Multiple Orgasm in the Human Male

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Males are much more inclined, and females are less inclined to discuss sexual matters with other persons. Striking evidence of this has already been presented in discussing the sources of information which start females masturbating. The data are as follows:

First information on masturbation
Sources	Female *	Male *
Sources	%	%
Self-discovery	57	28
Verbal and printed sources	43	75
Petting experience	12	Very few
Observation	11	40
Homosexual experience	3	9
Number of cases	2675	3999
* The totals amount to more than one hundred per cent because some individuals were simultaneously affected by two or more sources of information.

Note that 57 per cent of the females in the sample had first masturbated as a result of their own discovery that such a process was possible, and that relatively few had started because they had heard of masturbation through verbal sources. Even some of the females who had not started until they were in their thirties or forties had not known that masturbation was possible for a female until they discovered it through their own exploration. On the contrary, most of the males had heard about masturbation, or observed other persons masturbating, before they themselves ever began; and only 28 per cent had learned how to masturbate from their own self-discovery. This is a measure of the extent to which sex is discussed among pre-adolescent and early adolescent males. Such discussions of sex also occur among older males, from adolescence into old age.

For most males, discussions of sex often provide some sort of erotic stimulation. They do not provide anything like the same sort of stimulation for the average female, and in consequence she does not have the same inspiration for engaging in such conversations. Moreover, many of the females in the sample who had overheard discussions of reproductive and sexual functions when they were children, or even when they were adults, had not tried to understand what was being discussed, primarily, as they asserted, because they were "not interested” in sex. We have already recorded that there is frequently a lapse of some years between the time that the female first hears of masturbation, and the time that she attempts to masturbate herself.

On the contrary, from an early age the average male is interested in all that he can learn about sex and searches for sexual information, in part because it may mean something to him erotically. Practically all males who have reached adolescence attempt masturbation almost immediately upon hearing of it. This is further evidence of the importance of psychologic stimulation for the male.

Self-Discovery
Most of the females in our sample had discovered how to masturbate as a result of their exploration of their own genitalia. Since the child’s experience from the day it is born has shown it that satisfactions may be secured from the tactile stimulation of various parts of its body, one might expect that all children would sooner or later discover, quite on their own, that the greatest satisfactions may be obtained from such genital stimulation as masturbation might afford.

Table 20f. Source of First Experience in Masturbation
By Sex, Age, Educational Level, and Decade of Birth

Source	Males	Females
	Total Active Sample		Age at First Experience				Educational Level				Decade of Birth
	Total Active Sample		1-10	11-20	21-30	31 +	0-8	9-12	13-16	17+	Bf. 1900	1900- 1909	1910- 1919	1920- 1929
	% *	% *	%				%				%
Self-discovery	28	57	77	58	27	19	37	50	61	56	57	52	56	60
Verbal and printed sources	75	43	21	42	72	86	60	49	39	43	44	47	42	41
Petting experience	Very few	12	4	10	31	24	13	13	11	13	12	16	14	9
Observation	40	11	14	10	8	7	27	12	9	11	12	12	10	10
Homosexual experience	9	3	4	3	2	2	0	4	2	4	4	5	3	2
Number of cases	3999	2675	757	1401	372	145	60	463	1372	723	268	506	739	1109
* Two or more sources may be more or less simultaneously involved in an individual’s first experience and some individuals were simultaneously affected by two or more sources of information; the percentages in the totals and each group consequently add up amount to more than one hundred per cent.

A considerable portion of the masturbation which we have found among infants and young pre-adolescent girls in our sample appears to have been self-discovered. Some 70 per cent of the older pre-adolescent girls who had begun to masturbate before adolescence also appear to have discovered the possibilities through their own exploration (Table 20f).
The self-discovery of masturbation has been noted by many writers, including: Forel acc. Back 1910:112. Moll 1912:171. Hirschfeld 1916:122. Kralft-Ebing (Moll ed.) 1924:80. Rohleder in Stern 1927:283. Hoyer 1929:223. Hutton 1937:76.

Although some of the adults who were the sources of our information had probably forgotten the part which other children and even adults played in inspiring their early experimentation, some 58 per cent of the females who had begun masturbation between eleven and twenty years of age reported that their activity had been self-discovered. The figures were lower for the lower educational levels, and higher for the college and graduate school groups, but they were not particularly different in the several generations covered by the sample (Table 20f).
Other American studies show similar percentages learning to masturbate through self-discovery: Hamilton 1929:427 (65 per cent; records the circumstances). Davis 1929:109-110, 161 (51 per cent; records the circumstances). Dickinson and Beam 1931:350 (the majority). Landis and Bolles 1942:21 (69 per cent).

Interestingly enough, many of the older individuals who did not begin to masturbate until they were well along in their twenties or thirties, and even in their forties and fifties, were still discovering the possibilities of such activity through their own exploration (Table 20f).
Davis 1929:161 also mentions this late self-discovery in over a third of her married females who had started masturbation after age 14.

