Manhood
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He relates how he took his frustration out on his own body: I had lost her really; and the frenzy with which I revenged my fault upon myself, by assaulting in various frantic ways my physical nature, in order to inflict some hurt on my moral nature, contributed very much to the bodily maladies under which I lost some of the best years of my life: indeed, I should perchance have been completely ruined by this loss, had not my poetic talent here shown itself particularly helpful with its healing power.
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Does everyone do it?
In the media it is claimed that everyone does it, but that’s not true.
Scientific research by G. Van Zessen and T. Sandfort published in 1991
showed that 18 per cent of men and 45 per cent of women never masturbate.
Nowadays most sex manuals suggest that masturbation is a good way of discovering your own body, and helps an adolescent to be better prepared when he or she starts having sex with a partner. This implies that masturbation is fine, but unnecessary once one has a relationship.
Based on changes in sexual attitudes in the last few decades it is assumed that in general masturbation no longer poses a problem. However, large-scale surveys among young people of upbringing, sexuality and early childhood experiences reveal that just under half of young people under sixteen have had concerns about it, occasionally or more often. Analysis of interview clips shows that the concerns can be grouped in four categories: guilt feelings, fear of disease, and doubts and uncertainty due to ignorance. These categories can easily be traced back to the traditional myths about masturbation. All this takes place against a background awareness that, in short, solo sex is becoming more and more popular. Who could have imagined thirty years ago that the sexual revolution would implode into mass masturbation at one’s own computer? Only forty years ago many boys were ticked off when their mothers had trouble getting their sheets clean. How many of those parents, themselves brought up as children of the sexual revolution, prepare their own sons or daughters for what awaits them in puberty with a nice friendly chat? That might prevent a few years of guilt feelings. Why not simply say that masturbation is a ‘normal’
activity?
In A Conspiracy of Dunces the American writer John Kennedy Toole (1937–1969) describes how pleasant and satisfying it can be. The novel is set in New Orleans and tells the story of Ignatius J. Reilly, an unforgettable, Quixotic protagonist: overweight, burping, terrorizing those around him intellectually. His insufferably arrogant character, together with the unimaginable aura of bodily odours than envelops him, has not brought him much success in job interviews. But when he does land a job at Levy Pants, he organizes a wildcat strike and is fired; he ends up as a hotdog seller. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide at the age of 32, and A Conspiracy of Dunces appeared posthumously in 1980, thanks to the efforts of the author’s mother. In the following passage Ignatius reflects on the place of masturbation in his life: 252
s p i l l i n g o n e ’ s s e e d Ignatius touched the small erection that was pointing downward into the sheet, held it, and lay still trying to decide what to do. In this position, with the red flannel nightshirt around his chest and his massive stomach sagging into the mattress, he thought somewhat sadly that after eighteen years with his hobby it had become merely a mechanical physical act stripped of the flights of fancy and invention that he had once been able to bring to it. At one time he had almost developed it into an art form, practicing the hobby with the skill and fervor of an artist and philosopher, a scholar and a gentleman.
A survey of 2003 showed that for both men and women in the area of sexual taboos, self-gratification stands incontestably at number one.
Erection problems and sexually transmitted diseases were at numbers two and three respectively. Women tend to talk more openly but in the case of masturbation they find it more difficult than men (47% as opposed to 32%). Masturbation is certainly not a standard topic of conversation. Is it perhaps that there is so little of interest to be said about it? One may wonder if it comes under the heading of sex at all.
For a while it was fashionable in America to tell young people in sex manuals that masturbation is a safer option than sex. This is a sop to sweeten a recommendation of abstinence, and of course it doesn’t work. One activity has simply nothing to do with the other. Whatever one may understand by sex, it is at least something social, while masturbation goes in the direction of private grooming activities like picking scabs or squeezing spots.
Taboos are things one doesn’t talk about with others in one’s immediate environment, either because one is ashamed or because it isn’t done to talk about them. The respondents in the above-mentioned survey were also asked what taboo in modern society should no longer be a taboo. And the result in respect of masturbation? Only 8 per cent of women and 16 per cent of men felt the taboo should go. Conclusion: the taboo on masturbation will therefore remain. Is that so terrible? I don’t think so. When all’s said and done, a little sperm does get spilt.
And don’t let’s forget the trees felled for the millions of paper tissues!
‘Can masturbation harm you? No. Does it do you good? Just for a second. But apart from that it’s a rather silly occupation,’ as a colum-nist once put it. ‘Silly – like wolfing down a cake or a snack – and calling it supper.’ Who’s to argue with her?
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chapter ten
Women
As a remedy against the temptations of the flesh the Buddhists devised a meditation in which they imagined woman’s body as a bag of filth.
Medieval ascetics viewed woman as ‘a temple built above a sewer’, and St Augustine said: ‘Woman is the gate of hell.’ If one takes these words literally many men have entered hell down the ages, at any rate too many for them all to be damned. Perhaps it is precisely those who failed to enter the gate who wind up there. Perhaps the abstainers have most to hide, who is to say?
