Episode 405: What We Get Wrong About Masturbation (Essential Listen)
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You're listening to the Sex and Psychology Podcast, the sex ed you never got in school and won't get anywhere else. I am your host, Dr. Justin Neymiller. I am a social psychologist and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and author of the book, Tell Me What You Want, The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life. Human beings have a long and complicated relationship with masturbation, and it's a topic that still generates a lot of debate today, especially on social media.

About 15 years ago, a social media movement called NoFap kicked off on Reddit, where people started claiming that masturbation is bad for you and that giving it up is key to improving your physical and mental health. In the years since, this anti-masturbation sentiment has spread across platforms and seems to be growing.

If you scroll through Instagram or TikTok, it's only a matter of time before you'll come across some content saying that masturbation is unhealthy, that it's addictive, that it saps your body of testosterone, and that you shouldn't do it at all, or only very rarely. So we need to talk about the science of masturbation. In today's show, we're revisiting one of my favorite conversations from the archives, which is one of my interviews with Dr. Eric Sprankle.

Dr. Sprankle is an associate professor of clinical psychology and the co-director of the Sexuality Studies Program at Minnesota State University, Mankato. He's also a licensed clinical psychologist and ASEC-certified sex therapist, as well as author of the book, DIY, The Wonderfully Weird History and Science of Masturbation.

In this episode, we're going to delve into what the science says about popular claims regarding the health benefits of semen retention, whether abstaining from masturbation actually affects your testosterone, whether you can really become addicted to masturbating, and so much more. This is going to be another fun and fascinating conversation.

Before we get into the main topic for today, here is our Just the Tips segment presented by Popstar. Popstar was founded by two sexual medicine doctors who are creating science-backed products to support male sexual health and pleasure. Whether you want to last longer, finish stronger, enhance your health, or just make sex more pleasurable, they have a solution for you.

In our Just the Tips segments, my pal, Dr. Joshua Gonzalez, one of the founders of Popstar, will be joining me to answer your questions and share tips and tricks to help men boost their bedroom confidence and performance. Today, we're diving into the subject of whether size matters when it comes to ejaculate volume. In other words, do bigger loads mean better orgasms? Let's talk about it. All right, Josh, so let me first ask, why are so many guys concerned about the size of their semen volume in the first place?

You know, historically, at least in medicine, the concern about ejaculate volume, semen volume has really only been an issue when we're talking about reproduction. When my co-founder, Dr. Brian Steixner and I

first conceived of this product, our initial product, the Volume and Taste Enhancer, it was really because we were seeing patients in our individual practices asking about what they could do to naturally increase their load size more from a pleasure standpoint. They would report that over the years, they had noticed a decline in their ejaculatory volume. Sex didn't feel as good. Their orgasms were less intense. They had less confidence in the bedroom and so wanted to know what they could do to change that.

So I think that's why we've seen a shift in recent years about concern about volume as it relates to fertility and more volume and how it makes sex feel better.

And of course, part of the story here too could be the world of porn in terms of shaping our ideas about what ejaculate volume should be because, you know, in the world of porn, having a bigger load is something that is typically pretty celebrated, right? Yeah, it's called the money shot for a reason, right? Exactly. Okay, so does the size of your load actually matter? In other words, if you have more ejaculate volume, does that mean that sex is necessarily going to feel better?

I think for some people it does. And this is from stories that we've heard from our patients and our customers alike. We know that ejaculatory volume naturally declines with age, as many functions in our body tend to do, right? And I think that for a long time, people, both in the general population and in the medical community, really didn't put a lot of value in talking about ejaculatory health and talking about the importance of ejaculatory volume because it's

So much of the focus historically has been on like erections, right? Do you have good erections? Do you have erectile dysfunction? What can we do to change that? Obviously, erections are very, very important for sex. But I think that having a larger volume, at least for some men, does make sex feel better. And again, it plays a role in their confidence. They feel like, I don't know if you want to call it more masculine or more virile, but they just enjoy sex more when they can come more.

