Anthony Bogaert - Understanding Asexuality

Sometimes the fantasies are mere snippets of what, in real life, would comprise a longer sequence of behavior. So, for a heterosexual male adolescent, it may be as simple as imagining kissing a woman, stroking her inner thighs, and rubbing her vulva. These imaginings may ingrain into his psyche a short sexual script, the elements and order of which would be adaptive to act out if he were to encounter an opportunity to engage in sexual behavior with a member of the other sex.

Sometimes the imaginings are more elaborate. So, a young heterosexual man may have elaborate “harem-like” fantasies of having a bevy of beautiful young women as playthings at his sexual beck and call. If a heterosexual man ever had a chance to encounter and then enter this situation (i.e., to be a harem master), it would be, at least from an evolutionary perspective, a good idea for him to act out this script, as it would be a procreative gold mine: men’s genes would be replicated at a high frequency by mating with many young women. Men have a relatively low reproductive/parental investment (e.g., lots of sperm that are easily replaced), so, from the perspective of procreation, it is in a man’s interest to sow his seed among as many reproductively viable women as possible (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Symons, 1979; Trivers, 1972). Conversely, women have a relatively high reproductive/parental investment (e.g., must gestate a fetus for nine months inside her own body), so it is usually in their best interest to be picky sexually, potentially securing a man’s resources to help with raising their offspring and only mating with men of high-quality genes. Thus, it would be in an average heterosexual woman’s advantage to form a sexual/romantic bond with, say, Brad Pitt if she had the opportunity in real life, given the high quality of his genes ( My gosh, is he cute! ) and his excellent resources ( My gosh, is he rich! ). So, a young woman’s fantasies about Brad Pitt or similar men, even if they might irk her husband (if he knew), would be adaptive, as they help in rehearsing reproductively beneficial actions/scenes in case she ever encountered them.

In sum, it is not surprising that men and women create or are drawn to fantasies of this kind: they help to create or reinforce sexual scripts that, if they unfolded in real life, could be a huge boon, reproductively speaking. [22] Even though our fantasies often resemble what might be “best” for us, at least from an evolutionary perspective, modern society also has the capacity to make our fantasies maladaptive. The modern media, with their high-tech sophistication and super-realistic images, may make our fantasies more real and powerful than our brains could ever conjure. Thus, along with ingraining sexual scripts, modern media probably raise our expectations and, at times, make us too unrealistic about what to expect in real-life sexual encounters. Thus, these fantasies may be somewhat maladaptive in modern society, even if they would have been adaptive in in our evolutionary past. After all, realistically, we can’t all mate with Brad Pitt!

Masturbation may also have physical health benefits. Men’s prostate health later in life may be related to frequency of masturbation early in life (Walsh, 2004). Thus, frequent “flushing out” of the prostate gland (an important internal reproductive organ providing some of the content of semen) in early adolescence and young adulthood may serve a man well, although there is some conflicting evidence of this benefit (Dimitropoulou et al., 2009). Masters and Johnson (1966) argued that, for women, masturbation can be a good remedy for pelvic congestion, which contributes to menstrual cramps and tension. Similarly, men may also derive some relief through masturbation from muscular tension and pelvic congestion caused by sexual arousal. This explanation for masturbation—relief from tension and congestion—partly blurs the distinction between health and pleasure, as tension reduction is potentially healthy, but it also can be pleasurable. Finally, there is some evidence that sexual activity, including masturbation, is associated with heart health (Davey, Frankel, & Yarnell, 1997).

In sum, all of these factors—pleasure, the creation and rehearsal of sexual scripts, and various health benefits—may have conspired to create an impulse in humans to be the rather compulsive masturbators that they are (call it a “psychological masturbation mechanism”).

My second dumb question is this: Do asexual people masturbate? This may seem like a bit of an odd question, given that asexual people should have little interest in sex (right?). Despite the seeming peculiarity of it, the answer is, yes, some asexual people masturbate. In a recent study by Lori Brotto and her colleagues, about 80 percent of asexual men reported that they had masturbated, and about 70 percent of asexual women reported they had masturbated (Brotto, Knudson, Inskip, Rhodes, & Erskine, 2010). There was no comparison group of sexual people in their study, but these percentages (80 percent; 70 percent) were only somewhat lower than the percentage of people who reported masturbating in a national sample of the United States population. This is an extraordinarily high percentage, given that asexual people are perceived to have no sexual desire! However, although interesting, these findings may not be representative of the asexual population, as they likely represent only those who frequent the AVEN website (the most popular asexual website). These individuals may be more liberal and adventuresome (e.g., more curious about masturbation) than average asexual people. There was no information on masturbation available in my first study of asexuality using the NATSAL-I data (Bogaert, 2004) (see also chapter 4). However, in the follow-up to this representative British sample (NATSAL-II), I found that 42 percent of asexual people had masturbated in the last month (Bogaert, in press-a). This percentage is, as perhaps you might expect, lower than the percentage for sexual people (70 percent). Also, this 42 percent figure may be significantly inflated, because it reflects the responses of those asexual people who had some sexual experience with a partner; those who didn’t, unfortunately, were not asked about their masturbation habits. One might expect that asexual people with no sexual experience are less likely to masturbate (thus, the 42 percent should be a lower figure), because sexual behaviors tend to correlate with one another (i.e., people with more sexual experience also tend to masturbate more). But we can’t know this for sure. The broad and more important point, however, is that some percentage—perhaps a substantial percentage!—of asexual people masturbate, or at least have tried it once or twice.

One important point to take away from the research on masturbation among asexual people is that it reinforces the notion that asexuality is a diverse phenomenon: there are some who do engage in masturbation (a seemingly sexual behavior) and some who do not. In other words, there are different types of asexual people.

My next question, then, not really that dumb, is this: Why do some asexual people masturbate? It’s not really a dumb question because asexuality should be associated, presumably, with low, if not totally absent, sexual activity, and thus pondering why some asexual people engage in this form of sexual expression is a legitimate question.

Of the main reasons for masturbation (i.e., pleasure, rehearsal, health) mentioned above, which is the most likely to explain why some asexual people masturbate? The rehearsal function is not likely to be of ultimate importance for many asexual people, because they are not inclined to play out elaborate sexual scripts with partners. [23] This is not to imply that when (sexual) adolescents engage in masturbation with fantasies, they do so with the conscious intent of building sexual scripts into their psyches. Rather, this is done unconsciously; it just happens, especially after the fantasy/script is paired with (often repeatedly!) rewarding sexual pleasure and orgasm. If unconscious, one could argue that asexual people still retain the ancient mechanisms of masturbation (even an incentive to masturbate), which would have served this rehearsal function in our evolutionary past, but which is a somewhat useless byproduct for them now. However, as we will see later in this chapter, asexual people may be less likely to build sexual scripts into their psyches, because (perhaps not surprisingly) their masturbation is often without fantasy. However, releasing physical tension and health are likely important. In line with this explanation, some asexual people discuss masturbation in a health-oriented, utilitarian fashion: for instance, they sometimes engage in it to “clean out the plumbing” (Brotto et al., 2010, p. 611). Here is a similar quote from another asexual person discussing masturbation on AVEN: “It just feels like there’s a tension or something my body needs to release, but my mind has no interest in it whatsoever” (AnyOtherName, 2010, August 22).