A lady masturbator wrote

a lady masturbator wrote: 

As requested in the welcoming email, I am posting up an introductory message to the group before diving into any discussions. I’ve been reading the Onania main site, and after a quick glance around here I can say that you seem like friendly and accepting people. So thanks for that. It’s evident that one can post here free from the worry that they’ll seem “weird”, and that really is what makes it possible to talk about this stuff. There is a level of emotional honesty going on that is pretty refreshing, and in my experience fairly unique as well. The activity with which I’ve found my free time and private moments most often occupied is also the part of my life and myself which I’ve kept most private. While I did join hoping that maybe I’d feel comfortable enough to finally open up and discuss some of the emotions and issues I’ve been struggling with, now that I’m here at the keyboard and trying to come up with something to say about my reason for being here, I am feeling really ill at ease and finding it tough to talk about my situation. The act of typing the word ‘masturbation’ seems to require surmounting a mental block so large it’s virtually a herculean task, and that’s… kind of inexplicable. It’s inexplicable because masturbation is an activity that has basically slowly come to increasingly dominate and define my life over the years. When I say I feel ill at ease saying this, it’s not that there is anything unsavory about the people here, it’s more a discomfort I have with myself about my masturbation. Some of you have talked very honestly about how this has effected your social life and your sexuality, and the effect it’s had on me I can only describe as profound. I don’t really know what to make of it. I know there is nothing “wrong” with masturbation as an activity, but the way I’ve come to live my life feels much different from the norm, and from what’s expected of me. I don’t know how or where I fit in to the normal social landscape. I feel apart, and I guess that’s been my biggest issue.

OK that is enough woe is me. You people are fascinating so I’m off to fade into the background and stealthily observe all your captivating dialogs!     

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Hi there!

I very much appreciate your letter, and got a smile and a tingle as you spoke about the difficulty you have in even typing the word “masturbation”. I, for one, have positively stuttered at the word, and it wasn’t until the internet arrived, and I discovered other masturbators, that I was, gleefully, able to say it–over and over again! It is still a delight to type or speak, and I hope it will be for you. I relish the word, and would love to share it with you, as I’m sure many of us here would also.

We are masturbators, a special breed, perhaps, and we welcome you into the fold. I suppose also, that we are “weird” as you say–apart from normal, in how we spend our free time and private moments, as you said. We are a peculiar ‘bypass’ in the social landscape, in the bushes you could say, and it’s wonderful to meet others who also spend our private time alone in the bushes, too, and share our passion for masturbation.

Welcome. We are all shy about masturbation, in one way or another, and your shyness is very much enjoyed and appreciated, I’m sure.

Feel free to email me :)

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I am so glad that you took the time to introduce yourself to the group! OnaniaSupport is indeed a very friendly place where you will find people of just about every type of outlook and orientation but still all united by the need to discuss masturbation and desire to do it in a place where everybody treats others with respect.

As you read the posts here and, I hope, begin to participate in the discussion, I think you will find many that are at the same point you are and many more that have passed through it and can fully understand. While there is a lot of “gooning” type talk here, there is also plenty of what gives this group its name — support.

Finally for now, please know that you are just as welcome to join right in on the discussion as you are to lurk for however long you wish…and I hope you will enjoy being with this group and get a lot out of it. We are glad to have you with us!

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Kudos for the classy hello here and earlier on IM, wihotwispering , and thanks Pornagraphicus. It’s pretty cool to feel that you are welcome as part of a community of people (regardless of gender) going through the same things you are, It’s neat to have a place to casually ruminate on behaviors stigmatized in most other spheres of life, and now that I know this place exists it makes me a little more aware of what’s been lacking for me. More than a little of what I guess could be called the chronic masturbation condition could fairly be applied to my lifestyle. I don’t necessarily share some of the individual fixations or fantasies of the members here, but the over all theme I can more than relate to. I think most people don’t even really have the vocabulary to have a conversation about this subject, which can be isolating. For example, I can simply think of no way to tell my parents about my secret habit. If I were a lesbian, that would be quite literally no problem. I live in the east coast, and my mom’s a liberal. Break the news that I don’t come over for most family dinners because I’m sprawled out, sweaty and naked, reading sex stories online? Endlessly groping myself, tweaking my nerve endings using techniques practiced and perfected to an obsessive precision? Hard to see such a revelation looked on as anything other than some sort of failure on my part. And yet.. what’s been going on with my masturbation has become one of the most important aspects of my life and how I live it, but there is still no process for ever ‘coming out’ of the closet in a healthy way

I think the idea of being a ‘solosexual’ is a fascinating. I think until recently, the odds of such a preference developing in most people would have been low. From the industrial age which lead people to actually have leisure time to engage in such things at length, to the advent of photography, it seems like the dynamics for sexual fantasy and pleasure have changed immeasurably and irreversibly from where they stood for most of our history and evolution as a species. You mention the internet helping you make peace with masturbation, but for me at least, it was the presence of the home computer that lead me to focus my sexuality primarily on nights of fevered self stimulation, all the while failing to mature romantically. At school, I’d feel weird and embarrassed about not being chaste, about having this thing I did at home that I couldn’t ever really tell anyone about, and so I’d avoid flirting with boys. I was sure that my self pleasure (which I just somehow knew must have been more frequent or intense than what my friends were doing) was going to leave me sexually damaged somehow, and I wouldn’t be able to enjoy sex with a boy or do it right, and I was terrified of being embarrassed in that way. I’d socialize with friends, but the idea of dating felt like an alien concept, something doomed to failure and to be avoided. I made clear through my awkwardness that I wasn’t looking to date. When no one would ask me out, I’d of course go home and masturbate instead. I had male friends, and we’d hang out sometimes, and it almost went somewhere once.. but in the end I went through highschool a virgin. These days, to tell the truth I’ve ceased to socialize or seek out romance with others at all. My physical and emotional connection and focus on the act of masturbation overwhelms any drive I have to seek out a partner. There is part of me that keeps toying with the idea of trying to change that, but I’m 24 and it’s not happened yet. I’ve now had sex, but it has never once lived up to what I can achieve with my hands, some plastic and several hours alone in the dark. In the end, real sex just leaves me feeling dysfunctional

