In another revealing post M.B. Timothy ( Saboteur on BateWorld ) talks about overcoming masturbation shame. He also explains how we can overcome it. This is an excerpt from Timothy’s book CEDAR: An Ode To Masturbation, available now on Amazon, a sensual celebration of solosexuality through fact and fiction. Timothy has also released an anthology of essays on advanced masturbation called Real Men Masturbate, covering subjects from edging to handsfree ejaculation.
Timothy has been published on The Bator Blog where he wrote the popular articles, The Truth About Male Orgasm Parts One and Two. His blog No Love Like Solo Love is dedicated to masturbation and body pride. He has been called a Guru of Technique and an Evangelist of Self Love. He masturbates everyday.
Hormone-ridden, confused, moody. It is a time we must all navigate. Teenagerhood. It is a time which can be destructive and isolating. It can also be beautiful and full of discovery. It should be a time, if held aloft sensitively by the adults in our life, which delivers us toward the best versions of ourselves as adults.
The anxiety which pokes its head in my life from time to time can be traced back to my adolescence. It was far more acute then. I cannot pinpoint a root cause, and perhaps there is no root cause. Some psychotherapists have said that solosexuals, or “masturbation addicts”, are reacting to childhood trauma. To them, masturbation is the embodiment of emotional avoidance. Perhaps for some. Not for me. I have no childhood trauma. I fought with my father and sometimes he scared me, but that is not trauma. That is ordinary. And yet I masturbate.
I masturbate but I am as emotionally available as anyone. I am a good friend, a good son, a good employee, a good partner and proud to say, a good citizen to any stranger in need. I know this to be true. I don’t avoid friendships. My bator brothers are my community. I share tremendously with them and make myself available.
In my teenage years, I felt isolated. I felt different in ways I did not yet understand. It made me feel at times worthless. Such feelings can be par for the course of adolescence, and they were so for me.
Masturbation was a coping strategy for me. It was a way to quell dark surges. It helped to nip them in the bud before they got worse. How important masturbation was to me in this regard. To think that in the classroom the closest I got to a positive evocation of the importance of masturbation was buried somewhere in a textbook that described it as “normal.” I don’t believe that is good enough. Masturbation is better than normal. Masturbation is affirming. It is healing. It is wonderful. And especially for teenagers.
Imagine a world where teens, confused enough about sexuality, can be encouraged to embrace their first sexuality can be with themselves. Imagine the problems we would avoid. Imagine a generation brought up to love their solosexuality, not to hate their bodies, not to think their sexuality depends on another. Imagine what impact that would have on the sex phobic times we live in. Imagine the damage it would undo. Toxic masculinity… Degradation of women’s worth… Body issues… Harassment… Unwanted pregnancy.
As a teenager, I masturbated against those dark feelings of worthlessness. I felt present and vital while I did it, but then I was gripped by shame and guilt after. Being told “it’s normal” did not cut it. Imagine if I had been taught to feel good after.
Imagine if I had been taught that masturbation was healthy, that it promoted happiness, made me love myself. And I am a male. I can only imagine it would impact tenfold more positively on young girls. To own and embrace their bodies with self-respect. To learn that their sexuality is theirs. To foster control. And trans teens, whose discomfort in their bodies is only amplified more, imagine if they were taught that their empowerment depends on no one, that they owe it to no one.
Being told “it’s normal” did not cut it. Imagine if I had been taught to feel good after. Imagine if I had been taught that masturbation was healthy, that it promoted happiness, made me love myself.
Being shrugged off that it’s normal is not enough. We are dunked in sex phobia every day. We are all dripping in it. We must teach the positivity and gravitas of masturbation. We don’t need to show teenagers how it is done. That’s not what I am saying. Teens aren’t stupid. We simply need to show them why it is good to masturbate; why a solosexuality is good to foster. Teach them that it can be fostered in conjunction with other partnered sexualities. It is not an either/or. We just need to show teenagers how to feel great about masturbating and about themselves.
If we get mid-way or even further through our life and we have not yet learnt the lesson, it is never too late.
Men ask me all the time, how do I stop feeling bad about masturbating? A lifetime of shame is difficult to undo. Rewire your brain. In the moments you are not masturbating, remind yourself of all the things we know to be true. Masturbating is good for you. Men who masturbate have better sexual function and response. Masturbation is exercise. Masturbation is pain relief. Masturbation releases dopamine and endorphins. It makes you feel happy. Tell yourself. The more you retrain your brain on all the positive aspects of solosexuality, the better chance you have of a positive thought entering your mind after you masturbate.
When you back up masturbation with positivity, you are effectively making love to yourself.
