Scarleteen

I heard on a podcast that "male" masturbation would be more related to the search for pleasure while its "female" counterpart would have more to do with self-knowledge. That the male body would already deal with this type of need through the famous wet dreams and, therefore, masturbating frequently would damage an individual's dopamine functioning, especially if he uses some type of pornography. The producer of the podcast says that the healthiest thing would be to have real sex, connected with real people. How much of that is true?
Like, I've heard of the weirdos who promote "NoFap" and fads like that, but the host of this podcast identifies as progressive. These subjects are difficult for lay people to understand, as each site says something different.

Hi CrazyBonobo,

The short answer is that none of that is true.

For starters, there's not even remotely the gendered divide in why people masturbate that he's suggesting there is. Plenty of women masturbate for pleasure, and plenty of men masturbate to learn more about their bodies, and for people of any gender, the reason they masturbate can vary from instance to instance.

Too, people of any gender can and do have wet dreams. It seems to be more common for people with penises, but not exclusive to them (plus people with vaginas generally don't ejaculate during wet dreams, so it may be that more of them have them than we think because there's no "evidence" of that dream when they wake up and they don't remember having it).

Finally, masturbation, even frequent masturbation, does not damage dopamine functioning. And to the extent that porn use can cause problems, those problems are often way more about how they influence a persons expectations around sex or bodies than they are anything chemical. It's also odd to suggest that somehow partnered sex would be "healthier" in terms of things like dopamine release, because it's getting released during sex the same way it's getting released during masturbation; by his logic, you should also avoid having sex with another person for the same reasons you should avoid masturbation.

Does all that make sense?