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Further Reading
Mastrubation Survey
1) I last masturbated to orgasm
___ in the past hour
___ in the past six hours
...
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A survey
By
Bill Andriette
To see the results of the survey from our January 1999 issue click here.
Everyone's done it, just about. Some folks enjoy it a lot. But even in these frank and salacious times, masturbation can be a squeamish subject. Like homosexuality, it's about pure sex-- sex for pleasure's sake, not tying
knots or making babies. As such, masturbation hits up against Judeo-Christendom's deeply ingrained antisexual prejudice. But for different reasons, masturbation bears a stigma among the sexually cool, who regard it often as
the opposite of sex-- a poor and slightly embarrassing substitute for the real thing, sort of the Parkay margarine of erotic acts.
US President Bill Clinton recently spoke to this question, among many others, when he asserted that getting a blow-job or fondling another's genitals does not count as
sex at all-- putting masturbation, which the Commander-in-Chief also enjoyed in the Oval Office, utterly off the map. On this score, Bill Clinton presents himself as an old-fashioned traditionalist-- only when a man fucks a woman can he really carve another
notch into his bedpost. And yet such is the double standard under which masturbation labors that when former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders sagely called for teaching youngsters to self-stimulate (as a substitute for disease-
and baby-engendering vaginal intercourse), Clinton sent her packing: guilty of promoting an activity all too akin to full-blown sex.
As Clinton himself could have said under oath, what "masturbation"
is depends on what you mean by the word. (Not to mention what you mean by
is.) For such an everyday term and practice,
masturbation turns out to be surprisingly ambiguous.
The dictionary defines it firstly as "the stimulation or manipulation of one's own or another's genitals to achieve orgasm." But by that standard,
all sex is masturbation-- from missionary-position
hetero
intercourse to gay bathhouse orgies. (This, by the way, was the view of Immanuel Kant, the great 18th-century philosopher, who felt that sexual desire was so intrinsically self-regarding that it had to be leashed with the
gold bonds of matrimony.)
And what if you're the sort who enjoys a leisurely walk, without ending up anywhere? When it comes to the pleasurable "manipulation of one's own or another's genitals"
without orgasm, the dictionary insists that something that looks and quacks like masturbation isn't it at all.
Webster's offers a second and final stab at the subject: masturbation, it says, is "sexual self-gratification." But that hardly clarifies matters. This would mean you couldn't masturbate someone else. And
except for whores, who get gratified with greenbacks, self-gratification ought to be part of every sexual act (but jeez, Kant, not the whole enchilada). Once again, the dictionary dishes up criteria at once too broad and too narrow.
The truth remains lost in the haystack.
Masturbation suffers the rep of falling at the outskirts of real sex. But maybe it's right downtown. Masturbation is the first sexual experience many people have, the way most of us cut our erotic teeth, so
to speak. Freud warned that if people get too accustomed to the perfect erotic worlds that the imagination can conjure, the expertly aimed caresses of their masturbating hands (or whatever), they might end up finding
real-world sex underwhelming.
With every authority from Merriam Webster to Bill Clinton muddled about masturbation,
The Guide feels compelled to turn to people who know about the practice firsthand: our readers. For the high
scientific purposes of this survey, we'll limit masturbation to be sexual pleasuring one engages in by oneself (no disrespect to organized onanists intended).
So sharpen your pencils, boys, (this survey presumes at least a cock between your legs) and for a few minutes, at least, please keep your hands free. After answering all the questions, mail in your
survey, anonymity assured. Watch for the results, carefully tabulated and analyzed, in a future issue.
Editor's Note: To see the results of the survey from our January 1999 issue click here.
| Author Profile: Bill Andriette |
| Bill Andriette is features editor of
The Guide |
| Email: |
theguide@guidemag.com |
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