Idle Hands, Errant Loads: The Dirty Gay Sinfulness of Self-Stroking

By Shawn Baker / Thursday, November 10th, 2011

Imagine as a gay man that you had to forever be trapped in your worst phase of emotional development. Frozen in your most naked uncertainty, shame, self-doubt, isolation, and vulnerability. This is your beginning and your terminus. Do not pass go. It doesn’t get better.

Now you know what it’s like to be a hardline Moral Conservative.

This is the zone of arrested sexual maturity that all the Family Researchers, Concerned Mommies, and Don’t-Teach-The-Wittle-White-Kids-Anal NOMers not only are condemned to abide in but choose to abide in. And this is the emotional dungeon they expect us to dwell in.

You see, being a sexual hysteric who has to avert thine eyes from exposed lady parts and men’s high-sitting, provocative hindquarters is a choice. There’s nothing natural about it because it requires so damn much work. Yes, you may be able to have an adult sexual relationship with a man you have a genuine regard for in which you navigate issues like STI prevention and dating exclusivity with a certain adult grace, but sexual moralists instead worry about aping the unions of mythical people who lounged photogenically by waterfalls and talked to the animals. You can enjoy porn in the same manner that a moderate drinker can handle booze, but self-flagellators fancy themselves sexual werewolves who’ll terrorize the countryside if they see anybody jizz onscreen. And yes, you can crank one off by yourself with the knowledge that you’re not hurting anyone, but these latter-day buckle-heads? If even one motile sperm cell doesn’t end up in wifey’s Garden of Eden and fertilize an egg that will become a precious cherub, then they’ve just committed murder.

So really, that curvaceous, hirsute, marble-fleshed hot piece with the cascading stream in the corner of your screen is a flagrant genocidal maniac.

Like Hitler.

“Masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if he’s watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body.”

— Pastor Mark Driscoll

I’ll be frank: lately I’m sick to my dick of all these flamboyant heterosexual morals mongers. It’s absurd to me that they’re so anti-sex ed. when it’s so obvious that they have no clue how the act works. They can’t grasp how women’s menstrual cycles function. Whatever the hell they’re picturing in their heads that goes on between gay men in the hay sure isn’t my scene. Now even crankin’ it is some sort of gateway for the dreaded Gaaaaaaaaay to creep in.

I’ll paraphrase a response I once read from a bodybuilder who took flak in a forum for doing some solo modeling for Colt:

How can it be gay when I was alone?

You’ve probably heard of Pastor Mark Driscoll at some point. He’s the douche-attired preacher who’s responsible for giving Calvinism a pathetic man-child macho make-over, which basically means you get lots of Ultimate Fighting and beer cans crushed against foreheads on top of all the guilt and shame. His church seems to attract a male audience made of guys who cry when they masturbate and feel men aren’t really men unless they’re spearing a mastodon and charring the carcass afterward.

Look at that quote above and ask yourself if that kookery has ever even occurred to you. It really raises far more questions than it answers. Has he never actually done it before? Is he a complete narcissist? Is it all permissible as long as you’re using a visual aid?

I can’t.

The sense I get from this type is that deep down they suspect that everybody is gay, and good, moral people simply use their will power to stay on a hetero crash diet while bad ones gorge themselves on high-calorie dick. A libido is like breathing; it’s not something you should have to constantly work at and obsess over. I’ve never been confused about my orientation, so in many ways I have to marvel at the number of men who are well into adulthood. I guess I must have sort of an alpha gay presence, because I find that young men who are questioning things seem to want to confide in me about it.

I always ask the same question of anyone who’s wondering if they’re gay, with the preface that if they answer honestly with the first thing that pops into their head or equivocate even slightly that both responses are equally revealing:

The last time you masturbated, did you think about a man or a woman?

Still, if you’re like Aaron Eckhart in Your Friends & Neighbors and opine that nobody’s ever gonna be better than yourself, then that’s a whole other bag.

So yes, I have to figure that the majority of men have a lust object in their head other than themselves when they have at in private. Also, sitting in front of a mirror is both somewhat creepy and oddly antiquated given the amount of visual stimulus available. Admittedly, there’s a certain amount of self-reflexivity to the art of jacking off in the digital age. I’ll give on that.

