A meaningful consideration in figuring out what you, personally, need from sex is that innumerable physical variables make one person’s sexual response different from another’s. Human genitals are as different in their minutiae as hands or feet. Size and color are the most apparent differences but subtle variations, internal and external, are the rule. Not all genitals are positioned exactly the same: your parts may be slightly higher or lower, further up front or further back, than the next person’s. The distance between genitals and anus vary. Some of your genital aspects may be more prominent or less prominent. You may have hair where someone else is (naturally) bare. You may have a curve where someone else is straight, or wrinkles where the next person is smooth. Your veins may be closer to the surface, and your nerves may cluster in slightly higher concentrations. Your overall skin sensitivity may be low, medium or high. Such normal physical variations contribute to differences in sensitivity and response; the same caress or stroke that feels fantastic to one person could feel painful to another and won’t feel like anything at all to a third.
Lena R. was a vibrant, optimistic woman in her late 20s. She had freely explored her body and her sensuality since childhood. Her favorite activity was pulling the bed-sheets tight between her legs and riding them until “the oooh feeling,” as she described it. Sometimes she added other things — a shampoo bottle, a bar of soap — to increase the intensity of the pressure against her vulva. In her college years, she’d sown all her wild oats and then some, but one thing still eluded her: being able to climax during intercourse. Now in a happy marriage, she still couldn’t orgasm unless something was pressed tight against her labia over the clitoral hood. As we talked, it struck me that Lena wasn’t “stuck” on any one type of masturbatory habit. She had experimented with dozens of different ways of reaching climax. But in every case, the method that put her over the top invariably involved pressure on the outside of the vulva. She volunteered that once, by accident, her husband pressed down hard on her pelvis during sex and she “almost” came. She was frustrated by her lifelong inability to climax from penetration and wondered if she’d “masturbated too much” as a girl and ruined her chances of being able to enjoy “normal” sex.
Contrary to the popular image of women masturbating in ways that mimic the pleasures of intercourse — an image belabored in pornography for men — in my clinical experience, female orgasm commonly derives from pressure, friction, and other sensation either to the outside or visible aspects of female genitals (such as the clitoris, labia, and pubic mound). Vaginal penetration is wildly exciting to some women, but for many others, it is primarily an adjunct to their pleasures (or fantasies), not the mechanism for their orgasm. This is, indeed, one of the reasons why foreplay is so important. Stroking, caressing and other manipulations to female genitalia prepare a woman for orgasm.
Getting to understand your individual anatomy is a vital piece of the puzzle in successful masturbation and climax. Endocrinologists use a term I love: genital congestion. It may sound as if you have a cold in your groin but it’s the opposite: it’s a measure of blood-flow (and subsequent warmth), based on the amount of swelling that occurs. Depending on your sexual health, genetic traits, and vascular fitness, swelling in the genitals (penis, clitoris, vagina, and testicles) can range from truly impressive to barely noticeable. Some men find that their penis in repose is small but that they grow surprisingly large when fully erect; others may seem well-endowed, but do not see significant lengthening during erection; and most men fall between the two ends of the spectrum. Similar variations are common in women in as well. Some are endowed with a clitoris that swells significantly and protrudes from the labia; others show little or limited clitoral growth during arousal.
Some people experience genital congestion as a light, tingling pleasure; some as a swooningly sharp pang; some as a desperate clawing need for relief. All of these little (or not so little) variations impinge on what kind of pressure you need on your genitals as well.
Many of the women I’ve worked with admit that they still masturbate as they did as little girls, only in place of blankets or objects, they now use vibrators. Indeed, one of the most popular vibrators ever sold — the “Magic Wand,” manufactured by Hitachi — is a non-penetrative toy. As sex toys for women become more sophisticated, the emphasis has trended away from penetrative toys. The most upscale new tinglers focus on stimulating the clitoris and external genital region. Abundant anecdotal material proves again and again that, in private, for many different reasons, women opt for non-penetrative masturbation. Wishing you were built slightly differently, or could climax from things that biologically don’t work for you, is, in my opinion, a recipe for dysfunction. Far better for every woman to accept that her body is unique, to map its sweetest spots, and then to exploit her natural sensuality.
I suggested to Lena that instead of reaching for a goal that may never be possible, we assume it was natural for her to need pressure to climax. It was entirely possible that the location of her clit, or the sensitive nerves concentrated behind the clit, meant that her body simply responded best when stimulation was applied from the outside, not the inside. If this was how she was anatomically geared, she could fight and ultimately lose, or work with her body to find new pathways to coupled orgasm. We reviewed different sex positions and movements that could increase pressure on her pelvic region — from having him manually apply pressure during sex (placing his hand over her mound and pushing down), to doggie-style sex with something under her pelvis that she could grind against. Knowing they were very creative and open-minded, I requested that she allow him to watch her masturbate so he could better understand what she did to climax. It might give him ideas about what he could add to the mix. They agreed to try a range of new techniques and were thrilled with the results. They found one sure-fire method that worked for them — he entered her from behind and clamped his hand over her genitals, squeezing and rubbing as he moved in and out of her. It worked so well they had their first-ever simultaneous orgasm.
The last variable in how people masturbate depends on how much time and effort they invest in learning their own bodies’ responses and how good they get at giving themselves pleasure. In the pursuit of more intensely arousing masturbation, males have been known to penetrate an impressive range of bizarre objects. My personal favorite was in the novel Portnoy’s Complaint where the eponymous protagonist masturbated in a hunk of raw meat slated to be cooked for dinner that night. Gross, perhaps, but honest. Virtually anything which can be penetrated has been penetrated by men in search of satisfaction.
Women are also known to be curiously incautious in their choices of inanimate partners. I once advised some lawyers who were trying to analyze the legality of images appearing on their site. We all gained an education in the possibilities for creative excess some people bring to solo sex. I will never forget the lady who made an art of inserting wooden chair legs into her vagina. I was seriously concerned about splinters.
Insertions are a fairly common act during masturbation as an adjunct to pleasure. In addition to the most common practice (using a specialized sex toy in the vagina or the anus), people find unusual applications for other things. Some people enjoy inserting catheters and other narrow items into the urethra. Emergency room doctors have removed everything from bottles and light bulbs to baked potatoes from colons. As radical or unusual as these masturbatory games may seem to some people, in fact, doctors and helping professionals are well aware that they occur throughout the mainstream population.
As a sex therapist, I have learned that just when you think you’ve heard it all, you discover that of course you haven’t. There are always new angles, new variations and new fantasies that make one person’s masturbation different from the next. For me, frankly, that is the joy of being a sex therapist in the first place. The diversity of human sexuality is a beautiful and spiritual spectacle to behold.
Why Do People Masturbate?
As will become increasingly, almost tediously, evident as you read this book, the honest simple answer to every question regarding “Why do people do X sex act?” is the remarkably dull response, “Because it feels right to them.” It feels right and it feels very good too.
I realize most of you are thinking you didn’t need me to tell you masturbation feels good but it is on the notion of “right” versus “wrong” that people go astray. People