semen conservation

Should You Seek Sex-Addiction Intervention if You Have Seven Orgasms a Week? (Hint: No.)

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Fri, 2011-03-04 17:01

According to Annie Scudder, one of the items in a current Time magazine roundup of "things you didn't know about sex addiction" would be...

An orgasm a day is considered troublesome: The article explains, "seven orgasms a week (either alone or with someone) is still considered by many experts to be a threshold for possible disorder."

Source: Très Sugar

While this is a very big improvement on the Victorian belief that men could develop terminal and/or mental illness with "as many as" ten ejaculations a year, it's still a pretty ridiculous threshhold. 

I'm not saying, at all, that all people should have libidios.  Roughly 1% of adult men and women are straight-up asexual so no doubt 1% of sex "rehab" counselors are asexual as well.  (Same with Time Magazine reporters, editors, and fact checkers, who seemed a little more skeptical of the claim.)  Substantial numbers of other men and women have modest libidos, and numerous others either neglect or avoid erotic interest, and the libidos of others may be episodic or circumstantial where said circumstances are not common.  So, again, I don't expect all of them to have average to above average libidos.

But do none of them?

Actually, if I may be fair for just a moment, the very fact that people's libidos vary enormously both from each other and even within individuals over time suggests that "seven orgasms a week" might be a sign of "addiction" in an individual who's natural libido cycle would ordinarily be substantially lower.  In other words as with other silly-sounding but perfectly legitimate psychiatric disorders, a guideline of once per day can be an indication, but not an automatic diagnosis. If someone's libido interferes with their normal daily functions either directly or through obsession or anxiety about it then treatment might be beneficial.  Or, as the American Psychiatric Association's proposal puts it you might have a disorder if "you have an illness if you spend so much time pursuing intercourse or masturbation as to interfere with your job or other important activities."

But so much for being fair.  First because once a day doesn't seem like a very reasonable threshold. Second because I'm as suspicious of those who profit from "curing" sex addiction as I would be of, say, vibrator vendors who claimed one should have at least one orgasm a day.

Bottom line: the proposed APA definition based on effectiveness encroachment is waaaay more reasonable than a blunt count.

(via Em & Lo)

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The Stethoscope: Another Genuine Medical Achievement Brought About Abstinent Men

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Fri, 2010-02-12 16:43

Alex of Neatorama passes on word that…

The stethoscope was invented by a doctor too embarrassed to place his ear on a woman’s ample bosom.

Before the invention of the stethoscope, a physician would listen to a patient’s heart by placing his ear over the chest.

Read the quote in context here.

It sounds funny but there are actually a number of medical traditions wherein physicians avoided direct physical examination of patients… either patients of the opposite sex or all patients, period.

Such reticence had largely gone by the wayside by 1816, when the devoutly Catholic René Laennec invented his stethoscope. But when he was called to examine a young woman for heart disease he couldn’t bring himself to listen to her chest directly and instead used a rolled-up tube of paper. That worked well enough that he had one made out of wood.

One wonders if any other genuine medical advances arose directly from the 19th Century’s, well, passionate commitment to masculine sexual abstinence. (The other big contributions would be the health-food and exercise movements later in the 19th Centuries but I’d argue those were indirect advances.)

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Note: As a 19th-Century surgeon Laennec would have avoided spending up to two-thirds of his time, and receiving up to two-thirds of his income vigorously stimulating his female patient’s vulvas in order to bring about their “hysterical paroxysms.” A very common, profitable, but also undesirable-to-physicians medical treatment Rachel P. Maines’ called “the job nobody wanted.”

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Incidentally, when he wasn’t busy shying away from women’s bodices Laennec was a pretty productive, advancing understanding of peritonitis, metastasis of cancer, and naming as well as studying cirrhosis of the liver.

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Evolutionary Psychology As Artifact of the Sexual Revolution

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Thu, 2010-01-28 14:34

Boy, where would Evolutionary Psychology and its more deterministic uncle Sociobiology be without the sexual revolution?

All that seed-spreading. All that “natural promiscuity” among men. All that “natural reticence” (coughRule Number Onecough) in women.