I think it’s an interesting social order playing out here, and from my readings of Richard’s work on the main Onania site. From what I can see, my take is that essentially because of the internet and the availability of fantasy imagery in fetish porn, there are many people who have found it more stimulating to engage their sexuality primarily through intense practiced self stimulation. As to whether or not it’s different for men, I don’t know. I don’t know how the need for a literal physical “release” might influence any potential for an addiction to masturbation to masturbation, or a preference for the act of masturbation over a normal human intercourse. I can only really speak about my own experience, but for me at least my sexual drive seems to be totally fixated on prolonging and extending *self* pleasure. There has always been a biological function for masturbation in the human species. It’s been there for thousands of years, but in my opinion only recently has it been positioned to become a fulfilling sexual focus in and of itself. I think, for some people certainly, they could enjoy a fufilling life and never have a significant other. Between free time and the internet, a person could reasonably lead a completely fufilling and rewarding sex life through masturbation alone

I read alot of cyber punk (well, all of William Gibson, anyway), and I am basically of the opinion that this kind of phenomena is not going away. I may personally struggle with my compulsion, but I am clearly not alone. I think as technology, 3D tech, ETC marches forward, a great many people will probably find themselves addicted to masturbation as well e

In the end though, there is a part of me that can’t help but feel a little ashamed by how powerless I’m feeling lately about how much time I spend masturbating. It used to be that it was just affecting my social life, but lately it’s also become simply my number one interest in life. For example, I love film. There have been so many new movies that have hit DVD that I have never gotten to. Videogames that I’ve never finished. My netflix subscription is seeing basically no traffic. I’d certainly have to say that it is how I spend most of my evenings. Some weeks, it’s how I spend every night. This night, actually, I managed to work towards finally finishing up a game I’ve been working on since May of last year. I did that after signing up for Onania. I am not saying I want to stop self pleasure, but maybe that’s a good sign!

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I’m sure you’ll fit in here just fine, and I’m glad you found us. For all of us I guess, masturbation plays a big part in our lives and for many of us, regardless of orientation or gender, it is our sex of choice whether solo or with others. The beauty of this group has always been that because Richard does not allow direct posting of pics or vids, our membership is a little more thoughtful than many masturbation groups, so we can develop a camaraderie as we celebrate all things being masturbatory.

I don’t think it is that unusual for either men or women to prefer masturbation to penetrative sex. Two or three weeks ago someone mentioned a book by Nancy Friday called ‘Women On Top’ about the role masturbation plays in many women’s lives. I remember reading it about 10 maybe 15 years ago and being struck by the number of women who said that their main sexual pleasure and satisfaction came from masturbation, even though many of them were married or in relationships which regularly involved sex. Many of the women said they did not get off on vaginal stimulation alone, and did not get enough clitoral stimulation from fucking to really enjoy themselves. Others reported that they did not want to be penetrated or that they preferred the sensuality of fantasising and masturbating alone so didn’t need men or indeed women for sex. It might be worth a read if you can get hold of a copy. I certainly found it eye opening and a useful guide to what women thought
about sex, as opposed to what we men thought women wanted. It also had the benefit of including quite a few of the women’s fantasies to wank to …

As far as the internet thing goes, I suppose it has made it easier to find each other so that we’re not so isolated and it is easier to access free porn, but I don’t think it has made much difference to me personally. I started to masturbate with a friend in 1963 and had my first full hand induced orgasm in 1965. I haven’t stopped since whether I’ve been in a relationship or not, so I was a masturbator long before the internet came into being.

Either way, I wouldn’t worry too much about preferring to masturbate than to date or socialise. If you are happy with what you are doing, then fine, it is nobody else’s business but yours. Happy masturbating!

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…, many women find their chief sexual satisfaction through masturbation. This is now known, because the taboos on admitting to, or at least authors writing about, female masturbation, have decreased somewhat. I would love to see a good study going back before the “Sexual Revolution” to see how many women were frequent masturbators. My guess is that those who knew about it did it often :)

I think it’s really interesting, the idea that the cyber age allows for more serious masturbators to arise. In a way, it seems like you’re saying we are masturbating more now–because we can! I’m sure there’s much truth to that, though I’m sure there were passionate, devoted masturbators stretching back through history. The taboos of ‘coming out’ as a masturbator are so strong, even today (as you note), that forming a true idea of the extent of serious masturbatory sex is very difficult.

We do know, in our own ‘oral histories’, of the men who frequented dirty book stores. Surely many of them spent hours with book in one hand and penis in the other. I met some as a teen, and, looking back, I related to them as kind of mentors.

