Talk:Masturbation/Archive Traumatic masturbatory syndrome

For older talk see Talk:Traumatic Masturbatory Syndrome/archive1

OK since the page is going to be kept let's whip it into shape!

"Two-thirds of males who masturbate prone report having erectile
 dysfunction at least sometimes, while 86 percent of males in the
 age cohort who masturbate supine claim they rarely or never do"

Where do these figures come from? How were they obtained? Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 10:12, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

It's from online surveys conducted by the web site HealthyStrokes.com. The surveys claim to be merely a purposive sample of TMS males and a reference sample of males in the same age cohort who do not have TMS. No correspondence to any population is claimed by these surveys. Doug22123 15:32, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

So what you are saying then is that two thirds of males who are interested in TMS enough to visit that website and answer the survey,who masterbate prone report having erectile problems? Can you see what I am getting at?

Consider a fictional senario where only 1% of males who masterbate prone have erectile problems. 99% have no problems whatsoever. Now since they don't have any problems they ar hardly going to go looking for websites on erection problems are they? If they happen to come across a site like healthy strokes they are likely to think to themselves "What a load of nonsense" and just move on. So they will never participate in the survey. OTOH the 1% who do have erictile problems may well go looking for answes on the web. If they come across a TMS site they may think to themselves "Hey this is the answer to my prayers" and stick around. Therefore they are far more likely to fill in the survey.

You have to be very very careful with self selected samples like this. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 15:56, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Here is a good article on surveys and how they need to be carefully implemented: [1] func(talk) 16:27, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Purposive Surveys

Theresa, thank you for your constructive feedback. The problem with any health problem research is that you necessarily have to study people with the problem. (i.e., epilepsy research is based on studying people with epilepsy, pneumonia research is based on studying people with pneumonia.) These are known as purposive samples. We already know the prevalence of erectile and orgasmic disorders in the general population, so the only reason to study the general population is to determine the specific percentage of TMS in the general population. While this would be nice, it would be very expensive research due to the small percentage of men who masturbate prone. If only five percent do, then to get a sample of 45, one would need to survey 900 men. And that's a lot.

The surveys on HealthyStrokes.com, while polling a self-selected group, at least polled a large enough sample of men in the same age cohort of both TMS and non-TMS men that the survey results are worth something, even if they aren't as objectively valid as a non-self-selected sample (e.g., a survey of hundreds of college sophomores). The HealthyStrokes.com surveys always treat the TMS and non-TMS samples as separate and make no discussion of them as a single population. So the problem you discuss is really not a problem. Doug22123 17:27, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

But the trouble is you are identifying TMS with materbating prone. I'm not saying that the survey has no value whatsoever, I am saying that you cannot extrapolate. To say that two thirds of men who masterbate prone have erectile problems is misleading because there is no way you can tell that from a self selected survey. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 17:51, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

A problem?

Being able to have sex for more than half an hour is a problem? Surely it's only anorgasmia if you want to have an orgasm and can't, rather than, as the wording here suggests, that "normal" people are unable to have sex for > 1/2 hr whether they like it or not. -- The Anome 17:36, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that's what anorgasmia is. To the uninitiated, having sex for half an hour to an hour sounds like a lot of fun, but most men don't have the energy to go that long, at least not every time they have sex. What happens is they run out of steam and then lose their erection and don't get satisfied. If you want to dispute that anorgasmia is really a sexual dysfunction, you should do it on the anorgasmia page and not here. Doug22123 17:43, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes a problem, a real one. I just went through the old talk and see there were many questions as to if this could be a prank. It ain't. They could have written this description by watching my sex life. (Using black helicopters looking in the windows perhaps.) I have all these symptoms and trust me, it is not a lot of fun. I would urge the community to keep this page up and running. I only happened on the bravepages site by accident. It has been a great help. Publishing this information will help more men and couples.