Yeah, and I think psychology is a big part of this because, you know, seeing that you produce the larger ejaculate volume is something that, you know, for some people in and of itself is pleasurable. But also just sort of seeing that, like, as you mentioned, could also be something that provides some boost to confidence or masculinity and so forth.

it's an accomplishment right like right i did a really great job with this one right uh go me yeah exactly exactly all right so for guys who are concerned about their ejaculate volume is there anything that they can do to actually increase it

Yeah. So I would say the biggest factor that you can change is hydration, right? So making sure that you're well hydrated. This is a fluid like other types of fluids that we make, urine, sweat, tears, right? They come from our hydration status. And so that's probably the most important factor. And then there's ingredients in our supplement, in Popstar, that have been scientifically studied

and put together over months and months of research done by Brian and I to come up with a formula with the ingredients that have been shown to increase volume. So the Pygeum, the lecithin, the L-arginine, the zinc, all of those are important factors that help increase load size and also support the sperm within your ejaculate.

And what you mentioned about hydration is really, really important. And so what that means is that basically anything you're doing that is going to dehydrate your body is probably going to translate to lower seminal volume. So for example, if you're consuming a lot of alcohol or a lot of caffeine or basically anything in your diet that is going to leave you in a state of dehydration, it's probably going to have implications for something like seminal volume.

Yeah, that's absolutely correct. Another thing that we talk to patients about as well, which is another kind of modifiable factor, is spreading out the time between ejaculates, right? So if you're someone who's masturbating several times a day, the second or third time you are ejaculating, that volume is going to naturally be less. And so if you abstain from ejaculating for longer periods, you can sort of build up that volume over time.

But I agree with you, you know, the things that we take into our body are going to excrete themselves somehow, right? Or cause effects on how we excrete certain things. And so anything that you're doing that's going to sort of naturally dehydrate you is going to be bad for volume. And some of those things that you mentioned, things like alcohol, cigarettes, or tobacco products, and, you know, a poor diet, those are going to also influence the taste of your ejaculate, which is another thing that we have focused on with the supplement.

So one more question on increasing seminal volume, which is whether edging can work in terms of helping you to boost your volume. So in other words, if you kind of spend more time there on the brink of orgasm, can that help to increase ejaculate size?

It can in the sense that it often will generate a stronger force of contraction of your pelvic muscles when you finally do achieve ejaculation, right? So with a stronger contraction, you can expel more fluid. It's not that like edging is causing an increased production of that volume. It's just that you are contracting with greater force and getting more of it out.

Interesting. Well, thank you so much for sharing your tips with us, Josh. That wraps up our Just the Tips segment presented by Popstar. A huge thank you to our friends over at Popstar for sponsoring the segment and helping us all to have better and more pleasurable sex. We have much more ahead on today's show, so stick around and we're going to jump in right after this short break.

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Okay, Eric, let's talk about the science of masturbation. Now, I want to start by talking about this idea of semen retention, which has a long history and seems increasingly popular today. But before we dive into what the research says, let's talk about kind of where this fear of semen retention comes from.

So in my textbook, The Psychology of Human Sexuality, I talk a little bit about something called DOT syndrome, spelled D-H-A-T, I think I'm pronouncing that right, which is a fear of losing semen. And it's often described as this culture-bound phenomenon that's relatively prominent in India and Pakistan, where semen is kind of seen as this essential fluid and losing it is kind of like draining your life force.

Now, as it turns out, this idea is not so culture-bound after all, and it's growing in popularity in the West.

And I can't help but notice that in recent years, there's been this growing almost fetishization in the West with East Asian traditions in general when it comes to health and wellness. And that seems to include importing beliefs about semen retention. So tell us a little bit about how spiritually enlightened social media influencers have brought this idea of semen retention to the masses.

Yeah, I think you really explained it really well. It is a lot of white Western spiritual wellness influencers that you see on TikTok or Instagram, and they just kind of have a cherry picking of appropriation of various cultures outside of their own that kind of fit into their own wellness package.

And so a lot of that does come from Eastern traditions of like traditional Chinese medicine, parts of Hinduism and Taoism is a big one as it pertains to this. And they kind of pick out these little parts that deal with looking at semen as being kind of this vital fluid in your body or a vital force in your body. And therefore, any expulsion of this fluid, loss of this fluid is detrimental to your health.

And so they can dismiss a lot of other health advice from Taoism, but they kind of latch on to this one. And I think they latch on to it in a very similar way that we were talking about previously, that there's a general masturbation taboo and anxiety and insecurity about it. So, of course, anything speaking from a place of authority, especially the coveted like ancient traditions, you know, from a white Western perspective of viewing Eastern philosophies as kind of mystical and in their own right,

That, oh, this must be true, right? And I forget the logical fallacy that that's called. Maybe something appealed to tradition or something that, oh, it's been around for thousands of years. It must be true. So you hear that argument a lot. And so it is an appropriation of Taoism and using traditional Chinese medicine for their own kind of white Western wellness kind of grift that they have going on.

