Category: Philosophy of Sex

There are so many interesting people out there on the web.  And many of them are doing their damnedest to make a difference in the lives of others. For example, the other day a young woman who has her own relationship advice website asked me if she could interview me for her site. I was very happy to oblige.

Her site is very different from mine in both style and presentation. One of the first questions she asked me is. “Why do you put such sexually explicit images on your site? It sometimes looks like a porn site. Doesn’t that take away from the advice you give?” Without coming right out and saying so, I believe she thought I should have a more formal presentation, a presentation that was befitting a professional of my stature.

I told her, I add the images to be provocative. Most people who visit my site are already familiar with seeing sexually explicit images online. What they don’t get at those other sites is good, unambiguous, sex-positive information about human sexuality. I’ll be honest, I went on to say, I use the images to entice my audience to read the words around the images. It’s a psychological thing, ya see. Images, even those that may, at first glance, be off-putting can and do rivet one’s attention to the message I’m trying to communicate. Also the images make my site stand out from all the other professional oriented sites that offer similar sex advice. Besides, I like the way the site looks with all the images. I find it edgier as well as more interesting. After all, this is Sex Advice With An Edge!

Of course there is a downside to this. I’m approached on a regular basis by online advertisers; folks who would love to give me money in exchange for ad space on my very popular sites. And I’m all in favor of taking their money, don’t cha know. But more frequently than not, there are strings to this money. “Dr Dick, we would love to support you and your site, but we have to ask you to first rid your site of any sexually explicit image.” Well, fuck yourself very much! Is my retort. Of course, I try to say it in a real nice sorta way. I explain to my would be sponsors; ya see, this is how sexual repression begins. If I took your money and allowed you to dictate the kinds of images I could use on my site, in short order you would also be asking me to change my written and/or spoken content. And that, sex fans, I will never do, not even for some much needed financial support.

That’s when I hit upon the idea of having my audience help support the site. I added a DONATE button right there in the sidebar to your right, which you may or may not have noticed.  Ya see, infrastructure and administration for a free site like this is very costly. And instead of selling out to advertisers who want to censor my content, I invite all of you who enjoy DrDickSexAdvice.com and DrDickSexToyReviews.com to make a modest, once a year donation. Think of if as a holiday present to all you fellow sex fans. Your donation not only goes to supporting what you consume, but it underscores your social conscience. Your sponsorship helps disseminate badly needed sex education and sexual enrichment messages throughout the whole world. Hint, hint…I could use your support! I even have swell gifts to send to those who contribute as a certain level. Now doesn’t that sound just like your public television station?

Next my young interviewer asked, “If I could give one single piece of advice to her audience about sex, what would that be?” I love it when people ask questions like this. “Say Dr Dick, let’s sum up your life’s work in a sentence or two.” I tried to be gracious and come up with a pithy response that wouldn’t sound trite. I thought for a moment and said, “masturbation!” “Ahhh, what about masturbation exactly?” she inquired. I said, “everything.” She sounded perplexed. I suppose I was being a wee bit too pithy with my one-word answers.

So I went on to elaborate. Ya see masturbation is the key to a successful sex life. It is the most basic building block of all sexual expression. If we take the time to learn everything that masturbation has to teach us about ourselves, both in terms of physical and mental responses, we will be well on our way to being a really great lover. And the best thing about masturbation is that nature supplies all the motivation, because masturbation is it’s own reward. It’s pleasurable, informative, particularly if you pay the slightest attention, and you don’t need a thing other than what has already been supplied by nature.

Just about every sexual dysfunction I can think of has at its root a lack of understanding and appreciation for simple self-pleasuring. Some people never learn how to masturbate. Most of these folks are women, who then are set up for a lifetime of sexual frustration and disappointment. Some people learn to masturbate early in life. Most of these folks are men. But just because they can pull their pud with relative ease, doesn’t make them a student of self-pleasuring. In fact, a lifetime of mindless jerkin’ off can be counterproductive. Years and years of quick wanking just to relieve sexual tension, or just because one is bored, is the major contributing factor of premature ejaculation.

If we spent at least some of our masturbation time acquainting ourselves with our body and our sexual response cycle, we’d not only be pleasuring ourselves, but we’d be learning what makes us tick. And that, my friends, is essential information we’ll want to pass on to our partners.

