The Coming of the Sex Olympics: A First or Last Place Idea?

Or should there never be winners or losers—just mutual satisfaction?

Imagine masturbating for nine hours and thirty-three minutes! According to a HuffPost article, that’s just what Masanobu Sato, a director at Tenga–a Japanese sex toy manufacturer–did in 2008.

Inspired by Sato’s amazing stamina, I imagine an organized, competitive Sex Olympics. What would it be like? Would it be a fun, competitive entertainment event or fuel unrealistic expectations and self-consciousness among the spectators?

On your marks—

Sato’s record, set at an annual Masturbate-a-thon sponsored by the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco, is an example of a positive side to our hypothetical Sex Olympics.

After training as a sexual athlete, Sato controlled his body to delay orgasm and ejaculation for as long as possible, instead of being first over the orgasmic finishing line.

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Another beneficial aspect of Sato’s achievement is that it destigmatizes self-pleasure, promoting it as a sexually pleasurable, perfectly normal, healthy activity.

Outlining his training regime to Vice, he explained, “My abundant imagination was a key to my triumph, firstly. Secondly, I trained a lot in Japan from the time I won first prize last year. I swam twice a week and gained about five kilograms in muscle weight. That helped me a lot, too, in terms of stamina. Thirdly, the variety of sensations each Tenga toy gave me was ideal for long masturbation.”

Get set—

Using Sato’s marathon performance as an example, it’s not difficult to imagine similar events like seeing how many minutes or—dare I suggest it—hours an orgasm can last, the number of them possible during a set amount of time, and so forth; all designed to emphasize control, not speed.

Likewise, we might have synchronized events to champion communication between partners, and audience participation via sex tech-enabled long-distance devices, demonstrating entirely new methods for achieving, maintaining, and culminating sexual arousal.

For those who think a Sex Olympics is one of those way-too-weird-to-ever-be-real concepts, check out Maïa Mazaurette’s article for Le Monde, where she argues, “If sports can encourage “the harmonious development of humankind” and promote “a peaceful society” (again, according to the charter), these values are also shared by sexuality.” 

It’s worth mentioning the name of our sex-themed competition comes from Nigel Kneale’s 1968 teleplay, The Year Of The Sex Olympics, where it’s used to mollify the citizens of a pleasure-jaded, near-future world.

Could our own have the same numbing effect or lead to its viewers feeling inadequate—unable to ever come close to our sexual athletes—even if we strived to make it as sex-affirming as possible?  

Unfortunately, research into whether watching organized sporting events such as the Olympics can either bolster or decrease a person’s self-esteem is scarce, and what little there is seems to revolve primarily around having an affinity for a favorite team or player.

With that in mind, just as athletes can get people off their couches and exercise, ours might do the same by encouraging an emotionally and physically healthy attitude towards their bodies and capacity for sexual pleasure.

Go—

When you get down to it, for our Sex Olympics to do more good than harm has less to do with its events and more to do with its intention.  Right now, competitions—whether it’s baseball, football, hockey, reality shows, or the Oscars—are valued for their entertainment value and are not necessarily intended to leave their audiences feeling better than they were before.

So the basic idea of a Sex Olympics isn’t bad per se. However, making it more than Nigel Kneale’s cynical look at a numbed-down future might be the most challenging aspect of it.

But if we design our Sex Olympics from the get-go to be as arousingly entertaining as it is educational, it could encourage audiences to work with and not against their bodies, reduce guilt and shame, provide them with useful tools to help support their sexual desires and accept the message that pleasure isn’t given, taken, but consensually shared.

Image Sources: Depositphotos