Women did not have the luxury of bookstores to fulfill their yearnings, at least until recently. My lady friend/masturbatrix discovered prolonged and serious masturbation in her forties when she came across a trashy novel. Her masturbation was significantly aided by the advent of the internet, and then by eBay, where she could buy “series” sex novels virtually by the pound, to be consumed in uninterrupted weekends of continuous masturbation.

I would agree that sex does not, except in rare instances, compare to masturbation, though the emotional contact can be wonderful. Many, many women have discovered that, and more and more are open about it.

In college, I became friends with two Latvian roommates who came from very conservative and protective cultural circles. After many coffee chats after class, the then a couple of dinners at their apartment, they admitted to curiosity about masturbation–not for women, but men–and I willingly shared my considerable knowledge.

What floored me was that these otherwise shy and blushing girls had been masturbating themselves since their early teens–initiated by older women (an aunt and a family friend) who considered masturbation essential for a happy marriage! Sexual satisfaction would surely not be found from husbands, they believed, and to ward off sexual dissatisfaction and unhappiness and/or affairs, it was best, their aunts had taught them, to find fulfillment by their own hand (or each others).

I think that for the men here, as for you, our desire is to prolong and heighten our self-pleasure, and often intercourse interferes with that. Though it’s true that men can find ‘release’ more reliably than women through intercourse, self-pleasure goes way beyond simple release, and extending and increasing our ability to self-pleasure is extremely rewarding.

I have a very great fondness–passion, really–for women who are committed to masturbation, and I’ve had relationships that were masturbation-only between us, and they were the most erotic that I’ve ever experienced.

Or at least one was. Another was extremely sweet, but less neurotic. A girl I had a crush on was treated badly by a boyfriend, abused, and she stopped dating. Mutual friends tried to set us up, as we always had an attraction. It worked, in a way. She had spent over a year masturbating for a couple of hours every night, and was loathe to have sex. She was fearful and embarrassed to say she didn’t want to have sex, but when I convinced her it was ok, I was invited to share her bed for the night.

We talked, and she ‘confessed’ to her serious masturbation habits, and after lots of snuggling, we quietly masturbated and fell asleep. This continued for about three months, before she felt like she wanted to have sex, which we did a few times, somewhat to her disappointment. She had also ‘awakened’ to other boys, and began dating a guy who fucked her much harder than this masturbator ever could, and soon she was spending all her time at his place. Perhaps if she were as devoted to masturbation as you, we would be masturbating together still.

Such is the lot of many masturbators. I have a theory that we occupy a special place in society, somewhat like eunuchs, as the uninhibited digesters of the unconscious sexual energy of society, that somehow we are absorbing and grounding the rampant sexual energy around us. We are relied upon as safe and trusted ‘companions’ but not as objects of sexual gratification.

Certainly most of us here at Onania feel ashamed and powerless at our masturbation. For some, that in itself is a stimulant, sometimes a key to masturbatory abandon. ‘Solosexual’, is defined in many ways, most of them according to who touches your body parts. I like to think more of what truly stimulates us as masturbators. For myself, and many here, our focus is on the act of masturbation ITSELF, and although we are stimulated by porn, porn is solely an adjunct to our essential focus of masturbation.

We all struggle with our other commitments, social, familial, and to our own well-being. It’s important to find balance, and it’s also important to fully explore and experience fulfillment through auto-eroticism. You’ve come to the right place :)

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thanks for the welcome and glad to hear you’re feeling better. I was sorry to see that you’d been hospitalized? I’ll have to look into the book you mentioned, but it’s comforting to know that my viewpoint is relatable to a wide variety of people. I meant to get back here to post earlier, but didn’t… This reply may be a little disjointed. Their are two reasons for that. The first is that I’d initially intended to write it around 5PM. I got home from a talk therapy appointment this afternoon, made lunch, and played videogames. I told myself that I’d complete the last two levels of RED DEAD REDEMPTION which I’ve been putting off due to an OCD need to complete every last bit of the game before I complete the story. I’ve not touched the game in months, and want to get it out of the way. I’ve not been able to sit down and complete the task though, because I continue to be distracted with an activity I find much more compelling than any other. Still though, today I was going to play the game, write up a post here, finish the game and then watch a movie. That was my aspiration for this evening, at least. At five PM I flipped on the computer, ready to boot up the group to post.. but I decided first to spend what I told myself would be “10 minutes” looking at other material in order to heighten my mood and openness. That was at Five. I’ve just now finally decided to put my hands back on the keyboard and type this up.. and it’s 9 42 PM. Where did my night go? I need to go cook dinner now, and there is no time for a movie. The bed has a great sweaty wet spot soaked into the mattress, and I feel sticky and uncomfortable. My hair is limp and feels greasy. There is a part of me that has to look back at the previous four plus hours of masturbation and feel, well, digusted is not the right word.. but perverted might be. I wrote some notes down earlier on my ipod (while I was waiting around for my talk therapy.. where of course I mentioned none of this, instead only talking vaguely about a general inability to use my freetime productively) about things I wanted to say, and I’m going to reference those and expand upon them here a bit to tell my story and help you understand my relationship to self pleasure. Through careful private stimulation and a compelling fantasy, I am able to achieve sexual pleasure that dwarfs anything I’ve ever achieved in coupling with another person. I have mapped out my nerve endings in an exacting manner, and my ability to control my pleasure at this point feels more like an art than anything else. Penetrative sex can feel OK, but there is simply no comparison and I get hung up on all the ways the experience is somehow less than what I have with myself in private. A fantasy can be perfect, and used to reach incredible heights in masturbation. I’ll just come out and say that I enjoy BDSM fantasies to a certain degree. My own limited experiences in trying to live out such fetish stuff with other people is never satisfactory. I’m glad to have experimented so I have some idea of what the sexual act feels like, but it’s always awkward and doesn’t feel quite right for me. I used to think my masturbation was just psyching myself up to go out and become a submissive or something, but I’ve come to realize that thinking about it is simply a more rewarding experience than living it as a lifestyle. Everything that doesn’t quite meet my expectations about real life sexual exploration drives me back to the perfection of my fantasy rather than to apply myself in finding a more ideal sex partner (“the one”). My sexual history seems like a closed chapter in my life now, and serves only as elaborate masturbation fodder. It’s like it happened to another person. Getting back home, after a night out, was always the best part of it anyway. Stripping off and masturbating over how “naughty”/”slutty”/whatever I’d been.

