I want to ask you something personal,
but before I do, I want you to imagine
that sitting next to you is your mother or father
or maybe your grandparents.
Okay.
Are you ready?
Here goes.
If you have a hard time answering,
you're not alone.
I've spent over seven years interviewing
anyone I can get my hands on
from educators to porn stars
to sexual revolutionaries,
even a former Surgeon General
on topics ranging from history to politics
to health and education
or lack thereof.
Female reporter: He was bullied so badly
over that video that he committed suicide.
I've done this in order to understand a question
that has bothered me for years--
why is something most everybody does
so hard to talk about?
We know that 80 to 90% of men masturbate,
65 to 70% of women masturbate,
and the rest lie,
so what are we going to talk about?
All: ( repeating ) Masturbation. Masturbation. Masturbation...
( splat )
Choking your chicken.
Spanking the monkey.
Go ahead!
Double-clicking the mouse.
( vibrator buzzing )
Blasting off.
( screams )
( vibrator buzzing )
- Pet your bunny. - Coochee coochee coo!
( vibrator buzzing )
Whacking off.
- Ow. Ha ha! Ow. - ( vibrator buzzing )
Ow, ow, ow!
Hand-to-gland combat. I like that one.
This is my rifle. This is my gun.
Men: This is for fighting! This is for fun!
Some call it self abuse.
Give me a break.
Wanking. Wanking. Wanking.
( cheers and applause )
It's masturbation. That is the word.
Oh, rubb-a, rubb-a, rubb-a, rubb-a.
- Hey! - Oh!
When people ask me why I am making a documentary on masturbation,
I tell them it started as a joke.
Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.
We laugh at masturbation like we laugh
when someone trips on a banana peel.
We laugh because it makes us uncomfortable.
I recalled a conversation with someone.
He said that masturbation was like hemorrhoids.
Just because it existed
doesn't mean people want to talk about it.
Was masturbation so disgusting and painful
that it could be compared to hemorrhoids?
I have been obsessed with masturbation
for as long as I can remember.
I had my first masturbation experience when I was five.
I was playing show and tell with several
of the neighborhood girls.
I showed them how to do it, but for the life of me,
I couldn't figure out how they did it.
Women's hotspots are kind of in the little folds there
and not as easy to find.
Susie Bright has this great line about saying she never--
she never met a man who didn't know where his penis was
and didn't know how to have an orgasm, right,
whereas she's met thousands of women who have no idea
where the clitoris is and don't know how to have orgasms.
I think men are more comfortable with admitting they masturbate
because I think it's more accepted.
Men and women are socialized in fundamentally different ways
around masturbation.
Male genitalia is really out there.
You sort of can't miss it.
And women are born with a vulva, and it's internal.
So for us to actually figure out what's going on
takes a bit more work.
The clitoris is the only organ designed in the human body
exclusively and only for pleasure,
and for most women, it is their best bud.
There is no doubt about it.
Ducky Doolittle actually once said...
The clitoris is the center of the fucking universe.
Almost every woman can have an orgasm through her clitoris,
and studies show that as few as 24% of women
can orgasm from penetration alone.
Women have a lot more nerve endings than men,
or at least they're more centrally focused.
Normally men have between 4,000 and 5,000 nerve endings
where women have 8,000 in their clitoris.
( moans )
( singing operatically )
Jamye Waxman: So there's a big difference in the sensation.
We all know the stories of too-tight pants,
sitting on a washing machine,
riding ponies when you're a girl
and how exciting that is.
You talk to the women and ask them
what they humped when they were little, they'll be like...
- ( kisses ) - ( clears throat )
"Oh, my God, I can't believe I humped that, too."
They hump a lot of stuff.
Female narrator: It's wonderful being a girl.
Clits rule in the female sexuality world,
and let's hear it for penis tops as well.
( boisterous music plays, applause )
( boing )
Narrator: I was never taught about masturbation
and sex in Catholic school,
but I was taught about lust and sin.
There are no circumstances
under which we can condone masturbation.
It's what we call a moral absolute.
Narrator: I was in religion class
when I discovered a hole in my pants pocket
that allowed me to touch my penis
without anyone knowing.
It's a sin of Onan, the masturbatory crime.
Feelings of guilt mixed with feelings of pleasure,
but I couldn't resist.
The good feelings outweighed the bad.
I wondered what other religions had to say about masturbation
and whether they also viewed it as a sin.
No, masturbation is not a sin.
Masturbation has been indicated as a deviation.
If God didn't want us to masturbate,
he would have made our arms shorter.
It is a sin because it's an abuse
of what sex ought to be.
From a Buddhist perspective, the question of masturbation
has to do with what's our intention?
Does masturbation bring us closer to reality
Look at the nature of desire
and see if it really brings you the happiness you seek or not.
Muhammad: Based on the Koran
and the sayings of Prophet Mohammed,
masturbation is classed as a minor deviation
because the person is not harming anyone else.
In that case, according to the Quranian Law,
he has chosen a lesser evil.
The lesser of two evils principle does not apply there.
( Jewish folk music playing )
Ron: In the Jewish tradition, not so clear-cut.
Masturbation is not listed among the negative commandments
but mistakenly, people believe
that masturbation is condemned in the Torah.
That is not accurate.
It is not mentioned in the Torah "You shall not masturbate."
- It simply doesn't make sense. - So where did we get the idea?
It's from a story in the Torah in "Genesis"
of a guy by the name of Onan.
When Onan's brother died, God commanded Onan
to marry his brother's wife.
Joycelyn: He didn't want to have children...
Maybe I can convince him.
Because they would not be his children.
- And so he decides... - He would pull out
- and withdraw before he ejaculated. - And spill his seed.
Martha: What he did do was ejaculate not in a woman.
He ejaculated outside a woman which is similar to the way
you ejaculate in masturbation.
That somehow morphed into "masturbation is a sin."
It's a controversial subject.
They call masturbation Onanism. It simply inaccurate.
( rapping ) And now I'm stuck in a bad situation.
I'm the poster child for masturbation.
Narrator: If God made sex the only way
to procreate the human race,
what do all these religious people have to be afraid of?
The fear is that if we masturbate,
we will replace intercourse
and human connection with masturbation.
So they had to create all these mythologies
about the horrible dangers of masturbation.
Sex is for procreation, and pleasure is an incentive.
If it doesn't cause suffering,
then you can masturbate all you want.
But that doesn't give us reason to justify it.
Narrator: But it can be justified, because today
technology allows us to procreate through masturbation.
I think I'm probably responsible for somewhere between
75 and 100,000 children being brought into this world.
You see, I'm a andrologist, and I study men,
and therefore I study their sperm,
which is acquired through masturbation.
No, the act is still wrong.
Many people are taught that masturbation's a sin.
Whether it be in Judaism or Islam or any other religion,
- guilt is really intense. - It's always wrong.
Narrator: My Catholic upbringing influenced
the shame and guilt that I feel about masturbation,
even to this day.
