An Account of Masturbation Habits and Self Discovery

It is a truth universally acknowledged that 95% of men have masturbated in their life. The other 5% lied.

I discovered the joy of masturbation at quite young an age. A lot of literature books on sex education I had read spent a few lines talking about the emotional guilt arising from masturbation, male or female. Funny, but I never felt guilty until I read those chapters. (What? So I'm SUPPOSED to feel guilty for doing this?????)

I never quite fathomed the supposed "guilt", although I did feel anxious when I realized I had been fantasizing about guys rather than girls. So to sum it up guilt rarely influenced the masturbation frequency in my early teen years. That was until I read an online article discussing the health hazards of "excessive masturbation". At that time the article was convincing enough that I decided to reduce my masturbation frequency. To make sure I achieved that goal, I made a masturbation log book for myself, in which I recorded the times I masturbate on each day. Apart from masturbation frequency, I also recorded the time I woke up and went to bed everyday. Because of the sensitivity of the information contained therein, I devised a lot of codes for my record purpose. For example, the second and third days of my masturbation log book read something like this:

Wed. 23/11/05

Wake up - 0850

On Bed - 0015

'T' of MsB - 1 1/2 [Times of Masturbation]

Ej - 1 [Ej - Ejaculation]

R - No MsB for next week. [R - remarks]

Thu 24/11/05

Wake up - 1030 (sore troat)

On Bed - 0046

'T' of MsB - 0

Ej - 0

At some point, feeling anxious about my attraction for the same sex, I decided to record the thoughts I had for either sexes while I was masturbating or when I climaxed. Such notes first appeared on the 3rd week of my record.

Mon. 12/12/2005

Wake up - 1035

On Bed - 0040

MsB - 1

Ej - 1

R - (tragically torn between double-H) - need some mind exercises.

[Translation for readers: "double-H" means "heterosexual" and "homosexual". So what I meant was that I was very very torn whether I was heterosexual or homosexual on that day. "Need some mind exercises" means try to think about females instead of males to arouse myself.]

The entries became more detailed as time passed. For instance, at the first month anniversary of my log book, I wrote in the "remarks" column:

"struggling between Double-H (Aroused seeing G pictures)."

[Translation: G means "gay"]

As time passed, the log book served the purpose of monitoring my "sexual preferences" more than the original purpose of recording my masturbation habits. On some occasions in that period, I found myself masturbating just to confirm whether I feel homosexual or heterosexual on that particular day. I even quantified my homosexual tendency relative to my heterosexual tendency (e.g. Homosexual 60: Heterosexual 40) Perhaps I believed if I had begun to "feel" heterosexual on enough days, I would finally leave my "homosexual phase" behind and become "normal" like my peers. Of course, such phase transition never occurred.

The logbook ended on Friday, 24/02/2006. I stopped halfway while I was updating the entry for that day. If I remembered correctly, I was horrified by the amount of days I had "homosexual thoughts". The only conclusion for that was

The State of Mind of a Gay Teen

Sun. 01/01 - struggling

Mon. 02/01 - confused

Tue. 03/01 - confused

Wed. 04/01 - no reaction when talking abt Hets [translation: no reaction when talking about girls. School started. Guy friends probably talking about sex and women at school.]

Thu. 05/01 - greatly confused; torn

Fri. 06/01 - same

Sat. 07/01 - Same

Sun. 08/01 - Same

Mon. 09/01 - torn

Tue. 10/01 - torn

Wed. 11/01 - torn, aroused seeing cute guys in movie

Thu. 12/01 - torn

Fri. 13/01 - torn

Sat. 14/01 - severely torn

Sun. 15/01 - severely torn

Mon. 16/01 - severely torn [note: probably just learnt the word "severe"]

Tue. 17/01 - severely torn

Wed. 18/01 - heart speeds up when XYZ near.

Thu. 19/01 - same

Fri. 20/01 - heart speeds up seeing XYZ movie.

Sat. 21/01 - heart speeds up (H and also H) [Translation: heart speeds up in both homoerotic and hetero-erotic situations]

Sun. 22/01 - torn

Mon. 23/01 - TORN

Tue. 24/01 - TORN

Wed. 25/01 - heart speeds up seeing ABC movie

Thu. 26/01 -

Fri. 27/01 - Homosexual 70: Heterosexual 30

Sat. 28/01 - Homosexual 60: Heterosexual 40

Sun. 29/01 - torn

Mon. 30/01 - torn slightly

Tue. 31/01 - torn

Wed. 01/02 - H [homosexual]

Thu. 02/02 - H

Fri. 03/02 - TORN

Sat. 04/02 - Torn

Sun. 05/02 - torn

Mon. 06/02 - torn

Tue. 07/02 - undecided

Wed. 08/02 - undecided

Thu. 09/02 - 40:60

Fri. 10/02 - Torn

Sat. 11/02 - H

Sun. 12/02 - Torn

Mon. 13/02 - Torn

Tue. 14/02 - Torn

Wed. 15/02 - torn

Thu. 16/02 - less torn

Fri. 17/02 - less torn

Sat. 18/02 - attracted to M [i.e. male or men]

Sun. 19/02 - Torn (same as above)

Mon. 20/02 - torn immensely

Tue. 21/02 - H

Wed. 22/02 - H (ere seeing M) [Translation: had erection seeing nude male pics]

Thu. 23/02 - H

Fri. 24/02 - [note: last day of entry]

I rediscovered my log book a year later in 2007 under a deep pile of rubbish I kept in my drawer. As I reread the entries, it dawned on me that I must no longer subject myself to this pointless pain and struggle and begin working on accepting myself.

Weeks later in the bathroom, for the first time I looked myself in the mirror and went: "You...are...gay. omg... lol."

Alone in a car: "I....AM...GAY!!!"

Towards the end of the year, I began coming out to my close friends, and continued to do so in my form 5 year. The coming-out would not have been possible without the empowerment from the book by 欧阳文风《同根生》. Because I knew so few LGBT people, I thought everybody's experience was similar to mine, and if I told my stories to the people around me, perhaps, just perhaps they would understand. And with enough understanding the future gay teens or even children would not have to face the same fear.

Once I communicated the discrimination and prejudice I thought gay people face with a heterosexual peer. He was very accepting of me (I think), but his response to my complaint of prejudice was: "Sorry. But how did society discriminate against you gay people?"

I was flabbergasted by that question. (Like isn't it so obvious that we've been discriminated against all along?)

This whole long post attempts to answer that question. It is wrong for society to instill prejudice in children against a group of people, because like it or not a significant portion of children will grow to discover they are "those kind of people" whom they have been taught to fear, to mock and to ignore. Don't let gay teens and children fear, mock, and ignore themselves.