Dr. Joseph Winchester - Pulling it off: masturbation practices of 191 mid-western American boys

PULLING IT OFF

Masturbation Practices of

191 Mid-Western American Boys

Dr. Joseph Winchester

ebook by the Ghost

Copyright 1987 by Joseph Winchester, PhD.

First edition published in December, 1987 in The Netherlands.

Cover design and painting by Mario de Graaf.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio or television review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system.

Acolyte Press

Postbus 12731

1100 AS Amsterdam-Z0

The Netherlands

CIP-GEGEVENS KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK,

DEN HAAG

Winchester, Joseph

Pulling it off / Joseph Winchester. - Amsterdam :

Acolyte Press

ISBN 90-6971-009-9

SISO 308.15 UDC 392-055.3

Trefw.: homoseksualiteit ; mannen.

Publisher's Note

One day in the spring of 1987 a letter came through the post to The Acolyte Press from a man calling himself Dr. Joseph Winchester. He said that for some twenty years he had been working on a professional study of masturbation in boys but, despairing of it ever seeing the light of day in his native United States, he had decided to send it to us in the hope that we could publish it as a popular paperback. There was no return address. Obviously the writer was frightened of the American authorities and was taking no chances that his manuscript and the events it describes would be connected with him.

Several months later the study itself arrived on a computer diskette - again without a return address and with no information about the author except for what he provided in his introduction.

It is tragic that in the United States today no responsible research can be done openly on the sexuality of children, a circumstance which has allowed psychologists and psychiatrists to write volumes of unauthenticated nonsense, to society's great detriment. Empirical support for any commentary on child sex simply cannot be mustered; researchers would be thrown into prison if they tried to find out what boys between the ages of 10 and 15 really think and really do about sex. Any project like the one described in this book would have to be carried out in secret, at the expense of, and great risk to, the investigator, and when the data were written up they would never be accepted for publication by the established professional journals.

That raises the question of this study's authenticity. There was no way we could verify the tapings and the notes upon which this report presumably is based. No one can check on whether the person using the name of Dr. Joseph Winchester really carried out this work or whether it is in part or wholly fantasy. It seems only fair to the reader that we mention this. All too many books have appeared on sexual behavior pretending to be authentic, objective, well researched, introduced by "authorities" with line sounding titles, when in reality they have been nothing more than opinionated screeds. (the recent rash of "child sex abuse" paperbacks immediately springs to mind) or erotic fantasies posing as "research". This study, if it is fantasy, at least makes good reading. The data as recorded, what the boys are reported to have said, sounds right. If boys aren't doing and saying this kind of thing in America today they should be - or they would be if they werent too frightened. Whatever the provenance of this manuscript, we feel that its author, whoever and wherever he might be, has provided us with a vivid picture of an activity which, for a few years, is of intense, intimate concern to every male. Perhaps in the final analysis that is what is most important.

Introduction

At first glance it would not seem too risky, or too difficult, to investigate masturbation in boys. Surely, one would think, this is a research field which must have attracted the energies of amateur enthusiasts and professionals alike, and that is perfectly true if one only considers older teenagers. A number of studies exist of masturbation frequency, and even the content of sexual fantasies, of late adolescent youths. But reliable information about how, when and where boys just before, during and slightly after puberty carry on this common human activity is sparse. Most of what we do have was gathered retrospectively many years after the youngsters had reached a new stage in their lives.

Lacking, then, is a detailed description made at the time of how boys 11 through 15 manually and otherwise stimulate their penises, either alone, with a partner, or in groups; nor can we learn much from books and professional papers about the settings, especially the prefer- red settings, of these events, or what lubricants, vibrators and other "sex aids" are used, or the involvement of the other senses in the total masturbatory experience, or even what part masturbation plays in the social lives of pubertal boys. It appears that the curiosity of investigators is limited to whether a boy masturbates or not; only the fact and perhaps the consequence (did he have an orgasm, did he ejaculate?) were worth recording.

A year or two before he enters puberty a boy becomes intensely interested in his own sexual physiology, the functioning of his genital organs and their physical and tactile responses. He isn't very curious about the reproductive aspect of sex, female anatomy, or romantic love. His masturbation fantasies are often rudimentary or even absent. What fascinates him is the fact of his penis, the way it erects and detumesces and the very pleasurable sensations that originate in it and spread out from it through his testes, thighs and stomach when it is tactically stimulated.

Something so delicious and forbidden as masturbation, once discovered, must be shared, in one form or another, with ones more intimate peers, and so doing it alone grades naturally into exploratory games of "show and tell", initiation of the inexperienced, the "circle jerk" and "loaning a hand to your friend". The researcher found no good grounds for considering mutual masturbation anything but a logical extension into the pubertal boy's social world of the sexual activity he carried on in private. All but a few of the 191 boys of this study (and these were all over 14) thought "jerking off with your buddy, if perhaps a bit naughty, certainly normal. Often they had constructed quite a rationale around why none of this was homosexual.

Masturbation, alone or with others, then, is the natural sex activity for the boy at this age. It is not, nor does he yet consider it, a substitute for something better. If permitted, he pursues it with zeal, imagination and curiosity. How often can he do it? How can he make it feel better? How quickly can he reach a climax or how long postpone it? And, once ripening begins, how fast is his penis growing, when will he get sperm or how far can he throw it, how much pubic hair does he have, how does he compare with other boys in these respects?

For most pubertal boys, sex in its most basic aspect (i.e. his penis, its erections, orgasms and possible ejaculations, his sexual longings) is the very nucleus of his inner emotional world.

It is remarkable, then, in light of the pubertal boys intense preoccupation with these matters, that a curious kind of amnesia sets in later. As he develops into full adolescence, and eventually into manhood, fantasy becomes more and more the dominant element of each masturbatory event. Physical experimentation diminishes; less consistently pleasurable techniques are abandoned and favorite ones become well established; the movements are now all but automatic. Older boys and mature men no longer think about what they are doing with their penises; rather they fantasy about what they would like to be doing with a partner. Thus masturbation comes to be perceived as a poor substitute for intercourse of one kind or another, dreams of which, now, are really all that matter. An activity once central to the boy's inner life has been relegated to second-rate entertainment, kids games or "what you got to do to get rid of too much sperm". Thus when boys of 16 or 17 are questioned about the details of their earlier masturbatory life they tend to say something like, "l just did what every other boy did," or "We fooled around sometimes, but it was all kid stuff," or "None of thats to be compared with the real thing." Their standards of importance are now closer to those of the adult (and the sexologist).