I'd like to make very clear what I mean by masturbation since the term is often used incorrectly or over broadly. I've read it in books written by authorities who should know better. Someone will say, "She masturbated me". That is not the correct usage of the word. Masturbation is by definition a do-it-yourself job. No one else does it to you. If a man rubs his own penis, that is masturbation. If a woman or another man rubs his penis, it is not masturbation. They can be said to jerk him off, jack him off, pull his pud or whatever. The person doing the rubbing is politely and properly called a fricatrice.
Fricatrices were very popular in ancient times. The Jewesses of North Africa enjoyed a reputation of being master fricatrices. Women of ancient Lesbos were described by Catullus as, "Standing at the cross ways and in alleys to jerk off the high souled sons of Rome". In 18th century France fricatrices were well known specialists. However that skill has not had great popularity in the United States, because Americans being very practical - do it themselves.
Who was the first masturbator? That may sound like a joke, but Catholic theologians debated for centuries whether Adam, and Eve had sex organs in the Garden of Eden or not. Early Christian illustrations show Adam and Eve to be sexless before the Fall. Sort of like Ken and Barbie Dolls, no penis or vagina, but, in general, shaped like a man and a woman. That of course presumes that Adam and Eve existed, but even if they did exist they would have been sexless and obviously neither one of them could masturbate in the Garden of Eden. The Bible does not mention sexual activities until after they are kicked out of Paradise. Perhaps after that Adam sprouted a penis and Eves pubic area caved in. After all, the world was flat, supported by the pillars of hell up until just 300 years ago. Some good fathers advocated the other extreme that Adam and Eve were androgynous, with both male and female sex organs, both had penises, vaginas and breasts. Double the pleasure. So, perhaps it was Eve who jacked off first and not Adam. So much for Biblical fairy tales.
We can deduce from certain archeological diggings that ancient women masturbated. Dildoes, artificial penises, of many sorts have been discovered. But, alas no inflatable women have yet been unearthed. Of course, we all known that men just use inflatable women to drive in the diamond lanes on crowded freeways. Right?
Except for a brief period in adolescence when boys play masturbation games, such as circle jerks to see who can cum the quickest or shoot cum the furtherest, guys generally don't discuss their masturbation habits. The adult males attitude towards masturbation is that an admission of masturbation is an admission of failure to get a woman, to be socially inept, unattractive, a nerd. In addition, centuries of religious preaching has given masturbation the onus of being a grievous sin. Ancient Jews considered all masturbation a grave sin, especially for males, because it was a deliberate waste of seed provided by the Lord for procreation. At times in Jewish history, masturbation even merited the death penalty.
Onanism, which means masturbation, was derived from Genesis 38:9 in the Bible, where we read the story of Onan. A son of Judah - the father of the Jews. Onan's brother did some unspecified wicked thing so the Jewish god slew him. It was Jewish custom if the man died without an offspring, his brother was required to take that wife, impregnate her and raise up those children for his dead brother. Onan was sent by his father, Israel, to have sex with his brother's wife, Tamar, and raise up seed for his brother. Well, Onan went in an raised up all right, but he spilled his seed on the ground instead of in her vagina. So the Jewish god slew him, too. This scripture has been interpreted by Catholic and Jewish theologians to mean that Onan masturbated in front of Tamar and since the Lord killed him, the Lord obviously does not like masturbation. However, the more modern interpretation (who says the god never changes?) and one I find more plausible, is that Onan went in unto Tamar, and into her, literally, but at the crucial moment, he withdrew, and like a good porno stud, spilled his seed on her fanny, face or anywhere except her vagina. This is called coitus interruptus, and is quite different from masturbation.
Coitus interruptus is one of the few forms of birth control approved by the Catholic Church. It is still approved despite this modern day change in interpretation of this scripture. It's another example of their religious mumpsimus - that is, their refusal to change religious beliefs even when faced with the reality of their error. (Remember, Christians put people to death for teaching that the earth revolved around the sun.) The Vatican Declaration on Sexual Ethics of 1975 states, "Masturbation is an intrinsically and seriously disordered act. Even if it cannot be proved that scripture condemns this sin by name, the tradition of the Church has rightly understood it to be condemned in the New Testament when the letter speak of impurity, wantonness, and other vices contrary to chastity and continence".
The religion of The Goddesses has always looked at sex as being a gift of the Goddess. We do not consider masturbation a sin. We belief that our bodies were given by The Goddess to enable us to have physical experience. Sexual experiences are included in these. However, Christian and Jewish doctrine makes not only masturbation, but even orgasms sinful.
