I’m not usually one to disagree with Pee-Wee Herman, but I call ‘em like I see ‘em. Back in 2010, Paul Reubens gave an interview with Playboy — in it, he spoke about his 1991 arrest for public masturbation and denied doing the deed in that adult theater. His proof? He’s a righty, and the police report says he was going at it with his left hand. Had they gone to trial, Reubens said, “We had ready an expert from the Masters and Johnson Institute who was going to testify that in 30 years of research on masturbation the institute had never found one person who masturbated with his or her non-dominant hand. That would have been the end of the case right there, proof it couldn’t have been me.”
As it turns out, though, plenty of guys wank it with their non-dominant hand, and they do so for a whole host of reasons. Here’s what we found, but if you’re reading this with your dick in your non-dominant hand and we missed your personal motivation, feel free to let us know why.
It Feels Like Someone Else
The most common trope around jerking it with your other hand has to do with the idea that it feels like it’s someone else is doing it. This kind of makes sense: You don’t quite have your regular rhythm down with your other hand, so maybe the experience feels foreign enough to trick you into feeling like you’re getting an inexpert handy from a partner.
Somewhat skeptical, I reached out to Alexandra Katehakis of the Center for Healthy Sex, who tells me that there may actually be something to this idea. “The way the brain is organized is that we have a contralateral system, where the right side of the body is run by the left side of the brain and vice versa. So if someone is predominantly right-handed and they masturbate with their left hand, they’re going to be using the right side of their brain,” Katehakis says. By switching up where the brain signals are coming from, the sensation may be different, so it could actually trick the brain, at least a little bit. Plus, it’s about time those lazy right-sided brain cells did their share of the work.
It Delays Gratification
Sometimes, you just need to get things over with before the commercial break is over, but other times, you want to romance yourself a little. Maybe you’ll light a candle, or pick a video off Pornhub that exceeds a runtime of two minutes. You may even watch the terrible acting at the start, just so you can develop some empathy with that surprised but horny plumber. In times like this when you want to savor the experience a bit, trying the other hand may help out.
“It’s a good way to keep things spicy,” says sexologist Michelle Hope. Since your other hand isn’t quite so coordinated, you’ll have to work a little harder to get there. You may even stimulate parts of your dick that get neglected most of the time. By taking your time with the experience and letting your rookie hand do the work, the whole thing could last longer, and of course, “the longer the build up, the harder the blow,” Hope says.
It Allows You to Multitask
Or it may be the exact opposite reason. According to the Reddit thread on this subject, one of the most pervasive reasons for righties jerking it with their left hand is so that they can browse the internet with the right hand while touching themselves with the left.
While I can in no way vouch for the method or validity of this study, I did find a survey that looked into which hand men masturbate with and why. While someone would probably assume that righties usually go right and lefties usually go left, this isn’t necessarily the case. The surveyor, known as Don Bigote, says that he found that of his 189 participants, only about 40 percent of the lefties masturbated with their left hand and just over 75 percent of righties jerked with their right.
Instead of hand dominance being the primary factor in this activity, the surveyor found that age was the most likely reason. Younger people jerked off with their left hand nearly 50 percent of the time. The reason? Computers! Because the younger people have always jerked off with a computer to look at (and the mouse is generally occupying their right hand so they can keep clicking through that Brazilian circus porn), their left hand became more adept. However, among the older participants who began masturbating before computers came along, they did it almost exclusively with their right hand, which I assume has been their technique since the days when they jerked off to the wireless.
It’s Because You’re Ambidextrous
Also mentioned in the survey, as well as this piece in VICE, is that some guys are ambidextrous, so they don’t really have a dominant hand to begin with. In the Bigote survey, he speculated that this may be why more than 50 percent of lefties didn’t use their dominant hand, as more lefties are ambidextrous than righties (which is true).
It Can Cure Your Porn Addiction
This one threw me for a bit of a loop: AskMen claims that masturbating with your non-dominant hand may be a way to mitigate the effects of a porn addiction, including erectile dysfunction. The idea here is that by limiting the compulsivity of the action by touching yourself with your other hand, it may make you less numb to the experience of being touched, not only during masturbation, but during intercourse as well.
I ask Katehakis about this one, and once again, she believes there may be something to it. “Too much porn can impact your ability to achieve and sustain an erection as well as orgasm,” she says. So, she continues, by stroking with your other hand, due to the reduced dexterity and decreased rhythm, it could slow things down, and over time, make you more sensitive to touch. However, she also adds that this is probably not the most effective way kick your dick habit. “As evidenced by the Reddit group NoFap, four months abstinence from masturbation may help you naturally start to get your erections back,” she says. So if you’re taking part in No Nut November, it’s better to go all the way.
It’s Because You Broke Your Arm
Oh yeah, one guy on that Reddit thread said he jerks with his left hand because he broke his right hand and had to switch to his left, then he never went back. This seems pretty specific, though.
It Has to Do with How Your Dick is Shaped
Katehakis also said that dick shape may dictate your preferred wanking hand. “Anatomy is different for everybody, and some people’s penis may skew to the left or right. So, depending on that, [the preferred hand] may be related to what is the most comfortable way to move your hand up and down the shaft,” she says. As a cringe-worthy addition, she also states that, in the same way some men can do damage to their penis with compulsive masturbation, the shape of their dick may, in extreme cases, be altered due to excessive jerking to one side, including Peyronie’s disease, where the dick can basically “break” (and no, this isn’t the same reason that your dick naturally hangs slightly further to the left or right).
You Have No Idea Why
Finally, according to that aforementioned Reddit thread, a lot of guys just don’t know why they go at it with their non-writing hand. Sex therapist Catherine O Dowd asked one of her clients about this, and he simply told her that “he loved doing it because it felt so different,” and that was it.
So remember, there are many possible reasons a man may jerk off with his non-dominant hand—be they at home or in a dimly lit porn theater.
Your Hardest Questions About Dicks, Answered
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- Yes, some guys still don’t wash their hands after they pee.
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Brian VanHooker
Brian VanHooker is a staff writer at MEL specializing in pop culture, food (especially pizza) and long form oral histories. He is the co-creator of the comic book "Barnum & Elwood" and "The Tramp," a comedy pilot starring John O'Hurley. He also hosts a TMNT interview podcast called "Turtle Tracks" and was once called a "Good Guy" by Mr. T.