I remember the summer before high school
being called a jerk-off for admitting that I masturbated.
The rumors went around that I was a pervert.
I felt like Hester Prynne from "The Scarlet Letter,"
only my letter was a big "M."
Nobody talked about masturbation in high school.
Most of my education about sex
came from whatever porn magazines
I could wrap my hands around.
Two dramatic events took place that really impacted
my ideas about masturbation.
The first event took place in 1991.
Paul Rubens was allegedly caught masturbating
in an adult movie theater in Sarasota Florida.
I remember feeling embarrassed for Pee-Wee
and sad that such a fun person
could be so quickly outcast by a world
that moments before showered him with love and affection.
It reminded me of those days in school
when I was made to feel bad for admitting that I masturbated.
( rock music playing )
Man: Every year, the biggest musical act
opens this award show.
This particular year, masturbation did.
Man: Ladies and gentlemen, MTV is proud to introduce...
Heard any good jokes lately?
And MTV just made the biggest statement to young people
- around the world. - Ha ha!
Paul Rubens is like the poster man
of the culture's tweaky antipathy about masturbation.
Heard any good jokes lately?
There's a lot of things about me
you don't know anything about, Dotty,
things you wouldn't understand,
things you couldn't understand,
things you shouldn't understand.
Sadie Lune: 1991, July 26,
Paul Rubens on all accounts was in Sarasota, Florida,
visiting his parents.
His hair is long. He's got a beard.
He's not looking like a Pee-Wee.
"Pee-Wee's Playhouse" had actually just wrapped.
The series was actually officially over.
Anyway, he's in the porn theater watching this triple feature,
- and then the cops come in. - Man: "Freeze, scumbag!"
That's when I decided to take the law into my own hands.
What else are people doing in those theaters?
He's in an adult theater touching himself,
and he should do this somewhere else?
Isn't that what those places are for?
And if the media hadn't made a circus out of it,
no one would've been the wiser.
Paul: We were having so much fun.
After his arrest
and that photo of him made the rounds,
his career was basically ruined.
If the Internet had been as big then as it was now,
this would be a viral phenomenon.
And of course, the issue was
our antipathy towards masturbation
but more importantly,
our terror around childhood sexuality.
People really took this seriously,
like this was really a shameful, ridiculous thing.
Female reporter: Paul, you got a statement?
Sadie Lune: Nobody wanted to support Pee-Wee products.
All of these sponsorships got lost,
all this big thing because he jerks off.
It was that connection, that line that was drawn
between masturbation as a sexual sin, quote unquote,
and the fact that he talked to children and was a icon
- for children. - What?
That would've been a great opportunity
to teach kids about something
that should be considered healthy.
I almost think of him as one of the first rocks off the cliff
of the tabloidization of well-known people's sexuality.
The media has as dysfunctional of view of masturbation
as the general public.
Of all the wars, all the political unrest,
all of the abuse of human rights
that are going on in this world
at any given moment, and one celebrity
is caught masturbating in a public porn theater,
that's the big headline?
( scoffs ) Life can be so unfair.
Chris: It's unfortunate that the character is,
you know, marred by this one incident.
If you're hosting a kid's show on television
and you're caught masturbating in a theater,
I mean, you can just kiss that show good-bye.
I think we lost a beloved children's character.
It's time to go.
Chris: I mean, Pee-Wee Herman.
- Bye, Pee-Wee! - Bye!
Narrator: The second event that really influenced
my ideas about masturbation
took place three years later in 1994.
It was the firing of the Surgeon General,
Dr. Joycelyn Elders, for taking a positive stance
on teaching about masturbation in schools.
She was later forced to resign by the same president
who made the executive decision to play "hide the cigar"
with his intern.
We in America can't talk about sex.
We can do it, but we can't talk about it.
Carol: Good Vibrations started National Masturbation Month
specifically because of Dr. Joycelyn Elders' firing.
When I was asked a question at the UN
at World AIDS Day if I felt
that we should teach children about masturbation,
if I felt it would reduce unintended pregnancy
and reduce disease, my answer to that is yes.
And all of a sudden,
the first female African-American Surgeon General
the country has ever had gets canned
because she said something sensible.
In regard to masturbation,
I think that that is something that--
that's a part of human sexuality,
and it is a part of something
that perhaps should be taught.
She got fired because I think President Clinton
thought he was gonna lose some of his base.
Clinton: She is a person of great energy and conviction,
and she's devoted her life to child health
and reducing teen pregnancy and fighting AIDS,
but there have been a number of things
where we just have different positions.
It's one of the worst moments in our country's history,
and I say that mindfully.
That just shows some of the backward mentality
of some of the idiots that run our country.
It really represented the phobia
that America has about sexuality.
We have more sexually transmitted infections.
We have more teenage pregnancies.
Our incidence of HIV disease
is higher than in sub Sahara Africa.
And the fact that we can't really have
any kind of real public discourse about sexual education
in this country is very, very disturbing.
It seems bizarre that we wouldn't teach kids
about a perfectly safe way to have sex, which is masturbation.
You know, why wouldn't you teach them that?
Because we are afraid if we tell them about it,
they'll do it.
I can't think of anyone that I admire more
for taking a positive stand that masturbation
should be taught in the public schools.
Joycelyn: I was not the President's Surgeon General.
I was not the Congress's Surgeon General.
I was the people's Surgeon General,
and I was going to do
what I felt was the right thing
for the most people of this country.
Narrator: The firing of the Surgeon General
and president Clinton's hypocrisy
and failure to back her up infuriated me.
What's so wrong about education around masturbation?
What do we have to fear?
The curriculum at my school I've been told
has been the same for the past 25 years or so.
It's an abstinence-based curriculum.
In my mind, it's very outdated.
Masturbation, it's a natural, normal thing,
but people try to ignore it and avoid it.
So people say we can't talk to young people about sex
because it... might give them ideas.
And I have a clue for them is that Mother Nature
has already beat you to the punch.
There is very limited coverage
- on masturbation. - There is no masturbation education.
They don't talk about female masturbation at all in our curriculum.
That went out with the attempt made
by our former Surgeon General.
We can talk about abstinence.
We can talk about not doing it or how to prevent pregnancy
or sexually transmitted infections,
but we certainly can't talk about pleasure.
We live in a very anti-pleasure culture,
particularly sexual pleasure.
We're in a political agenda
that driving sexuality education
into our very harm state for young people.
So right now in the United States,
it's a bad time for sex education.
Masturbation is still being educated
as something abnormal, not appropriate.
It's called abstinence only before marriage.
It highly funded by the federal government,
and it preaches and teaches moral messages
and not accurate, safe, sensitive information.
The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery.
So you can't masturbate without lust.
Still think masturbation is wrong?
Oh, let's not even go there.
- Um, you know, um... - Why? You went there.
Are you the pro-masturbation talk show host?
- ( laughs ) - Uh, yes, why not? Yes.
The problem is that there is a political will
to not talk about sex.
All it says is wait until you get married, period.
