Mark Hay

Since then, facials have really popped off among porn consumers. Porn insiders actually at times complain they'd <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-it-time-for-porn-to-retire-the-money-shot?ref=scroll" id="fdc0bd33-2b99-3e5a-a866-c626b23e3f10"> like to retire </a> <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkbwd5/an-oral-history-of-the-moneyshot" id="c1905a3a-0233-3957-a4a9-a1c9598c417b"> the trope </a> because it can be difficult for performers to get off at the end of a scene, meaning producers have to burn money idling on sets for up to an hour while they masturbateand because <a href="https://www.complex.com/life/2016/07/adult-film-stars-how-they-really-feel-facials" id="0bda9f4f-da20-3829-abdc-28ded190cbad"> many stars on the receiving end dislike them </a> . But they can't, because there's too high a demand: Theyre so popular that even amateur performers feel the need to include them in their clips, notes <a href="https://www.ohio.edu/scripps-college/mdia/faculty-staff/slade" id="f325b6ae-d73a-37fd-a4c9-96b7b6180aae"> Joseph Slade </a> , a professor of media studies who researchers porn history and patterns. Porn fans, he adds, make more compilations of facials (often known as "cumpilations") than of any other kind of adult scene.

In recent years, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/are-facials-yes-those-facials-really-on-the-ris" id="f6d27ddb-3bbf-324a-a3e1-1bbd16e3679e"> sex researchers </a> , <a href="https://jezebel.com/he-wants-to-jizz-on-your-face-but-not-why-you-think-5875217" id="df9b3623-889f-373f-a9e1-8c71ff0d998d"> therapists </a> , <a href="https://www.salon.com/2012/02/21/explaining_the_money_shot/" id="54b480f1-51c4-3571-af45-b1aa0242f1da"> and writers </a> have also noticed a major uptick in the number of people talking about facials in their own sex livesand of men trying to figure out how <a href="https://www.vocativ.com/301638/ejaculate/index.html" id="10389e24-412a-3a59-ad83-80914ebc03e9"> to increase the size </a> <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9ad5k8/we-asked-a-male-porn-star-how-to-jizz-good" id="99093c9e-65a9-3612-ad1e-6185e13de812"> of their ejaculate </a> so they can shoot porn-sized loads onto their partners.

No one knows for sure how common they are in practice, but at least <a href="https://badgirlsbible.com/come-here-often" id="6ba38856-1d5d-3489-a504-cfa8da4fe3dd"> one big (if unscientific) survey from 2018 </a> showed that 42 percent of male respondents wanted to give their partners a facial, and a third of women believed most men want to give them facials. A spike in diagnoses of ocular gonorrhea (yes, that is a thing) and cases of genital warts cropping up on peoples necks suggest that more and more folks are in fact trying facials out, argues sex educator <a href="https://www.aasect.org/find-professional/listing/1/4237" id="9978afc1-79bd-361d-a728-d89894d1cf6a"> Lawrence Siegel </a> . And regardless of how common they actually are, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/annanorth/are-facials-yes-those-facials-really-on-the-ris" id="42d6e502-d9e7-3b04-ad30-5d74cd535e34"> many people just feel </a> that facials are, as Siegel puts it, now part of the slate of the typical sexual dynamic.

It's hard to say exactly what accounts for the popularity of facials, especially among men. As sex researcher <a href="https://www.lehmiller.com/blog/2014/4/11/sex-question-friday-why-do-so-many-guys-like-to-give-facials" id="b00490f5-e504-3e28-ad22-e779dd0fb37b"> Justin Lehmiller pointed out on his blog </a> a few years back, for lack of dedicated research and hard data, no one can offer a firm verdict on the matter. But sex researchers have still come up with a number of compellingand tellingexplanations.

Slade and others argue that facials are popular simply because they're pervasive.

Facials became popular in part because of their novelty. <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8ge9qk/the-pleasure-and-pain-of-being-a-faux-incest-porn-star-456" id="35507db6-2e89-32d3-a1d7-f93e686d98fd"> Porn trends often </a> <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/aeygae/porns-latest-trend-is-scrawny-young-men-who-look-like-pre-teens" id="29a046ef-d730-3e60-a739-0a09802302f8"> rise and fall </a> on the appeal of novelty alone, and producers talk about the industrys <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vdqby8/meet-the-porn-pioneer-who-sold-bukkake-to-america" id="c40f2e34-330a-3556-a3ca-67132c25e854"> follow-the-leader </a> <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/micro-targeted-digital-porn-is-changing-human-sexuality" id="7906c48f-773c-3795-a607-b40758e9e62a"> mentality </a> the drive to ape others successful formats. Eventually, facials became so common that they just became a self-reinforcing standard; if you didnt use them in your film, you were a jarring outlier. As a porn consumer, when youre confronted with the same standard over and over it has to get in [your head] eventually," Siegel says.

<a href="https://qz.com/915626/a-generation-of-children-is-learning-about-sex-through-porn-and-we-have-no-way-to-stop-it/" id="e3541400-5096-33cc-a7d2-6f87b7f8a691"> There's definitely merit </a> <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/21-men-reveal-how-porn-shaped-their-views-of-sex_n_55d3459ae4b055a6dab16ef0" id="2e6271e0-76f6-362c-a2ca-6752f198f3cd"> to the idea </a> that what we see in pornespecially in the absence of truly comprehensive sexual educationsubtly influences our sexual expectations, habits, and even desires. But this view doesnt seem to account for the fact that some porn tropes permeate popular consciousness more than others, nor does it fully account for why facials seem to appeal so much more to men than to other porn viewers.

Many sex experts argue that the real secret to the popularity of facials stems from the sense of male domination they conveythe way they seem to inherently degrade receptive partners. Literally, someone is over you, because you cant do a facial from down below, points out sex counselor <a href="https://www.ericmgarrison.com/" id="2ad06b08-5d67-3a14-a72a-d2d0cc366dc4"> Eric Garrison </a> . Theres a thing of marking territory.

Some people, like columnist Dan Savage, say that degradation can be a kinky kind of power exchange in the bedroom. Others, like anti-porn activist Gail Dines, <a href="https://jezebel.com/he-wants-to-jizz-on-your-face-but-not-why-you-think-5875217" id="e82a826c-98d9-38a4-a23a-1b02310e2730"> think that degradation speaks to men because of deep-seated misogyny </a> a common male impulse to assert power over and punish women.

Makes sense, given the ways many filmmakers shoot facialswith men ordering their partners to get down on their knees and look at them, sometimes with clear degrading intent. It also stacks up with <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27770079" id="a7f13521-e4b2-342f-a150-fcc01377c411"> one very small study from 2017 </a> , in which over a dozen men said that they felt like facials were part of a sexual script, and clear acts of male dominance that they want to impose on their female partnerseven if those women arent into facials. Anecdotally as well, <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a9273156/women-talk-about-facials/" id="27dcd18e-fef1-3794-a561-0c7955767365"> many people have </a> <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2018/03/28/its-actually-a-nice-and-intimate-moment-19-men-and-women-talk-facials-the-kind-involving-semen-7401598/" id="21d7189d-ec74-3bf7-ace9-f465a3e83ed2"> told reporters </a> they dont like the idea of facials because they seem degrading.

But there are also many anecdotal accounts of men and women who enjoy the feel of a facial and dont think theres anything degrading about them. ( <a href="https://badgirlsbible.com/come-here-often" id="79c3d5ca-b362-3a98-a41c-bf7aa4d3d8cf"> Only 12 percent </a> of women in that 2018 survey said they are independently into facials, a figure that tracked with porn viewership levels. But more in other surveys have said that even if theyre not gung-ho about them, <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2018/02/23/time-talk-facials-kind-involve-semen-7337371/" id="8d3161e6-b5f8-3aa5-a9f8-457a5fe015c5"> they can get into them </a> <a href="https://www.playboy.com/read/the-truth-about-facials" id="375f91a4-ab24-32e0-a991-5c90c980866b"> in the right contexts </a> .) Painting all facials as degrading can veer into kink-shaming territory, Lehmiller cautions.

An almost polar opposite theory maintains that people like facials because they represent a sort of gleeful sexual excess and abandon. <a href="https://www.playboy.com/read/the-truth-about-facials" id="29dd7180-3107-38c1-a502-a95b16a5018a"> From this vantage </a> , facials stem from a passion so great that a man just wants to be all over his partnerto wallow in the visceral experience of sex.

This not only lines up with <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a9273156/women-talk-about-facials/" id="f6d5bc14-e457-39f0-ac02-f6a0f9a0509e"> the way some people </a> describe the pleasure they get out of facials, it also seems to fit with <a href="https://www.playboy.com/read/the-truth-about-facials" id="0fef4f23-a1a1-332f-a974-1cd87f647f4c"> some recent research </a> <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2018/03/28/its-actually-a-nice-and-intimate-moment-19-men-and-women-talk-facials-the-kind-involving-semen-7401598/" id="f2d85ae2-d209-3919-abd1-8258b2073c38"> suggesting that a fair number of women </a> at least like to see their partners ejaculate because they think the size and intensity of a load is a good proxy for how much a man enjoyed sex with them. A few women even told researchers that they felt more sexual pleasure themselves, had stronger orgasms, when they saw or felt a large cum shot from their partnersfacial or otherwise.

Of course, this facials-as-joy theory feels like it has just as many holes in it as the theory that all facials represent some deep brain masculine attraction to sexual aggression and domination. But that doesnt mean these theories are both wrong. It probably means theyre both totally right.

Sexual diversity is part of human nature. We all find ourselves attracted to different elements of the physical and psychological experience. So, we all likely have a slightly different relationship with facials. The secret to their popularity, then, is likely not that they appeal to one specific type of person or set of desires, but their ability to speak to desires as diverse as the urge to dominate and the urge to liberate, supercharged by their longstanding utility for porn producers and thus their ubiquity.

Its so complicated and so layered," Nelson says of the popularity of facials.

This complexity makes it hard to predict if or when facials will eventually start to fall out of fashion in porn, popular discourse, or peoples personal lives. It also means that facials might fade out of some corners of the sex-scape (Garrison says he has noticed that they show up less and less in gay male porn and culture these days, and that they were never as popular in, say, German porn and culture as they have been in recent years in the U.S.) but hold strong or gain traction in others as tastes evolve.

If you like facials in your porn or your personal sex life, however, it is worth trying to figure out what about them appeals to you specifically. In truth, more often than not your motives will not matter. We are all entitled to our fetishes. But if you find that you do like facials exclusively because they speak to or fuel a desire to dominate women, you may want to interrogate that impulse, perhaps even seek professional help. Because, as Nelson puts it, for some men in the unhealthy spectrum of desires, facials can represent a lot of anger towards women."

No matter what draws you to facials, it is also worth remembering that, because your desires are unique, your partner may not share them. No matter how commonplace facials may seem, they are never part of an implicit, universal sexual script. It is never okay to try to give one to a partner without asking, or after that partner has expressed a lack of interest in them. But if you are open with your partner about your interest in facials and what you like about them, you may be surprised by how many of them, even if they have no independent interest in the act, will be willing to explore that desire with you.

How Money Shots in Porn Became So Popular

Since the dawn of sex, we have to assume that people have been trying to ejaculate on their partners' faces. But facialsthe sex kind, not the spa kinddidn't become a well-known thing <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qkbwd5/an-oral-history-of-the-moneyshot" id="4d43519e-d0e7-38e8-a6e2-747535908bba"> until adult filmmakers adopted them </a> as the standard ending scene in mainstream porn films in the mid-1970s. These scenes allowed filmmakers to clearly show male porn stars reaching...