The Swiss physician Dr. Tissot, in the late 1700's came out with the idea that masturbation was not just a sin, but also an illness, a form of insanity. The supposed proof of this theory was that so many people confined to mental asylums in those days could be seen masturbating. What else did they have to do for fun? Those places were not much more than jails. Actually Tissot went so far as to say all sexual activity was dangerous because it forced blood to rush to the head (which head was he talking about?) leaving too little in the rest of the body, so that nerves and other vital tissues slowly degenerated. It was this nerve damage that caused insanity.
Most people didn't buy his idea that all sexual activity caused insanity, but they did go for the masturbation part. So doctors jumped on this exciting new way to make money. Parents consulted physician to save their children from impending insanity by stopping them from masturbating. Some doctors blamed tight pants rubbing the genitals (those designer jeans can really get you aroused). But taking off the pants didn't change masturbation. Doctors prescribed straight jackets at bedtime, wrapping the child in cold wet sheet to cool the desire (sort of like the cliche, "go take a cold shower") and tying the hands to the bedposts. Inventions similar to old chastity belts were designed so parents could padlock the children's genital safely away from roaming hands. Doctors also applied leeches to the genital area to suck away blood (not suck them off) congestion that caused sexual arousal. Some devices were invented for curbing male masturbation in which the limp penis would be inserted in a tube or ring lined with spikes. If the penis became erect, it would expand in size and length and push into the spikes. Ow! Another practice was infibulation. This involved putting a ring through the foreskin, keeping it permanently drawn up over the head of the penis. Normally the foreskin retracts when the penis becomes erect. This would be painful and impossible with infibulation. Circumcision which used to be largely a Jewish tradition became more popular among Victorian christians because they believed the removal of the foreskin would discourage masturbation. Since smegma and odoriferous secretions accumulated more readily around the head of an uncircumcised penis, the penis would have to be handled to be washed more frequently when not circumcised and this the Victorians believed, might encourage masturbation. That infamous pseudo scientist Krafft-Ebing, who died in 1902, in his book, Psychopathalis Sexualis, claimed that masturbation was responsible for a wide variety of sexual deviations, severe degenerative neuroses and psychoses, and even sometimes the cause of murders for lust.
In the beginning of the 20th century, attitudes lightened up a little bit. Freud considered masturbation not to produce any gross physical diseases, but he did considered it an infantile form of sexual gratification which if continued beyond adolescence, could fixate the masturbator on himself and interfere with his ability to have adult heterosexual relations. In particular he considered it a cause of male impotency.
The great liberator of masturbators was probably Alfred Kinsey, that great pioneer of sex research. He reported in his book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, that masturbation was used more widely and over a longer period of life by better educated and socially higher class males than by those who were less educated and of the working class. That might have made it a status symbol if the general public had not been so outraged by the book. Those statistics may seem strange, but when you couple them with the statistics that frequent church-goers (and this effected women even more than men) masturbate less than non-religious people, you see that people with less education and more religious attendance are more likely to believe the taboos and horror stories about masturbation which have been largely Judaeo-Christian based. Uneducated people are less apt to try things on their own and more likely to go along with social and religious taboos. Kinsey had reported that 92% of male had masturbated sometime during their lives. In Kinsey's report he mentioned that in his days, 45% of the males had masturbated by the time they were 13 years old. A later study reported by Morton Hunt for the Playboy Foundation in 1972 showed that 63% of males had been masturbating by age 13. Kinsey reported that 20% of single men had ceased masturbating by age 30 and those that still did, had tapered off to 30 times a years. In the Hunt report 20 years later, only 10% of men had stopped and the rest were masturbating 60 times a year, over once a week. The rate of masturbation in married men has also increased over the years. Morton Hunt concludes. "The trend is thus unmistakable: throughout the population, males and females of all ages, but most noticeably the young whether single or married, college educated or not, religious or non religious, feel freer today than did their counterparts a generation ago to masturbate when they want to."
Men seem to be masturbating at a younger age. But how young? Kinsey observed orgasms in boys 5 months old. He also observed that some 2 year olds could have an orgasm in 10 seconds. Of course, little boys do not ejaculate at that age but researchers could tell they were experiencing orgasm from the typical physical responses males go through during orgasm-- body tension, twitching in the arms legs or mouth, heavy breathing, a gradual build up of tension, to rigidity of the body, throbbing of the penis, then a few spasms followed by relaxation.
Now that we know that most men are masturbating, "How are they doing it?" Most men, 82%, masturbate by rubbing, stroking or pumping the shaft of the penis with one hand. This led Masters and Johnson to comment that the men they had studied had less diversity and more "sameness" in their masturbating patterns than the women they had studied. Men rubbing their penises, do it lying on their backs in bed, lying on their sides, some sit on the side of the bed, some kneel, a few stand. No matter what the position of the body, the motion with the hand is basically the same.
