Sharing this piece again, since it’s that nutty time of the year!
Just a few years ago, not long after Sex and the Self came out, hundreds of magazines interviewed me to explain the science behind my assertion that orgasm was vital to human health. Orgasms significantly lower most adults’ risk of strokes, heart attacks, and reproductive cancers, and have been positively correlated to human longevity. (You can read the science in Sex and the Self.) So I need to revisit my old friend Masturbation and give ringing endorsement once more to the refreshing comforts of orgasms, the most healthful, peaceful and restorative habit that humans naturally have. You may consider this a kind of weird open love-letter to men. 🙂
Do you ever worry about your sexual performance? Ever fret because you failed to feel excited during sex? You may never think about a sexual dysfunction until you have one. When people do have problems in bed, they inwardly panic. They wonder, How long will it last? Will I get over it? Will things ever go back to the way they were a few years ago? They google the hell out of it. They haunt Reddit and FaceBook looking for information.
When they do, more and more, they come across Internet warnings that the problem is masturbation. Some claim that men who jerk off to porn will never climax with partners in real life. They often claim that Internet over-exposure to sex accounts for a spike in impotence and other sexual dysfunctions, a worrisome harbinger of future doom! Maybe you read that on a Sex Addiction site or a Christian counseling site, which lent the claim an air of credibility. Or maybe you saw it on Twitter, where growing numbers of sexually inhibited men think the solution to better sexual function is not jerking off and created the “No Nut November” viral challenge.
Did you know they don’t have any facts to bolster their claims? There’s no reliable study that shows men who jerk off a lot are less functional than men who keep it zipped up tight, whereas there are urological studies which strongly suggest that lack of erections can lead to ED.
Some ED Science FYI
The scientific investigation into erectile dysfunction first began in the mid-17th century, when a Dutch scientist ghoulishly experimented on male corpses with saline injections that gave them erections. If doctors were eager to cure erectile dysfunction by 1668, it means it was a common, known complaint, and that finding a cure could mean wealth and prestige for the doctor. By the late 1800s, a lucrative industry in quack remedies for all kinds of male sexual dysfunctions, from being too shy to get an erection, too nervous to hold back an orgasm, or an inability to get hard, were available to desperate, sexually repressed Victorian men. Charlatans and reputable doctors alike bamboozled meninto spending millions on quack medicines and dangerous treatments.
We can deduce from all the “virility aids” and treatments that were advertised in the 19th century that sexual dysfunction had, by then, became a very Victorian obsession.
Dangerous electrified devices were a thing.
The male fear of sexual failure is as old as sex, and someone always tries to make a buck off it.
Don’t wreck her happiness with your limp imitation of a penis. Send me money!
Exploiting male sexual shame remains a boom industry, as male supplement and penis-enhancement shoppers know all too well. The government lets male sexual anxiety simmer, too. Because of a lack of government funding, the scientific study of male sexual disorders and dysfunctions is pathetically lacking, except in Big Pharma where big money can be made inflating male members with pills. At least that’s safer than saline injections. Maybe.
What Does it Mean When The Male Member Won’t Cooperate?
Failure to have an erection is an insignificant biological event in and of itself. It happens to most men at least a few times in the span of their lifetimes. Your penis and your brain communicate chemically, so even a crappy mood could make you limp. If you tell your doctor you’re worried about an episode of softness, they will quickly write a prescription for Viagra (which you may or may not really need) and tell you not to worry. That’s because it’s such a common complaint from men, they’re not worried. In that sense, temporary dysfunction should be grouped with headaches, tooth-aches, belly aches, sore muscles and other universally common inconveniences of being made of chemicals, flesh, and bones.
Unfortunately, many men panic when they see failure. If a first failure is soon followed by another, they really panic. Suddenly they have to confront everything they were taught to believe about masculinity and how men who can’t get it up are somehow lesser or inferior to other men. (Another positively toxic and viciously ignorant concept is the notion that your penis rigidity defines your identity and social class.)
Almost all the men who came to me for help with impotence were, in fact, in the midst of a masculinity crisis over their prowess or lack thereof. This masculinity crisis is a nail in the coffin for men if they don’t break out of it. All of that post-failure self-recrimination, shame, self-hatred, humiliation, and fear of never finding someone who’ll respect their masculinity shakes men to the bone. It can trigger chronic impotence because, as noted above, your penis and brain chemically communicate. If your brain is thoroughly depressed about your sexual virility, your penis will agree. It’s basic sexual psychology and a Catch-22 that many men fall into.
Again, episodes of softness say zero about your overall virility or your masculinity but could say a lot about the partner you’re with, how much alcohol you drank, and whether you got enough sleep. Total impotence, particularly the chronic kind, on the other hand, is a RED FLAG that you need to see a cardiologist, urologist or endocrinologist. It could signal an underlying health problem. Talk to your MD about it asap.
Either way, your ability to get erect doesn’t say a damn thing about you as a man, good or bad.
Patriarchal Panic Mongering
All the scorn and negativity dumped on softness is in the cultural training, not in male biology, and not in the fact-based world.
We don’t have solid historical records to prove that people of our generation have more or less sex than people a century ago. Yet I see more and more places and people claiming that unless they immediately renounce porn or masturbation and probably both, men will never be “sexually normal” again. It a call-back to the anti-masturbation frenzy that seized Europe in the 18th century when a con artist selling snake-oil to cure impotence wrote a little brochure claiming that masturbation made penises shrink and destroyed minds.
His ad brochure caused a masturbation panic in the West that ripples around the globe today. In the US, we had a homegrown variety, thanks to the man who invented the Graham cracker, Sylvester Graham, who penned an article called “On Self-Pollution” in 1834, that convinced many influential politicians, including Horace Greely, that self-pleasure resulted in blindness and early death, among other terrifying outcomes.