How the Money Shot Became the Most Popular Move in Porn

Christine was hooking up with a guy from the club who was determined not to come unless she didso determined, in fact, that he repeatedly asked how close she was to orgasm. For Christine, who often has trouble getting off with new partners, the sex wasnt anywhere close to enjoyable. It was stressful.

It was like hed watched a whole series of pornos and compiled a list of positions, she recalls. He kept asking me, How much do you like this? Tell me exactly how much! I was like, What do you want me to say, 8.34 out of 10? As he tracked Christines progressor lack thereofhe called for five-minute breaks in the action, lest he climax before fulfilling his duty.

The man was on a mission. And it didnt matter that Christine was miserable.

Its easy to see why some men approach sex this way, says sex educator Lawrence A. Siegel. [Its] what we teach men to do: be goal oriented, conquest focused. Everything has to have a clear, winning goal. Research suggests that men can feel less masculine when their female partner doesnt orgasm; when they think about failing to get a woman off, they feel embarrassed, distraught, or inadequate.

And, to be clear: Guys should care about their partners orgasm, not just their own. By now, youve probably heard about the orgasm gap, the undeniable reality that women get off far less frequently than men during heterosexual encounters, possibly because the men theyre withbe they hookups or husbandsarent listening to their needs.

But men sometimes take that mandate and warp it into terrible sex like Christine and Club Guys, insisting that the woman has to comeand often come firsteven if that might not be practical or desirable for her. This creates what researchers call an orgasm imperative, a belief that any sex that doesnt end in climax for both parties has been a complete failure.

Nothing sucks the fun and passion out of sex like a guy whos angling for a gold medal in the Orgasm Olympics. Women say it puts undue pressure on them to get off, which can make it harder not just to get there but to enjoy sex at all. Sex therapist Rene Burwell, L.C.S.W., says both partners end up in a cycle of shame and anxiety that decreases connection and enjoyment of sexual experiences.

Overhead view sensual couple in pajamas cuddling on bed

So lets throw out the orgasm checklist and think about closing the pleasure gap instead. Removing the goal of orgasm can reduce pressure and returnor introducethe fun of being sexual, says sex educator Lisa B. Schwartz, Ph.D., L.M.F.T. The less pressure shes under, the more she can actually enjoy the experience. Ironically, letting go of the orgasm imperative might even make womens orgasms more likely.

First step: Stop with all the asking. Mid-coitus is not the time to inquire about her orgasm. Instead, have that talk before you get busy, says sex therapist Vanessa Marin. Let her know youre game to do whatever makes her feel goodas long as its within your own comfort zoneand that youd like to get her off but are totally fine to stop what youre doing if she says shes had enough.

Then, during sex, you can focus on enjoying the experience. Elisabeth Lloyd, Ph.D., a leading scholar on the biology of the female orgasm who helped pioneer the concept of the orgasm gap, says you can still check in with each other, but with non-insistent questions like What feels good or would feel good to you right now? rather than How close to coming are you?

The two of you can also make bucket lists of things youd like to try in bed. It can be as simple as spending a certain amount of time on massage, gentle touch, or deep kissing, says Lloyd. That way, you can concentrate on exploring that new activity together instead of fixating on orgasm, which takes pressure off both of you.

If youre still having trouble prioritizing pleasure over climax, theres always Siegels idea: Dont come at all. Go on an orgasm ban, so that everything youre doing with and for and to each other is for the sole purpose of experiencing pleasure, he says. Theres no set rule for how long your ban should lasttry it for a few days, or a few weeks. Sometimes we just have to create a new picture of what we are expecting until the behavior sets in, Siegel says.

A ban on the big O might sound scary, but theres a lot more to sex than ten to 20 seconds of orgasm. Many women find intenseeven completepleasure in the intimacy, passion, and playfulness of a sex session. Focusing on the orgasm alone is like eating an ice cream sundae and focusing on the cherry, Burwell says. The cherry is great, but the greater experience exists in the ice cream.

Close the Pleasure Gap and Save Your Sex Life

ARE YOU CLOSE?

Thats why potential and current porn viewers need to know what data adult sites can collect about themand what they do with it. Mens Health recently reached out to digital privacy and security experts, major porn sites, and adult industry figures to find answers to these questions.

Porn websites are no more anonymous than any other website, says <a href="https://twitter.com/iamdylancurran?lang=en" id="1856e113-e41b-3e8b-a22f-49a12c6a9535"> Dylan Curran </a> , director of tech for the digital security firm VFT Solutions. Like most sites, they log information on your <a href="https://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/what-is-an-ip-address.htm" id="dc1ddb8d-ca62-3d8f-a1c1-3f66d2cb8cfa"> IP address </a> , the type of device and browser youre using, and how your machine has interacted with the site in the past, stored in <a href="https://computer.howstuffworks.com/cookie.htm" id="572c57b0-c5a9-36af-a6fa-f1b8b1df5985"> cookies </a> . Sites <a href="https://qz.com/1407235/porn-sites-collect-more-user-data-than-netflix-or-hulu-this-is-what-they-do-with-it/amp/" id="7b029034-9e94-38cf-aa10-b82a54aad64a"> can also choose to track </a> what you click, how long you play videos, stay on a page, and other basic usage information. This holds true <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/27/incognito-mode-what-does-it-mean-history-google-chrome-privacy-settings" id="5c7bf936-306e-3a0d-a915-9f0bcba9ab57"> even if youre using a browsers private or incognito mode </a> , which just prevents your computer from building a local history of pages youve visited.

In theory, some porn sites could, with a little digging, use other digital databases to connect an IP address, browser fingerprint, or device to a named individual, says <a href="https://twitter.com/robshavell?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" id="7ec5b78e-8773-33ba-acec-6493a032e542"> Rob Shavell </a> , co-founder of online privacy firm Abine. They could also create comprehensive data files on named individuals porn viewing habits on their sites, which they could potentially sell to others.

However, streaming giants Pornhub and xHamster told Mens Health they dont use this data to identify specific individuals. (Users can and do at times opt in to providing them more personal, identifiable info.) MindGeek, the firm behind Pornhuband, by one 2018 estimate, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/27/incognito-mode-what-does-it-mean-history-google-chrome-privacy-settings" id="943eb166-0f8b-334b-aed9-eabc10444fb2"> 80 percent of all mainstream online porn traffic </a> has told reporters in the past that it <a href="https://qz.com/1407235/porn-sites-collect-more-user-data-than-netflix-or-hulu-this-is-what-they-do-with-it/amp/" id="3770d495-8a04-312c-a6b0-fd91a532ab9b"> does not sell this data </a> , or its analytics, to others.

Major porn sites do use data to <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/8xw9dx/pornhub-still-hosting-girls-do-porn" id="982d2b64-f9c5-33ac-a3c8-aa7708df6023"> get a sense of user demographics </a> , so they can serve you content others in your demo like. Companies like MindGeek that own streaming sites and film studios can also use <a href="https://qz.com/1407235/porn-sites-collect-more-user-data-than-netflix-or-hulu-this-is-what-they-do-with-it/amp/" id="c0bab6d3-b043-3275-a954-015a8fa4bb99"> that info to guide movie production </a> . Cookie data also allows them to funnel content that they think you specifically will enjoy directly toward youeven if in theory they dont know who you are, and just know your IP address or browser information.

Shavell notes that its hard to know from the outside which porn companies, of the thousands out there with ever-shifting privacy policies, may be involved in worrying identified data collection, and which ones are just using the data on us to optimize our next visit on their sites.

However, most porn companies do have a <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/539485/your-porn-is-watching-you" id="639264ef-0c25-3c00-abc7-3c3d872a3350"> vested interest in protecting their patrons privacy </a> , lest a PR disaster costs them a huge amount of their trust, user bases, and current or future profitability.

<a href="https://gizmodo.com/so-about-your-internet-porn-habits-1836499572" id="51efb4f6-96c3-32d0-ad5c-7b52aad37d30"> A study by Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft Research, and the University of Pennsylvania </a> looking at 22,484 porn sites in March 2018 found that 93 percent sent user data out to an average of seven different external entities. Thats actually not bad by modern digital standards; as of 2018, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/27/incognito-mode-what-does-it-mean-history-google-chrome-privacy-settings" id="aab63cd2-1072-3862-ad30-d911652b682b"> YouTube sent data onwards to about 20 other parties </a> . But it is hardly assuring to worried users.

Pornhub, xHamster, and other big porn sites told Mens Health that they try to make sure any information they send on to third parties remains anonymous. However it is not clear that every third party offers the same type or level of data anonymization. <a href="https://www.eff.org/about/staff/daly-barnett" id="843af01d-0a92-393d-a4fd-369f33d88993"> Daly Barnett </a> of the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that sometimes, even if youve scrambled one piece of a users data, like their IP address, an entity <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/8xw9dx/pornhub-still-hosting-girls-do-porn" id="0436aa77-4287-3715-a997-fdfec1e1c874"> could still in theory identify them </a> using other bits of info. And many third party services <a href="https://gizmodo.com/so-about-your-internet-porn-habits-1836499572" id="69afab4b-cfa5-3a89-a2e9-4f265fa2faa8"> have long been incredibly opaque </a> about what they collect and how they use it beyond their core services.

Portrait of man lying on couch at home looking at laptop

Individual porn viewers Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can also see the sites their users visit.

Widespread HTTPS encryption prevents them from reading the full, after-the-slash, URL for a page their customer was on. However, as of 2018, only 17 percent of porn sites <a href="https://gizmodo.com/so-about-your-internet-porn-habits-1836499572" id="5213f0cf-dcba-351e-a8e3-e5db6d31201f"> had HTTPS security </a> . So many porn sites still leak information about users searches, page views, and so on to ISPs. Then they can, in many jurisdictions, sell that information on to other firms or hand it over to the state.

<a href="https://www.salon.com/2013/12/12/whos_tracking_your_porn/" id="b2b1740b-5180-30f8-a72f-cdd0968e48e9"> The natural concern </a> is that some of our porn data will, through one or more diffuse channels, end up in the hands of data brokers, companies that suck up all the info they can find on individuals. These brokers create dossiers on people, which they then sell on to everyone from credit rating agencies to marketing firms to other individuals. Even a few bits of fragmentary info on our viewing habits, anonymous in abstract, when sucked into a data brokers massive archives could be used to build at least broad profiles on the sexual proclivities and porn viewing habits of named individuals.

Few big name data brokers, due to legal, company policy, or PR considerations, could work with porn data even if they wanted to. But there are, Barnett notes, many small, largely unregulated data brokers who use dubious sourcing to hoover up everything on us that they can. He says he hasn't seen sexual information appear in their profiles yet, but he "wouldn't be surprised" if they had it stashed away, or were selling it very discreetly. And while there may not be many corporate buyers interested in granular breakdowns on individuals porn habits, as these profiles become cheaper, more robust, and more widely accessible, Shavell argues there is a clear, growing market for them: individuals looking for dirt on people with whom they have an axe to grind.

young attractive and relaxed internet addict man networking concentrated late at night on bed with laptop computer in social media addiction or workaholic businessman concept

What's a guy to do to protect against the as-of-yet speculative, but still palpable, risk of your porn data leaking into the world? Unfortunately, the experts Mens Health consulted for this piece said there is no one tool or tactic, or even one surefire set of tactics, that can fully mitigate this risk.