We know there are plenty of men of both persuasions who enjoy filming themselves and sharing. Most men consider it a real show-stopper to spray themselves in the face, and if you pushed them, even straight guys will admit to unconsciously opening their mouths when they do. It all just shouldn’t be this big litmus test for purity or machismo. Years ago I can recall Dennis Miller joking that Lyle Menendez probably had a Hustler centerfold taped to the back of his head whenever his cellmate banged him out — as if that were somehow less gay — and since Driscoll is essentially applying that same prison logic to flying solo, you can guess how well adjusted he must be when he pounds his own pulpit.

Is it gay to be aware of your own erogenous zones? What if you massage your taint or rub your own abs? Does that mean you’ll call out your own name when you finally pop? I can’t say that I’ve ever looked at myself in the mirror mid-stroke and though “Oh yeah baby! I wanna put a hurtin’ on you!,” but you know how slippery that slope that can be.

Even if I play with my nipples it’s not my hand I’m thinking about — the hand just metonymically stands in for Joel McHale’s tits or the Supernatural brothers’ tongues. Yes, that’s very gay, but if you’re picturing the Swedish Bikini Team then you are certifiably straight, regardless of whether or not you might have a girlish thrill to your moans or lick your jizz off your hand.

I realize talking about jacking off is like dancing about architecture, but when dealing with people who are a few hundred years behind the times, you have to speak slowly.

And really enunciate.

Mike C.

Some friends and I were joking about Driscoll…who, for all his right-wing douchiness, is fairly bangable based on looks alone. We all have him labeled as the type who’s all resistant and reluctant until things start swinging…and then he’s an insatiable tornado who later begs and pleads for you not to tell while simultaneously trying to score with you again. Mmm, shame sex.

But seriously, he goes on about looking at yourself in the mirror while you jack off? Even I hardly ever do that. Guess we know what Driscoll does…
Nat

“The sense I get from this type is that deep down they suspect that everybody is gay, and good, moral people simply use their will power to stay on a hetero crash diet while bad ones gorge themselves on high-calorie dick.”

I think this is right, and I think this is the tragedy of the fire and brimstone closet case. Their perspective has been so thoroughly conditioned by an external cultural force that they can’t conceive that others don’t think the same as they do. So they have to reconcile their own internal urges with the external force. They conclude that homosexuality – like cancer or the Devil – is waiting in the wings for everyone, because it’s always waiting there for them.

They are, one and all, worthy of disdain. But I can’t help feeling sorry for them either, because they’re trapped between the certainty of their beliefs and the uncertainty of themselves.
http://kapitano.blogspot.com/ Kapitano

People don’t do things for long unless they enjoy it on some level. So do conservatives enjoy the guilt? Or is it the hating others they love?

It presumably varies, and people with identical outer douchiness will have different emotions underpinning their behavior.

If someone is afraid of going to hell, they’ll either soon find some sophism to tell themselves they personally are exempt from hellfire, or in some way get off on being the bitch of a god who hates them.

It seems in one way conservatives are sexually more adventurous than sane people – they sublimate their sexual desires far more distantly.
Bryan

“The sense I get from this type is that deep down they suspect that everybody is gay, and good, moral people simply use their will power to stay on a hetero crash diet while bad ones gorge themselves on high-calorie dick.”

