I was recently at a bachelorette party where the drinks were flowing and the conversation was, shall we say, randy. One of the ladies confessed that she had masturbated on her way to the party, in her car! That lead to a survey, and it turned out that of the 15 gals present, 11 of them had masturbated in their cars at some point. I am no prude, but I was shocked. I've never even thought to masturbate while driving. Couldn't it be dangerous? After all, texting is illegal, and having an orgasm has to be at least as distracting as texting! Is this some trend I've missed? I'd love to know your thoughts on this.
He Said: My own anecdotal survey of friends produced similar results. Nearly everyone confessed to having it done it one time or another (mostly as teenagers). But they also confessed to quickly having become extremely bored by the idea of it—after all, divided attention detracts from pleasure—which may be why we’ve not seen an outbreak of masturbation-related crashes and traffic violations, or well-intentioned laws to curb the practice. In this open-minded city, driving while masturbating is hardly shocking. But since we have one of the highest pedestrian mortality rates in the nation due to the erratic nature of our streets, it probably would be wise to pass up the opportunity and focus on the road.
She Said: My thought is that it doesn’t sound like fun at all. But then, I’m not much of a multi-tasker. I’ve personally never done it while driving, and my own anecdotal poll of about 10 girlfriends revealed that only a few had, quoting boredom as the instigator. But between righteous cyclists, texting pedestrians, and enraged drivers, how anyone can be bored in San Francisco traffic instead of fearing the loss of life and limb is a mystery to me.
It’s interesting to research this online. You’ll find several people have been arrested for it—mostly men, and often in Ohio. Go figure. A recent poll of 1,000 men by Glamour magazine revealed 24 percent of guys had done it in the car. Much more disturbing is that 31 percent had done it at work (hopefully in the men’s room). I couldn’t find any hard statistics on women’s masturbatory habits—though I’m sure a dedicated reader driven to prove my incompetence could do so within an hour. But even by these few barometers, I think we can safely say that your circle of friends tends to the horny end of the spectrum. Are you missing out on some “trend”? I don’t think so. As Psychology Today points out, most human behavioral research is based on people who are WEIRD—Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and living in democracies. Apparently, there are entire tribes in regions of Africa and elsewhere who don’t even know what masturbation is. Interesting, no? Perhaps some of us simply have too much time on, um, our hands.
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