With that in mind, Barnett notes that one of the easiest steps to take to secure yourself is making sure that you are using a browser that places a premium on security. Browsers like Firefox, Iridium, and Tor take pains to build privacy protections into their systems, he says. You can also install <a href="https://www.tomsguide.com/us/15-best-chrome-privacy-extensions,review-5770.html" id="383d18a9-7f4e-3107-a4c3-99fbe036dfc8"> one of many free browser extensions </a> to block many third party trackers from reading your most of your data, make HTTPS protections run on non-encrypted sites, or even provide real-time alerts on the snooping tactics a website you are visiting is employing and suggestions on how to react to them. It also doesnt hurt, Barnett adds, to use a VPN and an ad blocker, and to clear your browsers cookie cache to limit the amount data sites can glean.

Shavell also recommends limiting the number of porn sites you browseideally down to oneto minimize the avenues your data could leak through. If you decide to create an account on that site, or limited pool of sites, to access paid or premium content, he adds, make sure to use a throwaway email address created specifically to register for with site and anonymized payment, like a <a href="https://www.creditkarma.com/credit-cards/i/virtual-credit-card/" id="c7dadc84-ebc8-39cc-ad58-7439386e31d7"> virtual credit card </a> and phone number. The more personal data you willingly give when registering, the more direct and clear the risksand not just of gradual data leakage. There have been numerous cases of hacks and data breaches <a href="https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/04/15/millions-more-adult-and-dating-website-accounts-for-sale-on-dark-web/" id="12f8256f-4ff1-3342-a6a5-7326866bed6c"> exposing registered </a> <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-43795806" id="c791587e-b698-3637-abd2-ec5519e9c87c"> porn site users emails </a> , passwords, and credit card info, all of which can be used for identity theft, to call out an individual for their habits in <a href="https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2018/07/13/sextortion-scam-knows-your-password-but-dont-fall-for-it/" id="c49103ae-df01-3e8e-a0f1-20807328802d"> sextortion scams </a> (a fairly common racket), or for social shaming.

No matter what we do, ultimately we all have to accept the fundamental paradox of online porn: If we want to adult content privately online, theres always a risk that well be caught out on it publicly. That risk is incredibly low. But it is real. It can be mitigated, but never eliminated. We either need to accept that, or go back to buying porn in hard copy from a store 30 miles from our homes in cash while wearing a hoodie and shades. Given the choice, most of us will eat the risk.

The Truth About Porn Sites and Personal Data

Watching porn online entails an unsettling paradox: We want and expect our viewing habits to be totally private. Yet we know the modern digital economy is built on constant surveillance of our browsing habits.

Today, most porn performers make the majority of their money not by filming big scenes with big studios, but by interacting with fans, whether by camming, making custom clips on commission, operating premium fan clubs, or selling access to their phone numbers or other forms of contact, alongside dozens of other hustles. And they have to be on social media constantly promoting their content and cultivating a loyal fan base. Many production houses actually choose who to work with based on the number of Twitter followers a given performer hasin other words, how many fans they can sell content to, says 20-year industry vet James Bartholet.

The result is that it's now easier than it has ever been for the average Joe to interact with porn stars. But the nature of these increasingly frequent fan engagements is not always stellar, numerous performers tell Men's Health.

In person, fans will be more reserved, Darcie Dolce says. But onlinewith anonymity, distance, and very little cost to venting whatever is on their mindsfans can easily slip over into crude, insulting, often downright dehumanizing language and behavior, which can be grueling for stars to endure.

In the interest of helping fans step up and make the digital space more comfortable for the folks they get off to, we recently reached out to around 30 major adult stars who regularly engage with fans to put together a definitive guide to talking to adult entertainers in the digital sphere.

<h1> First, some of fans' most common mistakes: </h1>

Every performer agreed that fans seem to forget they are actual people with livesnot just sexual beings. "[They] assume I will fuck anybody and everybody, says Ember Snow, adding that fans feel entitled to randomly blurt out things like I want to cram my dick down your throat." Jessy Dubai says fans start unloading their personal fantasies of how they want a star to have sex with them"like its something I want to hear. Fans send so many unsolicited dick pics via Twitter and Instagram that some stars just give up on checking their DMs, says Mischievous Kitty.

This constant, aggressive sexual engagement is doubly insulting, says Ginger Banks, as it's clear many fans are trying to use free contact with performers to get themselves worked up, and hopefully to get off. As a sexual artist, them getting off for free is one thing I want to avoid, she saysespecially when so much of her content is already free and she needs to make money as she can.

Its not as if fans never do this kind of thing in person, Banks admits. There will be fans at conventions where, Im talking about casual things and theyll say, so how many gallons of semen do you think youve eaten?" She adds, "You can see them start readjusting their pants."

Desperate for attention from their favorite star, Addie Andrews notes that far too many fans try to solicit a response from me by triggering me emotionally, saying intentionally brutal, over-the-line things just to get enough of a rise out of her that she will respond. Banks says that if you reply to them, theyll say, Look, it worked! Youre interacting with me! I love you." This is just twisted.

Sensual Smiling Female Lying on Sofa and Using Tablet

<h1> Proper etiquette differs by platform. </h1>

It's hard to give hard and fast advice on how to interact with adult performers online, because different platforms come with different expectations. Twitter and Instagram are mostly for performers to advertise themselves, build their brands, or post entirely non-sexual details about their lives, says Richelle Ryan; on those platforms, "it is better for a fan to be less sexually graphic and more socialinteract, comment, support, and re-tweet." DMs on these platforms should be reserved for business deals and transactions, Brandi Love says.

However, on platforms fans are actually paying to use <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/style/onlyfans-porn-stars.html" id="fb5ba624-b3e2-35a6-a80a-5bb4c019649e"> like the subscription adult social media platform OnlyFans </a> , or texting services like SexPantherperformers are more inclined to engage with fans more directly and more often, explains Andrews. They will also often tolerate more overtly sexual comments and conversations, adds Dubai. But even if you're paying for an erotic servicelike on a cam siteyou're not entitled to all of a performers time. There could be hundreds of other people paying for attention at any given moment, so there is still a cap on much of a stars time they can monopolize, or how publicly lurid they can get, explains Genevieve LaFleur.

Every performer draws slightly different lines on every platform, says LittleRedBunny, a major cam performer (but not a porn star). Snow, for instance, will not tolerate any conversation in any context that stars off with hey sexysomething other performers dont mind. Kitty likes every interaction to be straight to the point, while others appreciate some build-up and casual chatting.

The key takeaway is this: Never make assumptions about what is or is not allowed. Always check to see if a platform or performer has posted rules of conduct. When in doubt, ask other fans or the performer in question.

Portrait of woman using mobile phone while lying on bed

<h1> Remember, adult performers are human. </h1>

So you should treat them the way you treat anyone else you encounter. Would any decent human being walk up to a woman at work or a coffee shop and say to her face, Youre hot; I want to fuck your ass? No!

Remember, treating a performer with respect and empathy doesn't close off the possibility of a sexualized conversation with them. If someone is posting about sex and porn, feel free to comment back about sex and porn, says Bunny Colby. Kenzie Reeves likes it when fans engage with erotic posts by or about her, tagging her and pointing out exactly what they like about that content. She sees it as a compliment to her workas long as the fan comments are positive.

Once a sexual comment is made or dialogue begins, start low and go slow. Rather than launching into dirty talking, or hashing out detailed scripts for what youd like a performer to do with you or on screen, start with relatively neutral descriptions of what you like about a performer or one of their scenes. It is hard to draw a clear line about what is and is not okay to say, admits Andrews, so you might accidentally overstep. If a step isnt reciprocated or appreciated, just back off. As Misty Stone puts it, allow womenor any other gender of performerto place that line. Then follow their lead.

If you overstep too often, some performers might block you, ignore you, or ask you to pay money, Stone adds.

Young Sensual Female Lying on Sofa and Taking Selfie at Home

Even on paid platforms where one has exchanged cash for explicit engagement, there are still limits on what you should bring up. Whether theyre camming, making custom videos, or just chatting, performers still have their professional limits, explains Riley Reyes. Some models dont like taboo role play, she sayslike fauxcest. Others dont like being dominated. If youre not sure what theyre willing to do or talk about online, then the answer is always to ask. If they arent into something you want them to be, it is never acceptable to try to shame, bribe, or otherwise pressure them into it.

You should also never insult or complain about a performer, Reyes adds. (Unless, say, a performer took your cash for the explicit purpose of making a custom film, then never delivered it to you and is unresponsive to check-ins. Then theres room for a neutral bad business complaintbut still not for personal slander or physical critique.)

FYI, most stars agree that sending dick pics without asking first is a universal no-no.

Finally, respect the fact that adult performers are busy. Interacting with fans is part of the job, but if I just sent a heart to everyone on Twitter who said Im beautiful, Id never be off of my phone, Andrews says. Even on camming platformswhere a live back-and-forth is a key drawunless you pay a premium for a one-on-one session, a performer will have many other people to respond to, she adds.

It is okay to want deeper conversation or more time with someone. But you have to earn that time, because there are a lot of people competing for it, Andrews explains. You can earn that by slowly building a rapport with a performer over time.

<h1> How to stand out and build a rapport: </h1>

One of the easiest steps a fan can take to earn a few points with most performers, LitteRedBunny suggests, is making sure that all of their interactions are polite and well-crafted. Which is to say, resume-writing rules apply when youre talking to adult performers online: Show them that youve clearly put some time and effort into a communication, that youre treating them with the respect youd pay to anyone else in your everyday life, by affording them common courtesies. A number of stars Ive spoken to also value good grammar and a lack of slang as a sign of time and respect.

Never send a message that just says, Hey, says LaFleur. Thats a good indication you have not put time or thought into reaching outthat you want performers to put in effort to engage with you. Spend a little bit of time coming up with something personalized yet respectful to say. Show your support on social media as well, suggests Andrewsyou could even hype your favorite performer to production companies and request shoots with them.

Fans often get bonus points with performers if they compliment their acting talent or personality rather than how hot they are or how well they get it on. People who say, 'Youre so funny' are the ones I like to follow back, says Banksthe ones who see her, not just her body parts.

A girl who gets asked about anal sex all day will absolutely light up if you want to chat about her favorite video game or her new art project, Reyes adds. Some performers even appreciate it when their fans share bits and details of their own live, like a funny and non-sexual selfie.

But don't try to dig deep into a performers personal life beyond what they put online themselves, Dubai stresses. That gets into stalker territory, and far too many performers have had scary experiences with men posting their home addresses online, or sharing details about how they followed them around at a convention sight unseen. Even genuine interest that reaches too far into a performers private life can read as hostile and harassing. You dont want to make a performer go from feeling loved to feeling scared for their life, Dubai says.

As long as you dont cross that lineor any others mentioned abovethen most performers truly love to hear from or engage with their fans. This is one of my favorite aspects of working in the adult industry, says Roxie Rae.

It can be validating and fun, mutually supportive and meaningful. It can even lead to real friendships here and there. Just so long as that engagement is built on respect.

How Porn Stars Want You to Talk to Them Online

A decade ago, the only places the average person could ever hope to interact with a porn star were adult industry conventions and strip clubs, where some performers would do the occasional feature dance. But times have changed.

