Boys Who Masturbate: Private! Keep Out!

In my previous article, Boys Who Masturbate, I detailed how I came to learn masturbation. I discussed the fact that I had over two years’ experience before I had a clue I wasn’t the only boy in town who played with myself regularly. Even then, it would have taken a lot to engage me in any sort of casual conversation about it. It was truly a guilty pleasure, and completely taboo.

Times are different now. YouTube lets kids see and be seen doing lots of outrageous and inappropriate things (though, usually not explicit). We’re in the era where a leaked celebrity sex tape is treated like it’s automatically everyone’s right to view. Song lyrics read like detailed sex manuals (“Baby in your ear! I put it your ear!”) When I saw jokes about teen masturbation in Transformers, there was no question in my mind that at least Hollywood thinks that the target audience—boys who mostly have yet to see their own semen—are already joking with each other about jerking off. Let’s compare an example of my experience to today: My interest in and education about sex coincided with my first first sight of semen (my surprise first ejaculation.) Today’s boys seem to acquire a library full of random (erroneous?) details about feminine hygiene, blow jobs, orgies, and gay sex. The average boy probably acquires a mini-PhD in semen by the time he becomes a producer. It’s hard to fault the ones who think, “I’ve learned to drive and now I have a car. There’s nothing left to wait for.”

“It’s not hard to imagine friends prodding each other into a shared experience. I’m here to say this is a bad idea.”

Boys Who Masturbate

As it turns out, I did not invent masturbation. Oh, sure, you knew that. Well, frankly, I know I’ve known it for a long time, myself, but when I first discovered what a fantastic feeling it was to hold a piece of wood in my lap while I worked on it with an orbital sander, I may have actually thought I was onto something revolutionary. Of course, I soon realized I could produce the same fluid with my hand. I may have realized it wasn’t a capability unique to me by the time I’d identified the word “masturbation” in a book at the city library. (Holy Hot Dog, Batman! There’s a word for what I do in the bathtub!) Still, it was an enormous revelation when during Driver’s Ed, in the summer after my ninth grade year, a guy bragged about asking a Special Ed. kid if he’d masturbated yet. Yet? Like it’s a given and only the timing is variable? Wow! I’d only waited two years for that news bulletin.

I Heart Boobies? Geez! Where Do I Begin?

I hate this new campaign to allow elementary school kids to display the word “boobies” at school. Of course, this wrist band/bumper sticker/T-shirt/etc campaign is really about breast cancer awareness. (Remind me again, what color goes with prostrate cancer awareness?) Oh, well, I guess it’s just a natural progression after the famously successful AIDS prevention campaign “Remember Your Fucking Rubber!” Remember those bumper stickers with the hilarious cartoon? Do you still have one those cuddly teddy bears that had “Remember Your Fucking Rubber!” tattooed on their derrieres? Okay, that was crude and I made it all up. My point is that in the desire to get this message as widespread as possible (and that’s presuming no dark motives), the “I ♥ Boobies” campaign creators are using a flamethrower of a word that leaves some scorched earth.

You Masturbate? Well, Here’s Your Strait Jacket!

“…in order to prevent the repetition of the act of masturbation and, if possible, permanently to cure the victim of this vice, boys often have to be put in a strait jacket…”, What a Young Boy Ought to Know, Sylvanus Stall, 1897.

Well, yeah, I guess strait jackets “cure” a lot of things. (Important side effect: you may lose the will to live.)