And yeah, you definitely see that they are incorporating the semen as a vital fluid in your body that's completely connected to your physical health as being a strong component of whatever they're selling with their yoga classes or spiritual retreats or whatever. And that's the funny thing in terms of like being called names on social media. That was the new one I got during the course of the researching for this book is that somebody called me an imperialist.

because I was quote, "shitting on Eastern philosophies or traditions." And of course the person who called me an imperialist was some white guy from Seattle with tribal tattoos. Of course. So again, yeah, so you kind of understand like where this stuff is coming from. But yeah, they are definitely taking it from different philosophies and applying it for themselves. But what you were saying with the dot syndrome, yeah, it's a cultural bound syndrome. That's how I learned it. I'm a clinical psychologist. I got the DSM over my shoulders here and that's how it's listed in there. That's how I learned about it early on in grad school.

But throughout the course of researching this book, it's not so culture bound. The underlying fear is a fear of semen loss. It may look different in different cultures. I think within Pakistan and India, it focuses a lot of the fear that you're urinating out semen accidentally. But the underlying fear is still that you're losing semen and that's harmful to your body in some way. And that's what we see in Europe and in the United States currently.

Yeah, it's so many things I could say here. But you know, we've often heard about people being, you know, cafeteria Christians or cafeteria whatever their religious background or tradition is and just pulling out the bits and pieces that make sense to them. And we see a lot of people doing that with some of these East Asian cultures and traditions, just pulling out the parts that they believe in or want to support and so forth.

and discarding the rest that's inconvenient to them. So, yeah, this kind of thing happens a lot. But I think it is part of this sort of broader health and wellness trend and part of like the all natural kind of like if it comes from your own body, it's good for you. And so, you know, you need to retain that or whatever. And so, yeah.

There's a lot of different ways to kind of unpack what's going on here. But what is the science of semen retention actually tell us? I mean, so what are the claimed benefits of abstaining from ejaculation for prolonged periods of time? And does the science say there's any actual benefits to that? Right. Short answer is no. The science is completely different than what the claims from the semen retentionists are making. So what they are claiming, the benefits of not ejaculating, so retaining your semen,

is that by retaining, you're not losing the vital nutrients that are in seminal fluid. And so they're worried about zinc loss. They're worried about protein loss, different sugars. They're worried about a decrease in testosterone and

and how that can affect muscle mass and everything else. And so a side note here, we may or may not get into this during this conversation, but so much of this is packaged in male insecurity and masculine insecurity of what it means to have like an idealized masculine body. And so masturbation challenges those ideals, or at least they can make the argument that it challenges those ideals. And one way is that masturbation supposedly causes testosterone loss and muscle mass loss.

And that always got me thinking of like, do they actually think like the testosterone is sitting in your epididymis and you're ejaculating out? Like how is the loss actually occurring? So what the science actually says behind all this is it's like a partial truth. It's like, yeah, semen does have a lot of nutrients in it. There's proteins, there's sugars, there's minerals in it.

What is misunderstood, however, is the function of those vital nutrients in semen. The function of those nutrients is to support the life of the sperm cells, not the person making the sperm cells. It's such a trivial amount. It's just to make sure that the sperm cell is healthy, alive, mobile. It can get to point A and to point B, what it needs to do. And if we're talking conception.

Otherwise, your body doesn't care that you have semen sitting in it. If you're not ejaculating, it's just sitting in your prostate in seminal vesicles. Your body will slowly absorb it and your body is not gaining any benefit from the trace amounts, even from that reabsorption. And from the testosterone, I have no idea where that's coming from because that's circulating through your blood. Obviously, it's made in the testicles, but you're not ejaculating it out.

They always like to point to this one study that shows seven days of abstinence showed an increase in testosterone compared to those who were not abstinent.

One thing to note here is that it didn't single out masturbation. This is any kind of abstinence. And that's the thing too, with any kind of nofap or semen retention claims is that masturbation is not unique here. You're actually talking about abstaining from an orgasm, any mechanism to get to an orgasm. But oftentimes they just kind of think that masturbation orgasm is the harmful one. An orgasm with your spouse on your wedding night to make a child, that's okay for your body. Your body doesn't care how it's having an orgasm.