Abnormalities at the gate
Certain physical abnormalities in the woman – abnormalities at the gate – can cause impotence. J. Smit, in his Manual for Men and Women Suffering from Impotence, Infertility and Other Mechanical Sexual Disorders (1810), formulates the problem as follows: Aristotle is right: fat ladies have too little charm, are too cold-blooded, their ovaries, encased in excessive fat, complicate the release of an ovum, the plastic lymph is too sticky and in addition the fat belly with its mass of bulging lard-like foothills prevents the male member from penetrating deeply enough.
Lean food, exercise, gardening, short periods of sleep, and mental activity is the best advice. Mustard, although it is the most powerful agent for melting fat away, has too great a weakening effect on the digestive system, breaks down calcium in the blood to too great an extent, and becomes detrimental to health.
Meanwhile examples have frequently been seen of portly ladies giving birth to several children; however, they find child-254
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birth very hard. For the rest, a cul de Paris, or a well-stuffed cushioned pillow, can provide a great deal of relief.
Too narrow a vagina, natural or acquired, can also cause problems.
When a gynaecologist operates on a prolapse, he or she will make sure that the vagina remains at least two fingers wide, the approximate thickness of the average penis. Smit wrote of the naturally narrow vagina:
Too narrow a sheath, as is sometimes found in very delicate, thin women, makes intercourse painful, unpleasant and fruit-less. In one case, where after several attempts over nine months the well-endowed man was able to penetrate only as far as the glans, the couple were obliged by pain on both sides to cease all further attempts. Dr Thilenius ordered an injection of almond oil morning and evening and left an easily extractable, four-inch-long piece of sponge, which had been coated with oil, in the vagina.
Men who are equipped with an exceptionally strong glans, may be congenial to women of experience, but until deflora -
tion, for the pleasure of young innocent
girls, they are very unsuited. If the young husband encounters such a distressing situation, it is permissible for him to prepare the way with his finger.
With his surfeit of male sex hormone and high stress levels the man lives on average a few years less than the woman. Many men are dependent on a woman not only for their birth, but also for geriatric care. An unknown Englishman once wrote: ‘Without this good friend
[the woman] the dawn and evening of life would be helpless, and its mid-day without pleasure.’
Women receive the fertilizing sperm, help the embryo develop and bear our children. However you put it, reproduction is closely linked to love, loving, sexuality. In all kinds of ways women are the experts.
Not so long ago some women in the Bandjoema tribe had an important role to play in this respect. Before a young man was granted the right to marry, he had to take a sexual exam. The young man had to prove that in marriage he would be able to do his reproductive duty.
The female examiner, called a sentondang, had to give a report to the father. Such reports were usually formulated as follows: ‘Father, your son is a complete man.’ If she did not consider the test successful and wanted a ‘resit’, she said: ‘Father, I can’t say much yet.’ What wisdom in such a culture! Things are very different with some Western women.
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My former partner once told me very vividly how her grandmother prized the sexual performance of her grandfather, who was then nearly eighty. Granny said: ‘He still wants it every week, but there’s not much left, you know. He almost has to shove it in with a fork.’
A former gp told me about a very respectable widower who late in life met a strapping Flemish woman. He married her, but unfortunately he proved to be impotent. Time after time she made fun of him and belittled him to his face. On one occasion she said: ‘Shall I do a hand-stand, so you can hang it in there.’ The gp referred the man to a famous sexologist, with a letter of referral in which he wrote that the wife was
‘stiffening his lack of resolve’. Of course there are also men who talk deprecatingly about their wife’s genitals. Generations of feminism and political correctness have not yet ousted ‘cunt’ as a term of abuse (for both sexes) in English.
The art of seduction
In our culture many men tend to ‘instrumentalize’ sexuality: they concentrate on certain parts of the body rather than the whole woman.
Women generally focus more on the man as a ‘person’, and the vast majority find it hard to give themselves unless they have been touched emotionally. One cannot say it often enough: in contrast to what men may think, most women are basically not that interested in the penis, not even in that of their sexual partner. No more than a third find the dimensions of the penis important and then, whatever men may think, what matters is the girth, not the length. The crucial thing is that the glans should be clean. Some women, whether lesbian or not, have long since replaced the penis with a pipette full of sperm. ‘Penis-centred’
men – known in sexological jargon as ‘pistils’ – do not interest them at all. Strangely enough, in the plant world pistils are female and stamens male!
Modern men are rather poor at seduction, at the ritual of courtship that precedes lovemaking. Going straight up to a woman and telling her you think she’s sexy, a turn-on, fit, etc., isn’t seduction. Nor is delug-ing her with love letters, phone calls, bunches of flowers or invitations to candlelit dinners. Nor are long walks on the beach, although it is beginning to look like it. In the 1990s a gay newspaper summed up the ideal (for gays?):
It is letting desire develop, like a slowly germinating plant, the seed of which was planted without anyone noticing. Then you cultivate that desire, water the plant, but ensure that there is still an edge of thirst. You let it grow, fertilize it, prune it and 256
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whisper sweet words to the emerging blossom, and all without the plant knowing. Then, when the day has arrived, the bud bursts open and the flower turns towards the light. And lo and behold: the plant comes towards you, it gyrates with pleasure on your windowsill and offers you everything that you could never have obtained by asking. That is real seduction.