Technology and it’s impact on our culture fascinates me. I think the crazy availability of porn has changed the game, though no doubt there are some people predisposed to such pursuits even without a world wide web. For me at least, the tech revolution lead to early accessibility of intense fantasies so powerful that the normal desires that our culture imprints on us (family, companionship, ETC) had no chance to compete. I have not had sex in two years, and at this point my need for the bliss I’ve found when I lose myself in my own nervous system has eclipsed my desire to seek out a real life sexual encounter. I don’t know when I’d ever have sex again, much less if. I can’t help but feel its tragic to just close the book on that part of my life at this age.. but I don’t know if that’s just society’s expectations speaking. Not everyone here might agree on the answer to that. This past fall I got in touch with a fomer “friend with benefits” to hang out one night, for the express purpose of just fooling around. I’d been feeling a little lonely, and bored with my routine. There are certain sensations, such as deep kissing, and getting my neck and ears sucked which are incredibly powerful for me, and sometimes I just want to enjoy that thrill of being nude around another person and feel some of the stuff that can’t be reproduced in a superior fashion when I’m on my own (unlike penatrative sex). I’d not been with another person intimately at all for a long time before that, but the thing is though that whenever I have had a hook up, it always feels more like I’m fulfilling some sort of itch than engaging in a meaningful pursuit. My passion, compulsion and addiction is for achieving ever greater and longer private pleasure, and I have no clue if that will ever change for me

I have some social anxieties these days, which, yes, perhaps relate to some of the isolation my habit has brought me. The truth is though that I don’t want to be desired or thought of as a sexual being by others. I don’t want to have those awkward moments with guys where they’re trying to engage me to see if I’d be open to something more than casual chat, and I need to walk the line between politeness and discouragement. I think that solosexuality may be a legitimate orientation, but it does also come hand in hand (for some people at least) with a failure to find a place in hte normal social order. I think privacy is important, but I wish there was a way to just let people know that you just essentially were not interested in coupling, and it just wasn’t a part of your life. Then it would feel a little bit less like you were failing to meet the expectations for how a full and normal person was supposed to live

Just my take

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Thanks for the deeply thought and felt posting! There are so many good passages, I’ve felt the need to excerpt a few here…

First, a very sexy one….

<<I told myself would be “10 minutes” looking at other material in order to heighten my mood and openness. That was at Five. I’ve just now finally decided to put my hands back on the keyboard and type this up.. and it’s 9 42 PM. Where did my night go? I need to go cook dinner now, and there is no time for a movie. The bed has a great sweaty wet spot soaked into the mattress, and I feel sticky and uncomfortable. My hair is limp and feels greasy. There is a part of me that has to look back at the previous four plus hours of masturbation and feel, well, digusted is not the right word.. but perverted might be.>>

…as a pervert, I know the feeling, and I’ve read this passage over and over and find it very arousing. As I mentioned, there is an erotic charge to admitting to one’s perversion….

…This also, is very sexy to me…

<<Through careful private stimulation and a compelling fantasy, I am able to achieve sexual pleasure that dwarfs anything I’ve ever achieved in coupling with another person. …. Penetrative sex can feel OK, but there is simply no comparison and I get hung up on all the ways the experience is somehow less than what I have with myself in private. >>

…many of us here will agree with you on that, that the satisfactions of masturbation can far surpass ordinary sex. When women, especially, discover they are able “to achieve sexual pleasure that dwarfs anything I’ve ever achieves…” it’s a cause for celebration, and personally, I’m very aroused by it. There is a place for ‘coupling with another person’, but for me, I would say it’s in the social, not the sexual realm….

<<My sexual history seems like a closed chapter in my life now, and serves only as elaborate masturbation fodder. It’s like it happened to another person. Getting back home, after a night out, was always the best part of it anyway. Stripping off and masturbating over how “naughty”/”slutty”/whatever I’d been.>>

….so many of us agree with you, and I certainly, almost invariably, masturbated after dates–even after orgies. As masturbators, or solosexuals, our primary interest is autoerotic. As to whether you have closed a chapter, I’ll speak as your perverted uncle–there are many chapters to cum!….

<<…whenever I have had a hook up, it always feels more like I’m fulfilling some sort of itch than engaging in a meaningful pursuit. My passion, compulsion and addiction is for achieving ever greater and longer private pleasure, and I have no clue if that will ever change for me>>

…I’ve chatted with many people who have embraced the masturbatory “lifestyle”. Often, after separating from a partner, women discover satisfaction they never thought possible, and loose interest in pursuing men for sexual pleasure and all the complications that come with it. Many men feel the same way. I think, for various reasons, some of us are predisposed to masturbation, quite early, and there is a path to discovering that. You are in some ways fortunate to have embraced your predilection early in life….it’s so much more fun!….

