Understanding Asexuality

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]

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”).