A reply to Robert Lynch’s “The Ape in the Basement”

Robert Lynch asks, “Why is masturbation so shameful?” I think that part of the answer is found in another question: Why haven’t anatomically correct and increasingly sophisticated sex dolls made old-fashioned, Toobin-style masturbation extinct? 

Well, we know the answer to that question. Full-size plastic dolls manufactured to resemble a woman can provide pleasure just as reliably as the crude artificial vagina that the 12 year-old Robert Lynch made. However, they are utterly incapable of receiving pleasure. A male can stimulate himself pleasurably with a fake latex lady but he simply cannot provide her with any pleasure.

As most men know, the ultimate in sexual pleasure is bringing ecstasy to his lady. As most women know, sexual pleasure is greatly enhanced by witnessing her man peak in pleasure. This ultimate is more apparent for women than it is for men, who therefore often ask the lady, “Was it wonderful for you?” There’s no point in asking a sex doll that question.

A device can reproduce stimulation. It cannot reproduce reciprocity. Reciprocity transforms an appetite into an encounter. Human sexuality possesses a remarkable characteristic: another person’s pleasure can intensify one’s own.

Humans seem to enjoy far greater mental harmony and spiritual stability in the reciprocity that comes when they function as givers as well as takers. Charitable donors are far happier than charity recipients. Parents seldom complain to therapists about how their children ‘ruined their lives’ but the reverse brings rich rewards to the therapy industry. Givers are happier than takers. Men who bring their wives to orgasm regularly are better off than masturbating men. People who give and take are better off than those who only take.

Now try to think of something you can do which benefits nobody but yourself. If I indulge myself with an ice cream cone, the vendor is also happy. If I shower, the folks who work alongside me will be happy. The two big exceptions are going to the bathroom and masturbation. That is why going to the bathroom is often euphemistically referred to as “relieving oneself”—because it relieves nobody else. And masturbation? Well, enough said, it brings pleasure to the practitioner alone.

Perhaps for the human spirit, taking pleasure while given nothing to anyone else is inherently shameful. I might well say to someone waiting for me, “I’ll be ready as soon as I have showered and changed.” But almost nobody would say, “I’ll be ready once I’ve masturbated and gone to the toilet.” 

Robert Lynch got it right when he wrote of the man in the suit on one side and the animal on the other. Only humans moralise reciprocity while animals are evidently just fine only receiving. Embarrassment may reveal an intuition that something profoundly interpersonal has been reduced to something entirely solitary. Being only a recipient corrodes the human spirit and as such it is shameful.

—Rabbi Daniel Lapin