This provides striking evidence of the ignorance which is frequent among females of sexual activities which are outside of their own experience, even though they may be common in the population as a whole. Some 28 per cent of the boys in our sample had discovered masturbation on their own, but 75 per cent of them had heard about masturbation, 40 per cent of them had actually observed it, and 9 per cent had been masturbated by other males before they began their own activities (Table 20f). It is obvious that neither younger girls nor older women discuss their sexual experience in the open way that males do.

Not a few of the females in the sample had learned that masturbation occurred among males long before they learned that it was possible among females.

Among the females in the sample who had not begun masturbating until after age thirty, 19 per cent had not heard of it before they began their own masturbation (Table 20f). However, 27 per cent of the graduate school group, from whom the professional counselors of youth most often come, had not known that masturbation was possible in the female until they discovered it in the course of their own experimentation after they were past thirty years of age. Since most of the males had begun masturbating before they became adolescent or soon after the onset of adolescence (Figure 134), most of them knew about masturbation and had actually been masturbating for ten or twenty years before some of their mothers and teachers ever learned that there was such a phenomenon.

Some females had masturbated for some years before they learned that the activity in which they had been engaged had any sexual connotation and constituted what is known as masturbation.
For additional records of the female masturbating even to orgasm without realizing the sexual nature of the activity, see: Hirschfeld 1916:130. Meagher 1929:74. Davis 1929:400. Kelly 1930:174. Meagher and Jelliffe 1936:76.

Verbal and Printed Sources
Approximately 43 per cent of those females in the sample who had ever masturbated, had learned that such a thing was possible from information acquired through verbal and/or printed sources (Table 20f). This was the second most important source of first knowledge for those who had begun masturbation by age twenty. It was the most important source, surpassed by no other, for those who had begun masturbation after that age. In this regard, there were no significant differences between the generations born in the four decades covered by the sample (Table 20f).
Learning from verbal and printed sources is also recorded in: Adler 1911:98, 101, 105. Achilles 1923:45 (about 50 per cent). Hellmann acc. Weissenberg 1924b:211 (friends, 35 per cent; literature, 16 per cent). Schbankov acc. Weissenberg 1924a: 14 (servants, 13 per cent; literature and shows, 31 per cent). Golossowker acc. Weissenberg 1925:175 (friends, 39 per cent; literature, 10 per cent). Gurewitsch and Grosser 1929:528 (friends, 51 per cent; literature, 16 per cent). Davis 1929:109, 161 (30 per cent). Hamilton 1929: 426 (25 per cent). Dickinson and Beam 1931:350. Landis and Bolles 1942:21 ( 15 per cent).

On the other hand, 75 per cent of the males in our sample had acquired their first information about masturbation from verbal and/or printed sources, but chiefly from verbal sources (Table 20f). The females in the sample had more often obtained their information from books—chiefly from moral and sex education literature, and from religious lectures which were designed to discourage masturbation.
Religious books as inspiration for masturbating are also cited in: Moraglia 1897:9. For the Bible and classics as sources, see: Wulffen 1913:257. G. S. Hall and Brill acc. Meagher and Jelliffe 1936:75 deny that serious books have such an influence, but our data do not support them.

Most of the females in the sample had begun to masturbate soon after they had learned that such a thing was possible, but some of them had waited months and even years after they learned of masturbation before they began their own activity. Males who hear of masturbation rarely delay their actual experimentation.

Petting Experience
The females in the sample had begun masturbation as a result of their petting or pre-coital experience with males in approximately 12 per cent of the cases. There were very few males who had not known of masturbation before they ever engaged in heterosexual petting. Some of the females, even though they had had males manipulate their genitalia and bring them to orgasm in the course of a petting relationship, had not realized that self-manipulation could effect similar results. Although extensive heterosexual petting is somewhat more frequent in the younger generation, it seems to have provided an introduction to masturbation among older generations, forty years ago, fully as often as it does for the younger generation today (Table 20f).
Hamilton 1929:426 found 18 per cent of his females reported masturbation which originated in petting, but did not distinguish between heterosexual and homosexual petting. Davis 1929:110 reported that 3 per cent of the unmarried females started masturbation from petting.

Observation
Observing other persons in masturbatory activities was the chief inspiration for the beginning of masturbation for only about 11 per cent of the females in the sample. Such observation was the source of inspiration for the initial experimentation of some 40 per cent of the males. There appear to have been no changes in the importance of such observation over the last four decades (Table 20f).
Masturbation originating from imitation of others is recorded in: Hamilton 1929: 426 (6 per cent).

The direct observation of masturbation is most often possible during pre-adolescent or early adolescent years (Table 20f). Not infrequently girls observe boys rather than other girls in masturbation, and subsequently explore their own capacities. There were even cases of older women who had found the initial stimulus for their masturbatory activities in their observation of infants and young pre-adolescent girls.

Homosexual Experience
About 3 per cent of the females in the sample had begun their masturbation as a result of their homosexual contacts in pre-adolescent, adolescent, or more adult years (Table 20f). In a few instances it was a nurse, housemaid, or female relative who had provided the first experience for the child. It was 9 per cent of the boys in the sample who had learned of masturbation through their homosexual experience (Table 20f).
Homosexual relationships as the origin of masturbation are also noted in: Adler 1911:101. Krafft-Ebing (Moll ed.) 1924:501. Davis 1929:110. Hamilton 1929:426.

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