There is nothing characteristic of the heterosexual offenders vs. minors in regard to the accumulative incidence of masturbation. However, they began at a median age of 14.5 years whereas all other groups (except for one) began between 13.3 and 14.3 years. Again this simply reflects the fact that they tended to reach puberty later than average, and consequently began their postpubertal masturbation later.
In age-specific incidence—the number of individuals who masturbated in any given age-period from puberty on to old age—the single heterosexual offenders vs. minors show definitely low figures, usually being second or third from the bottom of the rank-orders. Their low ranking in this respect is shared by the other two heterosexual offender groups, and may be the result of the fact that these particular offenders had a greater than average amount of heterosexual activity and hence a lesser need for masturbation. On the other hand, among the married segment of our sample, whose heterosexual activity is more nearly uniform, the offenders vs. minors have the lowest age-specific incidence, which is in keeping with a low frequency to be mentioned later. In this connection it should be noted that only a few of the offenders vs. minors at any time in their lives ever masturbated nearly every day or more than daily, and most of them never exceeded twice a week.
The premarital masturbatory frequencies of those who did masturbate tend to be somewhat low, ordinarily less than those of the control group, the median frequency being about once a week before age fifteen and 2 to 3 times a month thereafter. This is in keeping with the low age-specific incidence mentioned above. The married offenders vs. minors who masturbated had a very low frequency, lower than any other group, if one makes an over-all appraisal. For the average (median) married man it amounted to only 4 to 5 times a year.
As one would expect from the low incidence and frequency, the offenders vs. minors derived a relatively small proportion of their orgasms from masturbation. With few exceptions they are found at or near the bottom of the rank-orders, and this is true irrespective of marital status. Among the single the proportions range from about half (in their early teens) to one quarter (in later life). Among the married the figures are 2 per cent or less up to age forty-five. From age twenty-one on, the separated, divorced, or widowed males are also to be found in the lower half of the rank-orders. In brief, these offenders are similar to the prison group, and masturbation was for both a rather insignificant phenomenon.
The heterosexual offenders vs. minors were not given to much fantasying in their masturbation, usually ranking in the lower half or lower third of the scale; 12 per cent (the third largest figure) never fantasied at all.
One has the impression that as a group the offenders vs. minors sought and achieved sociosexual activity, chiefly coitus, and had little incentive to masturbate or develop much of a fantasy life. In connection with this it is worth noting that they were not very responsive to nontactile sexual stimuli: nearly one third reported no sexual arousal from thinking of or seeing females. Despite their comparative lack of masturbatory activity, they did an average amount of worrying over the possible adverse physical or mental consequences; in this they were on a par with the control group.
The offenders vs. minors had the largest proportion of individuals who first learned of self-masturbation by observing others. They likewise had a high percentage who learned by word of mouth or from printed sources. More of these offenders than members of any group except the heterosexual offenders vs. adults learned of masturbation from these combined sources of talking, reading, and observation. Few learned by being masturbated by another person, and fewest of all discovered masturbation independently. The fact that observation and verbal or printed sources were so important to the offenders vs. minors may be the result of their having had little prepubertal sexual activity and of having reached puberty at a relatively late age. Consequently they were less likely to have been masturbated by another person and less likely to have independently discovered it; there is a general tendency for self-masturbation to coincide with or foreshadow puberty, and hence delayed puberty would enhance the chances of an individual’s seeing or hearing of masturbation before his late-developing “sex drive” resulted in independent discovery.
*47\161\2*