I don't think any intelligent person
is gonna think that if you mention masturbation to kids,
they're gonna run wild in the street masturbating.
That's what I thought, too, until I discovered
in Fremont, California, parents were actually gathering
with the hopes of having a sex-education book
removed from the high school curriculum.
The Fremont school district plans to use a new book
to teach sex education,
but some say that book is too graphic.
I think the "Your Health Today" book is a very modern,
up-to-date, approachable book for students.
There were people who put together a petition,
and they had concerns about the age-appropriateness
of this particular textbook, things like
masturbation or how to properly put on a condom.
I'm gonna read from it for a minute.
It just says, "Masturbation is self stimulation
of the genitals for sexual pleasure.
The stigma attached to masturbation is left over
from a previous era when it was considered sinful
and dangerous to one's health,
probably because its purpose was pleasure
rather than procreation."
Sexual education begins in the home with parents.
Children are learning by watching their parents. They're the role models.
If the parents are uptight, conservative,
aren't gonna speak about it, children are going to feel
some guilt about their normal bodily functions.
I got a little slip of paper from one student asking
if you masturbate too much, could you give yourself herpes?
How can my child even think that feels good?
He shouldn't even know he has that thing down there.
Even worse if they're being made to feel ashamed
about masturbation and that masturbation is dangerous.
I have an announcement to make.
We have discovered why there are so many
unexplained deaths in the world.
Each time a man masturbates, another man dies.
So from now on, masturbation is illegal.
Not dumping our fear onto the child
is the first step to not messing up young kids.
The healthiest perspective that I think a parent can take
is that their child is a sexual being
and that we don't have to quash them at all.
I don't think it's our job to encourage our children
to be sexual beings.
Oh, Ricky, I did see what you were doing.
We let them develop, and we let them grow.
It felt good, didn't it?
I'm just glad you're doing this in the privacy of your own room.
Kids should not be punished,
nor should kids not be answered
if they want to know a sexual question.
If you do that, who are they gonna ask?
Anybody else but you for the rest of their lives.
We've got to be honest.
We've got to educate them,
and we've got to teach them to be responsible.
And you can't be responsible if you don't know.
Narrator: I graduated in 1996,
the same year the movie "The People vs. Larry Flynt" was released.
The film seemed to speak out against the repressive attitudes
that plagued the '90s blackballing of Paul Rubens
and the firing of Dr. Joycelyn Elders
and was based on the life struggle
of "Hustler" founder Larry Flynt,
who fought hard against sexual repression.
We live in a free country.
But there is a price for that freedom,
which is that sometimes, we have to tolerate things
that we don't necessarily like.
I won on unanimous decision in '88.
It's too bad that they won't hear
a lot of these other cases involving human sexuality.
My parents told me nothing about masturbation.
The people who oppose masturbation
don't know what they're talking about,
or number two, they don't know what they're missing.
This young guy walked up to me.
When I autographed his book, he stuck out his hand
and he said, "Mr. Flynt, I just want to thank you
for helping me make it through puberty."
What he's really telling me is he spent a lot of time
jerking off to "Hustler" over the years.
So go back in that room where you are free to think
whatever you want to think about Larry Flynt
- and "Hustler" magazine. - Ooh, "Hustler" magazine.
"Hustler" is the magazine most widely read by one hand.
In many ways, I'm contributing to the development
of their sexuality by giving them an outlet.
That's why "Hustler" is so important
and such a terrific tool to use when you masturbate.
Narrator: I saw Larry Flynt as a revolutionary
willing to fight against the history
of sexual repression,
a history that seemed to contradict
our own natural instincts.
( chimp grunting )
( chimp screeches )
The history of masturbation goes back
to when man first was created.
As an evolutionary biologist and someone studies
the behavior of other animals, I can say that I think
we can learn something about our own sexuality
from studying the behavior of our closest living relatives.
In a wide array of primates,
they masturbate just like humans do.
I can say that we have a very, very long ancestral history
of the practice of masturbation.
When we crawled out of the primordial soup,
as soon as we were dexterous or whatever
how many millions or billions of years ago,
people probably started touching themselves.
( "Also Sprach Zarathustra" playing )
( all grunting )
It's just part of the human condition.
Patti: It's occurred as far back as the Egyptian hieroglyphics
were done around 1500 BC.
The Greeks and the Romans talk about it,
but it's basically talked about as a joke.
It's "American Pie" kind of humor.
Then sometime around 1712, an anonymous book was published
which was called "Onania."
The author of this book was a man named John Marten.
Man: That unnatural practice
by which persons of either sex
may defile their own bodies...
Second part of the book, that all the medical consequences
that happen as a result of masturbation.
Everybody that was sick did it.
Maybe it was causing the sickness.
If you masturbate, you were gonna suffer horrible effects.
- Vernon: It causes insanity. - Ron: You will go blind.
You will deplete your body of its life force.
So it's basically like an article
we might write today about crack cocaine.
- This is crack. - It's the crack cocaine of sex.
There's certainly a good number of Victorian doctors who recommended
instruments to prevent masturbation,
the cock rings with nails,
the electrified panties that sound an alarm
at the first signs of an erection.
( electricity crackles )
Jayme: Sylvester Graham and John Kellogg.
Funny guys.
Kellogg and Graham were both really about healthy diets
and a healthy lifestyle that only included sex
once a month if you had to do it at all.
It is my scientific conclusion
that sex is unnecessary and dangerous.
Jamye: They believed that sexual activity
was really deteriorating to your health.
Woman: So if you're losing semen, you're exhausting your body,
and you're therefore opening up
for the chance of greater disease or death.
You cannot afford the loss of life-giving fluids.
The core scientific idea about masturbation
is that semen was this rare, precious, refined fluid,
that it took 40 ounces of blood to generate one ounce of semen.
Jayme: Graham made graham crackers,
and Kellogg made corn flakes,
not the kind that you eat today.
They have way too much sugar and refined flour.
They would not approve of the way
their foods have come out,
but they made these really bland-tasting foods
thinking this would help curb sexual appetite.
Kellogg even went further than that and did perform
at least one clitoridectomy on a young girl whose parents thought
that if they didn't remove her clitoris,
she would destroy their family, and all of their siblings
would get this idea that it was okay to masturbate.
May I have a volunteer, please?
Oh, come on, don't be shy.
Hysteria in the 1800s, it was like a catchall term
that if a woman was too outspoken,
if she was irritable, that was linked under hysteria
for women and linked to hyster, uterus,
linked to their reproductive system.
Women would go to their doctors,
and the way the doctors would treat hysteria
was to manually stimulate their vulvas
to bring release of hysteria, which was orgasm.
( women giggling )
That particular kind of massage was not considered sexual
and that the paroxysm
that resulted, aka orgasm, was not considered sex.
Dr. Jenn: So as the story goes, the doctor's hands
( laughs ) were getting tired of masturbating the women,
and that's when they developed the first
steam-powered vibrator, like this huge device.
