Anthony Bogaert - Understanding Asexuality

But who exactly are the most likely doubters? Interestingly, they seem to be, almost invariably, men. Perhaps this says something about male sexuality: that it emerges with such a punch in the groin at adolescence, thanks largely to pubertal testosterone (Udry, Billy, Morris, Groff, & Raj, 1985), and generally sustains itself as such a major force in many men’s lives, that some men cannot perceive it could be otherwise in others; hence, they have a false consensus that everyone has a high, male-like, sexual attraction and drive.

Conversely, more women than men have questioned whether this figure was too low. Is this also a false consensus effect? If women have a lower sex drive than men, and their sexual attractions are more flexible than men’s (see chapter 6), perhaps they assume that a disproportionately high number of people are similarly inclined (i.e., have low sexual drives and/or lack sexual attraction)? Hmmm, only this low, huh? I expected the figure to be much higher…. [19] In the last two paragraphs, I expect I offended both men and women. In my defense, although lots of variability exists within each sex, there is also strong evidence that men, on average, have a higher sex drive than women do, and that women are more flexible in their sex drives/attractions (see also chapter 6) (Baumeister, 2000; Baumeister, Catanese, & Vohs, 2001).

I’ve also noted that some gay men seem to be the most suspicious of asexual people. This is partially understandable because gay men, of course, are also part of the high testosterone brood—men. But there may be other reasons as well. First, openly gay people, especially those with a bit of seasoning in the sexual marketplace, are often astute enough to know that people claiming one sexual identity (e.g., “I am bisexual,” “I am heterosexual”) at one point in their lives may “come out” as gay years later. I, too, do not discount the possibility that some asexual people, or those who identify as such, might be gay people in waiting, although I suspect that this does not apply to the majority of asexual people.

An additional reason why some gay men may be opposed to accepting a 1 percent (or more) prevalence rate may concern justice sensitivity. Gay and lesbian people have often fought hard for the right to be accepted in Western society as a visible minority. Thus, although most gays and lesbians seem very accepting of sexual variations, some may be justifiably sensitive to issues related to their own rights and recognition. Now there is a new kid on the block, perhaps encroaching on their hard-fought and hard-won space. Does yet another sexual minority in some way diminish the status of the original sexual minority group? Perhaps some gay and lesbians believe so, if only on an implicit level. Relatedly, I expect that all humans, as social psychologists have argued, have a tendency to dislike the “out-group” and, sadly and concomitantly, to force to the back of the metaphorical bus ever more marginalized groups, even among those who believe that they themselves are near the back of the bus already.

Even when we rely on information from national probability samples, we cannot know for sure how many asexual people exist, although my original estimate of 1 percent may not be a bad figure to work with for now. There are various reasons (e.g., health, demographic, political) why such prevalence figures are important and of interest; thus, the tallying and head counting of sexual minorities is not likely to go away soon. Why people believe or do not believe (i.e., the “As if!” reaction) in the current estimates of sexual minorities may have less to do with the quality of the scientific studies surveying this issue (although this factor should not be discounted) and more to do with human cognitive biases (e.g., the false consensus effect). The fact that sexuality so often and so strongly evokes these biases—even when discussing asexuality—reaffirms a main theme in this book: sex is deeply embedded in our psyches and our cultures, and not just in our genitals.

In this chapter, I ask and perhaps answer a series of seemingly dumb questions about masturbation. I do so to try to understand masturbation as a sexual phenomenon, but also to understand some of the variability in asexuality.

My first dumb question is this: What is the purpose of masturbation? This first question about the rather delicate subject of masturbation is, at least on the surface, “dumb,” because there is, of course, in many people’s minds no real purpose to masturbation, aside from simple pleasure; it just feels good, and that’s why people do it. But from an evolutionary standpoint, it is a good question, because the existence of any form of sexual variability without clear reproductive benefits (e.g., homosexuality, asexuality, and masturbation) puzzles scientists. After all, how could a sexual variation without potential procreative sustainability compete with one—heterosexual intercourse—that has obvious and built-in procreative sustainability (the replication of genes in the form of children) over millions of years of human evolutionary history? So, masturbation seemingly serves no obvious reproductive purpose, yet it exists. Thus, masturbation misses the (evolutionary) point. (And sometimes, in the case of men, messes the point.)

So the answer, “because it feels good,” begs another question: Why does it feel good? Or, at least, why does it feel good enough to make people do it, even sometimes when there is an available partner? Before we answer this question, let’s give a little background on the incidence and frequency of masturbation. In the classic survey conducted in the United States by the pioneer sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, nearly all the men and about 60 percent of the women indicated that they had masturbated at least once (Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953). Indeed, one of the great cultural shocks of the 1950s, summarized in Kinsey’s book Sexual Behavior in the Human Female , was that a majority of women had masturbated. Today, people are less likely to see this fact as a revelation and more, perhaps, as a titillating curiosity. A well-conducted national survey of the United States in the 1990s, the National Health and Social Life Survey, sometimes considered the modern follow-up to Kinsey’s work, indicated that 75 percent of women had masturbated (Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994). So, there is support for the notion that masturbation is a common recreation, rivaling—dare I say?—baseball (or hockey if you’re from Canada) as a national pastime.

Returning to our original question, what is the purpose of masturbation? It is true that masturbation does, for most people, feel good and thus serves “the purpose” of pleasure enhancement. It is also true that other factors, including the availability of a partner, can influence masturbation frequency. So, some people do it, partly as a substitute for an unavailable partner. [20] However, note that a lack of a partner is not a good proxy for high frequency of masturbation, as sexual behaviors tend to correlate with one another, so those who have frequent sex with a partner also, on average, masturbate more. But the main point here is that masturbation can, at least for some, serve as a substitute for an unavailable partner.

Beyond these perhaps rather obvious reasons, the ubiquity of the act suggests that masturbation may be evolutionarily adaptive or serve a reproductive “function,” or at least not be detrimental to one’s reproductive success. Indeed, there is likely a purpose to masturbation beyond mere pleasure enhancement or replacement for a lack of sexual partner. In adolescence or young adulthood (particularly if accompanied by fantasy), it may serve as a form of sexual “rehearsal,” or a kind of mental acting out of sexual scenes ( First I’ll kiss her like this, then I’ll stroke her like that… ). Thus, it may create or at least reinforce important sexual scripts, potentially to be played out with partners later on in life (see also chapter 2). In other words, as an actor learns his role—what he needs to say and do—from a TV script, we learn potentially adaptive sequences of behavior, along with how to deal with behavioral contingencies ( If this happens, do this; if that happens, do that… ), partially through fantasies. [21] Masturbation, then, is like all “play” activity in that it is more frequent in younger versus older people, but the seeming insignificance of the act belies the fact that it partially prepares one for later, adult-oriented challenges. Thus, it is not surprising that our fantasies often match or closely resemble what might be best for us from an evolutionary perspective, even if this fantasy world never exists in real life.