<<I think that solosexuality may be a legitimate orientation, but it does also come hand in hand (for some people at least) with a failure to find a place in hte normal social order. I think privacy is important, but I wish there was a way to just let people know that you just essentially were not interested in coupling, and it just wasn’t a part of your life. Then it would feel a little bit less like you were failing to meet the expectations for how a full and normal person was supposed to live.

…..there are many niches in the social order, most of them small, and we have ours. It’s really a shame, though, that we masturbators can’t advertise or broadcast our preferences.

For men, the role of masturbator in society often takes us out of the category of “real men”. I’m very interested in how male masturbators are often the safe, “nice guys” that women will confide in, but don’t consider sexually. We lust after women from a distance, knowing we will never “have” them, and also knowing that even if we could have them, our own masturbation will be superior to what we might enjoy in bed with them.

Women who masturbate, in my experience, often exude an eroticism that is strong and undeniable, stemming both from their sexually stimulated bodies and from their sexual independence, I believe. I’m curious about the social role of such women, it seems less distinct than for male masturbators. Women masturbators that I’ve known, and worshipped, are often ‘slutty goddesses’ in their persona, and I’ve known them to frequently ‘mentor’ male masturbators, perhaps because of what you say, that a woman who’s not interested in hooking up does not meet average expectations, and so find companions in male masturbators, who do not demand anything more than the opportunity to masturbate, and, perhaps, to share fantasies.

One final word, about masturbation and submissiveness. We are submissive to masturbation. To the shame and perversion of it, to the uncontrollable eroticism of it. For me, that is a gateway to further submissive experience.

just sayin’

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Indeed, of the several women that I was sexually involved with in my life, all confided to me that they could only orgasm from direct clitoral stimulation and I always made sure to provide that, usually before any penetration occurred. In fact that seems so natural to me, expecting that a woman might orgasm without direct clitoral stimulation seems to me like expecting that a man might orgasm without direct penis stimulation – perhaps not impossible but highly unlikely.

Sadly many women are shy about confessing that to be satisfied they need more than just “intercourse”.

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Sorry I neglected to connect last night. You’ve all written such insightful and lengthy posts, it can be a bit intimidating to sit down and attempt a full response. I don’t like to just toss off a quick message when others in the group seem to prefer to expound at length on the subject at hand, but that also means that sometimes I’d rather just not engage. It was clear that typing up a full response to the messages posted in reply to my introduction would have taken quite a bit of time last evening, and I just couldn’t let myself get bogged down in that part of my psyche for another night in a row. I’ve been feeling very powerless over my masturbation lately, and wanted to show myself I could hold off, even if only for a few hours if not an evening*. I’d rather not fight it, and it’s not like it’s not exquisite in the moment, but the fact is that those moments turn into minutes, and then hours, and before I know it it’s February 26th 2011, and I’ve spent the majority of every night of the new year touching myself. This past week? I’ve done virtually nothing else. My life has simplified to the point where there is only room for the most essential responsibilities and tasks. Masturbation has pushed everything else to the sidelines. I sleep. I eat (though probably not as often or as much as I should). I work.. and then I go home. As soon as I get there, my needs quickly overwhelm me. I can’t hope to break myself away once my masturbation starts. I know that many here live chronically addicted, and simply have to integrate this fiercely powerful compulsion into their lives, but it’s not always easy, and it can be a little dispiriting at times to feel so weak. It’s tough to get used to the idea that you’re living a life where virtually *all* of your time is going to be spent only on masturbation. I’d like to think of myself as a person with well rounded interests, but there is the ideal me I like to imagine, and the reality of how I conduct myself

Now.. masturbation *is* fun, and I think it’s perfectly acceptable to prefer it over sex with another person. As I’ve discussed before, it’s my firmly held belief that solosexuality is a legitimate orientation in it’s own right. However, solosexuality seems like a different issue entirely than the reality of having an addiction to masturbation. The two can go hand in hand but they are not always one in the same. You can be a hetrosexual married, with a family, or you could be a hetrosexual sex addict. You can be a masturbator who has managed to functionally integrate masturbation into a broader life, and you can clearly also be someone helpless to put any limits on your habit. The word addiction has negative connotations for many people, because of the destructive effects many traditional addictions are known to have. I guess any time you’re not able to control yourself, it can be interpreted as a failure of willpower, certainly. I don’t use the word to further stigmatize what’s already an sensitive subject for many people (I can see that for alot of guys, masturbation, or rather, the failure to find a sex partner or have sex in a way that satisfies a partner, seems to be firmly tied to their self worth, which has lead to feelings of inadequacy), rather it’s simply the most accurate label I can apply to my behavior. Lately, I’ve quite simply been unable to masturbate less. I’m not even trying to stop, but at this point I can’t seem to *start* without watching the hours melt away. It’s been a big part of my life for a long time, and to spend hours at a stretch dedicated to masturbation is not a new experience for me. Going back to middleschool I can remember sitting down at the computer to read sex stories a hundred pages long, all in one sitting. Masturbators spend time masturbating. Nothing inherently shameful about that, at least for those who understand that it can be it’s own orientation. What I’ve really been struggling with lately though is my inability to put any kind of limits on how much time I spend engaged in this pursuit. When I was first starting out as a masutrbator, it quickly became my normal way to end an evening. It was something that I made an effort to ‘fit in’ to my schedule, because it was fun. Time to kill before bed? Why not boot up the computer and see what’s brewing over on ASSTR? Wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep? Why not head downstairs for a longer hot shower in order to take advantage of the massaging shower head? Sure, it was causing me to develop profound hang ups about real sex, but it was still an enjoyable way to pass the time and in a way my little excursions to the world of fantasy were like a hobby. It was something I enjoyed, and I made room for it in my schedule along side other such enjoyable activities.