The head of the penis has a very high concentration of sensory nerve ending compared to the shaft and is very sensitive to stimulation. The other sensitive areas are the coronal ridge, that is the rim around the base of the head where the shaft meets the head, and the frenulum, a thin strip of skin on the underside of the penis that attaches to the head. Usually direct stimulation of the had of the penis is not used as it may be too sensitive. Most guys start off slowly, some will lubricate with a lotion, with oil or just plain saliva. Most men grip the shaft and move up and down with increasing tempo as the orgasm builds. Some men will let their hand slip up over the head from time to time. During ejaculation some men stop all motion and grip the penis firmly, some just slow down to a few final strokes, sort of milking the last drops of cum out of the penis.
Another methods of male masturbation is to lie on the stomach and rub the penis against the bed or pillow. This is used by about 15% of adult males. This is often how children discover masturbation. Men have also tried other objects to rub, such as the necks of bottles. This has led to embarrassing cases for medical doctors when a man would arrive at emergency with his penis in a bottle. The penis of course would be put into the neck of the bottle when not fully erect, but once expanded to full erection, it could not be extracted from the bottle. In the resulting panic and excitement the penis would not go down. To be carted off to the emergency room with your penis in a bottle is a little embarrassing to explain, and, of course, the solution is to break the bottle without breaking the penis. Men have used modeling clay to mold their own portable vaginas and even cored out apples. Adult stores now have a great variety of inflatable dolls with artificial vaginas, mouths and anuses, some that are even heated or vibrate. A bizarre and somewhat disastrous attempt at masturbation has been done by men who inserted their penises into the hoses of vacuums. When the machine was turned on, they were literally sucked off, very painfully. Occasionally men masturbate by inserting things into their anuses. Not long ago there was a report of Gerbils having to be extracted from the anuses of a few experimenters. But one doctor reported looking into a mans anus with his little light only to be met with a brighter light shining back at him, as the man had shoved a flashlight up his behind. Fortunately, those are very rare, cases.
Another variety of male masturbation is thigh pressure. I have personally observed this only in older men who do not have very strong erections. Shere Hite in the Hite Report of Male Sexuality reports this as being used by only 1% of males.
In this methods, the man tucks his penis between his crossed legs and squeezes tightly with his inner thighs. Another very small percentage, only about 1/2 of 1% of men, used water massage, positioning the penis under the facet or shower hose for stimulation. In a time of drought and water rationing this is not a technique to develop. In the book, Any man Can, Dr. Hartman describes a problem resulting from using the shower to masturbate: "Jim is a good example, As a boy, he learned to masturbate in the shower. He ran water on his penis, and it got hard. When he got old enough, he ejaculated under the shower. He continued this method of masturbating all through high school and college. When he found himself in a gang of boys talking about masturbation, he could carry his part without ever realizing that they were talking about two different techniques. Jim just never developed a response pattern that was effective when he tried intercourse. When Jim married, he couldn't get an erection with his partner unless they were in the shower. He had to be taught, as an adult, how to masturbate by copying the up and down motion that simulated coitus."
Another very rare type of male masturbation is to suck on one's own penis. Needless to say, few men are capable of this. The man needs to be very flexible and have a long penis. I met one man, Ron Jeremy, an actor in both mainstream and porno films who has done this on film. He used to be a gymnast in school and has a 9 3/4 inch cock. Others men have tried, I'm sure, but failed. Perhaps it's where the limerick came from:
There once was a man from Kentucket,
Whose cock was so big he could suck it.
He said with a grin,
As he wiped off his chin,
If my ear was a cunt I would fuck it.
I have observed that men are somewhat addicted or hooked on the particular way they masturbate. The way a boy learns and practices masturbation can affect his ability to have intercourse when he gets interested in women as an adult.
Kinsey jokingly quipped that an excessive masturbator is usually defined as someone who does it more than you do. There are no hard fast rules on how often is too much. However, I define an excessive masturbator as someone who masturbates so much that he cannot ejaculate any other way, he can't cum in a woman.
The inside of a woman's vagina is soft, wet and warm. The walls are muscular, but even a snapping pussy like mine cannot grip the penis like a man's hand. Men who get accustomed to their own grip find it impossible to respond to the soft, caresses of a woman's vaginal muscles. This can also happen if he is used to rubbing against a bed sheet with the whole weight of his body applying pressure. The man gets a nice hard erection, enters the vagina and then goes soft because of the difference in stimulation from what he is used too. Total frustration for both parties. A man can be reconditioned to cum in a woman, but that takes a bit of time and lots of patience on the part of the woman.
