Sexual Behavior in the 1970s Part V: Masturbation

The Playboy national sex survey finds that sexual liberation, which has had impressive effects on many attitudes and behavior patterns, has a mixed record where masturbation is concerned. Our data, compared with those gathered by Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey from 1938 through 1949, indicate that the belief that masturbation is sinful has largely disappeared and that today both males and females start masturbating at a younger age, continue to masturbate longer (many into their married years) and do so more easily and more often than used to be the case. These changes, however, have been less impressive than those in many other areas of sexuality, and most people, despite their professed liberalism on the subject, still are more ashamed and secretive about their own masturbating, especially current masturbating, than about almost any other sexual behavior.

These attitudes have persisted despite strenuous efforts by sexual liberationists in recent years to remove the stigma from masturbation and even to endow it with considerable merit. Kinsey defended it as normal and valuable; he reported that for American males, it was second only to coitus as a source of sexual gratification, and that for females, it yielded orgasm more reliably than any other sexual act. Since Kinsey's time, a growing number of doctors, psychologists, sex experts and others have argued that masturbation is harmless (it does not cause physical disease, mental disease, pregnancy nor interpersonal conflict) and have enumerated its virtues (many authors, ranging from psychologist and longtime Kinsey associate Dr. Wardell Pomeroy to sexploitress "J" of The Sensuous Woman, recommend it unhesitatingly for sexual relief, pleasure and precoital training).

But in a series of in-depth interviews supplemental to our questionnaire survey, we found that guilt and shame about masturbation are still both common and powerful during adolescence and especially during adulthood. A few of the men and a fair number of the women we interviewed indicated that guilt had wholly prevented, or at least long delayed, their masturbating.

A typical comment:

Man, 38: "When I was an adolescent and would get an erection, I'd want to grab it and do things to it--I'd be almost sick with wanting to--but I felt too terrified."

But sooner or later, nearly all men and a majority of women yielded--and many continued to suffer and struggle and yield for years:

Man, 25: "I worried and held back, and fought it, but finally I gave in. The worry didn't stop me and doing it didn't stop my worrying."

Woman, 38: "I tried not to, and wept and prayed, and I did it anyway. But as soon as I fell in love with a boy at the age of 16, I got the strength to stop and I felt clean and decent again--until the next time."

Only a few had no initial conflicts about it:

Man, 26: "I learned from the guys I played baseball with. I was in sixth grade and one time they said, 'Come on over--we have books and pictures and we jack off together.' So I went over, and there didn't seem to be anything wrong about it--it was all happy vibes."

Even this man, however, later felt shame and a sense of failure when, as a young adult, he resorted to masturbating during a sexual dry spell. Only a few wholly liberated people feel totally at ease about masturbation in adulthood:

Woman, 29: "I still do it when the man I live with is away. It gives me satisfaction and peace and keeps me from wanting to go looking for someone else."

Man, 25: "Even though I'm sleeping with a great girl, I still masturbate sometimes, because the orgasm is better or because I just want to do something different."

But almost no adults, not even the very liberated, can bring themselves to tell friends, lovers or mates that they still occasionally masturbate. Americans are neither ashamed nor secretive about their self-administration of other kinds of pleasure (e.g., eating, lying in a hot bath, staying in bed late); why, then, the shame and secrecy about this one? Or, rather, why does this common sexual act engender so much more shame than most others? Probably because parental disapproval of touching or playing with the genitals is manifested so much earlier in the child's life than most other disapproval--so early, indeed, that much of it is preverbal and implanted too deep for liberating words to uproot it fully later in life.

Nevertheless, at the conscious level, during the past generation, Americans have grown measurably more tolerant about masturbation. Though Kinsey published little statistical information on attitudes toward masturbation, we can see the change by comparing the 35-and-older half of our survey sample with the 18-to-34 half; the attitudinal differences reflect differences in the social milieu in which each half grew up. Our findings:

• In the older half of the sample, nearly one out of three men agrees with the statement "Masturbation is wrong"; in the younger half, only one out of six agrees.

• In the older half, one woman out of three agrees with the statement "Masturbation is wrong"; in the younger half, only one out of six agrees.

Our data, broken down by smaller age groups, show that the residual condemnation of masturbation has withered throughout the era of sexual liberation:

Mastrubation is Wrong

(percent agreeing)

Kinsey found that the taboo against masturbation was stronger at the blue-collar level than at the white-collar level and stronger among noncollege people than among college-educated people. Today, men and women in every category are more accepting of masturbation than their precursors were--but the gap between levels has not narrowed as it has in many other areas of sexual attitudes and behavior. One reason is that while freer verbal communication has played an important role in breaking down class-determined attitudes about foreplay and coital variations, masturbation still is inwardly regarded as a lowly and immature act, and it is not yet a topic of honest and liberating conversation.

Actual masturbatory behavior has, however, increased measurably as a result of the partial stripping away, by other forces, of the aura of sin and/or pathology that surrounded it. At first glance, there would appear to be no significant increases in the percentages of men and women who have ever masturbated: Kinsey gives 92 percent for males, 62 percent for females; the Playboy survey, 94 percent and 63 percent, respectively. But our figures represent only what has happened up to now in the lives of our respondents, while Kinsey's are lifetime, accumulative incidences. Since a few men and a fair number of women do not masturbate for the first time until adulthood, lifetime figures for our sample would be somewhat larger; i.e., there have been definite increases in accumulative incidence since Kinsey's time. (In making this and other direct comparisons with Kinsey's all-white sample, we use only the white data in our own survey.)