Here's How Porn Stars Want You to Talk to Them Online

Ample coverage of these surgeries at the time they took place offered readers plenty of details about what a penile transplant involves-all the nerves and arteries to be reattached, the techniques used, and the years of research and hours of operating time they took to come to fruition. Yet no coverage to date has answered what for many observers may be some of the most burning questions about penile transplants: What is the post-surgery recovery process, the sensation of having a new penis after years without one, and the process of integrating a new penis that came from someone elses body into yourself like?

The lack of public info to date on patients post-transplant experiences is largely logical. Recovery takes time, so it can be years until there is something meaningful to say on the topic. Three of the four patients who have undergone the procedure have requested that their doctors and the media reserve their anonymity for entirely understandable reasons. (Only the 2016 Boston-area patient, <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/05/17/a_penis_transplant_isnt_a_punchline_mocking_this_procedure_could_keep_many_suffering_in_silence/" id="03390448-997b-3a9b-a22f-e473589a91a8"> Thomas Manning </a> , who was 64 at the time of his surgery, allowed his name and picture into the press in hopes of destigmatizing genital injuries and accidents. Doctors <a href="https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/4334wd/everything-we-learned-from-the-first-penis-transplant-in-the-us" id="eda51652-c2bf-3a90-a512-6199263e842b"> can only say so much </a> about their patients post-op conditions in most cases to nosy reporters.

But recently, we got to speak to some of the doctors who performed Americas first two penile transplant procedures. They were able to tell us quite a bit, in general, about their expectations for their patients post-transplant experiences going into the surgeries. They were also able to share a number of details about their patients actual experiences of recovery, sensation and function, and psychological integration after receiving a new donor penis.

<h1> How successful are penis transplants? </h1>

Although it may seem odd, the doctors all told us that they actually expected, going into these procedures, that their patients would probably regain penile functions and sensations, including sexual sensations, better and faster than many patients having their own penises reattached.

Doctors have actually been reattaching penises for decades. Although the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1993/10/07/a-stitch-in-time/4bb12535-5a24-45a5-a1ac-674ef4802f26/?utm_term=.9ae4a662dd41" id="5ab0fd01-f991-3c0e-a88d-8661fc0a28d0"> John Wayne and Lorena Bobbit case </a> thrust the procedure into the US spotlight in 1993, it <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/07/13/health/the-doctor-world-artful-surgery-reattaching-a-penis.html" id="f3c86bbc-b936-3ea4-a8e7-5b9b763f8f0a"> seemingly first garnered major academic attention in the 1970s </a> when Thai doctors performed at least 18 reattachments during a spree of penis dismemberments committed by local women against their abusive or cheating husbands.

Early 1970s procedures often failed, but by the 1990s, surgeons were already getting pretty good at them; the male Bobbit <a href="https://people.com/crime/john-bobbitt-penis-surgery-murder-made-me-famous/" id="2fdf9e61-e9bd-3936-abe2-2d34c6c405ad"> notoriously made a few pornos </a> after his surgery to show off his still functional dick. Fairly consistently, says <a href="https://jhu.pure.elsevier.com/en/persons/richard-redett" id="3ab96b5a-b61e-397f-ab38-13c66241c4b6"> Richard Redett </a> of the team at Johns Hopkins University that performed the 2018 transplant surgery, we know that these men get return of decent sensation and the ability to get an erection, although not a very firm erection.

Surgical instruments Set for surgery on blue drape

<h1> What's it like to have a penis transplant? </h1>

Usually, people lose their penises in fairly traumatic ways, so there is stretching and tearing damage on both ends of the organ, says <a href="https://www.massgeneral.org/children/doctors/doctor.aspx?id=18246" id="38707c8a-46f4-3253-ad02-abcbce8a4225"> Curtis Cetrulo </a> of the Massachusetts General Hospital team that performed the 2016 transplant procedure. You have to shorten things to compensate for damage, he explains, and you cant really tell the extent of the injury sometimes, so that rejiggering of tissue can be a little rough. It can lead to, say, tension on reattached nerves. A transplant is a much more controlled situation, Redett says.

In many cases, a man who lost most of his penis will likely have messy or confusing damage on his end, unless it was surgically removed, as in Mannings case. But doctors can remove a donors penis in a clean and known manner-and remove some extra nerve from the donor for tension-avoiding safety and good measure. Not only that, but they can minimize the time the penis is severed before being attached to a new body.

Some who bring in their own penises for reattachment might have been holding onto their severed shafts for upwards of half a day (in the worst cases), after which reattachment is <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbx4jx/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-penis-transplants-but-were-afraid-to-ask-317" id="77e850b5-f56f-320e-ab4c-b5e23bec9ba2"> still viable </a> but the organ may have suffered some additional damage. And in a lucky coincidence, Redett adds, one of the immunosuppressant drugs transplant patients take to keep their body from rejecting new organs seems to promote and improve nerve regeneration, and thus penile sensation.

This isnt to say that transplant procedures are uncomplicated. Even with quickened or improved nerve regeneration, doctors never expect patients who have lost and regained a penis to recover full sensation in the organ, much less the same sensation they had before losing their members. There is also <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbx4jx/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-penis-transplants-but-were-afraid-to-ask-317" id="6d589e12-7e16-3fd9-a0cf-957f95a25aa8"> always a risk </a> when attaching a free-floating penis to a body that inflammation of the blood vessels during the healing process could lead to long-term erectile dysfunction to some degree.

Still, the American transplant teams said they had high hopes for their patients, expecting that they would be able to gain the ability to urinate within a few weeks and regain sensation throughout the penis, including sexual sensation (even if reduced) in the glans, within about six months to a year.

<h1> What are the psychological side effects of having a penis transplant? </h1>

On the psychological front, too, they did not expect many difficulties. Even early hand and face transplant patients (procedures that doctors have been doing for about 20 years and 15 years now, respectively) didnt, for the most part, have much trouble learning to see those new, visible organs as their own despite the fact that they came from donors, notes Cetrulo. It was a surprising outcome with those patients, he adds. This face is their new face. This hand is their new hand. There hasnt been as much of a psychological barrier as most people would have predicted.

And in the intervening years, medical psychologists and social workers have developed all manner of screening methods and pre- and post-op protocols to help people prepare for and work through the integration of a new visible organ. We have psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers on our team who specialize in these issues, says Redett.

( <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbx4jx/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-penis-transplants-but-were-afraid-to-ask-317" id="99ac0113-28b8-3242-a380-f9def4c884b4"> According to some reports </a> , the first ever attempted, but failed, penile transplant, conducted in China in the mid-2000s, went south due to psychological complications. However, the details of this procedure and the patients experience are shoddy. Cetrulo thinks its possible, based on pictures from the case, that it could have been a technical failure or a rejection-we dont know.)

<h1> How have previous penis transplants turned out? </h1>

At least two transplant patients have exceeded even the rosy expectations doctors had for them. The first ever transplant patient in South Africa, for instance, reportedly regained his ability to get hard and get off <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/health/thomas-manning-first-penis-transplant-in-us.html" id="4ae71356-24b8-3124-a264-5674a9e1fadb"> within about four months of his surgery </a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33103294" id="a7acb00e-3dc4-3f2c-a574-040678209545"> got a partner pregnant within seven </a> . Redetts patient regained sensation at least a few weeks before his doctors expected him to and seems on track to start having erections again soon. His patients transplant was the most extensive ever, involving a full penis and a chunk of abdominal tissue, so-given that the more tissue replaced, the longer it typically takes for nerves to grow back through all that new tissue-that is quite amazing. You dont know if these are going to be entirely normal erections, he cautions, but a young, healthy person has the best chance of anyone of getting erections after a transplant.

Mannings recovery was not as quick and easy as these patients. Sure, three weeks after his surgery he could pee normally again. (With just a stump, explains Cetrulo, every time he would sit down to go to the bathroom, it would spray all over his clothes, all over the toilet, and hed smell like urine the whole day no matter what he tried to do. He couldnt stand up to use a urinal.) But as an older man, he was almost bound, his doctors say, to have slightly slower nerve regeneration; it took him around 18 months to get physical sensation back in the tip of his penis. He is also only able to achieve partial erections, but Cetrulo says they still have many options left for improving that functional issue. Manning had to have heart surgery after his transplant, he explains, and suffered some complications related to treatment for a kidney stone, which precluded moving forward with erectile dysfunction therapies that theyre only just digging into now.

But its more realistic, I think, in a 64-year-old to be patient and use adjuncts like Viagra and Cialis, or even down the road to consider an implant or something like that, says Cetrulo. Many people in this country have a sensate penis and have to have mechanical help to get an erection. Ultimately, Redett believes, having performed the operation and watched and listened to his patient post-op, the results of a transplant are far better than conventional reconstruction when youre talking about sensation, the ability to void, and the ability to get an erection withoug having to get an implant.

(Conventional reconstruction usually involves <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbx4jx/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-penis-transplants-but-were-afraid-to-ask-317" id="72b008ba-a245-365d-ac75-91569335538a"> bringing out whatever urethra </a> a man has left after losing his penis, and <a href="https://www.baltimoresun.com/health/bs-hs-penis-transplant-20160112-story.html" id="bf4b7a20-144d-3d8f-a42c-9728d3afbae7"> taking, as needed, skin, nerves, and blood vessels from other areas of the body </a> -typically an arm or thigh-then shaping them into a phallus. Although a common procedure for many who have lost their penis and cannot recover it, it does not work for everyone, especially people with extensive blast or burn injuries. It is also just rudimentary compared to the actual tissue, says Cetrulo, and the urethral element of the reconstruction process all too often results in scars, fistulas, and other flaws that lead to problematic urination post-op.)

On the psychological front, both American patients appear to have avoided any complications; actually, they have apparently reaped ample mental benefits thanks to their new organs. Most men lacking a penis, explains Cetrulo, feel distraught. Seeing that you have a penis again after years without one, adds <a href="https://health.usnews.com/doctors/dicken-ko-894484" id="605113b8-270e-3adb-af34-a6bf658bddd3"> Dicken Ko </a> , another doctor involved with Mannings surgery, is a big deal.

Thats definitely what he was thrilled about initially, says Ko of Manning, because, all of a sudden, hes whole again. Cetrulo notes that, from all Manning has said, hes fairly certain that he quickly started to see his new penis as an integrated part of him. Redett says his patient seems to have had a similarly profound and positive experience integrating his new penis into his sense of self. I can see a difference in his demeanor, he says, just his joy.

It's worth pointing out, though, that the second South African patient, a 40-year-old black man, <a href="https://qz.com/africa/1140050/south-african-surgeons-transplanted-a-white-penis-on-to-a-black-man/" id="d8816ce0-fc22-35a9-a0fc-199ddd9ec87e"> received a transplant from a white donor </a> , whereas other patients donors have matched their skin tone. His doctors are reportedly exploring <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-05/su-sat052217.php" id="1b26ed56-ab31-3edc-a66f-fe7591682923"> medical tattooing </a> to change his penile complexion to match the rest of his body. It is unclear whether this tonal mismatch has caused complications in the integration process, but it is not hard to see how it could be potentially quite jarring.

<h1> What's the future look like for penis transplant patients? </h1>

These are just the early days of these patients post-surgical experiences. They could still develop more sensation and functionality; Cetrulo points out that in, say, hand transplants, it can take up to six years after an operation for nerves to finish regenerating. But they could also suffer setbacks or losses. Ko points out that, while most transplanted organs last for a good long time, the question now becomes, how long will the transplant last. As long as it lasts, though, the patients will have to take a cocktail of immunosuppressant drugs to keep their immune systems from attacking their new penises.

