The Dawn of the Solosexual

Being solosexual or any other preferred sexual preference is perfectly OK.

Any educated, open-minded individual will probably smile and tell you that masturbation is natural, healthy, and lovely. That happy expression could change to one of worry or perplexity if you said to them that masturbation was your preferred or even your sole sexual outlet. Masturbation can't be a replacement for sex, can it?

A Short History of Masturbation

Anxiety can be induced by masturbation. For ages, it has done this. A doctor of questionable reputation penned a tract for the grub-street newspaper in London, England, at the beginning of the 18th century. It concerned a purported illness that required immediate attention and unprecedented care. Until then, masturbation was practiced by people of all ages and types. This doctor, however, felt compelled by morality to expose this "self abuse" before it caused physical and/or psychological harm (epilepsy, consumption, death!). This "new" illness and its associated problems were mentioned in the best encyclopedia of the time, just fifty years later.

A Growing Subculture of Masturbation

A growing number of individuals are discovering that masturbation is the best sex they have ever had. Traditional forms of sex may or may not be practiced by these men, but they are united by an unrestrained love of "bating."

In general, these men are doing much more than just wanking in the shower before work to release pent-up energy. They're turning it into an art form. They continue to masturbate until they reach what they refer to as the "batehole." There, sexual bliss takes over, and the outside world dissolves. On websites like BateWorld.com and Chaturbate.com, where masturbating on cam is the main attraction, they are meeting up virtually.

A universe of males who speak their own language is centered around the websites above. Those who masturbate are "bators." The "masturbatorium" is their equivalent of a man cave, and "batecations" are the weekends they spend "bating." These men lament "Batus Interruptus" occasions when you are riding the "edge" of the "bate" when the damn phone rings. Edging is defined as the slow ascent to the peaks of ecstasy, approaching climax, retreating before sailing over the cliff, settling down, then escalating to the verge of sexual bliss once more, and ultimately "gooning." Gooning is the stage of the bate where men begin to shift into a different level of awareness as a result of their intense connection to the pleasure that their bodies and cocks are providing them.

Check out the videos of males "cockbabbling"—a speaking in tongues—on any masturbation-focused website. They say things like, "Oh my God, I love my cock." I am an absolute bator. A chronic, compulsive, and addicted bator, that's what I am. Indeed, gooning is defined as the point in a bate when a connection to the penis is all that is needed to achieve an almost terrifying level of sexual enjoyment, and porn is no longer required. After that, one enters the batehole, which is a kind of sexual abyss. Use the search terms "Tumblr" and "goon" to view collections of the usual expressions of a gooner's face: Man turning into a satyr: face twisted, tongue hanging out.

This group's most amazing—and somewhat surprising—aspect is that its members have adopted the term "brothers" to refer to one another. A common yet personal experience unites them. These men aren't necessarily attempting to dig inside each other's personal lives like on other hook-up websites. Instead, they are urging one another to take responsibility for their actions.

Solosexual

In fact, a lot of males have started calling themselves "solosexual." They identify as males who favor masturbation above other forms of intercourse. Nonetheless, masturbating can be a paradoxically social experience. I was told by one bator that it was:

Gooning is accomplished by spending hours masturbating and watching porn. It is an almost solitary act by definition. It belongs to the lonesexual. Sharing that experience with someone else almost seems contradictory, yet it's not quite a contradiction. The Internet allows for a peculiar mix of sociality and privacy, which has allowed males to enjoy heightened masturbatory experiences as solosexuals. Without online porn, cams, and chats to further fuel their decline into the batehole, it is challenging to envision guys masturbating for three, four, or five hours per day. To enhance their self-gratification, solosexuals rely on online sociality; in other words, their act of solitary self-gratification is inherently gregarious. It is conceivable to attain and share something akin to mutual gooning—a completely self-absorbed, unrestrained bate state—in the company of another in the same state since solosexuality is gregarious despite being solitary.

This exaltation of everything solosexual goes against what is often believed. When we reach maturity, masturbation is viewed as an alternative to coupled sex in our society. It serves as a sort of appetizer till the main course is served. Even after centuries have passed since the alarm about the alleged hazards of masturbation was raised, the fallout from it continues to influence our conversation about it, if we have one at all. According to the entry on masturbation in the most recent print edition of the Encyclopedia Americana (2006), "If an adult prefers masturbation to sexual intercourse when a partner is available, or if it is abnormally frequent, it may be a sign of an underlying psychological problem."

A comment like that would be met with "hogwash" from most bators. Bators don't hesitate to talk about problems like masturbation addiction, but they also don't want to be labeled odd. Some bators bat for hours, just as some individuals watch TV for hours. They'll claim that no "Modern Family" episode has ever brought them to the same euphoria as bating.

Do you recall when homosexuality was viewed as abnormal in the West? Once more, solosexuals are questioning what constitutes appropriate adult sexuality. Masturbation and the idea that we are better than anyone at what we do threaten certain people. Others believe that accepting masturbation has opened a new channel to the innermost parts of themselves. That, as thrilling and terrifying as it may be, our sexuality—whether in a relationship or alone—leads us all on a journey within ourselves.