Interesting isn't it? In this day and age there are still medical conditions that are unstudied and unrecognized. Go figure. [[PaulinSaudi 17:52, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)]]

Don't worry - the page is being kept. We are just trying to word it fairly. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 17:54, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

According to Google's summary of Hayward et al. Human middle cerebral artery blood velocity during sexual intercourse J Ultrasound Med. 2000; 19: 871-876. [2],

All values are given as means ± SD. RESULTS The total duration of sexual intercourse ranged from 16 min to 55 min (mean, 29 ± 12 min).

half an hour of sex is pretty normal. This is backed up by the 1998 Durex World Sex Survey, from which some results are reported at http://www.gazette.uwo.ca/1998/September/24/News5.htm. If the average is also the median, and half an hour represents anorgasmia, by your logic half of the U.S. population suffer from anorgasmia. This seems unlikely. -- The Anome 18:05, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If we regard what a majority of the population do as "usual", and assume a Gaussian distribution and choose a ± 1 SD (68%) intervaL, we might make the statement "usually, sexual intercourse in the U.S. lasts between 17 and 41 minutes". -- The Anome 18:17, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Where do those studies begin the timer? At arousal? Or when actual thrusting begins. I'm talking about 30 min of thrusting with no orgasm being anorgasmia. Most people spend a lot less than 30 minutes in the actual thrusting stage. Doug22123 13:28, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't think the Hayward study is best for evaluating duration of intercourse. Anyway, that Hayward study is a mean, not a median, meaning high values will tend to bring it up. The SD is also a very high 12. This page http://health.yahoo.com/health/centers/sexual_health/001954 says that most men ejaculate 2-4 minutes after thrusting begins and calls 30-45 minutes "prolonged intercourse." Also, the Yahoo page discusses as a cause of delayed ejaculation "conditioning caused by unique or atypical masturbation patterns." I think it's looking better and better that this article didn't get deleted.

Removed self-selected survey data to talk

I've moved the self-selected survey data here:

According to a self-selected web site survey about TMS, half of the males who state they have TMS have this problem almost every time they have intercourse, and another nine percent have anorgasmia most of the time. Among males who state that they do not masturbate prone, only four percent state that they have anorgasmia or delayed orgasm even most of the time. A third state that they have erection problems at least half the time they have (or attempt) intercourse, while only five percent of males in the corresponding age group who state that they do not masturbate prone do. Most males with TMS can only have intercourse in the missionary position (if they can have intercourse at all), the survey claims.

-- The Anome 18:13, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't actually think that's necessary. Like i said above i don't think the survey is totally valueless and i already removed the sentance we were discussing. I think the above text is pretty neutral, it says the survey is self selected for example. It cxould probably do with tweaking to make it easier to read but on the whole I'm happy for it to be in the article. Theresa Knott (taketh no rest) 17:58, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Unfortunately, self-selected polls are generally so badly sampled and controlled as to be meaningless. I added a lot of the NPOV wording to this paragraph, and found that doing so rendered it almost unreadable; in my belief, this is a reflection of the survey methodology, which is entirely based on self-selection and self-reporting. On the other hand, I would be more than willing to include here information from a double-blind placebo-controlled survey. -- The Anome 18:13, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

As an attempt at compromise, I have summarised the results of the survey, and criticism thereof. -- The Anome 18:28, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Without having followed the edits in detail, the current paragraph looks fine to me. The only question I have is whether there should be a link to that "self-selected web site survey." Well, it's a rhetorical question, as I think there should be. Presumably the site is healthystrokes, but I don't see why there shouldn't be an actual link to the survey. I don't think two links will Googlebomb the site any more than the existing link does... [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 22:33, 22 Sep 2004 (UTC)

What makes a non-notable website poll worth reporting in Wikipedia? Certainly it falls into the realm of original research. - Nunh-huh 04:25, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Because it's the only hard numbers (albeit flawed ones) we have about TMS. Dr. Sank used no hard numbers; he only had four case studies. HealthyStrokes.com has dozens of case studies and two full-scale surveys (although the participants were indeed self-selected). When more adequate studies are available, they should be referenced and the HealthyStrokes.com surveys not. For now, the online survey is the best hard data. Doug22123 13:31, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)