Bike riding! Skiing! Movies! Hanging out with friends! Each of these enriched my life, and I’d make the effort to spend time on my hobbies because they were fun. I may have been a masturbator, and was dealing with some private issues that not everyone can relate to, but it was just a part of who I was, not the whole kit and kaboodle. The thing is though, that as I’ve gotten older, the dynamics at play have been changing. As I’ve gotten better at it, masturbation has slowly become a compulsion. It used to be neat, but not necessarily so totally awesome that I could envision a day where it would be something I’d do to the exclusion of other activities that bring me pleasure. Being a masturbator used to mean that I’d have a cozy night at home rather than go to a party, but my solitary life was full of variety. I’d read and watch movies, talk with friends on IM, and then if the mood struck me, delve into into some sexy stories and videos to take care of my needs. It was a quiet, private way to live, but it worked for me. As I grew out of my teens, my anxieties about my failure to feel a desire for a relationship eventually lessened and I made peace with the idea that not everyone is cut out for such pursuits. I grew distant from my old friends, but to be honest it didn’t particularly bother me. I simply wasn’t available to socially engage the way they’d expect of a close friend, and so many people just kind of dropped off my radar.

Lonliness wasn’t a big problem, though by 2009 I was feeling a little frustrated. Frustrated not because I wasn’t spending my weekends at parties the way my peers did, but because while I could enjoy masturbation privately, it kind of sucks to be into film and not have anyone to talk about movies with. Like wihotwhisper says, connecting in some way with people has value, even if a sexually orientated connection is not what everyone wants. It’s sort of like how I feel about hooking up, I don’t want or need intercourse, but being kissed every once in a while can be nice.

So, long story short, I signed up for an online movie forum at a website I’d been reading for a long time. Though the clashes over matters of opinion can be turbulent at times, it was a wonderful thing for me at first. Suddenly I was able to choose exactly how I’d engage the other people around me. I could talk about anything that popped into my head (and alot pops in and out over the course of a day), without any sort of preasure whatsoever to engage on any subject that didn’t interest me. I could chat about the movies I’d seen the night before at work the next morning, and no one would feel any resentments if I chose not to check back in till the next day. I could pursue my interests (cinematic or pornographic) if the desire struck me, and I’d never have to worry about turning down an offer to hang out in order to make it possible. I’d finally found my groove in life, and was feeling better off for it.

The thing is though, that my need for masturbation continued to grow. Over the past long months, it’s moved from an activity that I did more than most normal people, to something I do more frequently than probably even most of those that idedentify as solosexual. I feel like since I gave up on the idea of achieving satisfaction from sexual intercourse, the pleasure I’ve received from my masturbation has only grown, and is now so powerful it’s hard to tell my mind that it should want to engage in any other activity. I may like film, and I really *do* want to get back to doing other things with my life, but once I am back home in private? It’s tough to act on that with any conviction. About three weeks ago I was kicked out of the movie forum (long standing tensions with certain members brewed over and became unworkable when those members were made mods), and since then my masturbation, which had already been more and more frequent and itense, has sky rocketed.

Reading some of what various people here have said, there seems to be some admiration for women who masturbate openly and regularly. Again, masturbation is 100% A OK. It’s normal, natural, and everyone does it. If you prefer it over other sex acts? That is your right, and a choice I personally can more than understand. I think it’s good that women can finally explore masturbation knowing that it’s not a “sin”, and rather simply a way of becoming more attuned to yourself and your body. I’d support anyone making the choice to explore this way. I have given and continue to give alot of credit to technology, but the era of social progress in which I grew up has as much to do with my sexual development as the easy availability of porn, at least on some level

Anyway, I can see that the gender dynamics of the world today can lead people to relate to such a choice differently, but in the end I think it’s perfectly healthy and normal. Don’t get me wrong: I certainly understand the power of sexual humiliation, and am familiar with how we tend to take our greatest anxieties and fears and sexualize them. It makes it easier to process and deal with difficult emotions, and it’s ultimately healthy I think. I don’t feel entirely comfortable looking down on male masturbators though. My own relationship with sex is so wrought with phobias and fixations and the like that anyone finding themselves unable to perform has my sympathy, and not my condemnation. I think that in the normal sexual dynamic, masturbators could perhaps find themselves deficient when it comes to the task at hand, but I don’t think that says anything about them as people. Just because a so called ‘alpha male’ guy can fuck (in the words of Bill Maher) with ‘vigor and velocity’, and does so with a woman who enjoys the same shouldn’t mean that anyone should have to feel inadequate if you can’t or don’t want to engage in sex yourself. Certainly society’s expectations inevitably come into play as we go about the world living our lives, and that is where sexual fantasy and sexual humiliation can come in, but I don’t think guys should be torturing themselves over what they’re missing out on. That’s just going to make you miserable