- Yes You are correct here. But one must raise the question, so what? Do you think this defeats their argument, refutes their claims? Because it does not. It is not simply these people or “this type” that hold to such a view. Any single person who from Freud to Kinsey to Foucault or Juidth Butler has ever held that sexuality is not some genetic or chemical (biological) given, nay, Absolute without change or the possibility thereof agrees with, and will continue to agree with these people (this type) that admit “yes, there but the grace of god go I”. To admit to one’s fluidity when it comes to desire or to the situational nature of most sexual encounters does not make one a radical homophobe and it is the “bad faith” (Satrean) of many gay or straight crusaders for equal representation under the law that has separated the camps into such extremes while at the same time limiting the sexual possibilities of many people who cannot or will not identify as gay or lesbian. This refusal no doubt hovers around notions of masculinity that have been struggled against quite rightly but it also stems from gay identity as such…the desperate need to make or find meaning with a three letter word. Please, there are other ways to make or find meaning for men and women who enjoy having sexual relations with other men and women. These conservatives and the religious right are ‘right’ when they say you are your own sexual object-choice and Guy Hocquenghem in The Screwball Asses is correct when he notes: “I lose myself when I masturbate: the one with the whip and the one being whipped, the one who binds and the one bound, the one on top and the one on the bottom, I don’t know, my masturbation is a balance with two scales that gets freaky”. And for a religious right conservative (for any conservative of any kind) “losing oneself” is the one thing one cannot, must not do…and so when you write that: “A libido is like breathing; it’s not something you should have to constantly work at and obsess over” this means two things to me: 1) you’ve never had air issues and 2) you’re just as conservative as they are because for you the sexual is that remnant of pleasure between “STI prevention and dating exclusivity with a certain adult grace”, that little left-over “fun” at the end of a hard day’s work…the same as a “stiff” cock-tail after work: “You can enjoy porn in the same manner that a moderate drinker can handle booze, but self-flagellators fancy themselves sexual werewolves”…damn straight! Who would not want to be a sexual werewolf?! The only proper difference should be between those who are proud to be wolves, always hungry and those who are ashamed, desperately wanting to be nice little lambs. I say, bring on more self-abuse! I can handle it! I come from a position of strength and can push through the pain. Now, if we told religious right conservatives this; imagine how the flood gates would open and the seas would part!
Nat

“To admit to one’s fluidity when it comes to desire or to the situational nature of most sexual encounters does not make one a radical homophobe and it is the “bad faith” (Satrean) of many gay or straight crusaders for equal representation under the law that has separated the camps into such extremes while at the same time limiting the sexual possibilities of many people who cannot or will not identify as gay or lesbian.”

I don’t really understand most of your post, but I feel I can make a comment on this point:

The way to depolarize is to remove the novelty of non-heterosexual behaviour, and the way to remove the novelty is equal individual rights. I support equal rights to end ghetto culture, not to foster it. The kind of diversity you’re after isn’t possible without some basic precepts.

And I should also add that the essence and strength of fluidity will vary from one individual to another. People who view themselves as ‘sexually fluid’ or thread their sexuality through situational variants tend to have the bad assumptions that everyone must actually think as they do. But for many, identification isn’t just trying to artificially create a peace of mind – it’s an honest statement on their own self.
Bryan

I’m sorry you didn’t understand most of my post. I hope that saying such is not an easy way of disengaging with complex and often unsettling notions. But to your point: “The way to depolarize is to remove the novelty of non-heterosexual behaviour, and the way to remove the novelty is equal individual rights. I support equal rights to end ghetto culture, not to foster it.” I agree here that what equal rights do is normalize the relations between groups and remove the strangeness, queerness, novelty as you put it homosexual behavior and homosexual forms of relation and intimacy. But this is exactly where one can see the problem. While equal rights and equal representation makes for normalcy and even diversity amongst peoples, it does not alleviate the problems with multiple identification or no identification; problems that started this discussion in the first place when some people started talking about young black men as an identity and black people in general as an identity as if they were exclusive identities. These posts bespeak someone who has no difficulty in thinking black as community and gay as community but never seeing black and gay embodied together and recognizing someone who crosses both identities all the time. We see this everywhere today. In the marriage debacle in California, in the “douchebag” article in nightharm and the amount of discrimination against blacks, asians, latinos, etc in the supposedly progressive “gay” community. The problem can be summed up like this: even with the normalcy that equal rights has brought to the relationships between blacks and whites or asians and whites have whites felt more black or asian? Do asians feel more black or blacks feel more native american? These “racial” or “ethnic” differences are not natural; they are cultural. Skin color yes and phenotypic features of eye shaping or hair-type are natural evolutionary varieties and are coded genetically but what these features MEAN and how these facts get interpreted and by whom…that’s the element of the social and the cultural at work. Now, once you say, gays are equal and they are born with this difference the same as the other races, ethnicities, does this increase the likelihood of straights feeling gay or gays feeling straight? As you put it: it’s an honest expression of one’s self – except of course that this identification is just that – an Identification and by definition to identify with something or as something is to do so as something prior to that identification, e.g., to identify as democrat (surely one wasn’t a democrat all one’s life? There was someone before you became a democrat, no?).

Does this increase the chance that there will be more sex period especially when you code your attraction at the level of the gene? You would in effect be going against your “nature”…and ironically enough this is exactly what the conservative religious claim.
matt

I wish these guys could cum over me