Theyll need to take <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-05/su-sat052217.php" id="268eae14-e313-337c-a124-81218f3398db"> less and less over time </a> , but over the course of 10 to 20 years their side effects or long-term effects <a href="https://www.nps.org.au/australian-prescriber/articles/long-term-management-of-patients-taking-immunosuppressive-drugs" id="cdf2cfee-f344-3c80-afc6-9d969b676a55"> can take all manner of health tolls </a> . This is actually one of the reasons penile transplant surgeries are so rare: Although well over a thousand young veterans <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/health/genital-injuries-among-us-troops.html" id="422092a9-b515-3d2c-ac9b-be78b98bde12"> have suffered genital injuries in Americas ongoing wars </a> , a good chunk of them losing their penises, the risks of a lifetime on immunosuppressants are so serious that many doctors are hesitant to consider doing a transplant on a man with decades to live. Wake Forest Baptist Health has been approved to do a penile transplant, notes <a href="https://www.wakehealth.edu/Providers/T/Ryan-Terlecki" id="b3c21df1-6b62-3f39-a28f-f2f8e125e9dd"> Ryan Terlecki </a> , a urologist there, but doesnt want to do one on a cancer patient because of immunosuppression concerns.

The penile transplant teams at both Johns Hopkins and Massachusetts General are hard at work on efforts to reduce the amount of immunosuppressants their patients would need to take post-surgery. Cetrulo thinks his teams methods are almost ready for prime time. If they can move the dial on immunosuppressant risks, he says, the risk-benefit profile would plummet and we could potentially do kids [born with penile defects], young trauma patients, lots of different patients."

(A team at Wake Forest, with which Terlecki is involved, is working on lab engineering <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/oct/04/penis-transplants-anthony-atala-interview" id="644a1a82-4962-3a23-a80e-3987be36d81c"> replacements for parts of the penis using cells from a patients own body </a> . This would basically allow for transplants without any complications related to ones immune system rejecting the new, yet still you, organ element. However, he explains that theyre still far away from being able to engineer a whole penis, which is much more complex than generating just, say, a urethra.)

It is hard to say, given how few penile transplants have been performed to date, just how typical the four extant patients experiences will end up being. Every post-surgical experience, they explain, will be different based on the patients age, general health, and the nature of his injury, as well (most likely but less clearly) on the health and background of the penis donor. If future patients have more initial episodes of rejection, Redett points out, that will definitely affect their future erectile function, and could affect other aspects of functioning and sensation as well. Specific surgical techniques could have major effects on post-op sensation and functionality, too.

It will take many procedures to start to get a sense of exactly what variables lead, in most cases, to which experiences-and what the average post-transplant experience is overall. Building up all those data points will take lots of time, as penile transplants are still experimental, costly, and time consuming. The United Network for Organ Sharings records do not show any requests for new penile donors, so its not likely well see a third American transplant in the near future.

Even with all those caveats in mind, though, the experiences of the first two American penile transplant patients post-op seem extremely heartening. Their experiences should be a ray of hope for the thousands of men worldwide each year who lose their penises in accidents or attacks, or to botched circumcisions or disease.

In the past five years, doctors in America and South Africa have performed four full penile transplants. The first and only surgeries of their kind, they entail exactly what youd think: removing the penis from a deceased donor and attaching it to someone without a penis. (The two South African men who have undergone this procedure, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qbx4jx/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-penis-transplants-but-were-afraid-to-ask-317" id="766ebf36-d64e-39dc-af60-64...

What it's Like to Get a Penis Transplant

It gets thrown around in common speech, like when in 2017 short-lived White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci denigrated Steve Bannon to a reporter as <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/anthony-scaramucci-called-me-to-unload-about-white-house-leakers-reince-priebus-and-steve-bannon" id="beadf5e2-b07b-3ed3-a0f3-b46bd11153d4"> trying to suck his own cock </a> . Its a frequent topic of discussion in sex and sexuality columns and talk shows; Dan Savage has been fielding <a href="https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/a-cultural-history-of-men-sucking-their-own-dicks" id="4da7e118-1618-3260-a5e1-6ee1d5452cf8"> questions about it </a> for years. It even features in fine art, like Kiki Smiths 1993 New York gallery-featured beeswax sculpture <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/736620082775296038/" id="ce035582-457e-31d4-aed2-5e6c259f69cb"> Mother/Child </a> .

<h1> Why Men Are So Obsessed With Sucking Their Own Dicks </h1>

Clearly we are, as a culture, low-key obsessed with the act of sucking our own dicks. But how long, exactly, has the West been fixated on-openly acknowledged and made frequent cultural and conversational use of-auto-fellatio? And why has the concept gained so much traction in our popular imaginations? We recently set out to find answers, scouring historical and cultural records and speaking to a wide range of experts in order to build a brief yet comprehensive history of our cultural relationship to and fascination with self sucking (as some who practice or idolize the act call it).

Humans, everyone I spoke to for this piece agreed, have likely been thinking about and attempting auto-fellatio since the dawn of our species.

The assumption often runs that anyone who, historically or in the modern era, thinks about or tries to fellate himself likely did so out of homoerotic urges. For some people throughout history, this has likely been the motive. Al Eingang, a contortionist known as the King of the Self-Suck since he started performing auto-fellatio in adult films in the 1980s, tells me that he got started in puberty in part because I already knew I wanted to suck cock, and mine was right there, waiting to be sucked. Social pressures against homosexual acts could, writer <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2011/08/autofellatio-the-contorted-history.html" id="bfc25591-5164-3554-a86b-6cc28b59d7f0"> Jesse Bering argued in Slate </a> eight years back, have historically nudged men towards it as a form of isolated, safe sexual exploration.

But auto-fellatio has never, the experts Ive spoken to again all agreed, been exclusively or even primarily motivated by homoerotic impulses. Instead, men (regardless of sexuality) have likely stumbled into the act for millennia thanks to a mixture of curiosity, physiology, and, as Eingang puts it, the creative, adventurous spirit that horniness can bring out in us. Sex counselor <a href="https://www.ericmgarrison.com/" id="2ad06b08-5d67-3a14-a72a-d2d0cc366dc4"> Eric Garrison </a> notes that many men today tell him the thought of sucking their own dicks crossed their minds when, as youths, bending over or stretching and realizing how close their penises were to their mouths. As people are always looking for ways to make solitary sex better, says Garrison, some men have likely always taken this fleeting thought and run with it-or at least tried to do so.

Physiological happenstance may also explain, in part, why we dont talk or think as much about auto-cunnilingus, or women eating themselves out. As Eingang points out, it would take more flexibility for women to achieve this than men. Nelson also credits this disparity to the fact that men tend to be obsessed with our penises and many view them (erroneously) as our only erogenous zones, while many women are not as solely fixated on their vulvas and therefore may not be as primed to entertain the thought or tempted to try it out. Sex therapist <a href="https://www.dulcineapitagora.com/" id="5cdff2e7-cde2-3701-ac5d-b807b4dc6957"> Dulcinea Pitagora </a> argues that society has long suppressed-and still all too often suppress-female sexual pleasure while it worships the male penis. This may have historically suppressed awareness or reports of, or interest in, auto-cunnilingus among women. At least some women have likely attempted this since the dawn of history too, though.

<h1> The First Examples of Auto-Fellatio in History </h1>

Regardless of how long men have been thinking about, trying, or engaging in auto-fellatio, the first documented depictions of auto-fellatio show up in ancient Egyptian texts from about 2,500 to 3,000 years ago. <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=113956&amp;partId=1" id="f429ffa4-c8c7-39e7-ab17-d1d8c56d5aa7"> In one story </a> , the ancient Egyptian god of creation, Atum, produces his children by sucking himself off and spitting out his own semen. <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=114314&amp;partId=1" id="bd76f2c7-57c1-3fd4-a8fa-633046952c8d"> Images depict other gods </a> engaging in what appears to be auto-fellatio supposedly to depict their potency, fertility, and self-sustaining powers.

These depictions dont mean that ancient Egyptians were thinking often, speaking openly about, or engaging in auto-fellatio. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20101229072235/http:/reocities.com/Athens/academy/1326/ontology.html" id="bf83ba2c-d102-3af6-a4f9-bc37b6998875"> Gods did what gods did </a> in accordance with their nature to maintain order in the cosmos. But at least we know that they were familiar with the core concept of self-sucking.

Auto-fellatio doesnt seem to pop up again until the 100s C.E., in the writings of the Anatolian Greek dream diviner <a href="https://todhartman.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/michel-foucault-the-history-of-sexuality-vol-3-the-care-of-the-self-rh-1986.pdf" id="e55f6023-9158-330f-afd3-c3efb29b7d12"> Artemidorus Daldianus </a> . He describes the act as a form of deviance on par with bestiality and necrophilia, and claims that dreaming of kissing the tip of your penis would portend the birth of children, or return of kids whove been away from home. Dreaming of sucking it, however, portended the death of ones children, the loss of the women in ones life-as Michel Foucault put it in his analysis of Daldianuss writings, for one does not need women when one can gratify oneself-or impending poverty.

This lines up with the contemporary Roman view that, as <a href="https://www.edx.org/bio/dr-ian-frederick-moulton" id="128e2212-c198-340e-ada2-0d6e6ffc8410"> Ian Moulton </a> explains it, receiving oral sex was fine, but performing it was shameful. That doesnt tell us much about whether people actually performed auto-fellatio. But it does point to the fact that, at least in the elite cultures that wrote history, it would have been seen as an especially shameful act, and so not one likely to receive much contemporary mention or historical attention.

The first real evidence that people had auto-fellatio on their conscious minds seems to show up between about 1000 and 1400 CE, in Christian architecture (of all places) and medieval literature. Figures appear on a good number of churches, mainly in <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/84265607@N00/466142993/in/set-72157600098198681/" id="a7e0d599-e7b7-36cb-ac5a-ad98ef89cf7a"> France </a> , Spain, and Germany, but often in <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/sarahpeverley/scatology-and-rude-scenes/?lp=true" id="fcf51466-7748-3418-aa09-c59e7f3f2d51"> England </a> <a href="http://www.sheelanagig.org/wordpress/category/southern-england/page/2/" id="2bf14192-a339-3341-ac27-4c2940bf37aa"> as well </a> , explains historian <a href="https://www.slu.edu/arts-and-sciences/english/faculty/ruth-evans.php" id="a51e8d6f-2be8-360e-a0a9-6cddf22ec163"> Ruth Evans </a> , that sure seem to depict men bending down or flipping their legs over their heads to suck themselves. Most of these carvings have not been extensively studied; no one is even sure if the most famous one of them, <a href="https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/a-cultural-history-of-men-sucking-their-own-dicks" id="1350bf49-1488-3a98-a8ec-c3bb835e87c1"> from the Cologne City Hall </a> , is genuinely medieval or a very convincing fake installed by a cheeky restorer during repairs to the city after World War II.