But what's interesting with that testosterone study is that it was retracted, so we can't even look at it for useful information. From some of the studies I was looking at in like fertility journals,

There's a lot of debate over how long somebody should abstain from any kind of orgasm. Again, just not for masturbation to have a better increased chance or likelihood of conceiving. And that was really just at a couple of days, like 48 hours. And really that's going to increase seminal volume. But even if you're abstaining for like two months with the goal of having like better fertility, that's actually not giving you better fertility.

You're having greater volume of semen that's ejaculated, but the actual sperm cells themselves may not be healthier. And actually, there's an argument that more frequent ejaculations are healthier for fertility because you are kind of ejaculating out the duds in the stockpile. And so their argument that a living has any type of impact on testosterone or fertility is just not backed up by the data. Yeah.

Yeah. It's so interesting that some people buy into this idea that ejaculate is just pure testosterone. And I mean, if you're so concerned about like not having enough testosterone in your body, maybe shouldn't you be over at the glory hole or something? I mean, you can have this free supply of like pure testosterone, right? Right. Right. Absolutely. That's not where they go for some reason. No, I think that would challenge their views of idealized masculinity too. So I think that's more the issue.

Yeah, and speaking of masculinity, it's so interesting that these online communities that have emerged in the last decade or so who are preaching this masturbatory abstinence

They seem to suggest that abstinence is somehow going to give you these sexual superpowers. You know, there's this growing number of men, many of whom might identify as incels, who want to have sexual and romantic relationships, but they can't find partners. And then there are these communities telling them that you can't possibly be an attractive partner unless you give up masturbation.

It's like you can't be hot, manly, and confident unless you're abstaining from self-pleasure and you're saving your orgasms for a partner. Because supposedly the partnered sex orgasms are healthy, but the masturbatory orgasms aren't. Like, I don't know. I just can't deal with some of it.

Yeah, it's wild. It does stem from living a life that's not going as planned. That's kind of like how I'm viewing it of like, okay, so they don't have the body that they want and they may not have the body that they want because they're comparing themselves to this idealized kind of cultural beauty of like ripped muscles. They need to be in a Marvel movie or something, have that kind of like training and fitness routine.

So they're not as shredded as they would like to be. They're not as wealthy as they'd like to be. They don't have a girlfriend because typically these are straight younger guys who I'm seeing in these forums. And then they get across this information. It's like, oh, well, why am I not having the life that I want? And then masturbation falls into that. It's like, well, because you're wasting your potential, right?

by sitting in front of your computer jerking off. And that's not what real men do. Real men go out and hunt, they seek, they work and earn their orgasm. They're a big thing on like earning an orgasm. And by just sitting at home masturbating to porn, that's an unearned, undeserved orgasm. And it's actually making yourself more lazy and less motivated to get out and go to the gym and find a partner yourself. And so why masturbation? Why did that fit again?

masturbation, anxiety, insecurity, we're already kind of on the fence whether this is healthy or not. And so someone telling us it's not healthy and this is why your life isn't going as great as you thought it would go. And also, I think more importantly, it's something completely within your control.

And so, you know, you can't change your genetics. You can't change the job that you have in terms of like immediate earning potential or the gyms that you belong to or anything. But there is this one thing that you can do that's entirely in your control that if you just stop doing that, that would put you on the path to greatness. And so that's an easy buy-in, I think, for these young guys and because they want to look better, be different. And it's just an easy buy-in that, oh, if I don't touch my genitals, that seems easy enough. But what we know is that

That's not easy enough. And that's where it can start getting into actually kind of dark territory. I know Dr. Nicole Prowse has been looking at this more recently, actually after I finished the writing of my book. So her stuff isn't included in as much as I would like to have been now. But looking at guys who are on these nofap forums and are really beating themselves up because they relapsed.