The role of a female masturbator is, as has been said, less defined. I can feel anxiety over my lifestyle, but it’s disconnected from the kind of judgments that have long been rendered about male masturbation. The idea that woman can masturbate is something people really only just became aware of, where as in our culture and I’d imagine across the species, the idea that a man who masturbates is failing to live up to his biological imperative is a bit more ingrained. It’s easy to bring a gender bias into your thinking on this subject, even if you’re open minded. Though I do feel humiliation related to my masturbation, and some of it can be sexually stimulating, those feelings are kind of vague and nebulous. I don’t feel that women who choose to have sex are somehow my betters, for instance. On some level I feel a perverse thrill from thinking about how abnormal my sexual life and history is, about how I’ve been subsumed by desires that to which I’d likely never been exposed if I’d been born 10 years sooner (our family got the internet in 1994). The idea of a man mocking me for my habits does nothing for me other than feel slightly uncomfortable. General degradation has an appeal, but specific masturbation related teasing is not something I’ve ever spent much time thinking about before. My tastes in sexual humiliation when it comes to masturbation are more broadly tied into my more general feelings of inferiority that have fueled my BDSM desires. I can understand how male masturbators have the fixations they do, and but I’m just kind of coming at it from a different place. I do feel a little unusual at times describing myself as a “masturbator”. Sure, I masturbate, and do it frequently, but somehow the word seems to be exclusively applied to describe a male role. Removed from the gender context though, it’s just a word that describes someone who engages in a certain behavior, and the implicit male pecking order value judgements don’t need to be part of it’s definition. In that spirit I’ve been making an effort here to use the word when discussing myself and my lifestyle. My masturbation isn’t any better or worse or classier than yours.

This is all basically a long way of saying that when I masturbate I don’t feel like I’m embracing a beauty or purity within myself. I don’t feel like a goddess. I am not sure if anyone here has seen AGORA, but it’s my favorite movie of 2010**.

— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agora_(film) —

In the film, the Greek philosopher Hypatia, portrayed by Rachel Weiz, studies astronomy and the curvature of the earth while spurning romantic entanglements and potential suitors. At first, she tells one guy that he should focus his attentions on a more beautiful mistress… his music. Later, when he presses her by presenting a gift to her in public, she responds by giving him a gift of her own in class the next day: a handkerchief spotted with menstrual blood

 

(from the film)

“You say that you’ve found the harmony in me, but I think there is little harmony or ‘beauty’ in that. Don’t you agree?”

 

Perhaps harmony can be found in masturbation — there are moments where it’s almost transcendent –, but I feel ill equipped to mentor anyone on the subject. I don’t feel like a goddess of any stripe, just a sweaty, awkward nerdy girl unable to control myself

That is what I am wrestling with, and yes wihotwhispering, I can’t help but find such a fact, when bluntly stated, arousing as well

OK Well that’s enough writing for now. Typing up this post managed to get me through most of my work day, so thanks, Onania! : P I look forward to discussing this more with you guys and in reading up on how men are dealing with this stuff. From a psychological/anthropological viewpoint, the differences in how people process this basic fact of their individuality (through fetishism, humiliation, genital fixation ETC) is nothing less than fascinating

PS EDITED this after work, and posted from home

*I wasn’t entirely successful. Once again I was up late masturbating, and spent several hours at it. I did finish the last 15 minutes of a movie I’d started a few nights ago (Del Torro’s CRONOS… which deserved much more attention than I gave it) and a few side missions I discovered I’d yet to complete in RDR. Tonight? Hopefully beat the game. One more Stranger mission, one Uncle mission and two Jack missions (the last of which is the final level of the game) and I’ll be able to put a period on the hundreds of hours I’ve invested into the game. It’s worth it though, check it out:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_FV3UIGV-iMA/S__ZPwGsuzI/AAAAAAAAAVw/lsD1hpDjOz0/s1600/RedDeadRedemption_01.jpg

*it came out in 2009 but I didn’t see it till it hit DVD in ’10 so I am catagorizing it as a 2K10 movie.. this is the kind of thing that lead to my banishment from the movie forum!

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Of course I write all that and then go on to conduct myself in a productive manner for the last few hours. Productive by the standard of my own limited ambition. It’s not been effortless, more like a moment to moment struggle not to just give in and start masturbating, and when I say I’ve been productive I’m not counting the time I took editing my post from earlier nor taking into account the fact I’ve still been absent mindedly touching myself of and on while I am engrossed in my game…. but still.. I do feel a little less overwhelmed by sexually charged sensations than I did before having putting my thoughts down. Post hoc ergo propeter hoc? Perhaps as you guys say, confession does indeed help!

 

— In OnaniaSupport@yahoogroups.com, “pellamac1986” <pellamac1986@…> wrote:
>

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Hi Katherine….thanks for sharing your thoughts and weaknesses with us. I’m very glad to have a woman’s perspective on masturbation and masturbation addiction.

We male masturbators had a great conference call this morning, very sexy and very thoughtful, both. I think it’s unfortunate that there are few places where masturbation is the focus that aren’t mostly populated by penises, because, really, masturbators are all the same–finding self-pleasure in their bodies.

One participant, who is gay, confessed, with some surprise, I think, he has been aroused by videos and pictures of women masturbating–their swollen nipples and obvious pleasure. I think that’s very understandable, and also quite wonderful. Perhaps solosexuality, in stepping outside the traditional roles, leaves more room for natural empathy.

Richard has said, many times, that chronic masturbation can be destructive. It’s a powerful compulsion–aside from the psychological component, there is a bio-chemical pleasure that can be addicting, and he’s talked with people who’ve lost their wives and jobs, just as if they were a drug addict.