But they show up <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7zPN7AIhER8C&amp;pg=PA236&amp;lpg=PA236&amp;dq=autofellatio+medieval&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=xjghG-93A4&amp;sig=ACfU3U0OdWY3HwBuxM9Eb-qEHdnNAKcCNw&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwj4pem21PXgAhUG04MKHW7FCwkQ6AEwB3oECAIQAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=autofellatio%20medieval&amp;f=false" id="b2c3ab1f-aa5b-3c50-a017-8c3977f155de"> often enough alongside images of anal sex, bestiality, and masturbation </a> to suggest that local churches and writers were using these images as reminders for their parishioners of known but non-procreative and as such immoral acts to avoid.

Popular medieval literature and sketches may also contain coded references to people engaging in auto-fellatio that we just arent hip to today. Evans points out that there is an argument that images <a href="http://leidenmedievalistsblog.nl/articles/geoffrey-chaucers-miller-pigs-and-bagpipes" id="bea02972-2080-32ad-a59e-ead75001597a"> of boars playing bagpipes </a> , an instrument that some medieval churchmen apparently viewed as sexually tinged, are an oblique-reference to auto-fellatio. <a href="https://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/ILLUMIN.ASP?Size=mid&amp;IllID=1427" id="38875af6-6a96-30fe-ae12-53429b8eecb6"> In one telling scene </a> sketched into the margins of a 15 th century text by an English scribe, she notes, a jester to the right of the piping boar is clasping his chest with one hand and cupping-squeezing his genitals with the other.

Its tempting to read into the piping boars, and the grotesque nature of some of the auto-fellatio carvings on churches, and conclude that our medieval ancestors viewed the act like many do today: a sexual practice that would occur to many, yet read as marginal or taboo to most (thanks to the church), and that could be used both to impress and astound (the jester clasping his hart and junk) and to provoke a good laugh ( boars). But it is difficult to know whether that is a fair reading.

However Medieval Europeans might have viewed or referred to auto-fellatio, by the early modern era, non-procreative sex basically disappears from the historical record, notes Moulton. And in the stringently sexually repressed Victorian era, <a href="https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/a-cultural-history-of-men-sucking-their-own-dicks" id="760380a9-64ae-3d10-a4db-9f608273a692"> some argue that explorers, scholars, and everyday Europeans gallivanting around the world </a> may have done their damnedest to destroy earlier records of auto-fellatio, leading in part to the paucity of the historical record. But even if auto-fellatio couldnt bubble into the popular consciousness then the same way it does today, there are some signs that people were still thinking about it-in ways that feel very familiar. <a href="https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/a-cultural-history-of-men-sucking-their-own-dicks" id="4616e76b-4557-3b95-a40a-32b0f587aff6"> In 1902 </a> , for instance, a year after the death of Queen Victoria, someone first recorded the bawdy version of the limerick There Once Was A Man From Nantucket, the mother lode of self sucking cultural references.

About 25 years later, we finally get the first hard evidence of people performing, rather than just thinking about or referencing, auto-fellatio- <a href="https://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=psar.041.0354a" id="cac207a6-35ed-3edc-ab18-3e4fd611702c"> in the form of a psychological report </a> on a 33-year-old man suffering from depression. <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2011/08/autofellatio-the-contorted-history.html" id="a956d09c-9a07-3b38-a306-7783c9060375"> Between 1927 and 1977 </a> , psychologists in Europe and America recorded a handful of other cases of people who could suck their own dicks, many of whom did so regularly. Some could only get the glans just past their lips. Others could fornicate with their own throats. The doctors pathologized them all, describing them as generally maladjusted and typically as narcissists and closeted homosexuals. This was part and parcel with psychologys attacks on non-normative sex in that era. It also did quite a bit to add to our modern recognition of the reality of auto-fellatio and our sense that those who pursue it are probably gay or in some way off.

Only about 0.2 percent of men could achieve auto-fellatio, Kinsey argued.

Ironically, this was the same period of time the father of American sexology, Alfred Kinsey, was active. His 1948 report, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.1330060119" id="72181b0b-2cf0-3c1e-a7b7-4d379b9e7c96"> Sexual Behavior in the Human Male </a> , argued that a large number of men attempt to suck their own dicks at least once as teens. Eingang, who had a copy of the report in his home growing up, says reading that made him feel okay about his exploits, like he wasnt so odd. But Kinsey and his collaborators argued that it was incredibly uncommon for people to succeed; auto-fellatio, they argued, was something that only about 0.2 or 0.3 percent of men could achieve. His account and the comments of psychologists likely helped not just to increase the visibility and discussion of auto-fellatio, but to paint it as something <a href="https://www.kinkly.com/definition/70/autofellatio" id="3968cff6-ffce-314b-ae7a-2b9a38f27280"> that only thin, young men with big dicks could pull off </a> -something, then, to be admired as a sign that one had a socially ideal body.

Nip/Tucknotoriously fed on and perpetuated this conception of an auto-fellator <a href="https://gawker.com/5152622/niptuck-blows-auto-fellatio-plotline" id="02c383b5-2ebe-3de1-ab22-53080bd5aced"> in a 2009 episode </a> , in which a sexy yoga instructor asks for a dick reduction so he can stop spending his days sucking himself off and finally learn to hold down a job and have a relationship-a rare, shocking case.

<h1> When Auto-Fellatio Started to Appear in Porn </h1>

More than reports and studies, the force that propelled auto-fellatio from the quiet corners of human sexual thought and experience, into pop culture and common conversational knowledge, was porn. <a href="https://www.therialtoreport.com/2014/04/13/who-was-dr-infinity-the-curious-story-of-adult-films-first-autofellator/" id="15a774ea-46fb-32a3-a789-579ec3c4dcb4"> In 1975 </a> , three years after Deepthroatthrust porn into mainstream consciousness and dialogue in a big way, the film Every Inch A Lady featured a scene in which <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/vito-aras-stole-harvard-gutenberg-bible-transformed-into-porn-star-dr-infinity?ref=scroll" id="bc90d809-7a0c-3eaf-a634-374b43e0ad96"> Vytautas Kerbelis </a> , also know as Vido Aras, but known in the porn world as Dr. Infinity, grew tired of waiting for a madame, stripped nude in her office, stuck a cucumber up his ass, flipped his legs over his head, and sucked himself off. From that point forward, directors started featuring auto-fellatio in mainstream porn for male and female, straight and gay audiences alike.

Though we often forget this today, porn legend ( <a href="https://www.vox.com/a/sexual-harassment-assault-allegations-list/ron-jeremy" id="ee62c42e-0c80-3e5e-ac3e-639ffbb8be85"> and alleged sexual abuser </a> ) Ron Jeremy <a href="https://www.kinkly.com/definition/70/autofellatio" id="ac85f0bb-5991-383b-adc3-2fe9ce084e4a"> made his name </a> in the early 80s by lightly sucking his own cock, just for a moment here and there. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20061021215552/http:/www.sexinfo101.com/as_autofellatio.shtml" id="8063f80b-7a40-3d5d-a79c-5d701161b995"> Jeremy and others in the adult industry </a> have described it more as a parlor trick to shock and awe rather than something to arouse audiences-which is strikingly similar to the way that writers and directors use it in shows and movies, and we use it in conversation, now.

As an aside, <a href="https://www.therialtoreport.com/2014/04/13/who-was-dr-infinity-the-curious-story-of-adult-films-first-autofellator/" id="e3b81798-805c-355c-a2e2-9a28eedfd08a"> directors reportedly had to hide </a> the fact that they were using auto-fellatio as a joke from Dr. Infinity. Hed apparently been angling to get into porn since 1973 because he had developed an esoteric philosophy centered around auto-fellatio and wanted to use adult film to sell people on his belief that having sex with yourself puts you in control of your body, emotions, and life, ultimately making you fitter than others. Some on set were apparently afraid of him, as he seemed so zealous and erratic. He later shot a giant reel of himself exercising his talents in parks and public landmarks along the East Coast, before moving to Barcelona in 1982. There, he reportedly endeavored to meet Spanish artist Salvador Dali to hopefully join forces in advancing his philosophy-and worked in the early 90s in the erotic nightclub Bagdad. So clearly some people who get into auto-fellatio can be a little off-although Dr. Infinity is in the tiny minority.

In the 1980s, interestingly enough, a Finnish actor named <a href="https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/mythologist_ior_bock_dies_in_mysterious_circumstances/5666456" id="1127b96b-8e3c-36c0-a90d-091a77b03bc5"> Ior Bock </a> stirred up some interest in his homeland when he released what he claimed was an ancient, but indefinitely old, series of pre-Christian myths and rituals that his family had been safeguarding for generations. He claimed that old Finnish faiths thought it was wrong to spill ejaculate, so people performed ritualistic 69s, men learned to fellate themselves, and women drank their own vaginal fluids, in common fertility rituals. Bocks theories almost certainly werent strictly historical. But it is odd how much they share in common with Dr. Infinitys ideas. It is unclear if one influenced the other, or if they were drawing on a similar influence. Bock died in 2010 and Dr. Infinity died in 2017.

The rise of the internet in the mid-to-late 90s helped to spread the visibility of auto-fellatio porn even further. Eingang recalls getting online back when the total number of websites was in the thousands and finding stills of his films floating around early porn-sharing communities already. This proliferation may explain why the mid-90s also gave us widespread urban legends about notoriously sexual and strange <a href="http://www.ladbible.com/entertainment/celebrity-music-marilyn-manson-addresses-rumour-that-he-had-a-rib-removed-20180105" id="287c5b9a-c74f-3405-af63-2ae616909b72"> pop cultural figures like Marilyn Manson </a> having their ribs removed to be able to suck their own dicks. (These digital-era legends may have been fed, albeit, by earlier rumors about turn-of-the-century Italian writer <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2011/08/autofellatio-the-contorted-history.html" id="5a3114be-8909-3e20-a503-e576b15983ff"> Gabriele dAnnunzio </a> , whose poetry was erotically charged.) It would also explain why, at the turn of the millennium, SNLcould get away with a sketch in which Will Ferrell tries to learn yoga so he can suck himself off: Auto-fellatio had finally reached a critical mass of popular awareness and discussion, and also been firmly defined within pop culture as something rare and desirable, yet pathological-to-risible.

<h1> How the Internet Made Auto-Fellatio Seem Normal(ish) </h1>

The democratization of sexual conversations fostered by the internet also made room for mainstream (but very NSFW) movies like 2006s Shortbus, which featured what seems to be the first un-simulated act of auto-fellatio outside of porn. However that film showed auto-fellatio in an unusually matter-of-fact style, as one of many flavors of diverse human sexual expression.

Notably, even in the era of digital porn, it is difficult to find auto-cunnilingus. A few videos float around <a href="Notably,%20early%20porn%20does%20not%20seem%20to%20have" id="01288041-d796-3ae1-a577-3c941e65b64a"> claiming to show it </a> , but all appear to be staged. Eingang believes it is entirely possible for some women to at least make contact between their mouths and their vulvas via contortion-and suspects there is a market of porn consumers eager to watch it. So this content gap is striking, and likely speaks to all the physiological and cultural forces mentioned above that keep cultural depictions and popular discussion of the act far below that of the widely known auto-fellatio.

Yet at the same time the internet was helping to spread and ossify now entrenched views and uses of auto-fellatio, it was also creating communities for people who didnt just think about or try it once, but really wanted to explore how to do it, see others doing it, or show of their skills. Eingang today runs SoloSuck.com-do I really need to note, NSFW?-which, beyond sharing free and selling premium auto-fellatio content, has been collating related online forums, chat rooms, and advice columns since the dawn of the internet. He links off to dozens of such sites and platforms.

