Supple Towel Cuddle

Masturbation & What It Is

Towel, here, asking: What are the actual no-bullshit risks of plain old masturbation?

This deserves to not be one of those ask-your-doctor types of questions every bit as much as it deserves to not be an ask-your-personal-religious-affiliate type. Because w/r/t the mundane and everyday logic of mundane and everyday life, neither of these authorities really have any, well, authority. Only a tiny handful of physicians have the time to be earnestly concerned with global medical advancement enough to rise above the intellectual-seeming, med-school-induced stupor they otherwise enter when confronted with Western medicine's most unsatisfactory answers, esp. when these are brought forth by doubtful/inquisitive/and insubordinate laymen, doubly esp. when these are brought forth about masturbation. On the other hand, the costs inherent in approaching any religious authority with a question about masturbation (or any question of "Is it okay if I [insert questionable act here]?") can more or less be summed up as the time you wasted plus the effort required to try and glean as-of-yet-ungleaned knowledge from a source that--by the time you reach the intellectual age at which you ponder such dilemmas--you probably already drained of purport, (i.e., presuming most hopefully that you developed the requisite capacity for independent thought prior to pondering moral paradoxes). One should always feel encouraged to just keep it real. As a young and lonely American male who is not atypically well-versed in Masturbation, it is with a sense of duty that I stand up in the faces of Science and Religion and speak that which is true of male gerkin jerkin; i.e., that Masturbation IS:

.:1:. Time-consuming: While every sexually autonomous male over the age of spermarche could readily attest to the potential expedience of masturbation, the truth is that we are often--and at the worst times--likely to let ourselves get carried away in moderating how much time is allotted to the span ranging from when we first begin to when we finally release. As sexual mammals, our sympathetic nervous system *needs* to give way to our parasympathetic nervous system in order to procreate meaningfully (N.B. If you ever need an emergency boner cancellation, just focus on the most stressful thoughts you've been having lately; you'll see these work rapidly every time because they change and grow with context, whereas regular "back-up" flaccidators (e.g., think of baseball, grandma naked, necrobestial porn, etc.) tend to pale with use from boner to boner. If you don't want to grow habituated to the thought of your grandmother performing malodorous acts naked, you don't have to; instead, just think about how little time she has left and regret all the ways you could have appreciated her more, but haven't and probably won't.). Your body does this very readily, and this common transition is colloquially called "chilling the fuck out." The higher the stress-level one transitions from, the faster his/her mood-level will be swinging when it passes 0, neutrality, and thus the lower his/her subsequent stress-level will be; i.e., w/r/t your "issues," the bigger they are, the harder they fall. While low stress-levels lubricate one's aptitude for appreciatory thought, extremely low stress-levels (e.g., those attained by taking a "breather" from exam cramming or term paper writer's block) practically propel one toward self-indulgence; masturbation, since it can be started, enjoyed, and ended in about as much time as a coffee break, is thus supremely appealing in times of high stress. What one can easily fail to anticipate, time and time again, however, is the consequence of going directly from high-stress to super-low-stress. The parasympathetic nervous system is terrible at time-management, (i.e., time flies when you're having fun) and the lethal dose of relaxation proffered by masturbating mid cram session/term paper can only too easily rob a good student of an hour or two of important work. The realest risk, then, is the inextinguishable academic regret that follows, which makes the work even more stressful than it was prior to taking the break, and in so doing only increases both the appeal and the lethality of chilling the fuck out again via deceptively "quick 'n easy" masturbation.

.:2:. Refractory-period-inducing: Nuff said. Particularly in how it exacerbates the struggle already inherent in returning to (stress-inducing) productivity.

.:3:. Mojo-spending: Believe in mojo. See if you can follow the line of reasoning in this story: assume a man chooses not to masturbate for some time; in its continual absence, the man becomes increasingly aware of the fact that orgasm as a physical sensation knows no (legal) neurological equal; the man thus has an increasingly hard time suppressing his instinctive urge to orgasm, which orgasm is known to increase in pleasantness with every passing day since his last release; the man thus becomes increasingly aware of his natural sexuality; because he is presently averse to masturbation, the man becomes increasingly dependent on his ability to distract himself from the notion of his natural sexuality; said ability requires ever stronger attention and energy as the man's sexuality becomes harder and harder for him to ignore; the man continues to improve; the man thus begins to act notably more attentive and energetic in a greater variety of situations; the man is thus made more proactive in the absence of masturbation. It's not that masturbating is directly unhealthy to your existence the same way, say, starving yourself is. But it is detrimental to your being in the sense that doing it means that you're missing out on the benefits of not doing it; i.e., it is detrimental in the same way that never reading important novels, taking Rush Limbaugh at all seriously, and believing in God (or whatnot) without having spent at least a year or two not believing in him are: although they do not necessarily inhibit personal growth, these behaviors do, over the longterm, enable potent and intricately recursive ignorance w/r/t hugely important (= wholly relevant to the pursuit of meaning in life) issues. Your physician won't suggest that you adjust your lifestyle because it's not his/her specifically sworn duty to make sure that his/her patients aren't wasting their time on earth being lazy assholes; i.e., although a preventable death is unacceptable in any and all circumstances, a preventably wasted life is more or less gravy. Due to the immense challenge of overpowering one's increasingly visceral urge to orgasm, withholding jizm is a swift (albeit challenging) route to a proactive lifestyle. Since like fifth grade or thereabouts, the longest I have ever gone without spoogin' was 28 days. A mere four weeks. Seriously. And in fact I would never have done this if it weren't for the the fact that I had agreed to a contest of sheer non-masturbatory wills. But from this month of acute hyper-horniness, I can attest to the social wonder-drug that is the biochemical incapacity for nonsexual thought. Think of the exact opposite of how charming you aren't for the 10ish minute refractory period that follows orgasm.

.:4:. Indispensable: Okay, having someone other than you get you off is amazing. I wouldn't really disagree with somebody who insisted that sex, blowjobs, and "etc." are all superior in quality of experience to that of masturbation. However, I would strongly oppose he/she who then went on to say that masturbation is thereby dispensable. Just because it isn't the best. In truth, masturbation has some advantages over its interpersonal counterparts (no pun intended). That is, masturbation is the one thing sex (or whatever) with somebody else can just never be: totally private. Because it's all about you, masturbation: allows for exploratory mistakes--whether physically manifest or psychological--to be made without lethally ego-toxic recourse; permits you to sit back, relax, and take as much time as your mood sees fit (which unique appeal can also be a definitive hazard, as described above in bullet 1); is ready and consenting at a moment’s notice; and I could go on. Or if that bent doesn’t grab you, then let me put it another way: where would the porn industry be without masturbation? Fucking dead, that’s where. And then what would become of all of us who so doggedly pursued across countless nights the image or video that might grant us maximum human arousal, that legendary best-possible-orgasm which only the Holy Grail of Porn could, by definition, invoke? I honestly can’t bring myself to postulate the consequences. A significant smidgen of porn available online is just inarguably amazing in its ability to stimulate both the wiener and the imagination; if masturbation were suddenly outmoded or something, then it would mean the demise of a gargantuan human accomplishment. But masturbation is, fortunately, quite popular. So go for it. Do what you will do, and do it however you want. Hone your favorite fetishes, or maybe explore new ones; they make you who you are in a way that can never be articulated. Come to know yourself. Come to know pleasure. Come to forget the distinction.

Then get back to work.