A more striking and clear-cut measure of change is the age at which the urge to masturbate breaks through barriers of parental and social disapproval. The trend is unmistakably toward breakthrough at younger ages, as this table shows:

Also noteworthy are certain changes in active incidence (the measure of how many do a given thing within a specified period of time) and in the typical frequencies of masturbation. Active incidences for young single males are only moderately higher in our sample than in Kinsey's, but very much higher for young single females: In Kinsey's sample, only a little more than a quarter of the single girls in their upper teens and a little (continued on page 176)Sexual Behavior(continued from page 55) more than a third of those in their early 20s masturbated, as compared with more than three fifths of the girls between 18 and 24 in our sample. Similar changes appear in the analysis of median frequency, as shown by this table:

Mastrubation Frequency per year

(single white males and females)

Sexual liberation has, curiously, produced a tendency for more single people to continue masturbating in adulthood than formerly, even though single adults engage in coitus more than their precursors did. In Kinsey's sample, nearly a quarter of all single men had stopped masturbating by the time they became 30; today, less than a tenth have done so. In Kinsey's sample, those who still masturbated at 30 had a median frequency of 30 times a year; today, the median is over 60. Nearly a half of Kinsey's single women in their late 20s and early 30s were still masturbating; over four fifths of ours are doing so. (Our sample of single women of 25 and over is too small for the computation of a statistically significant median.)

Most remarkable of all is the increase we find in masturbation by young married men and women. Kinsey reported that the incidence and frequency of masturbation dropped sharply alter marriage but that far more married men and women continued to masturbate at least occasionally than had previously been realized. But today still more do so than in Kinsey's time, and for men the typical frequency is much higher than it used to be:

• Kinsey: More than two out of five husbands in their late 20s and early 30s masturbated and their median rate was about six times a year. Playboy: More than seven out of ten do so and their median rate is 24 times a year.

• Kinsey: About three out of ten wives in their late 20s and early 30s masturbated, their median rate being ten times a year. Playboy: Nearly seven out of ten wives in the same age brocket are active, although the median rate remains ten times a year.

These increases do not signify diminished sexual satisfaction among the married, nor do they indicate increased sexual frustration among the single; previous installments of this series have presented evidence to the contrary. The increases mean only that single or married, male or female, the people in our sample, especially the younger ones, feel freer to masturbate when they feel the urge than their counterparts did a generation ago. Most of them no longer regard doing so as either sinful or perverted but merely as somewhat immature, and some do not have even this reservation about it. For many young adults (and, to some extent, older ones), the act is merely another acceptable, normal way to get sexual relief--inferior to heterosexual coitus but not in conflict with it.

Actually, it no longer is primarily a matter of sexual relief, as Kinsey seemed to think it was. Although four out of five men and more than two out of three women cite sexual relief as their motive for masturbating, substantial percentages of men and women also cite other motives, many of them nonsexual. One quarter to one third feel the urge to masturbate when they are suffering from loneliness, when they are tense about nonsexual problems, when they are sleepless or when they are feeling rejected.

Masturbation also offers vicarious variety: Nearly half of our males and more than a fifth of our females at least sometimes have fantasies about coitus with strangers while they are masturbating, and still larger numbers have fantasies about coitus with acquaintances. (The percentages are lower among the married than among the single, but still substantial.) It is important to add, however, that the fantasy reported by the largest number is coitus with a loved partner; the cultural tradition that links sex with love remains largely intact even in masturbation, and this is true for the young as well as for older people in our sample.

The young feel somewhat freer than older people to use masturbation as vicarious fulfillment of deviant desire, but at all ages at least some people do so. Here are some figures from the Playboy survey on the use of such fantasies in masturbation:

• Sex with more than one partner at the same time: 33 percent of males, 18 percent of females.

• Doing things one would never do in reality (a catchall category): 19 percent of males, 28 percent of females.

• Being forced to have sex: ten percent of males, 19 percent of females.

• Forcing someone to have sex: 13 percent of males, three percent of females.

• Homosexual contact: seven percent of males, 11 percent of females.

Thus, masturbation partially gratifies nonmonogamous, daring and deviant desires that, if they were acted out, could be hurtful to the individual's primary love relationship or emotionally or socially damaging.

Is there, then, no danger at all in masturbation? In the interview sample, we found that a few people use masturbation in highly neurotic ways--as gratification that prevents them from solving major personal problems and from achieving far deeper gratification. Some, for instance, use masturbation to avoid the challenge of adult sexual behavior and interpersonal relations, some as a weapon against mates and some as a form of hostility toward and protest against the opposite sex in general.

But for those who function normally in their sexual and emotional relationships--for the great majority, that is--the freeing of masturbation from its traditional burden of sin and/or perversity is undoubtedly a real boon. Even though sexual liberation still has some distance to travel where masturbation is concerned, its benefits even there are already numerous and unmistakable.

This is the fifth in a series of articles reporting the results of a comprehensive Playboy Foundation-funded survey of sex in America. Morton Hunt's full report will be published as a book, "Sexual Behavior in the 1970s," by Playboy Press.