Jayne: Women would come to the doctor's office.
It cost about $200 in the late 1800s,
which was a lot of money, and have a session
where they would be blasted with these vibrations
until they got off and were essentially cured
of their hysterical ways.
It's a very interesting history because doctors
had been doing it for centuries until the advent
of the electric vibrator.
Jayne: Once they were electrified and smaller,
women realized they didn't have to pay their doctor
to do it for them anymore.
Over time, vibrators became the fifth appliance
to be electrified behind, like, the toaster,
the sewing machine and the tea kettle.
Vibrators were found in Sears Roebuck catalogs,
in needlecraft magazines.
And then in the late 1920s, because the first vibrator
made an appearance in an adult film,
all vibrator ads were quickly removed from magazines.
Narrator: Even some of our most Revolutionary thinkers
struggled to come to terms with masturbation
throughout history.
Vernon: Freud was pretty negative about masturbation.
I mean, he saw it as a major cause of neurosis,
and he really felt that the full regular sexual act
with ejaculation in the vagina
was the only thing that was completely
natural and healthy for males and females.
Man: But what Freud says is, is that, look.
Masturbation is an important part of puberty
both for boys and girls, but that for adults,
you quit this having sex with yourself,
and they start having to understand
that not what their bodies are meant for.
( bomb whistles )
Man: * Now there is a change in the weather *
* There's a change in the sea... *
My first introduction to human sexuality
and to masturbation, for that matter,
was the Kinsey report.
Stan: I think Kinsey was a pioneer.
I think he was the first person who actually looked
at sexual behavior in America.
I think that he brought sexuality into the public media,
and I think his work was priceless.
Patti: I think it's very important to understand
that when Alfred Kinsey studied sexual behavior,
masturbation was regarded as its own unique
and appropriate and healthy sexual outlet.
Stan: Kinsey was the first person to actually go out and survey
the average person, men and women,
about these kinds of things
and brought this taboo out of the closet.
He normalized this behavior for the masses
who were already doing it but feeling somewhat
like they were alone.
Do you find my answers typical?
- Am I normal? - Am I normal?
Kinsey, I'd say, really is a key figure
in liberalizing things.
He writes about data that said 90-plus percent of males
masturbate at some point in their life,
and after that, professions claims
against masturbation really just collapsed.
Patti: What he did is he actually sanctioned masturbation
going away from the shame-based pejorative way
of viewing masturbation as something that was sick
and shameful and dirty and bad and wrong
to something that was a healthy sexual outlet for expression.
Man: Liberation is here.
No area of male-dominated American culture is spared.
Equal rights for women.
Thomas: In the '60s with the rise of feminism
and books like "Our Bodies Ourselves,"
it becomes part of the rise of the clitoral orgasm.
One of the things we certainly put in all of our editions
of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" are the many varied ways
that women use to self pleasure.
*
Encouraging women to learn how to masturbate
is about encouraging women to be their own human beings
and to feel entitled to participate in society
in ways maybe
they hadn't felt entitled to.
It's not just the act of pleasuring yourself sexually.
It's about power.
Thomas: So a lot of this early feminist movement
is focused on clitoral orgasm, which is focused
on masturbation, and Betty Dodson took this one step further
and argued, look, this is the foundation
for female sexuality.
This is a way of expressing our sexuality.
Everything else is an add-on.
Dodson invented masturbation!
There was no masturbation before Dodson.
Thank you, thank you for being here to see
an old masturbating lady, for God's sake.
I went public with masturbation.
I was one of the first women on the planet who talked openly
about liking masturbation and the importance of it.
Woman: She had groups of women masturbating together.
For some women, that was incredibly freeing
because it was, yes, this is something that's mine
that I can do and that I'm sharing it in a circle of women.
She has really fought like crazy for 35 years
to bring the concept of self-love
as a perfectly valid, equally important
aspect of a person's sexuality.
Carol: And so Betty really recognized what masturbation
meant to women on such a fundamental level
in terms not not only of their own ability
to be sexually fulfilled
but also what that meant in terms of their relationships
and their choices that they might make.
And it's not that people say, "Oh, I want to thank you
for teaching me how to masturbate."
"I want to thank you for liberating me.
I want to thank you for giving me
a wonderful sex life with my husband.
Were having a renaissance. It's fabulous."
Carol: As she got to be the mother of masturbation,
I think she came to learn more and more and more
that men didn't all feel good about masturbation either,
and the fact is, masturbation is a healthy part
of everybody's sex life, and Betty was the first person
to really, really stand up and say that
and not stop saying it ever.
I am a fucking pioneer.
Narrator: Despite much progress, it seems that shame and fear
from our sordid history with masturbation
continues to affect us today.
( applause )
My name is Giulio Sciorio.
I'm a commercial photographer, and this is my exhibit.
It's called "Faces of Ecstasy," real people, real orgasms.
They are a series of photos of people's orgasms
fully clothed from about chest up.
I am about to be photographed...
mid-orgasm, and I'm gonna masturbate.
And I'm gonna call him over when I'm ready.
G?
And he's gonna come shoot me in the middle of it.
Giulio: It's a study on human sexuality and just being human.
People giggle.
Some people walk away in disgust.
These are all normal people, the bankers,
a teacher, the electrician.
Everybody does it. Your grandma does it.
I've never gotten the sense that music was sort of anti-masturbation.
Narrator: Many songs have been written about masturbation
or reference it in some way with a euphemism of some sort.
* Dancing with myself, oh-oh, dancing with myself... *
* She bob, he bob, we bop
* I bop, you Bop, they bop... *
( acoustic guitar strumming )
* I love myself
* I want you to love me
* When I feel down
* I want you above me
* I search myself
* I want you to find me
* I forget myself
* I want you to remind me
I never really set out to write a song about masturbation.
It was really playing with words for me
more than really playing with myself.
* Oh, I don't want *
* Anybody else
Oops. Don't use that.
I think part of the appeal of the song "I Touch Myself"
is that certainly it says something openly
about something that is repressed
in our society, no question about it.
If you want a love song, there's, like,
hundreds of thousands of them.
But if you want a song about masturbation,
there aren't too many of them.
I'm Keith.
I'm the lead vocalist in a band called The Circle Jerks.
* Wild
* Wild...
We came upon the name Circle Jerks
in "The American Slang Dictionary."
Not only did we think that it was funny
but, like, the Beatles could be a very catchy name.
Instead of "Come Together," it's * masturbation
I personally have never been involved in a circle jerk,
but we have got into a bit of hot water over the name,
particularly in the Bible Belt.
I remember watching on the television Madonna.
* Like a virgin
the Italian police were gonna shut Madonna down
because of her simulated masturbation.
( pop music playing )
A month before, she released a book where basically,
you're inside her vagina, but she does this,
"Ooh, ohh, ohh, ohh, ohh," over clothing
and, oh, shut her down.
What's going on here? Seriously.
The best results seem to be obtained
through fantization accompanied by masturbation
followed by ejaculation.