You’d think by now everyone would know better. They don’t. If someone marketed another cracker guaranteed to stop masturbation, I’m sure they’d have thousands of positive reviews on Amazon. And then there is the “No-Nut” campaign, which demonizes the same old Judeo-Christian sacrificial goats: masturbation, pornography, and sex-work.
If they read as many sex studies across disciplines as I have, they’d know the opposite is true. All are normal expressions of human sexuality and don’t cause dysfunctions. But entrenched ideologies and sexual shame pervade global consciousness.
No-Nut is Some Heavy Patriarchal Propaganda
By its mere name, this movement makes itself known as strictly phallocentric. Women don’t nut, so what we “ladies” do is apparently irrelevant. This should immediately make you suspicious. After all, if jacking is dangerous for males, wouldn’t jilling then be dangerous for females? Or maybe female masturbation is too cosmic for them to comprehend. Any way you interpret it, this campaign is a boy’s sex club. It is weirdly homoerotic in its special concern about male masturbation. It’s a public social media spectacle of bro-bonded chastity with overtones of piety and purity. And, scientifically speaking it’s stupid and makes no sense.
For better or worse, sexual dysfunctions — ED, difficulty climaxing, depression after ejaculation — have always been part of the male human experience. Creating panics about it and preying on male insecurity is how patriarchal bullies stand on other men throats. They make you feel ashamed for looking at porn and touching yourself, and cluck if you pay for sex. Kind of like your mom or maybe your Sunday School teacher. You need to break with them before they kill your spirit.
There is no good reason to stop masturbating unless you don’t feel like masturbating, in which case you don’t need to schedule it on your calendar. Listen to what your body’s telling you, not what prudes are telling you.
Masturbation Is Your Friend
It’s ok if you don’t feel like masturbating. It’s ok to go through dry sex spells. It’s also ok to masturbate for hours every day. What isn’t ok is allowing strangers to control your orgasms or lie to you about virility.
In reality, masturbation is the single most common and primal sex act in the world. It’s normal, it’s fun, and it’s harmless. There is zero evidence that abstaining from sex improves virility or that masturbation causes health problems (the exception would be rare cases of people allergic to sex or sex fluids).
Medical doctors who keep up with the sex literature (urologists, especially) recommend orgasms at least 2-3 times a week to keep yourself in peak health. That’s what sexologists recommend too. I say go for the gusto: if you have a wonderful libido, celebrate it and have all the orgasms that make you happy. If your go-to is your hand, it’s just as valid a release as a partnered experience. No shame.
It’s all about the happy. Why do you think orgasms feel so good? It’s to encourage you to want even more orgasms! Why? Because it is healthy for your body, head to toe. It’s like a secret internal cleanse! Your brain rewards your whole body every time you come. Listen to your biology — not with fear or rage, not with shame or guilt, but with the primal joy that’s coded into your DNA. You can learn how to let go and feel the pleasure. You can drown out the negativity that’s been drilled into you by culture with your own sighs of happiness.
PR0N
There is no proof that porn is dangerous for humans. Porn is a normal, natural and very human interest. Archaeologists have shown that images of sex acts were drawn by cave-dwellers dating back 37 thousand years. What do you want to bet that there were some people even back then who bitched when cave dudes stared too long at the cave porn? People. Harumph.
Porn is as old as people. People have always loved creating and viewing visual representations of sex. Looking at it “too much” doesn’t make you soft. Your shame might, though.
Porn is Not the Problem but your Attitude Might Be
Do you know what REALLY kills male sexual performance? Men who feel inadequate, or worry they aren’t “real men” if they can’t spring a stiff one every time like a machine. It’s even worse if you are surrounded by people who re-enforce that nonsense and criticize you for your private habits. Porn and masturbation are both peaceful private activities. Sex fantasies are normal. There’s a good reason we call prostitution “the oldest profession.” It’s true. These are all norms for human sexuality.
People who believe that masturbation is shameful or disgusting seem to outnumber the people who believe that it’s perfectly acceptable. In my experience, it isn’t a liberal v. conservative thing, either. It’s about whether or not you can reject ideology-driven patriarchal teachings. When it comes to masturbation, embarrassment and anxiety and sexual dysfunction are distributed equally among the pious, the pagan, and the atheist too.
Not surprisingly, men with fixed ideas about virility and masculinity are the most likely to have problems in bed. If you are raised to believe that genitals are the gateway to Satanism, sex is likely always going to be complicated for you, at least until you break with those teachings.
In Sum ….
1. We don’t have enough medical studies to conclude ANYTHING about the causes of sex dysfunctions, least of all that porn or self-pleasure could cause a lasting negative impact on male sexual performance. Not only have studies already abundantly shown the whole-body (brain, circulatory system, skin, internal organs,) healthfulness of masturbation, we also have a range of psych studies showing porn’s benefits for most people.
2. It has never been proven, in any study, that abstaining from sex restores your sex drive — unless you mean that after abstaining for a while you are so horny, you’d do it with a paper bag. Abstaining is not necessarily a bad thing. After a trauma, for example, many people abstain in order to heal their minds. Sometimes, sex therapists use it as a tool to help a couple focus on other types of intimacy (touching, kissing, hugging). But the notion that abstention cures sexual dysfunction is absurd. All it does is put you at a mild risk of being more dysfunctional after your month of chastity than you were when you started out.
3. Your normal doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s normal. Your normal just has to make you happy without hurting anyone else. Give yourself permission to be happy with what you’ve got. Love yourself.
Please nut in November and every month for your own sexual health.