They masturbated and when they told themselves that they were on a weak streak and then they gave in to temptation. And now they're depressed, they're anxious, some of them are even suicidal. Other guys in the NoFap forums or whatever types of forums are bullying them and kind of chastising them for relapsing and which is just making their depression, anxiety, even suicidality even worse. And so it's just like this self-torturous kind of lifestyle where it doesn't have to be this way at all. Just have to change the attitudes of like,

masturbation is fine, it's normal, it's healthy, it's not going to hurt you. And if you do it, therefore you're not going to feel distressed by it. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy both ways. Yeah, it's really unfortunate. And, you know, when you think about

how a lot of these men are, they're really desperate because they want to have these sexual and romantic connections. They can't seem to find them for whatever reason. And so, you know, anybody who's willing to try and sell them on something that is going to help them get what they want, like people are willing to try almost anything when there's something that they really want. And you're right that this is something that

is within your control in terms of whether or not you do it. But many people, if not most people, find it really hard to have complete abstinence from masturbation, right? It's just a natural human tendency. It's a thing that people tend to do. And so then when you can't do it, and then that kind of sets you up for failure, and then you start blaming yourself, and then it becomes, yeah, this really bad place. And people can spiral into, yeah, some really dark territory there. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely a shame cycle and it's like setting yourself up for failure. Like I would argue if anybody came to me like I don't practice therapy, I'm licensed psychologist, but I don't see patients. But if I was in practice and someone came to me with the goal of complete masturbatory abstinence, I wanted to accept that at face value without question. I would definitely want to understand like where is this coming from? Do you think this is a realistic goal for you? What do you expect to happen as a result of the abstinence?

But for these guys on these forums coming with into like any type of self-help improvement kind of program with the goal of completely abstaining from masturbation is celebrated. And I think that's just setting you up for failure and setting you up for this shame cycle. And I think it's a part two of like this.

kind of biohacking thing that I'm not too familiar with it. I just kind of see it existing, like the Huberman Lab kind of stuff of like, if you get up at 4 a.m. and take a cold shower and then run for two miles and make sure that you eat, right, and make sure you eat like two handfuls of like rolled oats and just all this, like it's a to-do list. It's a ridiculous to-do list. But again, I think in terms of having control over something, this is something that you can do.

It's not practical. It's certainly not sustainable. I would like to think that there's some goof out there that this is his grift, that he knows this doesn't work, but just likes to torture people by telling them you need to get up at 4 a.m. and take cold showers.

And that's going to benefit you. Right. Yes, this is a sadist. I think a sadist would have a good avenue in this grifting, like this biohacking grifting, because it just seems unbelievable what's being recommended. And what the outcome is just kind of a slight tweak. We're not talking about clinical disorders. Going back to like the testosterone thing, no one is saying that even abstaining from testosterone is taking you from hypogonadism, right, to clinically low testosterone to testosterone within normal range.

if anything there's just minor fluctuations all of which are normal anyways and so this isn't even being used to actually treat things that are clinically pathological it's just that they want to optimize themselves in terms of

Everybody wants to become a robot. Like that one billionaire who's like essentially a vampire taking in like young blood or something to try. I don't know what his name is, but I see him occasionally online be like, what are you doing? Like, what is this? What are you trying to optimize here? Like how much better is your life given the amount of effort that this takes? Right. I know. I've seen those videos as well.

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Now, we could do a deep dive into what's happening in the online world with all of this. But another big health concern surrounding self-pleasure is that high levels of masturbation constitute a so-called addiction. And there's a huge industry that's emerged around that trying to sell people on cures to get them off of masturbation.

So is there any science behind that one? Can someone actually become addicted to masturbation? And do these 12-step masturbatory addiction recovery programs actually work as promised? So people can absolutely think that they are addicted to masturbating. And that's the key word, think.

And when you're dealing with like psychological processes, how you feel about yourself, kind of really all that matters. I mean, there's not going to be a blood test to tell you that, oh yeah, you're addicted to like jerking off or not. So it relies on self-report. And so if you feel like you're addicted, that's going to be distressing for you.

And so there is a lot of research, a lot of new research that's been coming out over the past 10 years has been great, kind of all operating under the theory of moral incongruence, which essentially is when your values do not align with your behaviors, but you're engaging in those behaviors and therefore it causes distress because you're not living up to your own values.

and so that definitely plays out in the porn world and i mean removing porn can play out just with masturbation alone that if you think masturbation is unhealthy it's immoral it goes against your values it's sinful in some way but you masturbate anyways of course yeah it makes sense that you're going to feel bad about yourself afterwards you're going to feel guilty ashamed embarrassed if it's something that you told yourself you're never going to do but you did it anyways that's going to feel like you're out of control right even if you just did it once in a year

That's going to feel like you're addicted to it because you did something that you didn't want to do. So sex addiction is more about that, the perception of feeling out of control, as opposed to any kind of concrete, universally agreed upon criteria, especially frequency of like, oh, if you masturbate more than three times a day, you're an addict.