Narrator: It's interesting to see how our ambivalent attitudes
about masturbation are also depicted
in movies and television.
( whirring )
( moaning )
Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my. Oh, my.
I think almost every instance of masturbation in movies
has been displayed as something that's grotesque, that's actually taboo.
In "The Exorcist," Linda Blair's possessed by the devil
shoving a crucifix in her vagina.
Let Jesus fuck you! Let Jesus fuck you!
Kind of shocking.
I mean, it's either shocking or the other side of it
is just to make a big joke of it.
The movie "American Pie"
takes the icon American pie...
and fucks it.
Carol: I got to say, I wonder if "American Pie"
would've been as popular as it was
without that masturbation scene.
Copulation with a confection, which is strange.
Carol: And of course, it's referenced right from the title
I think you're supposed to pay attention to the pie.
Well, we'll just tell your mother that, uh,
that we ate it all.
People love scenes like that, number one is that they--
because they do acknowledge that we all masturbate, right?
But it also carries a certain amount of shame.
It's like you're being caught in an extremely personal moment.
One of the best examples is a film called
"Fast Times at Ridgemont High."
Everybody remembers the image of Phoebe Cates
coming out of that pool in slow motion and the music.
They remember that part.
What they forget is that Judge Reinhold's
masturbating to that image...
and then gets caught.
Oh, wait just a minute.
Doesn't anybody fucking knock anymore?
That scene is sort of about the anxiety of masturbation
more than it is about the pleasure of it
because most young boys in particular
learn to masturbate very quickly
because they're afraid of getting caught.
I think it brings us back to that preadolescent time
when we felt we could be made fun of for almost anything we did.
Me personally, I don't want to have people see me do it.
Unfortunately, I had to do a scene in a movie.
In "The Truth About Cats and Dogs,"
I had to masturbate while being on the phone.
That scene in the movie was just something
that embarrassed me beyond all.
( squeals and laughs )
I mean, who the hell wants to be masturbating
with cameras rolling and a crew around,
and then an audience sees it?
I was absolutely mortified.
I did shots of tequila before I did it.
It's just too vulnerable.
Another instance that comes to mind is "American Beauty."
What are you doing?
If you haven't been caught masturbating,
you've been afraid to be caught masturbating.
Oh, all right, so shoot me, I was whacking off.
That's right, I was choking the bishop,
chafing the carrot, you know, saying hi to my monster.
It strange to see that so many instances in movies, um,
it's just portrayed as something that one shouldn't be doing.
( laughs ) So disgusting.
When you read that on the page, when you knew
you were gonna have to do that, is it like "my God"?
It was akin to the experience of watching the movie
with my parents sitting next to me.
So just go clean the pipes, and it's a go.
Chris: "There's Something About Mary" has to be one of those
unique comedies that actually
has sort of a useful take on masturbation.
Just get it out of your system so your head's clear.
You can go on the date and not feel
- so much pressure to get laid. - Is that hair gel?
Chris: It's still humiliating in the way that it's shown.
- Yeah. - Great, I could use some.
- No, no, no, no, don't. - I just ran out.
Chris: But has a real purpose to it.
TV also has sort of a taboo view.
In particular, "Seinfeld"'s famous episode "The Contest"
about who can hold out the longest.
I am never doing... that again.
- Oh, give me a break. - Yeah, right.
- Come on. - ( laughs ) Come on.
- You don't think I can? - No chance.
Care to make it interesting?
We laugh about it, but we're talking about it publicly.
If you think about it, really, it's kind of a healthy view.
They all admit that they masturbate.
Sex on television and showing masturbation on television
was fundamentally changed by "Sex in the City."
- Uh-huh. - Yeah, I'm totally wiped out.
Carrie: "Wiped out"-- that was Charlotte speak for,
"I'm spending the night with my vibrator."
And then the friends say they'll have an intervention.
So it's very funny to think about her becoming addicted
to her vibrator, to masturbation.
Narrator: Regardless of the humor and shame
depicted in the media, there's always been
big business in getting people off.
There are two primary industries that make billions of dollars
off masturbation, and that would be pornography
and the sex-toy industry.
I don't think masturbation sells anything,
but sex certainly sells.
Sure, sex sells, yes, but masturbation also sells.
Anywhere between five and $13 billion
is spent each year on pornographic material.
( cash register ringing )
Masturbation is big business.
It's just not often talked about in polite conversation.
We are at The Adult Expo in Las Vegas.
Titties, dicks, asses, everything.
It's what you masturbate too, I know it.
The porn industry without masturbation
would be a different industry.
Certainly porn as we know it
in the last 35 years has been primarily a medium
made by men for men.
A lot of guys love just watching girls masturbate.
There's been adult film, you know, lines were the girls
just masturbate, it's like, one girl after another.
Guys love it.
At least half of the audience are men
using it for solo masturbatory purposes.
Probably today more than ever, like, masturbation's rampant
in terms of, like, the Internet and technology.
You know, how many guys are jerking off in front of their computers
right now as we speak?
Internet porn is a rage because why would you want to spend $50
on a DVD when you can masturbate to 25 different websites
for $23 a month?
A lot of people spend a great deal of time
wanking on the Internet.
There's so much out there. There's something for everybody.
I have two favorite porn titles.
One was "Breast Side Story,"
and the other is "Fuck My Aching Tits."
( laughs )
I mean, just a little earlier, we looked up alien porn,
and there are websites that cater to people
who fantasize about aliens having sex with women.
If you want to just see women with large breasts
bouncing on a trampoline, we got that movie for you.
If you want to see nothing but a bunch of men in a circle jerk,
we got that movie for you.
I've been in the business of selling
sex toys or marital aids for about 25 years.
Worldwide, sex toys account for about 1.5
or $2 billion in terms of revenue.
Bruce: There's quite a demand out there
for quality sensuous products.
And as you can see, there are loads
of different kinds of vibrators now to choose from.
This is actually sold as a ring-toss game.
Or like the rabbit vibrator, and it moves around like this.
It's kind of cool, actually, but, um...
I totally lost my train of thought.
( laughs ) I'm like, "Vibrator." I'm like, "Rabbit."
You know, sex toys nowadays are very graphic.
A lot of them look terrible. I wanted it to be camouflaged.
You know, guys are into tools. It looks like a flashlight.
So it doesn't draw attention, so is someone sees it,
they don't wonder what it is.
We've done this in mocha. We call this Mini Maid.
- This is the nondescript. - It looks at the piggy bank.
The hand is usually the best way to go
every time, guaranteed.
Narrator: But despite the economic boost
generated from this industry, I was surprised to discover
that in the state of Alabama,
the sale of sex toys is illegal.
Do Americans have the right to life, liberty, and sex toys?
No, says a federal appeals court in Alabama
regarding those last items.
I'm Sherri Williams, and 15 years ago
at the age of 28, I decided that Huntsville, Alabama,
needed a place for women and couples to shop.