What do you suppose it would have looked like if it had been proposed not in 1975 but in, say, 1875. That was at the height… but also near the end… of the 3,000-year-old male-chastity and semen-conservation movement when Kellogg’s corn flakes and Graham’s flour and crackers were sold over the counter as it were to promote what was then the very, very popular idea of sexual and seminal “continence” in men. What if it had been proposed in India today, where Ayurvedic medical theory still holds that semen is a vital essence, even single drops of which are expended only at a man’s peril?

What if it had been proposed by the ancient Greek athletes, warriors, philosopher, and physicians?

What if it had been proposed in the U.S. or England as recently as 1957?!?!?

I’m… pretty sure you’d hear all manner of research “proving” that instead of profligately screwing anything that moved and then moving on you’d hear earnest, intent, and scrupulously collated research papers “proving” that men value marriage as a way to insure the products of their “investments” of precious-bodily fluids were kept safe and healthy until they reached their own reproductive years. I’m sure you’d hear “just so” stories about how harem-owning Sultans and polygamist Mormons did their level best to sequester and impregnate their myriad wives as conservatively as possible in order to protect their own health. I’m also pretty sure Satoshi Kanazawa would still be implying that Russian women are whores, but based instead on suppositions about their “evolutionary” desire to ruthlessly and promiscuously extract as much semen as possible from as many men as possible.

In other words there still might be such a thing as evolutionary psychology but I’m pretty sure that when it came to research human sexual behavior it would look almost completely different than it does today.

For one thing I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be so single-mindedly obsessed with proving that sexual attitudes that are scarcely more than a century old… and possibly less than 35 years old!... have been the sexual status quo since time out of mind.

Which, I might add, the highly-contingent timing of evolutionary psychology and sociology don’t undermine the concept that components of behavior are shaped by selective pressure. Such behavior is clearly demonstrable in animals and even plants. And it’s very hard to imagine human behaviors, even sexual ones, weren’t similarly shaped.

It does however tend to undermine many of their most often-repeated, and lurid, popular, and bias-confirming hypotheses about gender.

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Long life, vitality, and men's precious bodily fluids

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2007-02-27 12:48

In a very short post Ann Althouse of Althouse says


Is he 107 because he stopped having sex when he was 30?

Chan Chi’s wife died in the Japanese invasion. Imagine going 77 years without sex. Few would do it on the hope it would make life last longer. And who even believes that it could? But it’s touching to think of a man who lost his wife and remained faithful to her.

Because it was so short I’ve excerpted the whole post. It originally appeared here.

According to various sources the idea that going without sex extends mens’ life or increases their vitality is widely accepted.

The sociologist’s term for it is “semen conservation” and if you Google for that term you’ll find all kinds of, um, helpful information. (Note: Since I have it at hand I’m relying mainly on Elizabeth Abbott’s A History of Celibacy but numerous other sources confirm the following tidbits.)

Semen conservation is allegedly a central (philosophical) principle in the Hindu tradition. Taoists and Buddhists believe in it too. It’s been documented in various shamanistic traditions in South, Central, and (I believe) North America as well.

Closer to home, late 19th-Century and early 20th Century movements including Muscular Christianity, the Boy Scouts, health food, infant circumcision, and opposition to “self-pollution” were based on the obviously-unfounded but widely held view among British and American doctors that the “loss” of semen during a single act of sex was equal to losing a pint of blood. It was generally believed that sex with one’s wife even twelve times a year was a one-way ticket to insanity and early death. Dr. Kellogg invented corn flakes, and Dr. Graham developed his crackers with the expressed belief that a sufficiently bland diet would preserve and extend men’s lives by curtailing their libidos. And finally, the Victorian euphemism “to spend” was based on the idea that men produced only so much semen in a lifetime and once it was gone so were you.

(It’s also worth pointing out that the stress of semen conservation on men, combined with a general belief that women could have sex with no ill effects, contributed to the upside-down-to-use idea that women were naturally sexually amoral and unchaste while men were the virtuous guardians of sexual restraint. Which is no less stupid than our current Purity-ball mentality that dumps all responsibility for restraint on women.)

The point being that while it seems daft to us (ok, it is daft), the idea that it’s not just moral but health-improving to abstain has been and remains a very popular belief.

Not that such belief takes anything away from Chan Chi’s faithfulness or devotion to his late wife. 77 years is a very long time, and 30 is very young. Dr. Kellogg notwithstanding, most traditions allow a “grace period” during one’s reproductive years. Abstinent or not he certainly could have remarried. That he chose not to is very touching.

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