"We have just started the journey on its discovery road," Dr. Roy Levin writes in a new paper.
It's 2017, and if you're reading this article, you probably know someone who swears by the experience of having something up their butt during sex.
The male prostate orgasm is real, and society is really starting to catch on. But as one researcher noticed, science is still a little bit behind. Dr. Roy Levin, a researcher at the University of Sheffield, recently published a paper on prostate orgasms, largely concluding that there's still a whole lot we don't know.
"The scientific study of orgasm has always been challenging," Levin wrote. "Those induced by prostate stimulation have been ignored. We have just started the journey on its discovery road."
Most of the data we have on prostate orgasms isn't really data at all, Levin notes—it's just "anecdotal sources" saying that, yeah, prostate orgasms rule.
Levin also hypothesizes why prostate orgasms are so intense. Prostate massages can have a variety of health benefits, but Levin thinks that in some ways it can "rewire the brain" to make you change how you feel sexual pleasure through a new, unfamiliar sensation. Basically, it's giving you another button to press besides the standard stimulation of the penis.
"The 'male G-Spot' is the prostate and it's about two inches in the rectum toward the belly," Susan Milstein, Ph.D., a sex educator and professor in the Department of Health Enhancement, Exercise Science and Physical Education at the Rockville Campus of Montgomery College in Maryland told Men's Health in November. The prostate has almost as many nerve endings as the clitoris, which means that Levin might be on to something when he says stimulation could almost rewire the brain. "It really can open up a whole new avenue of pleasure for men if they are willing to try it," Milstein said.
And hey, nearly half of men have experienced anal sex—usually with them on the giving end, with a partner of the opposite sex, according to 2011 CDC data. But it's about time that the tables got turned a little bit, and Levin notes that more and more people are discovering anal stimulation on the internet, through online forums like the Aneros discussion boards, organized by a company that makes prostate massagers.
But, Levin writes, it's high time that science started investigation prostate pleasure as seriously as it investigates prostate cancer. It might even make your inevitable prostate exam a slightly less daunting procedure.