In 1998, I get a call from a reporter,
and she proceeded to explain that they had just passed a law
that banned the sale of adult toys in the state of Alabama.
The punishment for violation includes being fined
up to 10,000 bucks and spending a year in jail.
Sherri Williams is the owner of Pleasures,
which sell everything from...
Just can't believe that our politicians sit in Congress
legislating whether someone in Alabama has the right
to have sex with a harmless piece of fun.
The law in the state of Alabama says
that you cannot sell a vibrator.
Sherri Williams, who owns Pleasures stores
in Decatur and in Huntsville filed suit
trying to overturn that 1998 law.
Narrator: What do the people of Alabama passing this law
have to be afraid of?
Especially in a state that has some
of the least restrictive gun laws.
I really couldn't imagine a state passing
such, what seemed to be, like, an archaic law in 1998.
Women are clamoring for more ways of having pleasure.
Men become often insulted
that they can't give their girlfriends on orgasm
that only a plastic mechanical device can.
Some of those old dudes out there who are are freaking out
about their woman, you know, getting off on a vibrator.
Sherri: Men are outlawing toys that are designed
to help women achieve orgasms,
and who knows why they would do such a crazy thing.
Viagra is always readily accessible everywhere.
Male announcer: Viagra. Talk to your doctor.
If we're enhancing male pleasure and sexuality,
dude, that is a good thing, but if we're enhancing
women's pleasure and sexuality,
ooh, that's a little uncomfortable.
Let's prohibit the sales of sex toys.
Over $1.2 million has been spent of taxpayer money
to uphold the ban on adult toys.
For nine and a half years, we fought this law,
and, um, unfortunately, we lost.
I'm breaking the law every day I keep my doors open.
Well, as I've said, I'll stop selling them
when they pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Narrator: Could Alabama's fear of sex toys be the result
of our media's obsession with sex addiction?
Actor David Duchovny has entered rehab for it.
So is this a true addiction?
My name is Charlie, and, uh,
my maid says I'm a sex addict.
There is no such thing as sex addiction.
It's sexual compulsions, not addiction.
You're not drinking anything. You're not snorting anything.
People engage in compulsive sexual behaviors
in order to relieve their anxiety.
Female reporter: Christie Brinkley accused her ex-husband Peter Cook
of spending thousands of dollars on Internet porn.
- He did not deserve that. - I still really love her and care about her.
I am deeply sorry.
Let me just reiterate to my wife
how sorry I am that I did these things.
New York Governor Eliot Spitzer under fire this week
for his involvement...
I am resigning from the office of Governor.
People can be addicted to masturbation
just as they can be addicted to two-person sex.
With all the hype around sex addiction,
it's easy to wonder how much pleasuring is too much.
Masturbation like anything else can be done in excess.
More than once a day would concern most sex therapists.
I am cumming day and night.
I mean, it's terrific, right? ( laughs )
It's not so much a matter of frequency
as much as it's how it's getting in the way of one's life.
The warning signs would be if you think of sex all the time.
Losing weight 'cause you're not eating.
You have to call in sick to work.
If it is a source of shame.
You go into the bathroom at work
and masturbate 100 times a day.
And you think about sex to the point
where you can't think about anything else.
And generally it's so obsessive that it becomes all-consuming.
What they need is to get on an antidepressant,
which brings that sex drive down.
I actually don't agree with that.
Antidepressants kill your sex drive.
If they'd known about Paxil back in the day, they would've
been giving that instead of the anti-masturbation devices.
A lot of people don't understand sexuality enough
to understand when they really are in trouble.
Quoc Lam: When I found out I was HIV positive, actually,
I was on-- pretty much on a spiraling out-of-control life
of crystal meth use, and you end up masturbating
for 48 hours, 72 hours in a row.
It is a problem, a real problem,
and those individuals need therapy.
And before I know it, I'm totally lubed up
from head to toe, and it's 48 hours later,
and I'm still trying to find that orgasm,
and I can't even get it up.
How come you haven't gotten up yet?
- I'm wet and sticky. - Oh.
My name's Joe Matt. I'm an autobiographical comic-book artist.
A recurring subject matter for me
is masturbation and porn addiction.
I have two books, "The Poor Bastard" and "Spent."
"Spent" is very focused
on compulsive masturbation and porn addiction.
I wanted to see if I could do it 20 times in a row,
have 20 orgasms in a row just to see if I could.
20 times a day is taking it a bit too far.
I'm a compulsive masturbator.
I have no motivation to keep doing it,
but I could keep doing it, you know,
after a little rest, you know?
Little rest, I could do it again usually pretty soon.
It's not a big deal.
The issues I see with people who have compulsive masturbation
are the inability to form a relationship,
the inability to maintain relationships,
destroying relationships as because of lack of intimacy
and lack of sexuality.
Compulsive masturbation is extremely isolating
and it can result in somebody getting so lost
in their own world of trying to get the best orgasm,
how to get off in just the right way.
People avoid relationships, avoid intimacy
and just masturbate because they're too uncomfortable
being with other people, but the masturbation
kind of keeps their fears and their anxieties at bay.
Narrator: Maybe the real issue is not how much
we are masturbating...
Oh, let's see. Ooh.
...but what we're masturbating to.
Let's get some Brazilian fart porn in there.
- ( farting ) - Oh, that's got it! Oh!
There's a huge gray area between unhealthy and healthy sexuality
and masturbation and fantasies.
Masturbation generally involves fantasy,
and that can be a really healthy thing.
Is it cheating for a married person to masturbate
and think about someone other than their wife or husband?
Within monogamy, within a committed relationship,
which in our culture presumes monogamy,
masturbation is really important to goes monogamy is difficult.
Fantasizing about sex with another woman
while you're masturbating is not the same
as having sex with another woman.
Fantasy is an essential element of how we express ourselves
as sexual beings, and without fantasy,
most masturbation doesn't really work.
If a person is using fantasy to remove him or herself
emotionally from the moment, the fantasy's not the problem,
but there is a problem.
But if the individual says I'm very happily married,
I have a good sex life with my partner, but at times,
I think about a movie star or some famous person
or even a person who I conjure up,
I don't think there's anything unhealthy about it.
In fact, what it can do is stimulate that person
to enjoy their sexual partner more.
What is SADD? SADD is a term that I coined.
S-A-D-D, that actually stands for
"sexual attention deficit disorder."
A lot of it has to do with easy access
to Internet porn simply because men
are potentially over masturbating.
I love to masturbate as much as possible.
Every girl gets pissed off when they catch their boyfriend
either masturbating or when they find that magazine
in the back of the closet that they never told you they bought.
No woman wants their husband fantasizing
about somebody else and vice versa.
Oh, come on, girls. Oh!
Ian: So a guy masturbates,
enjoys some Internet pornography,
and then the one thing that happens is he doesn't have
quite as much desire for his actual real-life partner.
Fantasy is part of the fuel of what makes sex delicious
and what keeps the fire burning,
and there's so much misunderstanding
and so much threat and fear around masturbation,
especially in coupledom.
