WEIRD Masturbation Habits (2011)

Who are the solo-sex world champs?

Spoof of heavy masturbation habitThis is the exciting sequel to Masturbation, Fantasy and Captivity. That post began with Leonard Shlain MD’s observation that no animals masturbate with the intensity and ejaculation frequency of human males, and concluded with historical support for the suggestion that today’s habits might be a function of our modern lifestyles rather than innate human behavior.

Now it appears that Shlain’s statement may only apply to the WEIRD. Last year, Cambridge University’s Behavioral and Brain Sciences published a review: “The weirdest people in the world?” Its authors pointed out that scientists routinely make broad claims about human behavior—using samples drawn almost entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Fully 96% of the subjects whose behavior has been reported in top psychological journals were drawn from only 12 % of the world’s population.

For practical reasons, the subjects most often recruited are Western university students, who are immersed in radically atypical circumstances compared with the rest of the species. So, “It should not be surprising that their psychological world is unusual as well.” (pp. 79-80)

Indeed, another academic wryly suggested that a better acronym for many student subjects would be MYOPICS: Materialist, Young, self-Obsessed, Pleasure-seeking, Isolated, Consumerist, and Sedentary. In his view, about all that students can reveal is “what humans might be like if they were utterly REMOVED from most normal selective pressures. [Specifically:] the utter nihilism and lack of restraint when normal constraints on human behaviour and decision making are relaxed.”

As members of WEIRD societies are among the least representative populations for generalizing about humans, the review’s authors caution that, “We need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity.”

With this perspective in mind, let’s reconsider what we think we know about our intense and frequent masturbation habits. Anthropologists Hewlett and Hewlett point out that,

The Euro-American human sexuality literature gives the impression that male and female …  masturbation are common if not human universal, in part, due to a reliance on several systematic and detailed studies conducted in [WEIRD] nation states. One human sexuality college textbook states that, “masturbation is a very common practice among adolescents, and that the vast majority of people masturbate at some time in their lives.”

Hewlett with Aka peopleHowever, as the Hewletts document in their 2010 study, Western sexual patterns, including our frequent masturbation, are unusual by cross-cultural standards. The Hewletts arrived at this conclusion in part by studying the sexual behavior of two central African cultures. They were astonished to learn that neither the Aka nor the Ngandu were aware of masturbation:

They laughed as we tried to explain and describe the sexual activities. We thought that maybe they were shy or embarrassed individuals, but this would have been uncharacteristic of the Aka we had known so long. …

It was difficult to explain self-stimulation to the Aka. They found it unusual and said it may happen far away in Congo, but they did not know it. A specific word did not exist for it. We asked men, in particular, about masturbating before they were married or during the post-partum sex taboo and all indicated this did not occur. … [emphasis added]

Masturbation also appears to be rare in other forest areas. We asked Robert Bailey … about his experiences of trying to collect semen for fertility studies from Lese men in the Ituri forest of the Democratic Republic of Congo. He indicated it was very difficult to explain to men how to selfstimulate to obtain semen samples. He said that despite explicit and lengthy instructions three of four semen specimens came to him mixed with vaginal secretions. pp. 113-114

In view of cross-cultural standards, the Hewetts caution that college-textbook representations of human sexuality probably reflect the interests and priorities of middle-class Euro-American [WEIRD] cultural models rather than those of humanity. (Watch a documentary about the easygoing Aka.)

If it’s prudent to be cautious in generalizing about the practice of masturbation itself, perhaps we should be even more cautious in insisting that masturbation to any intensity of stimulation and with any ejaculation frequency is normal. It may be common for the subpopulation of the WEIRD to masturbate with increasing frequency under the influence of today’s ever novel and hyperstimulating Internet porn. Yet such frequent masturbation appears to be exceptional in the larger context of human behavior.

Interestingly, there is a WEIRD operational definition for “hypersexual desire,” but one never hears it. Curious? It’s “7 or more orgasms/week for at least 6 consecutive months after the age of 15 years.”

It’s worth noting that, regardless of where WEIRD sexologists may set the bar for normal masturbation, its frequency is a rapidly moving target. Sexuality counselor Ian Kerner recently estimated that men are masturbating 50 to 500 percent more than they would without Internet porn—with adverse repercussions in the bedroom. We, too, hear from lots of (young) men who can now only sustain an erection while masturbating to Internet porn.