The psychologist Erick Janssen asked both male and female test subjects to put a number of ‘separate’ components of a lovemaking session in what they considered to be the normal order: stroking of the breasts, removing underpants/panties, kissing, undoing bra, intercourse, fellatio, etc. The replies of men and women, as expected, corresponded almost exactly. Next the subjects were asked to give the separate components a rating, indicating the degree of arousal per component. It was found that in men the degree of arousal ran in parallel with the
‘normal’ order (on which men and women were agreed). With the female test subjects, however, this was not the case: with components where in accordance with the ‘normal’ sequence they were expected to do something with the penis (take your pick), the arousal level plunged!
It would appear that most women are really not that interested.
So is the penile erection redundant? No! Though one might almost be inclined to think so, especially when reading women’s magazines, according to which women have a distinct preference for men who are both empathetic and good listeners. They adore household chores and the children, while remaining sexually faithful and in bed are devoted to their wives. They have a natural aversion to porn and aggression, feel no need for power and attach no importance to winning or being proved right. In short: a pretty weird collection of qualities for the average man. The articles confirm the stereotypical image that women do not go for strong, potent men. Intercourse, they would have us believe, scores very low on the female list of priorities. The journalist Sarah Verroen believes that is all nonsense. She conducted her own tv survey on the ideal lover. Thirty women from the fields of art, science, journalism and prostitution were approached about taking part in this – it must be said, totally unrepresentative – mini-survey.
The results were striking. In answer to the question of what women found most satisfying sexually, 29 of the 30 women put a cross against
‘a good, hard fuck’, and one chose ‘extended lovemaking with lots of attention to my needs’, while no one found ‘vanilla sex’ appealing. 24
of the 30 wanted ‘bold, knows what he wants and what you want’,
‘dominant and a bit of a brute’ had five crosses against it, while ‘tender and completely focused on your desires’ was chosen by only one woman. Verroen decries the wishy-washy taste of vanilla sex and makes 257
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it clear that at least some women are in favour of making love with men with a firm erection, of the phallus with its male attributes of effective -
ness, power and penetration. In her view eroticism exists by the grace of generosity: it is the smouldering flame that unexpectedly catches fire.
The new impotence
In the early 1970s there was talk of the ‘new’ impotence. Partly because of advances in medical science in the preceding two decades the 1970s were to be the age in which the women’s movement would demand equal sexual rights. Women began making demands on intercourse. It wasn’t a matter of quantity as it had been for the Queen of Aragon (who demanded sex six times a day), but of quality. The annoying thing was that many men proved unable to cope and replied with impotence.
The world gradually became feminized, and women started laying down the rules. Some men no longer knew what it meant to be a man, and became totally confused. Some of feminist demands were indeed baffling. One moment the man had to overpower the woman, but the next caress her tenderly. But, and here comes the crunch, the man had to intuit for himself when to adopt which strategy: For that moment when they enter Ela, men feel in control, for it is their erection which excites her. That glory evaporates as they get busy deciding what tempo to follow, which parts of her body are most sensitive, how to use their muscles, weight, skin and memory to satisfy her, how long it takes her to com
e, how to time their orgasm to coincide with hers. They blank out their pleasure to concentrate on hers. They delay their sensations and carefully plan to start with a bit of finger and tongue.
This is how Greek-born feminist Eurydice Kamvisseli puts it in her novel F/32 (1990).
Like today’s liberated women, medieval witches, as previously mentioned, were accused of causing impotence. They did it with a ligature.
That is, the art of putting a knot in the lace of a man’s breeches which led the man to become impotent through a kind of transferable magic.
Preferably it should be done at the time the marriage was celebrated.
This involved the witch pronouncing a magic formula, after which the lace was hidden. At the same time the witch threw two coins over her shoulder, as a symbol of the disabled testes. The impotence continued until the unfortunate victim found the lace, failing which the impotence was permanent.
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In the seventeenth century this ritual provoked such violent terror in certain areas of France that many couples had their marriage solemnized at night or in a neighbouring village, in order to avoid the knotting of the lace. The seventeenth-century Dutch poet and moralist Jacob Cats mentions in his Touchstone for the Wedding Ring how a certain Martin Guerre ‘was incapable for a full eight or nine years of paying his wife the due attentions; and that because of certain evil arts that in France are called the knotted lace’. Witches could also bring about impotence with the aid of magic potions, and could reverse the process in the same way, making them excellent sex therapists.
Undoubtedly the same applies to today’s liberated women: men badly need these modern witches! It is no longer the case that men are keener on sex than their female partners, or that women stare at the ceiling and make mental shopping lists during sex. Women want an orgasm, preferably two or three in succession, the way the women’s magazines promise them so temptingly. ‘And this is precisely when men are more and more often turning off in bed, and would sooner bury their head in a book than in her bosom,’ as a feminist once wrote.