Spike Spiegel
Member
Being serious for a moment here, folks...
I'm taking a course in Health & Sexuality over the summer semester, because it's a totally online class and an almost-guaranteed "A". The topic that we're discussing this week is masturbation, and the class has been given a number of online resources to browse through on the subject. Stuff on the history of masturbation, origins of myths and taboos surrounding mastubation, religious and medical views on masturbation, etc etc.
One of the hypothetical questions that's been posed to our class is, "If you had an 8 year-old son, would you talk to him about masturbation and, if so, what would you tell him?" And that's a question that really got me thinking.
Right off the bat, I thought "8 years old? That's waaaaay too early for masturbation." But I think that had more to do with the fact that I consider myself something of a "late bloomer" with regards to sexual activity; my parents didn't discuss sex with me AT ALL, and I was too closed off emotionally to discuss such things with my friends until well into my teenage years. I was in high school before I had a decent grasp of the subject of sex. It also had something to do with the fact that I didn't deliberately masturbate for the first time until I was 12.
But then I thought about how much things have changed since I was that young. Today's kids are being exposed to a higher amount of sexual content than ever before, are maturing at a faster rate, and are becoming sexually active earlier and earlier. Given those circumstances, perhaps 8 years old isn't too early at all. I think that, more than anything though, deciding to have that talk would depend more on the 8 year-old the talk's being given to.
So help me out here, guys, I'm trying to decide what age is appopriate for the masturbation talk. 8? Younger? Older? Much older? And how old were you when you masturbated for the first time; I want to know where I stand, and get a feeling for the age appropriate-ness of the subject.
Ladies chime in, too; according to recent studies, 2/3 of all women masturbate at least once per year.
I'm taking a course in Health & Sexuality over the summer semester, because it's a totally online class and an almost-guaranteed "A". The topic that we're discussing this week is masturbation, and the class has been given a number of online resources to browse through on the subject. Stuff on the history of masturbation, origins of myths and taboos surrounding mastubation, religious and medical views on masturbation, etc etc.
One of the hypothetical questions that's been posed to our class is, "If you had an 8 year-old son, would you talk to him about masturbation and, if so, what would you tell him?" And that's a question that really got me thinking.
Right off the bat, I thought "8 years old? That's waaaaay too early for masturbation." But I think that had more to do with the fact that I consider myself something of a "late bloomer" with regards to sexual activity; my parents didn't discuss sex with me AT ALL, and I was too closed off emotionally to discuss such things with my friends until well into my teenage years. I was in high school before I had a decent grasp of the subject of sex. It also had something to do with the fact that I didn't deliberately masturbate for the first time until I was 12.
But then I thought about how much things have changed since I was that young. Today's kids are being exposed to a higher amount of sexual content than ever before, are maturing at a faster rate, and are becoming sexually active earlier and earlier. Given those circumstances, perhaps 8 years old isn't too early at all. I think that, more than anything though, deciding to have that talk would depend more on the 8 year-old the talk's being given to.
So help me out here, guys, I'm trying to decide what age is appopriate for the masturbation talk. 8? Younger? Older? Much older? And how old were you when you masturbated for the first time; I want to know where I stand, and get a feeling for the age appropriate-ness of the subject.
Ladies chime in, too; according to recent studies, 2/3 of all women masturbate at least once per year.