Might it be beneficial to educate ourselves about the rest of the world’s masturbation habits? Pointing out the existence of a wider range of solo-sex behavior can be accomplished without shaming anyone. If we saw ourselves against the backdrop of the fuller range of normal human behavior, we might be more likely to recognize the source of any problems arising from excess. Broader knowledge might, in fact, encourage people to experiment with options more beneficial to them—without thinking themselves weird.

A forum member shared these relevant links:

  • http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2011/10/ahmadinejad_s_assertion_about_gays_in_iran_isn_t_that_crazy_afte.html
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20170703053221/http://huntgatherlove.com/content/sexy-sexless-culture
  • http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/jun/15/childrensservices.familyandrelationships
  • https://pragmasynesi.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/secrets-of-the-phallus-why-is-the-penis-shaped-like-that/

(2020) Why Are We in the West So Weird? A Theory

ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN

Are the men of the African Aka tribe the best fathers in the world?

While the women hunt, the men look after the babies – even letting them suck their nipples. Joanna Moorhead asks anthropologist Barry Hewlett why the Aka are such unusual parents

It’s a question that has united Aristotle, Darwin and my three-year-old in puzzlement: what exactly are male nipples for ? This week, the charity Fathers Direct came up with an answer, courtesy of some research it unearthed about a nomadic tribe of African hunter-gatherers. The answer, it seems, is the one my three-year-old (and Darwin, to be fair) suspected all along: male nipples are there as a stand-in for when mum isn’t around and there’s a squawking bambino in dire need of something to suck.

And, when you think about it, why ever not? Surely a male nipple, deficient though it is in terms of sustenance, gives a more pleasant sucking sensation than, say, a dummy.

That’s certainly how it seemed to Professor Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist who was the first person to spot male breastfeeding among the Aka Pygmy people of central Africa (total population around 20,000) after he decided to live alongside them in order to study their way of life more closely. By the time he noticed that babies were sometimes being suckled by their fathers, it wasn’t as stunning a revelation, however, as it might have been had he spotted it going on in the breastfeeding room at Mothercare in Manchester.

Because by then Hewlett had realised that, when it comes to gender egalitarian parenting, the Aka – who call themselves the people of the forest – beat anyone else he’d ever studied hands down. According to the data he began collecting more than two decades ago, Aka fathers are within reach of their infants 47% of the time – that’s apparently more than fathers in any other cultural group on the planet, which is why Fathers Direct has decided to dub the Aka “the best dads in the world”.

What’s fascinating about the Aka is that male and female roles are virtually interchangeable. While the women hunt, the men mind the children; while the men cook, the women decide where to set up the next camp. And vice versa: and it’s in this vice versa, says Hewlett, that the really important message lies. “There is a sexual division of labour in the Aka community – women, for example, are the primary caregivers,” he says. “But, and this is crucial, there’s a level of flexibility that’s virtually unknown in our society. Aka fathers will slip into roles usually occupied by mothers without a second thought and without, more importantly, any loss of status – there’s no stigma involved in the different jobs.”

One especially riveting facet of Aka life is that women are not only just as likely as their men to hunt, but are even sometimes more proficient as hunters. Hitherto, it has usually been assumed that, because of women’s role as gestators and carers of the young, hunting was historically a universally male preserve: but in one study Hewlett found a woman who hunted through the eighth month of her pregnancy and was back at work with her nets and her spears just a month after giving birth. Other mothers went hunting with their newborns strapped to their sides, despite the fact that their prey, the duiker (a type of antelope), can be a dangerous beast.

If it all sounds like a feminist paradise there is, alas, a sting in the tale: Hewlett found that, while tasks and decision-making were largely shared activities, there is an Aka glass ceiling. Top jobs in the tribe invariably go to men: the kombeti (leader), the tuma (elephant hunter) and the nganga (top healer) in the community he has studied are all male. But that doesn’t detract, he says, from their important contribution as co-carers in the parenting sphere: and nor, either, does it reduce the impact of the message he believes the Aka people have for western couples struggling to find a balance between the demands of employment, home-making, self- fulfilment and raising kids.

“The point about the Aka,” says Hewlett, “is that the active role the fathers have is simply one facet of their entire approach to life, and it’s that approach as much as anything that we can learn from. One thing that’s crucial in the raising of the young is the importance placed on physical closeness: at around three months, a baby is in almost constant physical contact with either one of her parents or with another person. There’s no such thing as a cot in an Aka camp because it’s unheard of for a couple to ever leave their baby lying unattended – babies are held all the time.” Aka fathers, apparently, aren’t averse even to heading down to their equivalent of the pub with a child attached to their chest (or even their nipple); the Aka tipple, palm wine, is often enjoyed by a group of men with their infants in their arms.