Even on Craigslist, notes Garrison, the sex counselor, you used to be able to find ads for, hey, come watch me do this, or, hey, if you can do this, let me come and watch you. Porn sites are still brimming with content for those who seek it out, though. And Garrison has found that male webcam performers who can perform auto-fellatio can make a fortune on that skill.

It is difficult to know exactly what to make of all the auto-fellatio communities and content online. It may simply reflect that there is more latent interest in, and human capacity for, auto-fellatio than anything in the historical record before the millennium would suggest. (Pitagora, the sex therapist, used to do sex work and always suspected that Kinseys estimates were low, based on the number of clients who wanted to show off their skills to her.) The internet may also, through exposure and confidentiality, have sparked more interest in and commitment to pursuing auto-fellatio than ever existed before in human history-especially under the weight of longstanding social taboos.

The pictures, videos, and how-tos plastered over the digital landscape ( <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Art-Auto-fellatio-Oral-Sex-One/dp/1879967111" id="2f5bca7c-1e49-30bd-a55a-a2203c149615"> some of them literal tomes </a> ) have certainly demonstrated that, contrary to popular belief, one doesnt need to be super skinny or well-endowed to suck his own penis. We have some fairly heavyset men with average or smaller dicks who are able to deepthroat their cocks, says Eingang of the community centered on his site. All auto-fellatio really takes for most is time and patience to slowly stretch out, improve your flexibility, find the right position-bending down while seated, bending over while standing, or flipping up ones legs while laying down-that works for you. Maybe get an assist from a friend or partner to help press down your legs.

A predisposition to flexibility does help speed up the process, as does penile length. Eingang notes that he has a connective tissue disorder that makes him very limber and is longer than the average bear, so he wound up getting his dick in his mouth on accident a number of times when just bending over to tie his shoe while growing up. Younger folks also have an easier time with it, although we have some men who are older than me who are still going at it with gusto, says Eingang. And some people may take years to figure out what works for them-or never figure it out. But certainly the internet has made the act feel more accessible.

Some sites (but fewer than you might expect) do caution that the over-eager pursuit of auto-fellatio can lead to injury. You probably wont break your neck and die like the off screen self-sucker in Clerks. But pulled muscles arent uncommon, says Garrison, especially for those who flip their legs over their heads. I find that people who can bend forward suffer fewer muscle or neck injuries, he says. He has also encountered a few cases of men biting themselves while trying to make things work, or even transferring herpes from a cold core on their mouths to their penises.

Whatever effect the internet has or hasnt had on the prevalence of the practice, most sex experts today believe, based on clinical experience with patients, sex surveys, and observation of digital these forums, that almost everyone with a penis at least thinks about auto-fellatio, and many of them try it at least once. More than you might expect manage to make it work. Yet while Pitagora argues that, if not for physiological barriers, auto-fellatio might be as common as other forms of male masturbation, most people who achieve auto-fellatio dont do it often-or more than once.

Its sort of like tickling yourself, suggests Garrison. Its not the same as oral from a partner. Many men cant suck enough of their penis to get much sensation. Those who can often <a href="http://www.altpenis.com/news/autofellatio.shtml" id="4478d523-ceb3-3bd0-ae48-506f89234c23"> only get to bob their heads up and down </a> , which is not entirely satisfying for many even with a partner. And men often learn quickly that the act involves more than theyd suspected: the feeling of something in their throats, the imperative to breathe through their noses, the question of what to do when theyre about to ejaculate. Nelson, the male sexuality educator, suspects that only a few dozen men across the nation learn to auto-fellate and then use it as their main form of masturbation.

Eingang is part of the limited cohort that enjoys auto-fellatio. <a href="http://www.eyeshot.net/autofellatio.html" id="cc220cf9-321e-395b-a01a-f8fad46e30e8"> He and </a> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20090929075505/http:/www.kapelovitz.com/selfsuck.htm" id="578d5ae8-830f-364b-a6c4-aedebb50919c"> others </a> who do it regularly say that it is not a replacement for oral, or other forms of sex, but provides a unique sensation that is heightened by the fact that they can feel and react instantaneously to their own pleasure. Others report enjoying regular auto-fellatio as a kinky fetish-for the taboo of it. Garrison notes that he has met a few women who like to watch it in porn, or ask their partners to perform it, because they love seeing a man self-pleasure with no boundaries, willing to discard social norms.

Only a few men, like Dr. Infinity, seem to eschew all other forms of sex for auto-fellatio alone, as the old adages (and psych reports) suggest that most men who can auto-fellate would. Nelson thinks that those guys probably do have issues-or at least have problems finding fulfilling sex with others.

All of this evidence reveals two things: Our cultural obsession with auto-fellatio is the product of long and grinding social and historical forces-centuries of sexual censorship and pathologization. And our beliefs about auto-fellatio, which fuel that fixation, are almost entirely false. It is nowhere near as rare and inherently blissful, nor as pathological or inherently homoerotic as mainstream quips and narratives hold that it is.

Those views are almost certainly the distorted products of the sexual mores that were in place when auto-fellatio started to move out of the shadows in Western culture in the mid-20 th century, the framing of psychologists, sex researchers, and pornographers. They are informed by our secrecy and embarrassment around masturbation, our enduring cultural homophobia, and our phallocentric conception of male sexual pleasure, among other wider social-sexual trends that have defined and warped so many other sexual experiences in the modern era.

Stripped of that history, auto-fellatio might actually be just your average niche sexual practice-something not everyone is into, or can do, but that we dont bat an eye at. A real understanding of the physics involved and the sensations it delivers might lead many people to see it as actually pretty boring, after the initial interest of seeing someone perform it for the first time. I dont say that to knock auto-fellatio. As Nelson argues, theres nothing wrong with it, and if it is what you are into, knock yourself out. In the end, our cultural obsession with auto-fellatio is simply much stranger, more contorted, and seemingly inexplicable than the act itself.

For a concept that seems fringe to many, it is surprising how often auto-fellatio (the technical term for sucking your own dick) pops up in modern culture. It shows up in movies like <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/Clerks" id="e84d9b55-b71e-38d6-acc8-5e68517aea25"> Clerks </a> (1993) as both a male aspiration and a punchline. An aspiration because it is supposedly a near-mythic holy grail of uncomplicated solo pleasure- <a href="https://slate.com/technology/2011/08/autof...

The Long, Complicated History of Men Trying to Suck Their Own Dicks

Yet today, man-on-woman anal fingering <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/love-sex/sex/a13097244/what-anal-fingering-during-sex-feels-like/" id="e050a4eb-28ac-38e2-a94a-c78f01ac561b"> is functionally mainstream </a> . It is hard to find solid data on how many people know of or experience it; most researchers dont see the act as a sexual health priority worth studying. <a href="https://forums.plentyoffish.com/11052472datingPostpage5.aspx" id="fef10c8a-deed-3bf8-af4b-2c09bfe260ee"> But anecdotes </a> <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AskMen/comments/3h3rih/nsfw_guys_who_enjoy_anally_fingering_a_woman_what/" id="e2b3c472-98ae-3b9e-a364-d5cfb52565d6"> from forums </a> across the digital world suggest it is a now common practice. Many men find anal fingering so desirable, or so routine, that for the past few years it has seemingly become common for guys to try to slip a finger up their partners rectums, sometimes without any prior notice or discussion, even on a first date or hookup. As <a href="https://twitter.com/sheenaxsharma?lang=en" id="27dabee7-a63c-37b5-a97c-6a737a77789f"> Sheena Sharma </a> <a href="https://www.elitedaily.com/life/guys-fingers-my-butt/1300623" id="483a43b8-126d-3ae3-af81-90b4a16d0205"> wrote in 2015 </a> , the unwelcome finger is a plague upon bedrooms across America.

So what changed? How and when did anal fingering go from an apparently niche act to a ho-hum part of many mens sexual repertoires? And what about it do men find appealing? Given how little we talk about sex as a culture, much less document major shifts in our sexual practices, it is hard to say for sure. But sex experts do have a basic sense of how we normalized the finger up her butt.

It is worth establishing that, no matter how unusual it may have seemed to many Americans just a couple decades ago, anal fingering has likely been around as long as our species. Humans are both experimental and pleasure-seeking beings; we explore our bodies, especially in the fumbling heat of sex, discovering every possible erogenous zone that we can. And the anus can be, explains sex educator <a href="https://www.ericmgarrison.com/" id="2ad06b08-5d67-3a14-a72a-d2d0cc366dc4"> Eric Garrison </a> , an erogenous zone for any gender thanks to the tons of sensory nerves within it. It is even possible <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/shannonrosenberg/add-it-to-the-curriculum" id="0cd8b796-095b-3a42-a837-c3950c39b18b"> for women some women to orgasm </a> through anal fingering, or other forms of anal play including full-on anal sex, that wind up stimulating their g-spots. (Men, of course, can also orgasm from anal fingering thanks to prostate stimulation.) So some women have likely always worked anal fingering <a href="https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/qv49wq/what-happened-when-i-tried-to-get-into-butt-stuff" id="9b313e62-a64f-3a65-ab79-d93fc54ef570"> into their masturbatory habits </a> . And some couples have likely always worked it into their sex lives, either as a warm-up for anal sex or a stimulating end in itself.

However, the commonality of anal play of all sorts <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201012/heterosexual-anal-play-increasingly-popular" id="e75fc90b-613e-3302-aae8-e4e5010df0c3"> has shifted throughout history </a> , depending on the sexual mores of a given culture or era. And America has long been hostile to anal sexuality. Religious traditions, and religiously-derived laws, frowning on sodomy long kept not only anal play <a href="https://www.lelo.com/blog/10-facts-about-fellatio-that-will-blow-you-away/" id="658e0189-bab1-39b1-a8ce-e9e53b4df921"> but oral sex and more </a> both taboo and, technically, illegal in much of the nation. Such taboo acts didnt even show up often in <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59k785/porn-from-the-1920s-was-more-wild-and-hardcore-than-you-could-imagine" id="486ada23-2fce-336e-ab50-c04c6e5b6c96"> stag films </a> , proto-pornos of the early 20 th century that indulged in seemingly modern tableaus like threesomes and quips about bestiality fairly freely.

Americans also long viewed any type of anal sexual behavior as happening explicitly among gay men, says sex researcher <a href="http://www.utoledo.edu/hhs/healtheducation/KMcBride.html" id="3887d13f-2419-3820-a267-45e1bb4e190b"> Kimberly McBride </a> , Ph.D.. Gays as a group have long been stigmatized in this nation by religious and non-religious folk alike. (In truth, not all men who have sex with men <a href="https://www.dailydot.com/via/5-biggest-myths-anal-sex/" id="23146eac-b68b-36b9-a286-731c820b8db8"> actually enjoy or engage in anal play of any kind </a> , and not all who do enjoy anal do it every time they get physically intimate.) On top of these cultural and moral taboos, adds McBride, Americans have long had trouble getting over the idea that the anus is irredeemably, existentially dirtier than any other part of our bodies.

Close up of an apricot on a red background

However, American taboos against anal play never actually shut off anal fingering, licking, sex, or any other form of stimulation, stresses sexologist <a href="https://carolqueen.com/" id="f6dc14c1-909e-31e8-abff-26f9b7f0d214"> Carol Queen </a> , Ph.D. In a sense, they may have added a new level of eroticism to it for some. Crossing lines and doing something one sees as new and daring can be, Garrison explains, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/201012/heterosexual-anal-play-increasingly-popular" id="241fdc00-2500-3913-a424-d3d7aed9c86a"> a deep source of psychological stimulation </a> . But they did send it underground, making it harder to hear about anal fingering, think about exploring ones own butt, stumble upon anal stimulation and accept any pleasure one finds in it, or feel justified exploring it with a partner.

