to anyone else’s.) It’s that you have to be really, really careful about making proposals based on “normal, healthy sexual behavior” because that often changes, sometimes diametrically, in less than centuries.

Image from the Babeland product page for the
“Monkey Spanker” toy for men.Megan of Jezebel brings up a great point!

A male colleague of mine remarked to be recently that writing about vibrators is a Jezebel scribe’s rite of passage. And, it’s true, we totally write about vibrators a lot; in fact, I popped my own vibrator-story cherry not that long ago! It is a rare day, however, that any of us writes about male masturbatory aides — and, when we have, we usually focus on Real Dolls and how vaguely disturbing we find the men who are into them. But then I saw this article in The Independent today about the surge in men purchasing all sorts of things to their dicks into or up their butts, and I realized that it wasn’t just sex dolls I find vaguely disturbing… and that that’s kind of sexist of me.

I mean, why is it that the mental image I have of a guy who utilizes sex toys is someone kind of creepy? Is this fleshlight any stranger-looking than a rabbit, really? Why is it that I am fine with a guy jerking off with his hands, but if he’s jerking off in something I’m vaguely disturbed? Why is it not remotely strange to me that men would buy things to shove up their butts — or to have their partners shove up their butts — but, still, looking at this picture of something the would stick their dicks in, some reptilian part of my brain goes “Ewww.”? Even the author of the article, Tanya Gold, admits to masturbating with mechanical aids, but seems to find male sex toys — from the pocket pussies to the pussy-in-a-jar devices to the blow-up and real dolls — disturbing in their appearance and what they say about the men who utilize them.

She discusses the issue further here.

I’m not sure sexism is the right word for the impulse for judging men’s masturbation, ahem, differently from women’s but she’s right about the double standard.

“Blossom Sleeve” toy for men.I’m the first to agree that the, um, highly stylized attempts at representing disembodied vulvas is disquieting and probably disturbing to people with the actual parts. That could be projection on my part though because I’m disquieted by the no-less “realistic” disembodied erections you see in a lot of sex toys for women. Fortunately many sex toys, for both men or women, aren’t really anatomical at all — consider the very novel, but allegedly quite effective “Monkey Spanker” toy for men in the photo, above.** But I digress…

I can think of two other reasons why we might feel more squeamish about male masturbation than for women. The first being that for many mainstream cultures, now and through much of history, have (believe it or not) placed a huge emphasis on male chastity. Several major religions and related medical traditions.*** (See Ayurvedic medicine, for instance.) In the West, from roughly 1825 to 1975, doctors were convinced that ejaculation in general and (male) masturbation in particular were the root causes of tuberculosis, insanity, curvature of the spine. The original Boy Scouts was founded to help divert young male minds from “self pollution.” John Harvey Kellogg invented corn flakes, Charlie Post cooked up Postum and Grape Nuts, and Sylvester Graham invented Graham flour and Graham crackers because they believed bland, whole-fiber foods temper hot lust. And the tradition of non-religious male circumcision was introduced and successfully promoted by physicians because it was believed to inhibit masturbation in boys and men. It was as much an article of medical faith in the late 1800s that “excess” ejaculation was as life-shortening as the (much more well-founded) belief that smoking is life-shortening today. That’s a lot of propaganda, and the late 20th Century, when the idea that masturbation-as-health-hazard was finally put to rest. And, well, perversely it really was the case that due to convention and social pressure those who did masturbate, or admit it, really could be seen as marginal or socially suspect. (Compare it to the reaction today to people who won’t wear seat belts or won’t car-seat their children — at this point if you haven’t gotten the safety message, and can manage to ignore all the dashboard lights, there really is something else going on.) And the late 20th Century just wasn’t that long ago — some of us still remember it quite distinctly. :-) Anyway, that’s one good reason.

“Fleshlight” toy for men.The other is that (soapbox here) the classic feminist construction of women as the sex class has it backwards. In fact it’s more accurate to say women are (prescriptively and proscriptively) supposed to be the restrained, chaste, non-sexual “no-sex” class, whereas men are held to be the reflexive, relentless (every seven minutes!), think-with-the-little-head, fuck-anything-that-moves, fuck-anything-that-*doesn’t*-move (Megan mentions “Real Dolls,” for instance, but drunk-date rape is a lot more problematic) sex class that perpetually threatens the chastity and propriety of “delicate flower,” “hey, my mom was a woman!” femininity. And so male sexuality, while considered utterly predictable, is also a commodity produced in quantities that far exceed demand.

Oh, see also the universally degrading “why buy the cow when the milk is free” philosophy advanced by the patriarchy as a means to induce men to marry… once they’re deemed “worthy” to receive the woman’s father’s consent. Given that Patriarchy functions not only by treating women as domestic livestock but also as a system for controlling men via access to sex, then that system is overridden by what author Neil Stevenson wryly termed “manual override.”

“Aneros Prostate Stimulator”
Oh, and one last thing. Recently, in the last year or so, several women have confided to me that they’re running into more and more men who now prefer masturbation to sex. With them. And whereas tradition, not to mention the “no-sex” class paradigm, says they ought to be relieved not to have to endure men’s lustful advances, reality says women desire and enjoy sex no less than men and consequently a “I see you as just a friend” isn’t so, well, hot. No, obviously the plural of anecdote isn’t data, nor am I ready yet to accept the generally breathless claims that, say, Japanese men are losing interest represents a real trend. But if it really does become a trend, and if toys for men become as sophisticated for men as they’ve become for women then I wonder if at some point traditional disgust or distress at male masturbation would flip over into resentment.

[** Note: Clicking the images in this post will take you to the corresponding pages at Babeland. I’m not at all affiliated with Babeland but that’s where I’ve nicked all accompanying images so it only seemed fair. They’re a good company though and the original store’s here in Seattle. Worth a visit if you’re in town. —fl]

[*** Male chastity being distinctly, well, distinct from male virginity. —fl]