It’s all a far cry from the west and, says Hewlett, the first thing fathers here could think about is the lack of time and physical contact they often have with their young kids. “There’s a big sense in our society that dads can’t always be around and that you have to give up a lot of time with your child but that you can put that right by having quality time with them instead,” he says. “But after living with the Aka, I’ve begun to doubt the wisdom of that line. It seems to me that what fathers need is a lot more time with their children, and they need to hold them close a lot more than they do at the moment. There are lots of positive contributions fathers can make to bringing up their children, but we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of touch and cuddles.”

This is one of the most important lessons the Aka brought to Hewlett’s own experience of parenting, he says: he’s a father of seven kids, aged between 13 and 22, and he has moulded his life and career so he’s been able to be around a lot as they were growing up. He says that his studies of the Aka have also made him a more trusting and sharing father (two qualities the Aka have in abundance, apparently).

Another lesson the Aka have for us – and this is for all of us, mothers as well as fathers – is about how precious children are, and how lucky we are to have them in our lives. If it sounds a bit schmaltzy well, that’s exactly why we need to hear it: the fact is, says Hewlett, that we’ve strayed into believing that our kids are a burden rather than a blessing and that’s something the Aka never do. “To the Aka, your children are the very value of your life. The idea of a child as a burden would be incomprehensible there … children are the energy, the life force of the community.” A saying from another tribe he’s studied, the Fulani, sums the sentiment up: they say that you’re lucky if you’ve got someone who will shit on you.

But back to that male breastfeeding: Jack O’Sullivan of Fathers Direct says he was invited on chat show after chat show on Monday in the wake of the report going public, and faced a mixture of horror, consternation and support. “Some fathers phoned in to say they’d let their child suck their nipples – often it had just happened when the baby was lying on their chest in bed,” he says. But some people were disgusted: the words “child abuse” came up more than once, which points up interesting cultural differences when you think that, to Aka folk, much of the way we raise our kids would count as child abuse to them (babies being left to sleep alone in a different room from their parents, for example).

For O’Sullivan, what is sad is that the negativity to the Aka revelation points up the continuing awkwardness around intimacy between fathers and their infants: while mother-child intimacy is very public, and celebrated, father-child intimacy is still shied away from and worried over, despite an increasing body of evidence showing that, given the chance, fathers can be every bit as respondent to their infants as mothers in terms of reading their signals and communicating with them. In a nutshell, says O’Sullivan, men are scared of intimacy with babies and small children – and it could be that looking anew at that fear, with reference to the Aka experience, could be a useful and liberating male experience.

· Barry Hewlett is co-author of Hunter-gatherer Childhoods (Aldine Transaction).

Also see –

NOTE: YBOP is not saying that masturbation bad for you. Just making the point that many of the so-called health benefits claimed to be associated with orgasm or masturbation are in fact associated with close contact with another human being, not orgasm/masturbation. More specifically, claimed correlations between a few isolated health indicators and orgasm (if true) are probably just correlations arising from healthier populations that naturally engage in more sex and masturbation. They are not causal. Relevant studies:

The Relative Health Benefits of Different Sexual Activities (2010) found that sexual intercourse was related to positive effects, while masturbation was not. In some cases masturbation was negatively related to health benefits – meaning that more masturbation correlated with poorer health indicators. The conclusion of the review:

“Based upon a broad range of methods, samples, and measures, the research findings are remarkably consistent in demonstrating that one sexual activity (Penile-Vaginal Intercourse and the orgasmic response to it) is associated with, and in some cases, causes processes associated with better psychological and physical functioning.”

“Other sexual behaviors (including when Penile-Vaginal Intercourse is impaired, as with condoms or distraction away from the penile–vaginal sensations) are unassociated, or in some cases (such as masturbation and anal intercourse) inversely associated with better psychological and physical functioning.”

“Sexual medicine, sex education, sex therapy, and sex research should disseminate details of the health benefits of specifically Penile-Vaginal Intercourse, and also become much more specific in their respective assessment and intervention practices.”