There's a lot of junk and like pseudoscience out there that you may come across of like, take this quiz to see if you're a sex addict. And they'll focus more on the behaviors of like how often you're doing this or what specific behaviors. And a lot of times it is over-pathologizing high frequency. It's over-pathologizing open relationships, over-pathologizing homosexuality, over-pathologizing PDSM.

sex work, all these things that deviate from what they think is healthy sexual expression. So you see that a lot where it's easy to label oneself a sex addict because you're not essentially living the sex life that the Pope wants you to live. So that's a little bit of a nuanced answer to what sex addiction actually is. How is it treated? Definitely there are a lot of residential treatment facilities. They treat it similar to like a substance use disorder.

Where you're, you know, away for 28 days, 45 days and like these resort facilities getting like around the clock group therapy, different types of exercises, art therapy, you know, whatever. And there's also like 12 step programs to like SAA and SAA.

Unfortunately, there is no real good data saying that that's effective. No data to suggest that the 12 steps are effective in curbing sexual behaviors that one labels for themselves as addictive or problematic. And definitely no data to support, at least empirical data, that these residential treatment facilities, the ones that you have to pay like upwards of like 60,000, 70,000 grand for a month's stay. Yeah, it's ridiculous.

So you're dropping a lot of money with the hopes of curing yourself of this problem, but there's no data to support that it actually does that. And then you kind of get into the ethics, you know, from the field perspective, the mental health field perspective of like, well, how ethical is it to charge somebody 70 grand when there's no evidence to support that what you're doing is actually helpful in any way whatsoever? Right.

Yeah. Now, a major issue with the folks who are pushing this idea of masturbation or sex or porn is addictive is that there seems to be a lack of acknowledgement that seemingly excessive or compulsive masturbation can be related to a number of underlying factors. You know, it might be related to a manic episode or an underlying anxiety disorder. And then there's the fact that, as you alluded to, no one can agree on how much constitutes too much.

when it comes to sex or porn or masturbation. And then there are all these shitty assessment tools out there, some of which can diagnose you as a sex addict simply on the basis of you perceiving your own behaviors as not normal and keeping your sexual behaviors private, which are such laughably low bars that could lead almost anybody to be diagnosed as an addict.

So can you just speak a little bit more to how it's impossible to come up with some kind of objective standard that says if you're having this many orgasms per week or if you're having this much sex that you're addicted to it? Yeah, it's all relative. And I think I don't like the analogy of sexual behavior with substance use, but.

There is some decent overlap and it's some like shared language. So even within like clinical circles, we can talk about, well, what's the diagnostic criteria for a substance use disorder? And can that be applied in some way to like sexual behavior? Because now with like DSM-5, that's applied to gambling. Pathological gambling is now within like the addictive like substance use disorder section and pretty much has the same diagnostic criteria gambling does as cocaine dependence.

So some of those criteria, even from like a DSM clinical psych perspective, wouldn't quantify the amount somebody is masturbating as a metric. Even though early drafts of like a hypersexual disorder that tried to get into the DSM-5, which ultimately was rejected, that that did try to quantify it to seven times a week on average. And like that's once a day. I think you're going to capture a lot of people as sex addicts

as being quote unquote hypersexual if that's going to be one of the criteria. Obviously, there's going to be other criteria with that, but just for frequency, that's a little concerning that in my opinion like that was a very low bar because I think a lot of people engage in sexual behavior on a daily basis, like they masturbate once a day or they have sex once a day or whatever, and it's not a problem in their life at all.

And so quantifying it in some way, I think is a huge issue that we shouldn't even look at. And we should look more at how is it impacting your life? Now, how can it impact one's life is that it can be detrimental to one's life. If you masturbate and you masturbate to porn and you're in a relationship that is considered cheating and your spouse finds your browser history of like big titty goth girlfriends or something that you forgot to delete.

yeah, you're gonna have a relationship problem. It is gonna fuck up your life, possibly lead to a divorce. Does that mean that masturbating to goth women on the internet is inherently unhealthy? No, but it's unhealthy for that person. It's unhealthy for that person in that relationship. So all these contextual things are important and it's important to also think then to back out and see the big picture of like, well, this really isn't a masturbation problem. This is a couple's problem. Right.

Or this is a religious problem because you're feeling bad about yourself and you're thinking it's ruining your life because it goes against your religious values. It's like, well, this other person over here is doing the exact same thing you are, has different values and has no problem in their life.

