You and Your Penis!

Sex And Your Penis

Concerns about performance and anxiety about sex are normal. Indeed they're common, perhaps universal, in men. After interviewing 125 men of all ages for their book "What Really Happens in Bed", Steven Carter and Julia Sokol concluded that "all men have sexual anxieties". More specifically: young men are anxious that their inexperience will show; they are also typically anxious about premature ejaculation and whether they know enough about female anatomy. Middle-aged men are worried that their erections are not as firm, or quickly achieved, as they were when they were in their late teens and early twenties. Older men worry that erections are less frequent, less firm, and more temperamental.

In The Hite Report on Male Sexuality, Shere Hite reported that a majority of her seven thousand respondents had concerns about getting and keeping erections and ejaculating too quickly. There is good reason to believe, therefore, that there's nothing abnormal or unusual about men's being anxious about sex.

Another place where our ideas of normality are way off base concerns sexual problems. Such problems, most of us think, are rare. But is that really the case? A review of community studies by llana Spector and Michael Carey found that about 7 percent of men have chronic erection problems, while about 37 percent suffer from chronic rapid ejaculations. The same review found that about 5 percent of men have difficulty ejaculating with their partners and about 16 percent complain of low sex drive. That's a lot of men with problems, especially since some difficulties - such as a sex drive that's grossly discrepant from that of one's partner's and dissatisfaction with sex even though there aren't any functional problems - weren't even considered.

To add to this, we need to recall that most men occasionally don't function as they desire. In Shere Hite's large sample of men, 65 percent answered yes when asked if they had ever had difficulty having an erection when they wanted one, and 70 percent said they had ejaculated more quickly than they had wanted on at least one occasion. I hope the point is clear: Sex problems are normal and typical. I know, I know, all of your buddies are functioning perfectly and never have a problem. If you really believe that, well.....believe me, it's not true.

In case you're wondering about women, Spector and Carey found that about the same proportion of women as men have chronic or sporadic problems with sex; these include difficulties getting aroused and having orgasm, painful intercourse, and low desire. For both men and women, it seems, sex problems are not unusual. While I grant it doesn't feel good when you have a problem, it's just part of the human sexual condition.

What About Masturbation?

Although the dictionary definition of masturbation is "stimulation of the genitals by means other than intercourse," I use the term as most people do, to refer to sexually stimulating oneself. Common synonyms include "playing with yourself," "self- pleasuring," and "self-stimulation."

Playing with oneself is one of the most common sexual acts. Little children do it - at least until their parents shriek at them to stop - and it has been found in every society studied. In America, the vast majority of boys start masturbating sometime during puberty, and most of them continue to pleasure themselves for the rest of their lives. Estimates are that about 70 percent of married men sometimes stimulate themselves (as do a similar percentage of married women).

Although there is nothing abnormal or unnatural about self-pleasuring, most of us feel ashamed or guilty about it. It seems selfish and too explicitly sexual (you can't pretend you're doing it for anyone else's benefit or for anything but sexual pleasure, and it's thought to hint of immaturity). A real man, we think, would be able to find a partner to have sex with rather than being left to his own devices. If he already has a partner, then why on earth would he want to have sex by himself? A married man in his fifties expressed his concern like this: "I'm embarrassed about this, but I've masturbated once a week or so all through my marriage. It's not that Grace leaves anything to be desired. She's a wonderful sex partner and rarely turns me down. But there are times when it just seems easier to do it myself. This isn't taking anything away from what we have together, it's just a separate thing. I think she'd be shocked and hurt if she found out and I wouldn't know how to explain myself."

It's understandable that masturbation should make us feel uneasy. Sex by oneself for one's own pleasure - where even the pretense of trying to conceive didn't exist - was always at or near the top of the worst sexual abuses in Western cultures, the mere mention of which was enough to send religious and medical "experts" into a state of hysteria. The terms they used to refer to the act -"self- abuse" or "self-pollution)" and "the solitary vice"- reflect their attitude. It was only about forty years ago that the American Medical Association and the Boy Scout Manual dropped their opposition to masturbation. Although virtually all medical and psychological experts today consider the activity quite normal, we aren't that far removed from the days when it was considered anything but normal.

Despite its reputation, masturbation actually has a number of uses and benefits.

For example, it's fun, one of the small pleasures of life. What's wrong with making ourselves feel good? In masturbation you don't have to look your best, and, as Woody Allen put it, it's sex with someone you love. You don't have to concern yourself with anyone else's feelings, desires, or goals. You can do whatever you want for as long or as short a time as you like and get whatever you want out of it. Partner sex, while certainly having advantages of its own, does require that we carefully attend to the desires of our partner and synchronize our behavior with hers, and that's not something one always wants to do.

Self-pleasuring is an excellent way to learn how to reach orgasm, discover how you like to be touched and stimulated, not only on your genitals but elsewhere as well, and find  out about yru sexual responsivity. This information can then be given to your partner, thus enhancing your sex life together and allowing you to learn best how to please your woman or man in bed.

Even if you're committed to partner sex as the best way of satisfying your erotic needs, there may, be times when you don't have a partner or the partner you do have isn't available because of illness, fatigue, or something else. Why deny yourself sexual pleasure at such times?

Masturbating in certain ways can help overcome sexual problems such as erection difficulties and rapid ejaculation.

The only sense in which masturbation can be said to be bad is when a man regularly uses it as a substitute for sex with his partner. That is, whenever he feels sexy he satisfies himself and rarely or never wants sex with his partner. Understandably, the partner may feel less than ecstatic about this state of affairs. Usually something else is involved. The man is unhappy about either the partner or relationship, about himself or about sex with her.

Because most of us still feel somewhat uneasy about masturbation, we try to hide it. When a man is walked in on by his partner while masturbating, instead of simply acknowledging what he is doing, he often denies it. "Nothing, just looking at it" or "I had an itch [or ache] in my penis and was just scratching [examining] it." Yeah, sure. How much better and easier if he could just say what he was doing.

It's possible the woman may not feel good about what he's doing, just as he feared. She may feel that her attractiveness or skillfulness is inadequate if he masturbates even though she's available.

Such feelings need to be talked about. They stem from our culture's narrow view of sex. As I try to show throughout this book, the only rules necessary for good sex are consent (if you're doing it with someone else, they must agree to the activity), honesty (don't say things that aren't true), and responsibility (it's not right to make babies when you don't want them, to spread disease, or to behave in ways that are disrespectful of your partner). Aside from these things, anything goes. It's perfectly fine to masturbate even though you have a sexual partner, it's fine to masturbate in her presence or with her participation, it's fine for the two of you to masturbate together, and it's just as fine for either of you to stimulate yourself during an erotic encounter together. Just because you have a partner who's available to have oral sex or intercourse or any other sexual activity doesn't necessarily mean you'll always want to engage in that activity with her. There are times when you may simply prefer to stimulate yourself despite your partner's availability.

As far as I'm concerned, the same rules apply to self- stimulation as to any other sexual activities. If whatever you're doing isn't hurting you, your partner, or your relationship, why not just enjoy yourself?

Sex, fantasy and other issues

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