Masturbation: a singularly human pursuit

Among primates, only humans masturbate. Why is that? Perhaps it’s our big….brains.

Go on, put this article aside, take a five minute break and put my challenge to the test (don’t forget to close your office door if you’re reading this at work): Just try to masturbate successfully — that is, to orgasmic completion — without casting some erotic representational target in your mind’s eye. Instead, clear your mind entirely, or think of, I don’t know, an enormous blank canvass hanging in an art gallery. And of course no porn or helpful naked co-workers are permitted for this task either.

How’d it go? Do you see the impossibility of it? This is one of the reasons, incidentally, why I find it so hard to believe that self-proclaimed asexuals who admit to masturbating to orgasm are really and truly asexual. They must be picturing something , and whatever that something is gives away their sexuality.

(via clusterflock)

Update: Apparently the author has never been on YouTube. (thx, all)

• psychology
• sex