So to me, that suggests it's more of an individual issue and something else other than the sexual behavior that we need to be concerned about. And that's important for me to say as a clinical psychologist because I don't want to be too flippant talking about this issue because people are really distressed and are struggling and are having impacts in their life surrounding their masturbation.

But it's not the masturbation per se. That's the problem, right? And it's not like I would be turning them away at the door, but like, no, you don't have a masturbation issue. Masturbation addiction is a complete made up thing. You're fine. It's like, no, they're not fine, but let's really get at the root issue here. And it's not just the masturbating. It's how they view masturbation and how others in their life view it. Yeah. It's usually never just the masturbation.

So a lot of what we've been talking about today focuses on beliefs about how masturbation is bad for men, how it hurts their health, how it takes away all of your testosterone and life force, how it's addictive, etc. And most of the treatments and community groups are directed toward men. But what about women? Are there people out there promoting the idea that masturbation is also bad for women's health and that they should be abstaining from it too? Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. And my goal for this book at the onset of writing it was to keep it completely gender neutral because I thought like, I don't even really need to insert gender into this. I'm talking about genitals. I'm talking about sexual behavior.

So I don't really need to say men versus women, things like that. But that became completely impossible once I started looking at the history of anti-masturbation attitudes and how they're very, very much gendered. And even a lot of the science and research on masturbation just based on the participants and how the results are talked about are very gendered. So that was impossible for me to ignore.

And yeah, it is heavier on the male side. And I think my editor did a nice job of trying to strike a little bit of a balance. And she was always like, well, what about women for this? It's like, there's just nothing written on this particular topic.

But there is in some of the sections, one being the role of vibrator use and concerns that it's desensitizing the clitoris and to the point where the person is not going to be responsive to sexual behavior without using a vibrator. Now, what's interesting with that common concern that I see amongst my students, I saw when I was practicing psychology, I saw it amongst my patients of like being very concerned about the

what kind of quote unquote damage to their body would result from vibrator use.

It doesn't do any damage to your body. So you should know that there's a misuse of the term desensitize for sure. It's not desensitizing anything like on a neurological level. You can become accustomed to a particular sensation that feels the best for you. You found a mechanism that leads to orgasm in the most effective, pleasurable and efficient way that should be celebrated. That shouldn't be looked upon as a negative in any way, but

I think because we view masturbation as less than partnered behavior, that's why we look at it as a problem. Because, oh, now I can't respond in the same way with my husband, right, or whoever my partner may be that I'm now addicted to or dependent on a vibrator. It's like, no, you're not.

You found how your body responds the best. That's great. You know, this is 100%, nothing wrong with you whatsoever. And kudos to you for finding a mechanism to experience that level of sexual satisfaction that consistently.

If this is a clinical issue then, then it's finding ways to incorporate what you learn about yourself and masturbation into partnered sex. And that may be including the use of a vibrator. And where the times you get resistance to that is viewing partnered sex as having to be a certain thing that isn't dependent on or even utilizing at all any kind of outside sexual aids like sex toys or vibrators. The expectation that penile-vaginal intercourse should be enough on its own.

to produce the same type of pleasure that I experience alone with a vibrator. And so counseling and therapy then would kind of focus on adjusting those expectations and challenging those assumptions. So that's one thing I see with women in particular. Other times too, that they fit into these issues.

just into a lesser degree. And that's its own level of misogyny and sexism in and of itself, because the assumption that, oh, this isn't important to women, women aren't masturbating as much as men, or it's just not as valued as much in their life, or they could take it or leave it, whereas with men, they have to do it, right? And so some of these sexist beliefs about sexual behavior that aren't unique to masturbation, they apply to other types of sexuality and sexual behaviors as well.

But that certainly plays out and I even kind of questioned some of these semen retention people who are so focused on ejaculation. I was like, well, is it actually ejaculation that you think is so detrimental or just orgasm? And how do you think women who aren't ejaculating but having orgasm, what do you think that's having an impact on their body?

And they kind of stumbled a bit and they say like, oh, it's still having an impact on them, but just less so because they have less muscle mass. And I was like, all right, okay. That doesn't make any sense, but okay. So they still think it's a concern and a problem for women, but less so. And probably because some of those sexist beliefs is thinking that it's just not valuable for them or not important. Yeah.