One of the biggest problems with partnered sex is that most women and a whole lot of men think that their partner should know exactly how to pleasure them, right from the get-go. This is incredibly naive if you stop to think about it. Just because each of us has a relatively similar configuration of parts down there, as does every one else, that doesn’t mean we all function the same way. Each of us is unique, not just in terms of our physical attributes and how we’re hot-wired, but more importantly what turns our crank in our biggest sex organ, our mind.

My interviewer than came up with a humdinger, “since so many people have difficulty expressing themselves sexually, why do you suppose they bother?” I suppose they bother because they are driven to bother. For starters, we’re animals and sex is part of the biological imperative of all animate things. Lots of people muddle through the complexities of sexual coupling just so they can replicate. Once that’s done they don’t bother further. For those who aren’t particularly successful in finding a mate for this purpose they can always burn off excess sexual tension on their own…which gets me back to my masturbation comments. You see how all this sex stuff tends to make a big circle, right?

As our forebears evolved and advanced farther from their mere biological urges to something that more closely resembles modern human motivation, their rapidly developing brains began to play a larger the role in dictating their sexual expression. Pleasure soon began to compete with procreation as the dominant reason for exercising our sexuality. Of course, we often run into problems when seeking out another to satisfy our pleasure, which gets me back to my earlier point, but we do nonetheless.

As humans began to develop societies along with culture came religion. Inevitably sexuality became intertwined with that too…not always for the better. On the upside, the earliest religions and gods welcomed and celebrated sexuality and an integral part of human nature. There were sacred prostitutes and sexual orgies were part of religious expression. Unfortunately, these religions and gods didn’t fair well in their upcoming struggle with more militaristic and male dominated religions and gods. Basically the old religions and gods were outlawed and persecuted. A new era of sexual repression was upon us. But even today, one can hear the echo of this ancient tradition. There are some among us who firmly believe that sexuality is the best means to communing with the divine.

As human societies became more complex, the role of sexuality also changed. In a male dominated culture sex was more about aggression and ownership than anything else. The pleasure principle, at least the concept of mutual pleasure disappeared. Women were on the receiving end of this assault, of course. And as a consequence a man never had to bother himself with the niceties giving to get. He just took. Centuries upon centuries of culturally sponsored behavior like this has created a sexual male that is unversed at best and resistant at worst to the idea of mutuality with his partners. The “get it up, get it on and get it off” mentality leaves little room for female sexual expression.

Only recently, with the rise of the women’s movement, have things begun to change. Happily, some of us men folk are getting the message that that pleasuring one’s mate will actually result in an abundance of more pleasure for them. A novel concept for most of us, don’t cha know. Alas, this still leaves us with the pressing problem that began this discussion. Most men, particularly young men, are unfamiliar with the workings of their own bodies and sexual response cycle. They are absolutely clueless about the great mysteries of the female anatomy and how all those blasted things works.

So we fall upon one another in this hit and miss manner, missing more often than we hit, sadly. And yet we persevere. All I’m saying is if we all took a little more time before for the event to introduce our partner to the peculiarities of our own bodies, there would be more hits than misses. Of course, that’s dependent on having a much better sense of ourselves than most of us do.

Nowadays, it’s très chic to fuck for a myriad of more interpersonal reasons. These include — self-expression, creativity, self-esteem and emotional satisfaction. With motivations like these, physical desirability of the potential partner often plays a much larger role than ever before. This gives rise to the innumerable industries out there that prey upon our natural insecurities. Think of all the ways in which we measure ourselves and one another. And who among us does not find ourselves wanting in one aspect or another? Either our cock isn’t big enough, our tits are too small. We’re too short or too tall, too fat or too thin, too young or too old, too much hair or not enough. We’re the wrong color, or ethnicity, too rich or too poor. Didn’t go to the right school or live in the wrong neighborhood. And the list goes on and on. With all this worry and anxiety it is, as my young interview suggested, a wonder that we ever connect at all.

Then there’s the “L” word — LOVE. This is the most complicated, irrational and inexplicable of all motivations for connecting with another human on any level, least of all sexually. While love may go a long way to blind us to the inescapable insecurities that plague us all — you know how they say that love is blind — it isn’t always enough to overcome sexual dysfunction. And here is where the sex advice industry, of which I am a proud practitioner, enters the picture.

Good Luck