It’s not any different from any other compulsion, and we all have to learn to live our lives as best we can. It’s certainly a life-long, perhaps THE life-long challenge we face, as masturbators and as people in a society that gives us many choices and possibilities for harm and good. Many people have hobbies that consume them, or are working ’til all hours, and newlyweds fuck all the time. Our patterns change, always.

My lady friend who discovered masturbation fairly late in life, and would spend nights and weekends in constant masturbation, now is very comfortable with daily, or less, visits to her toy cabinet, and occasional long sessions. I believe that, aside from addiction, that full, compulsive immersion in masturbation has many purposes, not least of which is, for those of us who are chiefly auto-erotic, to make the adjustment from the social roles we have adopted to our more personal, private, and stronger sexual predilection.

I would certainly never encourage you to mess up your life, but I would definitely encourage you to immerse yourself in your erotic pleasure. As you said, as you get better at masturbating, it becomes something you might want to do to the exclusion of other things, and that’s a bit frightening. You might also celebrate that you’ve found something that powerful, that touches your body/mind so deeply, and still recognize that it’s something that you need to gain power over in your life.

I have found women who instinctively understand and sympathize with the humiliation aspect of our masturbation, but none who really share it. In a general way, for both men and women, masturbation can be a role reversal. For men, it’s a shift to passively being stimulated, sitting and ‘being stroked’ rather than thrusting into a pussy. For women, it’s a shift from being passive and not in control, to being in complete control of what rubs against their body and goes inside their vagina–and what fantasies they can have.

When women embrace masturbation they take control of their sexuality. That is what I meant by goddess–a woman who is in control of her sexual power. Though you may see yourself as just a neurotic twenty-something trying to cope, you are already way ahead of most women who are spending all their waking hours, and a lot of money, trying to attract some guy to give them a lousy fuck. Perhaps neither of you has figured out what friends are for, but at least YOU can rule out sex, and that’s a very big step.

For men, the opposite happens, the shift to passivity in masturbation is a relinquishing of control. This can manifest, as it does for me and some others here, as a taste for humiliation. Rejection, after all, becomes an invitation–a license–to masturbate. It frees us from having to be alpha-males, and allows us to enjoy helplessness and passivity–and to engage in our personal eroticism and fantasy.

It’s true that many men (women too) turn to masturbation because they don’t have a partner. (This is especially, and delightfully, true of women who divorce). Not all men who don’t get lucky, though, become so enamored of masturbation. My own theory is that in some way we’re predisposed to auto-eroticism. I’ve had an active sex life, as many here also have had, but through it all, masturbation has been my real fulfillment.

As I shared this morning, when I met a girl who wanted me to only masturbate with her, light bulbs went off, and I was suddenly in heaven! I had always been a “masturbator”, and suddenly I could admit and accept that and I’ve never been happier, or felt more deeply, in my sex life. When I began to look back on my life, it became clear that (1) my central focus was masturbation and (2) although I had very loving relationships, full of sexual satisfaction, I never rang women’s bells in the way of the “alpha male”, and so, subtly or overtly, was treated as “just a friend”. That gentle relegation to the status of a performing eunuch actually fueled my erotic life, and still does.

The “masturbator” moniker has never been applied to women, but has always been used as a put-down for boys and men, and so it has a particular charge for us. Women are not immune to this–masturbation is not something women have talked about until recently, and, despite its popularity on “Sex in the City”, masturbation is still a taboo subject, and, accordingly, the word itself is an aphrodisiac, at least for men. I like the term “masturbatrix” for women. As we were laughing about this morning, “masturbator” is not an official word for spell-checkers. Masturbation exists, but, apparently, is never practiced.

We’ve talked here of other words to describe ourselves. Solo-sexual has the advantage of simplicity, but it’s used so much in contrast to having sex with someone else and is really just a social definition. A “solo-sexual” might just masturbate quickly every night before bed and prefer that to the messy business of sex. For me, it doesn’t begin to describe the depths of fantasy and erotic stimulation that many of us here have discovered.

I prefer the term autoerotic, which carries an implication of arousal and satisfaction coming without external stimulus at all, arising within oneself. Everything you’ve described seems to fit into this category–the discovery of depths of arousal and satisfaction arising from your fantasies, and your careful erogenous pleasure.

When we say that the sex we’ve had is fodder for our masturbation, aren’t we really saying that it’s the starting point for autoeroticism? We can have sex with others–satisfying sex even–but it doesn’t compare with what we can achieve ourselves. We may still want to share sex with others–and turn them on to what’s possible. It might not be as ‘great’ as we have alone in our rooms, but could be wonderful nonetheless, and we are still, at root, autoerotic.

One summer in high school, I worked the night shift in a food processing plant, right next to an attractive Latina immigrant. After a week, me being who I am, and having little else in common with her, the subject turned to sex, and over the course of a few weeks, I told her how to masturbate, as well as how to pleasure her husband. She would come to work positively beaming! She took to masturbation like a natural and totally got into her fantasies, and her body, and every day told me new things she’d discovered and fantasies that had surfaced. That would not have happened with many, or perhaps most, people–she was a natural autoerotic, a natural masturbatrix.

Out in the marketplace, people are shopping for others to give them pleasure. You have found, in a quiet corner, that greater pleasure can be achieved by yourself. Not just by being alone, but by bringing out what’s in yourself. It’s a very powerful discovery, and takes a while to understand, and control, and to be able to share with others.

I hope you’ll use this opportunity to share your experiences as a masturbatrix, and to both control and deepen your autoerotic potential.