Masturbating more will be a reward in and of itself. It is the greatest gift you can bestow upon yourself. The more you masturbate, the more you will come to understand your body. You will master your pleasure. The better you get, the healthier you feel about it, the deeper the wellspring you will find in masturbating. Your body is capable of tremendous acts.
Through sex like this, I heal myself. I heal the wound of wrenching myself from conforming. I stand before the mirror to masturbate. I caress one nipple with my left hand and I edge my hard penis with the other. When I hit the edge, I lift my right hand to masturbate my other nipple. Something incredible happens when I do this. I build up the most intense sexual pleasure and I feel my nipples activate in sensitivity. It’s like a hum of electricity inside me growing to lightning strike.
I’m an attuned masturbator. By practicing the art and by really thinking about my pleasure, I know how to play my body like a masterful pianist. My whole body is activated. I am fully making love. I get so close to the point of no return that just five pounds keeps me there. Then four. Then three. Then two. Then one.
Just one pound of my penis sends orgasmic waves through me. I see myself writhing. My hips are thrusting. My body is burning. My eyes are locked onto myself. A vision of pleasure. It fuels me forward. I keep tweaking. Sexual pleasure has fully transferred from my penis to my nipples. I masturbate my nipples in this incredible moment. Then I feel it. I see it too. A stream of ejaculate pours from my penis, which is throbbing, stabbing at the sky. I hear the drop, drop, drop of my semen hit the floor. I sigh in gratitude.
Updated article from October 07, 2018
pleasure yourself anytime and in any place, for as long as you want, for as many times as you want, doing anything you want – the ultimate in sex play
4:30 am and i just sprayed all over my comforter… that’s what a great article can do
Surprisingly no one’s commented on this topic, yet its surely something that many of us bators have dealt with. Or well, I have. I used to worry about being a masturbator but as I got older I finally realized – who cares. And we discover and appreciate that masturbation is good for you and its such a great way to reward ourselves with a bit of sexual pleasure.
In the late 1980s, I was away at college in South Dakota and I heard through the grapevine about a university therapist/counselor who was encouraging students to masturbate more. While certainly not controversial today, back then it wasn’t something spoken about very much. I was already a frequent masturbator, but I did tend to have some feelings of guilt from childhood where it was not forbidden in my home but not encouraged either. It was kind of viewed as a necessary evil that should only be done in privacy and never discussed (with 5 kids in a 1,400 SF home there wasn’t much privacy).
Anyway, I started seeing the counselor initially for other reasons, and I was having trouble getting up the courage to talk about masturbation. Finally, after like 6 weekly sessions focused on being homesick, and dealing with a significant sport injury, she asked me about dating, sex etc. I told her that I really hadn’t dated much as I was only on campus a few weeks before a knee injury had me on crutches and a walking cast for most of the fall. She said something about “taking care of yourself” in the meantime, and how it’s perfectly natural. I told her yes, my heart racing, and was able to get out a few words asking about guilt.
She explained to me that I should take care of my needs as often as I liked and that I should celebrate the gift of pleasure that my body was giving to me. She said, if you do that, you’ll find you have nothing to be guilty about. I have never forgotten those words and wish every young man had been told such things at 18.
I find it funny today thinking about my time in that old confessional booth where the priest would ask me how many times I “played” with myself, and where, and when. No wonder so many people are so screwed up. I guess my inner heathen won out in the end.
I understand your feeling as I have been there before. Confessing that I had touched myself in vain wad so demeaning.
Unfortunately, I think all guys start out with some shame about masturbating no matter how they’re brought up. And like most I certainly had and still have my share, albeit not as much as I did at first, but it’d still definitely still there.
I remember the first time I posted a pic of just my dick; it was both exhilarating, terrifying, and liberating at the same time. It was just my dick, but it was a start on a journey of self-discovery of accepting that I’m a Masturbator and letting go of the shame I was experiencing. The up and down of being stupid horny, and then almost disgusted at myself once I ejaculated. And as an edger who can get goon stupid to the tenth degree, once I orgasmed the deflating from such a height was a huge difference.
So, as I gained ground in being more open and becoming braver, I set myself up for failure as a win, if that makes sense. I made a webcam video of me Masturbating in which I verbally released all rights and declared as public domain, on camera at the beginning of the video. My goal was to share it here and there with a few people and have. Then I would occasionally post it in out of the way places, masturbate for a while wondering if anyone saw it or downloaded it or shared it, and then of course once I blew my load, I’d delete it as quickly as possible. Progress, but not the end of the process by any means.