New cultural forces started to chip away at these taboos and draw stigmatized sexual practices out of the shadows, though during the latter half of the 20 th century. There is not much information on how much <a href="http://www.glbtqarchive.com/ssh/sexual_revolution_S.pdf" id="8c3bc4c5-30fe-3634-af85-ca7d48605a92"> the sexual revolution </a> <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/culture-of-love/a-brief-cultural-history-of-sex-938527.html" id="f3f41ceb-3aff-391d-aede-ed84ed4876bf"> of the 60s </a> involved a counter-culture reevaluation of the ass. But by the 70s, many of the first mainstream porn directors started to feature anal fingering or sex in their films. Anything directed by Zachary Strong in the early 80s usually features digital-anal penetration, notes porn historian Charles Devlin, and Harry Reems put his thumb in a few asses in his early films. Rapidly, references to anal sexuality started to leak into mainstream films as well-like <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/11/26/18112531/bernardo-bertolucci-maria-schneider-last-tango-in-paris" id="5d368f30-2902-3f7d-a13b-1cb76b4bb3b5"> Last Tango in Paris </a> , a notorious Bernardo Burtolucci film from 1972 in which Marlon Brandos American character anally rapes a French woman played by Maria Schneider using butter for lube. (Dont watch it. Burtolucci sprung the scene on Schneider without notice so, while there was no actual penetration, it is actually a recorded sexual assault.)

As porn started to get more accessible moving into the 80s, Queen adds, sex-positive education that explored pleasure, not just the nuts and bolts of procreation, started to proliferate in parts of America as well, dissecting anal taboos and teaching people about the joys of all manner of anal play. By the mid-90s, the proliferation of the internet made it much easier for people across the country to discretely peruse porn, seek out diverse sexual information, and talk to each other about their experiences. As a bonus, in 2003 a milestone Supreme Court decision, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-102.ZO.html" id="9bd2ea87-066a-3b7a-ad71-838d835ca217"> Lawrence v. Texas </a> , toppled Americas remaining anti-sodomy laws. And during the George W. Bush presidency, <a href="https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&amp;context=mslj" id="737c509b-7dfd-3c16-a0dd-1b9c684c70e6"> a series of attempts to bust porn producers </a> on obscenity charges for depicting non-normative sex acts, like extreme anal play, fell flat. Suddenly, anal sexuality felt less legally, officially dangerous as well.

All of these forces seemingly led to increased awareness of anal sexuality by the late 80s, when people like Garrison remember seeing <a href="https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sexopedia/a8259251/shocker-hand-gesture-meaning/" id="d3513360-aef1-3508-a083-b0c55665e36d"> the shocker </a> hand gesture, in which men mime putting their index and middle fingers in a womans vagina and using their pinky to rub or penetrate her ass, used blithely by high school and college students. And by the mid-90s, people started to engage with anal play more actively. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=5APaJ7yxVA4C&amp;pg=PA128&amp;lpg=PA128&amp;dq=anal+stag+films&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=Jvxt9LUSjY&amp;sig=ACfU3U3KlPo5tNsBMsoQJHVeOWtZJI4Qqg&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwjv9pO8wdfhAhVrdt8KHXPNAro4ChDoATACegQICRAB#v=snippet&amp;q=anal&amp;f=false" id="2b70df0a-4c3b-35de-ae85-5078b2cdfea2"> Preliminary research in the early 20 </a> suggested that maybe 10 percent of woman had tried anal sex once in their lives. By the 1990s, a fifth of all women and a quarter of all men had tried anal sex at least once, according to the research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate of people trying anal at least once, or working it into their regular sex lives, has only risen since then. Today, says McBride, strong survey data suggests that 40 to 45 percent of all American men and women will try anal sex at least once in their lives.

It is hard to know for sure, points out sex educator and anal expert <a href="http://charlieglickman.com/" id="18fea701-3d87-30d5-a434-e1a460e0b3a9"> Charlie Glickman </a> , how much these figures capture an actual increase in the prevalence of anal play, and how much they just capture an increased openness to talking about pre-existing anal practices. People lie on sex surveys all the time, even when they are totally anonymous, thanks to ingrained taboos.

<a href="https://journals.lww.com/stdjournal/Fulltext/2008/11000/Heterosexual_Anal_Sex__Part_of_an_Expanding_Sexual.2.aspx" id="07a6ef13-fc11-3da3-a38c-19f45205ef64"> But by the end of the aughts </a> , hetero anal play was common enough that sexual health researchers truly started to take note of it. By the dawn of the teens, it was normalized enough in the American sexual landscape that the prolific porn star Asa Akira could declare on Twitter ass is the new pussy, and people (and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2015/02/02/ass_is_the_new_pssy_why_anilingus_is_on_the_rise_partner/" id="a4dcfd4e-89ea-3437-a8fa-5eb6be652b82"> mainstream media outlets </a> ) largely nodded and said, that sounds right. And by the mid-teens, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353514539648" id="be002521-b9f0-34a7-a9fe-fba5e7b7c42d"> social scientists were reporting that </a> young men and women both increasingly saw anal play as just one more common feature of or milestone in sex-a box they believed they had to tick to do all the things, be good at sex, or be suitably chill and sexual and thus be cool.

Granted, none of this tells us exactly when anal fingering got to be so common, given the focus of so many studies and cultural analyses on penile penetrative anal sex. One of my frustrations with sexual science, grips McBride, has been the lack of attention given to anal sexuality among heterosexuals and the idea of emphasizing intercourse without recognizing that there is a whole repertoire of anal sex practices that people participate in, including but not limited to fingering.

But chances are, most of the experts Ive spoken to agree, that anal fingering rode the same general wave of normalization that anal sex did. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28514239" id="cec56a56-5db1-3cff-a657-cad2627116f6"> And one recent, limited study </a> suggests that anal fingering has probably grown more common than anal sex, analingus, or other forms of anal play.

That makes sense. While <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/59azjz/how-to-have-great-anal-sex-according-to-a-buttload-of-porn-stars-vgtl" id="695b4ca4-de95-350a-ac08-d256e307f596"> a shocking number </a> <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8qwkmg/how-to-do-anal-like-a-porn-star" id="0753fedd-0a52-3d76-ac0b-915f58d164c1"> of men do try </a> to jump straight into anal sex with no warm up, likely misguided by porn, which hides the prep stars go through for an anal scene. Many use anal fingering to stretch out and arouse a partner before consensual and well planned anal sex. Many couples also use fingering alone to build up to broader anal play later in a relationship. After all, notes <a href="https://www.bvibe.com/about" id="5429bde5-947a-3e1e-a695-0bd3bf644ad7"> Alicia Sinclar </a> , founder of anal sex toy maker b-Vibe, many people find a penis or toy intimidating, but a finger is a good size for experimentation, and allows for solid control.

But many men also seem to use anal fingering to test the waters for further anal play. If a woman lets a man get away with putting a finger up her ass, Garrison explains, that man may feel he has a chance of having anal sex later. Men often do this in lieu of talking to a partner about their feelings on anal play. They seem to have developed a complete strategy, McBride says, likely spread via word of mouth or digital connections, of pretending that their finger or penis slipped into a female partners asshole-that way, if she doesnt like it, they can say it was just a mistake. (Most people, McBride argues, do not seem to actually accidentally stumble into anal stimulation with a partner.) Needless to say, this testing the waters approach doesnt seem that successful on its own, so many men and women wind up with anal fingering as their only, almost routine, anal play experience.

Some men may not want anal sex, but still finger their partners assholes. They may get a kick out of the taboo-breaking element of anal contact. (Interest in anal fingering alone as a minor kink actually <a href="https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/qv49wq/what-happened-when-i-tried-to-get-into-butt-stuff" id="a06dd210-3984-3955-a962-9f67511ed559"> seems relatively common </a> .) Or they may enjoy the pleasure their partners tell them they get out of anal stimulation. Although pop culture often talks about anal as something men push for unilaterally, McBride stresses that many women are actually introducing the idea to their male partners of anal fingering as an end in itself, or of fingering as a lead up wider anal play.

Or they may just believe, whether or not they like anal play, based on feedback from past partners who like anal play or bad guidance from cultural figures like Russell Brands character <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THhZgLKkx_w" id="3ef460d9-e05b-331e-aa80-7553a8addeaa"> in 2008s Forgetting Sarah Marshall </a> , that all women like anal stimulation. In this case, they may try to get a finger up a womans ass, often without asking, just to feel like they ticked all the good sex boxes.

Some men may even finger their partners asses because they want their own asses fingered or fucked, points out couples counselor <a href="https://helfandretreats.com/" id="1b6464bd-8214-34ad-a9d8-c2fbf6b114a4"> Israel Helfand </a> . Heterosexual male interest in prostate and other forms of anal stimulation has exploded in the last decade, Sinclar points out. (It really really hit the mainstream when media personality <a href="https://www.vice.com/sv/article/xd73nq/lets-be-honest-we-all-like-butt-stuff" id="3aa9068a-7d1f-36e9-a6f6-86e4879b1eb6"> Amber Rose Tweeted </a> about how her ex, Kanye West, allegedly liked her to play with his asshole.) The forces behind that emerging anal trend are myriad and complex; they deserve their own piece. But suffice it to say that, as Helfand explains it, most American men have a hard enough time talking about sex and their desires openly, so they try to make subtle hints about what theyd like by doing it to their partners. Or, acknowledges Garrison, they may think that because they like the stimulation of anal fingering, their female partners will too.

Until fairly recently, argue McBride and Sinclar, anal play was something couples only started to explore after being together for some time. But the increasing mainstreaming of anal sexuality writ large over the past decade pushed that from an advanced sexual activity to explore later on in a relationship to a seemingly mundane activity to try even in a hookup or on a first date. Sinclar acknowledges that early and un-discussed anal fingering could have been common even before this, but just underreported thanks to continuing taboos around sexual dialogue and the reticence of many women, pre-MeToo era, to talk about non-consensual sexual experiences like getting a finger up their ass without talking about it beforehand

No matter why a man might be interested in anal fingering, though, or at what point in a sexual relationship he decides to introduce it, it is never okay to do so ( <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-014-0367-2" id="597fa6ad-c8fa-3986-a295-798cea8ee4cf"> as many men seem to </a> ) without discussing anal play with a partner first. Sure, acknowledges Glickman, it may seem incredibly hard to talk about sex for many people, especially with a hookup or new partner, and easier to just try something. Past experiences in which women wound up liking that unannounced finger, or didnt react negatively to it, may make it seem okay. But it is, in fact, an assault. Even women who dont react negatively to this unexpected intrusion may still not like the experience; they may just go along with it because they feel like its whats expected of them in the modern sexual world.

Just over 15 years ago, the idea of a man fingering a womans ass as sexual play was fairly foreign to many Americans. Literally. The 2002 edition of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-15309357" id="f6190d32-e793-300e-a7f7-8e8d96fc283b"> The Joy of Sex </a> , the late Alex Comforts seminal 1972 illustrated guide to everything sexual, refers to the act as postillionage, a distinctly French (read: bizarre European libertine) tradition, with which <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01...

Mark Hay

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