Also see this short review of masturbation and health indices: Masturbation is Related to Psychopathology and Prostate Dysfunction: Comment on Quinsey (2012)

It is difficult to reconcile the view that masturbation improves mood with the findings in both sexes that greater masturbation frequency is associated with more depressive symptoms (Cyranowski et al., 2004; Frohlich & Meston,  2002;Husted&Edwards, 1976), less happiness (Das, 2007), and several other indicators of poorer physical and mental health, which include anxious attachment (Costa & Brody, 2011),immature psychological defense mechanisms, greater blood pressure reactivity to stress, and dissatisfaction with one’s mental health and life in general (for a review, see Brody, 2010). It is equally difficult to see how masturbation develops sexual interests, when greater masturbation frequency is so often associated with impaired sexual function in men(Brody& Costa, 2009; Das, Parish, & Laumann, 2009; Gerressu, Mercer, Graham, Wellings, & Johnson, 2008; Lau, Wang, Cheng, & Yang, 2005; Nutter & Condron, 1985) and women (Brody &Costa, 2009;Das et al., 2009;Gerressu et al., 2008;Lau,Cheng, Wang, & Yang, 2006; Shaeer, Shaeer, & Shaeer, 2012;Weiss& Brody, 2009). Greater masturbation frequency is also associated with more dissatisfaction with relationships and less love for partners (Brody, 2010; Brody & Costa, 2009). In contrast, PVI is very consistently related to better health (Brody, 2010; Brody & Costa, 2009; Brody &Weiss, 2011; Costa & Brody, 2011, 2012), better sexual function (Brody & Costa, 2009; Brody & Weiss, 2011; Nutter & Condron, 1983, 1985;Weiss&Brody, 2009), and better intimate relationship quality (Brody, 2010; Brody & Costa, 2009; Brody &Weiss, 2011).

Moreover, although less risk of prostate cancer was associated with greater number of ejaculations (without specification of the sexual behavior) (Giles et al., 2003) [Note conflicting evidence, however: “Prostate cancer may be linked to sex hormones: Men who are more sexually active in their 20s and 30s may run a higher risk of prostate cancer, research suggests.”], it is PVI frequency that is specifically associated with reduced risk, whereas masturbation frequency is more often related to increased risk (for a review on the subject, see Brody,2010). In this regard, it is interesting to note that masturbation is also associated with other problems of the prostate (higher prostate specific antigen levels and swollen or tender prostate) and, compared with the ejaculate obtained from PVI, the ejaculate obtained from masturbation has markers of poorer prostatic function and lesser elimination of waste products (Brody, 2010). The only sexual behavior consistently related to better psychological and physical health is PVI. In contrast, masturbation is frequently associated with indices of poorer health (Brody, 2010; Brody & Costa, 2009; Brody & Weiss, 2011; Costa & Brody, 2011, 2012). There are several possible psychological and physiological mechanisms, which are a likely consequence of natural selection favoring health processes as cause and/or effect of motivation to search for, and capacity to obtain and enjoy, PVI. In contrast, selection of psychobiological mechanisms rewarding motivation to masturbate is unlikely due to the severe fitness costs that would occur if it deterred one from PVI by making it irrelevant for well-being (Brody, 2010). More plausibly, masturbation represents some failure of the mechanisms of sexual drive and intimate relatedness, however common it may be, and even if not uncommonly it coexists with access to PVI. In this regard, it is noteworthy that greater masturbation frequency is associated with dissatisfaction with several aspects of life independently of PVI frequency (Brody& Costa, 2009) and seems to diminish some benefits of PVI (Brody, 2010).

Finally see this PDF – Social, Emotional, and Relational Distinctions in Patterns of Recent Masturbation Among Young Adults (2014)

“So, how happy are respondents who masturbate recently when compared with those who have not? Figure 5 reveals that among those respondents who reported being “very unhappy” with their life these days, 68 percent of women and 84 percent of men said they had masturbated within the past week. The modest association with unhappiness appears linear among men, but not women. Our point is not to suggest that masturbation makes people unhappy. It may, but the cross-sectional nature of the data does not allow us to evaluate this. However, it is empirically accurate to say that men who claim to be happy are somewhat less apt to report masturbating recently than unhappy men.”

“Masturbation is also associated with reporting feelings of inadequacy or fear in relationships and difficulties in navigating interpersonal relationships successfully. Past-day and past-week masturbators exhibit significantly higher relationship anxiety scale scores than do respondents who did not report masturbating in the past day or in the past week. Past-day and past-week masturbators exhibit significantly higher relationship anxiety scale scores than do respondents who did not report masturbating in the past day or in the past week.”