34th Street’s sex survey issue has certainly been a thumping success. Yesterday, I heard people talking about it all over campus, and multiple people asked me which part of it I was blogging about. The answer came when I spent an hour arguing with a friend about masturbation. (When else does inspiration ever strike?)

The Street statistic says that “the majority of guys … claim to have a wank 4-8 times per week.” Sounds about right to me. My friend, on the other hand, fixated on the high end of the scale. “Eight times a week?” he said. “That sounds excessive.”

My female friends all agree with me — guys masturbate more often than they eat, sleep, or breathe, right ? Every teen comedy we’ve ever seen has told us this. The guys I talked to, though, had the same opinion as said male friend. Excessive.

“If you’re jerking off 8 times a week, you’ve totally given up on your sex life. You’ve just accepted that you’re not going to get laid. And you’re not engaging in enough human contact,” they said.

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