Not Blind Yet

Ah, springtime! The birds are chirping and gathering twigs to make their nests. The trees and flowers are blooming. And just to prove that man is in touch with nature, you can bet that all across the country, chickens are choking, monkeys are being spanked, and young ladies are giving their fuzzy bunnies a carrot. As I mentioned last week, Masturbation Month got off to its usual hard-pumping start (please feel free to substitute a metaphor more suitable to your gender and/or wanking technique of choice) over the weekend with the 2009 Masturbate-A-Thon in San Francisco. The SF Weekly has a few photos. And while I haven’t found a decent report on what went on at this year’s event, SF Weekly printed an article last week that answers such questions as “How do you make all of these people comfortable while they jack off?” (answer: doggie beds) and “How do you keep track of the number of orgasms with women?” According to judge Nellie Wilson:

“It can be tricky with a woman, because they tend to run together. Is it one long one, for example, or three short ones? Do you segment? How do you make the distinction? Sometimes it’s clear. Often it’s a judgment call.”

From the event’s official site, I did find that the new record for men’s distance ejaculation is 5 feet, 4 inches. And last year’s record holder, Masanobu Sato of Japan, broke his own record for nonstop masturbation and clocked in at just two minutes short of 10 hours! (Ow.)

Elsewhere on the masturbation front, Oprah Winfrey apparently stunned her studio audience into utter silence last week when she and guest, sex educator Laura Berman, suggested that parents not only make sure their teenage daughters know it’s OK to masturbate, but to encourage them to do so, even if it means buying their girls vibrators. The fact that this sounds radical is a pretty potent argument for Masturbation Month and what may first seem like a frivolous gimmick. (We’ll know we’re in trouble when Hallmark comes up with a card.) And if Oprah pushing it and Britney Spears singing about it can help, then good for them. (OK, for those of us with a little more time perspective, I don’t think Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” or the Divinyls “I Touch Myself” did much good. Maybe we need video? We need Good Vibes to sponsor Tristan Taormino to produce a “how to” video that would be shown to all of the 5th and 6th grade girls instead of the “how to use sanitary napkins and belts” movies Kotex used to show in the 60s and 70s. Not to date myself or anything.)

I also ran across this terrific You Tube video (from Little Plum Pictures) where young women talk about masturbation, particularly about how no one ever, ever wants to talk about girls masturbating and what that means to girls as they grow up:

Finally, there was this humorous piece about a man who discovered masturbation was actually more fun than killing time on the computer, thanks to a power outage.