I used to encounter mostly older men who were widowed or divorced who were hooked on masturbation, but lately I have encountered several good looking, healthy young hunks who have become so dependent on masturbation that they are lousy lovers who can't perform satisfying vaginal intercourse. Certainly in our days when casual sex is not so frequent due to the AIDS scare and with the great popularity of phone sex, more and more people are masturbating. But I'm afraid this will lead to unsatisfactory male female relationships if carried to excess.
What do people think about when they're masturbating, provided they no long are having guilt feelings or worried about going blind? Some of the fantasies used by men are, intercourse with strangers, about 47%; Sex with more than one person of the opposite sex, about 33%. Doing sexual things you would never do in reality, was admitted to by 19%. Being forced to have sex was actually a fantasy of 10% of males. Forcing someone to have sex was indulged in mentally by 13% of males. Having sex with someone of the same sex was used by only 7% of males - yet homosexuals would have the world believe that 10% of all men are homosexual. From the above mentioned fantasies, we can see that masturbating can often be an outlet for forbidden or suppressed desires. In addition to using fantasy or mental images, men frequently use pictures and videos of nude women. The Book of Sexual Lists mentions the types of people who attend X rated movies on a regular basis. Included in this list is the psychic or fantasy masturbator. The X-rated movies did not make them masturbators, but allows them an outlet for their fantasy.
With the old myths about the dangers of masturbation debunked, what, if any, are the benefits? Masturbation plays an important role in children's development. Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, co-author of the famous Kinsey Reports, in his book, Your Child and Sex, states, "In my practice I have found that if a male has not masturbated by the time his is fifteen or sixteen, there is some cause to worry about it. There are certain relationships between early masturbation and sex in later life that emphasize its importance. Boys, for example, who masturbate with accompanying fear, guilt and anxiety about what they are doing may have difficulty with too rapid ejaculation in later life, for if they masturbate hastily and fearfully, anxious not to be discovered by disapproving, wrathful parents, they will establish as boys a pattern of quick ejaculation. Boys who masturbate without such fears learn to prolong the experience, and to enjoy the sensations from it; consequently, they are able to prolong intercourse as adults, and to achieve happier sex lives, and are not prone to the problem of premature ejaculation that troubles so many adult men. Another positive relationship, established statistically, is the one between the age of starting masturbation and the age at which erection and ejaculation can still take place, often with surprising frequency. Early masturbators are sexually vigorous as adults well into their sixties, seventies and even beyond, Perhaps every girl should check out her future husbands or lovers masturbation habits first before entering a sexual relationship. Masturbation of course, helps to release tension. It can be pleasurable and comforting. It has been recommended as therapy for men who tend to have weak erections: masturbate before intercourse to get it hard."
Where do men learn to masturbate? Children discover masturbation while taking baths. usually. Little boys, in particular, since their penises protrude, can see their sex organs easier than girls see their genitalia. In fact, many adult women still don't know where their clitorises are. Also since the male sex organ, the penis has a dual function, urination and sex, males handle their penises everyday, several times a day. Eventually they notice some kind of arousal or new pleasurable feeling and experiment with stimulation that produced the feeling. If the young boy hasn't learned to masturbate through experimentation then sometime in his adolescent years he'll learn from another boy. In His book, Any man Can, Dr. Hartman comments, "How did most men learn to masturbate? If what we hear is valid at all, most men learn to masturbate as boys, and they learn from other boys. A big boy in the block teaches younger ones, `you move your hand up and down on your prick, and after a while some juice shoots out and it feels good.' And that's the extent of the lesson. Orgasms and ejaculation are the same thing. That's what most boys learn." Any Man Can, attempts to instruct men on how to masturbate so as to help rather than hinder vaginal intercourse. "Most men masturbate by grabbing the penis and moving the hand up and down the shaft. That's how we want you to do it. But you've probably moved your hand quickly in the past. You should change now. We want you to move your hand slowly, gently, using a light touch. You can try to use about the same pressure as you'd feel from the walls of the vagina during intercourse. We find that some cases of ejaculatory `incompetence' are caused because a man is accustomed to masturbating with a firm pressure of his fingers - a pressure far greater than he experiences when he has intercourse with women."
Masturbation is a normal healthy activity when used as just one of a number of healthy sexual activities. It only becomes a problem when used neurotically as a tool for other problems such as avoiding social relationships with females. So relax and enjoy yourself.
Men are not the only ones masturbating. Women enjoy sex by themselves, just for the fun of it.