What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?
I was just reading emails.
No, you weren't. You were watching porno.
So I created No Fap on June 20th, 2011.
I market it more as a challenge, something you do
to temporarily abstain from porn and masturbation
or even orgasm altogether temporarily
in an effort to cure a sexual dysfunction.
I don't agree with that.
That's an impossible limit to put on a mind.
Minds go places.
Alexander: It's grown so big that "New York" magazine
did a story on it, "Business Insider,"
a few other big ones, and that just goes to show
how much of an unspoken underlying issue
this is for so many people.
It's-- it's sticky.
It's a really sticky area.
Narrator: I wonder if much of our fear about masturbation
comes from a fear of our own uncontrollable sexual impulses.
( screams )
Male announcer: Warning!
There's a plague affecting our nation.
Symptoms may include blindness...
weakness...
madness or worse...
Hairy palms!
Masturbation madness!
This public service announcement has been paid for by P.A.L.M.,
People Against Lascivious Masturbators.
Man: He separated the skull from their body
and masturbated in front of it.
When we talk about masturbation, we do know
that there's a core group of serial killers, for example,
who really get into the fantasy system.
Narrator: In the book "Sexual Homicide Patterns and Motives,"
specially trained FBI agents
examined the childhood traits of 36 serial killers.
Although some of the listed behaviors are disturbing,
including cruelty to children and animals, convulsions,
and self-mutilation,
the three indicators reported with highest frequency are...
There are some individuals who have very, very
scary thoughts when they masturbate,
and it's very exciting for them,
but it's very scary thinking.
Eric: Jeffrey Dahmer started masturbating to road kills.
He actually would take a dead animal and eviscerate it,
and then he would take the sexual organs of the animal
and put his penis against the organs and masturbate.
That led him eventually to disemboweling adults,
human beings.
Posing people who were dead that he killed for pictures,
masturbating all over the place.
This is Jeffrey Dahmer.
Narrator: Was it simply a coincidence
that Pee-Wee Herman was arrested just four days
after Dahmer when it was discovered
that Dahmer's first offense was masturbating in public?
It was somewhat coincidental,
but there was some overreaction to Paul Rubens.
What he was doing is being done in a lot of theaters
across America, but the truth is,
masturbation for some men is a gateway to crossing lines.
I currently am involved with a fellow
who is very methodical about what he's going to do,
and he's planned becoming a serial killer.
He's very much involved with compulsive masturbation.
I think there's some danger that some fantasies may lead
some people who have poor impulse control
to actually go act out those fantasies.
Eric: But I want to find out exactly
what are they masturbating to?
If they are becoming sexually gratified
as they masturbate to the suffering of other human beings,
- we have a problem. - So fantasy is what's going on
between our two ears as opposed to our two legs.
Narrator: But studies do link masturbation
and violence in the brain.
Maybe that's where we got the idea
that masturbation could cause madness.
But does the link between masturbation and serial killers
mean that if we embrace our sexual impulses
that we're all going to run around
like masturbating zombies?
( doorbell ringing )
The concerns of masturbation go beyond the psychological.
Masturbation won't cause us to go blind...
( screams )
...won't cause hair to grow on our hands...
Oh, dude.
...and we know that we're having sex with somebody we love.
It's really good for you. It gives you good skin.
It helps you go to sleep. For women, it can relieve PMS.
If we don't masturbate, we actually suffer
and can cause harm to ourselves.
Shut up! Shut up!
Healthy and harmful, it could be both.
70% of people report an increased energy level
if they abstain from masturbation,
and they perform better at work.
They're able exercise more often.
I don't know, maybe it's a placebo effect.
But I'm not gonna knock it because it's helping people.
Masturbation can be psychologically
and physically beneficial, and for many people,
I think it can serve as a substitute for sexual partner.
( sheep baas )
Narrator: As a young martial artist,
I learned about chi and inner energy.
I later discovered that this comes into play in how
Asian medicine and inner-energy arts like chi kung
view the potential dangers of masturbation.
When a man ejaculates, he loses his will.
It's all gone. It's not coming back.
Yeah, you have to manage your internal energy,
and the biggest energy leak is masturbation.
After a man stops masturbating, his whole life changes.
All of a sudden, he's not dragging all the time.
He's alive. He's happy.
He's just not always complaining and being tired
and settling for less.
You are losing a lot of your life force
from your organs and your glands.
So that's why it can be very dangerous.
There have been a number of studies linking masturbation
to prostate cancer that have had contrary scientific results.
A colleague of mine named Spring Cooper and I wrote
an article for the website The Conversation
where we highlighted the health benefits of masturbation.
The study that we focused on looked at about 30,000 men,
was published in the Journal of American Medical Association,
and what they ultimately found and concluded
was that when men masturbate, they flush out
cancer-causing agents in their body,
and so it reduces their risk of prostate cancer.
That's why I was shocked to discover a Cambridge study
in 2009 that indicated men in their 20s and 30s
that masturbated frequently were more likely
to develop prostate cancer.
I wondered for the first time, should my documentary
come with a Surgeon General warning?
Then I remembered,
I had a former Surgeon General in my film.
My own mother once said that she prefers stories
that dealt with life or death.
The prostate studies made me realize
masturbation could be about life or death.
But nowhere did this become more evident
than Thanksgiving night in 2013.
A San Diego family said video taken of their son
in a school bathroom went viral.
They said he was bullied so badly over that video
that he committed suicide.
Matthew Burdette, a former Boy Scout
and San Diego high school freshman,
committed suicide after a video posted by another student
showed Matthew allegedly masturbating in his school stall.
Female reporter: The 14-year-old teenager committed suicide
after the release of an embarrassing video.
The fact that the media called it an embarrassing
bathroom video speaks volumes to the charge
that we have as a society about masturbation.
Female reporter: Weeks of constant bullying caused him...
Narrator: Headlines from three major newspapers
failed to mention what he was doing in the bathroom.
The video taken at school led to intense bullying.
- Woman: They bullied him. - From the bullying.
Woman: It was two weeks of bullying.
We just label things "cyber bullying,"
we label it an embarrassing video
because we're too afraid to really look at this issue.
It's a real shame that children continue to feel such guilt
and humiliation surrounding masturbation.
A lot of this is due to adults' discomfort with the topic.
Have you been... practicing?
Lauran: Children are very, very perceptive.
And if an adult is feeling uncomfortable
that masturbation is wrong, a child's going to feel that,
and they're going to internalize that,
and that's how it'll just continue to be perpetrated
throughout the generations.
I had a really hard time getting in contact
with the Matthew Burdette family,
teachers that knew him, friends.
I finally got the mother of Matthew Burdette,
but she didn't feel like the media
was portraying him in the right light.
She started crying, and I started crying
on the phone, and it was very difficult.
She just said she wanted to keep his memory sacred.
The Burdette story brought back all those painful memories
of when I was made fun of as a child
for admitting that I masturbated.