So I have one last question for you. In your book, you talk about how anti-masturbation folks often misrepresent the facts, but pro-masturbation folks sometimes do so in the sense that they seemingly sell masturbation as a cure-all for everything, suggesting that if we all masturbated more, the world would be a better place for everyone. We might even have world peace. So can you speak to that point a little more and how, as usual, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle?

Yeah, I ended the book with this of kind of looking at this neoliberal concept of masturbation being self-care. And I had this whole section, it was a little bit of a tirade of kind of being very critical of neoliberal ideas of self-care, of kind of self-care.

It's on us. We have to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps to be healthy. If it's we have depression, anxiety, high cholesterol, we have the tools within ourselves to fix that. Right. And it doesn't matter that we're working a soul crushing 60 hour work week that's barely paying the bills. We're depressed and anxious because we're not doing something enough. Right. So that's the general criticisms of neoliberalism approaches to self-care.

that we're ignoring kind of collective action to address the root causes of some of our distress. And masturbation certainly falls into that. How I've seen it talked about more recently, and I try not to be too cynical with it. I can have a tendency to like piss on parades. That's not the expression. It's raining on parades. Piss on parades is the same thing. It's going to ruin the parade. That's a kink. That's different. Yeah. It may ruin the parade for some, not others.

Yeah, I didn't want to, because my editor came back, the first draft of that conclusion was like, let's lighten this up a bit. This is the end, let's end on a high note. But yeah, of how masturbation is talked about within self-care as kind of being the savior, right?

I spent the whole book challenging the notion that masturbation is this destroyer of bodies, souls, and civilizations. But oftentimes I see it in the kind of pendulum swings completely in the opposite direction of like, oh, we need to masturbate to save ourselves. And here's all the benefits that we can gather and get and reap from masturbating. And some of those are truthful, right? And some of that is backed up by science. Others, I don't know where they're getting that masturbation will clear your skin or things like that.

So I think it is a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation of the research. But I think for me, what I wanted to really land on in the end is that, yeah, there are some non-sexual benefits to masturbating. The physiological process of orgasm, it can allow us to be more at ease, to relax us a bit, can help us fall asleep. And people self-report that these are motivations to masturbate.

But what's often overlooked is the number one reason people say that they masturbate. And that's simply to feel good, to feel pleasure. And I think that's all the justification masturbation needs. And I think that's some of my critique is that we're trying to do some respectability politics with masturbation to try to sell it to the public. It was like, oh, no, this isn't just a sexual behavior. This is what you can put on your to-do list.

to engage in wellness and self-care that look at all these health benefits that it has. It's like, yeah, okay, some of that is based a little bit in reality and in science.

But even if that wasn't the case, masturbation by itself should be valued and we should view it as a legitimate form of sexual expression simply because it's a moment of pleasure. And that's all the justification we need for it. Yeah, very well said. And what we should not be hearing is somebody telling us that all of the problems in our life are...

are caused by us masturbating, or all of the problems in our life are caused by us not masturbating. Right, yes. Because when it's one of those two extremes, it's not quite the right message. So, yes, masturbate just because it feels good. It feels good. That's all the motivation you need. I love that. So, thank you so much for this amazing conversation, Eric. It was a pleasure to have you here. Can you please tell my listeners where they can go to learn more about you and your work and get a copy of your new book titled DIY?

Yeah, sure. I'm on social media. I'm on, let's see, Instagram threads and Twitter, all at Dr. Sprankle. My website, drsprankle.com. You'll see all the links to get the book DIY. Two links typically, one's just to the Amazon one. If you don't want to shop at Amazon, it's another independent booksellers too, just search for it there. And then also I have a link to

Next Chapter Booksellers here in St. Paul in Minnesota. They're the exclusive provider for signed copies that they can ship out anywhere in the U.S. So if you want a signed copy, go to the Next Chapter Booksellers, their site. Otherwise, wherever you buy books, it'll be there. Great. And I'll be sure to include links to your website and social media handles in the show notes. Thanks again so much for your time. I really appreciate having you here. Thanks, Justin.

Thank you for listening. To keep up with new episodes of this podcast, visit my website, sexandpsychology at sexandpsychology.com or subscribe on your favorite platform where I hope you'll take a moment to rate and review the show. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, please consider becoming a Sex and Psychology Premium subscriber to enjoy ad-free listening for just $3.99 a month.

You can also follow me on social media for daily sex research updates. I'm on Blue Sky and X at Justin Laymiller and Instagram at Justin J. Laymiller. Also, be sure to check out my book, Tell Me What You Want. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.