So here I am in that same pattern, pushing my boundaries and stepping outside my comfort zone in the name of progress and wondering if I can hold out long enough to post this with the link to that video and see how people respond and if I’ll have no choice but to accept it this time and know there’s no going back once people have copies. Will I delete the post again? Or will I have no choice but to work through any existing shame, accept any embarrassment and awkwardness, become a bit more desensitized, or maybe a lot, lol. Only one way to find out, so here’s the link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/50yvz9zwh9lj1mr/Public%20Domain%20Jerk%20Off%2002%20%281%29.mp4?dl=0
Reminds me of the first time I photographed my penis back in the film days, it was a combination of excitement and trying to be artistic. Having my own darkroom it was easy enough to process the film and make prints. But realized what will I do with these prints? Not like I can hang them up in my apartment for everyone to see. So I kept them in an envelope stowed in the top shelf of my closet. Eventually I tossed them out.
Now here on BW we have a place to openly share the photos we take of our “downthere” and get comments & compliments.
I was a little disappointed that the link led to an error page. Did you delete your video? If so, no problem, but I hope it was not out of shame.
I have gone back and forth, alternating between shame and pride. I push my boundaries of self-revelation and then take it all back. I have taken many wonderful photographs of my solosexuality and then gone back and destroyed them. This cycle has repeated itself countless times.
> Imagine what impact that would have on the sex phobic times we live in.
LOL WHAT? This was a hot story but I am sorry this rings ridiculous. There has never been more sex positive times in the history of humanity. You can literally go out and do ANYTHING and can arrange meetings with ANYONE in the world all from your bedroom. You can watch literally any kind of porn at any time on demand. There are no laws to punish you from doing nearly any sexual thing you want (with other consenting adults). “Sex phobic” is the absolutely worst way to describe today’s times.
I respectfully disagree. I believe we are actually subject to comprehensive, cultural sex-negative conditioning from birth and live it and adapt to it. Adaptation renders it invisible to us but it’s totally still there. In the United States, for example, public masturbation is considered a sex crime that results in arrest and lifetime sex registration. “Indecent exposure” can likewise ruin a life. These are cultural crimes that do no actual harm except in the context of sex-negative social norms and, being norms, are invisible to us because we all adapt to them. It’s normal to keep masturbation hidden and the penalty for exposing it (except in these discreet online forums or sex clubs) is entanglement in the criminal justice system for life.
Of course, we can observe and participate remotely on our computers and from inside our treasured Internet Sex Bubbles, and it seems like an abundant world of whatever we want available 24/7… but that is not The Real World where any public enactment of what we KNOW is healthy and good and harmless can ruin our lives the instant the wrong person gets offended and files charges.
I’m not arguing that we should allow all sorts of sex to happen openly. I’m only pointing to one piece of evidence that civilized society is absolutely sex negative. It is part of early childhood conditioning, codified in legal systems, fundamental in 100% of the major religions. It is the sea we swim in all our lives… so we can lose the entire concept of what it means to be wet.
We are fortunate that human sexual impulse is tenacious and creative and keeps seeking free expression, but we should not mistake the crumbs society throws us as a feast. Civilized culture has been sex phobic, in varying degrees, since the agricultural revolution.
Great books to read:
“America’s War on Sex” by Dr. Marty Klein
“Civilized to Death” and “Sex at Dawn” by Christopher Ryan
Paul describes the obvious result of typical child-rearing, even today. Prior to puberty we are taught by most parents and by society that 1.) Nudity is bad (leading to body shame), 2.) It is horrid to touch, play with or ask about your genitals (triggering shame upon reaching puberty’s irresistible urge to do so), 3 ) A kid should not ask questions or talk about sex (getting misdirected or even lied to, resulting in – in the USA, anyway – inevitable uninformed teen sexual experimentation being clueless and dangerously life altering), 4.) Having sex is a very high risk of disease (sex education in most schools, etc. often focuses on this), 5.) Emotional feelings towards a peer are to be constrained and minimized (resulting in confused feelings and behaviour once puberty is in full gear).
All of these – and more – set up an environment where masturbation is to be a quick, furtive, embarrassing thing, ameliorating a physical need only (and sex in general must be secretive or an open taboo).
I am certainly NOT arguing for a sexual free-for-all with regard to raising children – heaven forbid. We simply must have age- and environment-appropriate discussions with kids so they are prepared for what will happen to themselves and their emotions, and to not teach them shame-complexes any more.
Your point in reference to trans teens, “… imagine if they were taught that their empowerment depends on no one, that they owe it to no one,” applies across humanity. It implies some of the social/political usefulness of sexual repression in history. I think you’re right here, that the cultivation of self-love, especially in adolescence, primes us for self-possession, grounds us in knowledge of our agency in life. That’s dangerous to interests that want to control us (religious, political, ideological entities) and goes a long way toward explaining just why there is so much sex-negative conditioning across the civilized world.
The truly self-possessed are not subject to institutional control without their consent.