Only back then, it was so much easier.
There was no Internet to expose your vulnerabilities
to the world so pervasively.
I couldn't help feeling that had this film been made
and released already that maybe we could've done something
to help prevent this young man from taking his life.
After seven years making this film,
interviewing over 60 of the world's experts on sexuality,
learning about the struggles of Dr. Joycelyn Elders,
Paul Rubens, Sherri Williams' fight
to overturn the sex toy ban in Alabama,
it was like here's a story that seems to tie it all together.
Yet nobody would talk to me about it,
not my alma mater when I reached out
looking for social media interns,
not Burdette's lawyers, not even the media
who originally broke the story.
Though for everyone who refused,
thousands wrote in emails expressing praise
and interest in wanting to see this film.
The years that I spent making this documentary
have taught me a lot about myself and masturbation.
There were times when I started to wonder if perhaps
the questions I was answering
were only leading to more questions.
That's because at its core, masturbation touches upon
our deepest, most personal feelings,
our fantasies and pleasures, our hopes and dreams,
our insecurities and fears,
our desire to be loved, and most important,
our need to love ourselves.
But if we continue to pass our shame down
to the future generations,
Burdette's suicide won't be the last.
Will technology amplify our guilt,
resulting in more such deaths?
Or will our attitudes eventually evolve?
- I've often wondered... - We'll use the orgasmatron.
what is the future of masturbation?
( both grunting and squealing )
Masturbation could bring us together as a society
if we will accept it, enjoy it,
let go of the guilt and the fear,
and just know that we're all sexual.
I think that the future of masturbation
is actually really exciting.
I think it's here to stay, just like sex.
The future should be
that there's some doctor-recommended
prescription for masturbating.
As part of your treatment, I'm going to ask
that you masturbate five times a week.
Now that something we can come together on.
I can't even guess what the future is going to be.
I hope that its future is one that is less shameful.
Technology will help people
to feel more close to one another
and to their own sexuality.
The next evolution of Internet,
there'll be masturbation there, too, I feel certain of it.
Masturbation and the Internet are gonna continue
to go hand in glove, so to speak,
for a very long time in the future.
I don't imagine that's gonna change.
The future of masturbation in terms of technology
is a little... scary.
We probably will have masturbatory robots
who pleasure us on command.
Sex with robots? I can't wait, personally.
The future for masturbation hopefully will be a dialog
that opens up as a result of documentaries like this one.
I am hoping that it does get discussed more
in the curriculums in the future
because I think there are a lot of confused kids out there.
I don't see it endangered, like polar bears.
I think the future looks really good
for information about masturbation.
I think masturbation might be the answer to world peace.
The Internet's the future of masturbation.
I don't really know.
I have to say I don't have a lot of hopes in my lifetime
that there'll be a fundamental shift.
I would like to think that masturbation could help us
as a culture come together literally and figuratively.
We can make this world all about self-love
because if we loved ourselves, I think that we might be able
to get out of some other pretty sticky situations.
The future masturbation is...
exactly what it is right now.
Whatever you want to make of it.
The future of masturbation is it's here to stay.
It's whether we accept it or deny it
or pretend it doesn't exist, but believe me,
we're not gonna ever do away with it.
Narrator: Do you masturbate?
- What? - Sure.
I can keep my hands off myself.
Of course.
I masturbate whenever I get the chance.
I have. I'm sure I will.
I invented masturbation, as a matter of fact.
( laughs )
You'd like to know if I masturbate?
Sometimes I do.
You know, if you walk by a bathroom
and there's water running and you don't hear any plopping,
I'm jerking off probably.
No.
( laughs )
Yes.
I do. I do masturbate.
Oh, I masturbate as often as I can.
( laughs )
- On occasion. - Sure.
Occasionally. I'm an old man now, you know.
( laughs )
I masturbate at least a couple of times a week.
And I'm quite proud of the fact.
Yes.
Mostly in the shower on the road doing stand-up comedy.
It's very difficult to masturbate
when you've got a baby Bjorn.
Every chance I get.
I gotta figure that out.
As soon as I do, I will, though, as much as possible.
All the time. Sometimes far too often.
Do I masturbate? Absolutely.
Unequivocally, as much as possible.
90% of men masturbate. And I'm a man.
I will let you draw your own conclusions.
- Absolutely. - I do masturbate.
- Do you masturbate? - That's a silly question.
That's disgusting! I'm shocked at you, young man.
You come here to my house, and here I am a mature woman,
and you ask me if I masturbate?
Fucking-A, buddy.
Well, now, I didn't say we were gonna tell everything
on TV, did I?
So any other questions?
Woman: Um, why don't you want to put yourself on camera?
( chuckles )
All right, cut.
So ask me what you wanted to ask me.
Do you masturbate?
( chuckles )
( sighs )
I think I said everything I want to say.
( upbeat music plays )
Man: * Susie had a big problem that Johnny didn't know *
* She was horny and she wanted him *
* Inside her making love
* But Johnny rarely wanted it *
* To her, that was a crime *
* One day Susie told Johnny *
* You spend far too much time *
Man and Woman: * Beating your meat and tugging your chain *
* Bopping your baloney, walking the snake *
* Cleaning the pipe, diddling your dong *
* Choking the sheriff so the posse will come *
* Polishing your rocket, pounding your pud *
* Spanking the monkey, oiling the glove *
* Squeezing your lemon, buttering your biscuit *
* Tuning your antenna
* Mangling the midget
Man: * Johnny had a big problem *
* That Susie didn't get
* He was just as horny as any guy *
* And liked his women, yeah *
* Susie always nagged him and loved to pick a fight *
* So Johnny told her, Susie
* Maybe it's best you spend your nights *
Man and Woman: * Greasing your hips or fanning your fur *
* Polishing the peanut, playing poker *
* Tickling the kitty, checking for squirrels *
* Buffing the weasel, polishing the pearl *
* Flipping the bean or pushing the button *
* Chucking the heavy going spelunking *
* Strumming the banjo, testing the plumbing *
* Stroking tulips
* Or buffing the muffin
Man: * When Susie heard Johnny complain *
* It started a big fight
* They planned to leave each other *
* And just masturbate at night *
* But it turned her on to watch him *
* He liked her getting wetter *
* Now they agree when they make love *
* To masturbate together
Man and Woman: * Pulling the pink punk, clubbing the puppy *
* Airing the orchid, brushing her bunny *
* Peeling the carrot, rubbing his knob *
* Groping the grotto, feeding her slot *
* Pulling the wire, snapping the whip *
* Taunting the turtle, toggling the bit *
* Fondling the fig on hand-to-glad combat *
* Parting the red sea
* Wrestling her wombat
Man: This song won't make you go blind
or grow hair on your palms, but it might make you mad.
So if it does, take matters into your own hands
Maybe you can start strumming along making your own song,
or maybe if you don't wanna play with me,
try playing with yourself.
( song ends, splat )
All: We love masturbation!
- Whoo-hoo! - ( laughs )