SOAS Research Online

Abstract

There is a large body of literature, in anthropology and psychology, referring to semen-loss anxiety, a generalized anxiety commonly found among South Asian men and focused around the deleterious effects to health of losing semen, a substance which, when conserved, contributes to physical well-being and strength. In social-structural and cultural analyses, anxiety is attributed to the impossibility for men of correctly socially regulating their sexual impulses, seen as individualized and necessarily wayward. In psychoanalytically motivated analyses, the roots of the posited sexual anxiety are traced to fears of demanding, devouring mature female sexuality, the latter hypothesized in over-intense mother-son attachments. Magazines passed around among young men as masturbation aids include both soft pornography and ostensibly medical or psychological publications such as Doctors Answers. Pleasure seeking is not confined to the fantasy representations of women, but seeks out the real thing.