I rcently read somewhere on Slate, during a recent bout of insomnia, that birds who are players burn out quikcly, have low energy and weak sperm at a relatively early age. The article touted this as good news for women who've had to deal with sleezeballs at bars. First of all, I am not a huge fan of extrapolating from birds onto humans without further research. Second of all, as a woman who has had to deal with sleezeballs at bars, this would not be good news to me - it would just make me feel sorry for said sleezeballs. Anyhow, its like these birds use up their sexual energy - and good sperm - quickly, and then are left dissipated.
I think this is is interesting, becausein India there is a type of depression and lack of potency caused by excessive male masturbation, ie release of sperm, and Maimonides also beleived that excessive sperm release could lead to lack of energy. It makes sense - if sperm is this life-giving force, and you are born with an ability to create a large - yet ultimately finite - amount of it - then every time you spill sperm, you are spilling a bit of that life-force out of yourself, leaving you with less life-force inside you, less life-force to spend on future sexual encounters and life endeavors. I am not saying this was the thought process of ancient Indian culture and Maimonides - I know their scientific knowledge was not as advanced, but I think humans have long had ways of intuiting things about the human body, and these intuitions manifested themselves in different cultures. In the Middle Ages, they did know that man gave the "seed" for the baby, but they didn't realize that some of its characteristics were received from the woman as well - she was viewed more like the earth in which the seed grew.
I would be very curious to see what science has to say about the human sleezeball - but not because I want revenge - rather, because I find it fascinating when science validates aspects of ancient cultures.
I too would be fascinated to find out what science has to say about the human sleazeball...but I think I probably wouldn't go to the bank with the theory here. (I mean, I have no idea about the birds - more on the scientific validation of ancient ideas.)
ReplyDeleteFirst, I'm not sure sperm is actually best defined as "life-giving" or a "life-force." It's just another kind of cell with only one half of your total DNA instead of two that happens to be capable of interacting with a complementary type of cell (an ovum) upon encountering it. It doesn't really *do* anything for men inside their own bodies and isn't really a store of energy or anything.
The question of its being finite is also uncertain - I'm not sure the testes really ever get "used up" as a function of anything other than age - as in, I don't think overusage would do it. And of course, there's the fact that many/most/all (?) men, if they don't ejaculate over a certain period of time, have greatly increased chances of nocturnal emissions, anyway.
Finally, we'd have to expect the same results both from the sleazeball at the bar and the guy who gets married at 22 and has a very active sex life with his wife, as your body can't tell the difference between masturbation and sex, anyway. That makes it an interesting sort of thing to think about.
In either case, it could be interesting to see a decent study in humans on correlating frequency of ejaculation (whether by sex or masturbation) with other sorts of things!