MENU
Tips & Techniques

Edging and Anal Masturbation

Are you a person with a penis or a prostate? Then you'll want to read this new article about the benefits of masturbation and exploration...
by M Christian
11 Aug 2021

UPDATED: 3 Apr 2023

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 11 Aug 2021

No matter what equipment you have, when it comes to self-pleasure everyone can benefit from a little help now and again, whether that’s suggestions for new techniques or simply a reminder that masturbation is healthy, natural, and can help to improve your sex life!

What Are The Benefits Of Masturbation?

But what, aside from putting a big smile on your face, exactly are the benefits of playing with yourself?

For starters, doctors and medical researchers have long known regular penis masturbation works wonders for penis owner’s overall health. Depending on the person, this can include reducing stress, getting a good night’s sleep, coping with depression and sexual performance anxiety, and even boosting the immune system.

And since ejaculation is often a big part of penis masturbation, self-pleasure is also an effective way to keep your prostate in tip-top shape. The prostate is a small gland located near a penis owner’s bladder that produces seminal fluid: the wet, sticky stuff, along with sperm, that comes out when you ejaculate. Evidence now suggests regular masturbation helps exercise the prostate, going a long way to preventing prostate cancer and other conditions.

But perhaps the most positive thing about penis masturbation is how it assists penis owners in understanding their sexuality. 

If someone refrains from self-pleasure, perhaps due to feelings of guilt or shame, when they eventually play with another person things will be unexpected and unfamiliar. This can lead to stress, and make it difficult for anyone to have a good time. But when you’re armed with self-knowledge gained through masturbation and therefore understand your body and sexuality, you’ll have far less trouble communicating what you do and don’t like when it comes to sex. 

Edging For Greater Pleasure

Edging is a masturbation technique that is all about trying really hard not to come. Or rather, getting as close as you can to orgasm but, just as it feels inevitable, you do your darndest to pull back from the brink. 

Doing this “get close, then retreat from coming” thing can be an extremely effective way to explore your sexual responses, and, cherry-on-top, it may even zap you with extra-powerful orgasms.

First, the whys behind it. 

Edging gives you an understanding of your body and how you respond to stimulation. As a practice, it involves being very aware of sensations in your body, as you want to be able to stop yourself before you go over the edge. This can teach you about how pleasure builds, and what feels good for you as well as being a workout in restraint if holding off on coming is something you’d like to be able to do. 

With practice and patience, edging masturbation will allow you to develop an instinctual feeling for when an orgasm is on the way, and from there, you can learn physical and psychological methods to pull yourself back from the verge. The benefit to this is potentially learning to last longer, something which many people would like to be able to do, especially in partnered sex. 

To illustrate edging’s other benefit, think back to when you really, really, really wanted something, and rather than immediately leaping to instant gratification you put it off as long as you could. Then, when you finally got it, didn’t it taste much sweeter?

It’s the same for orgasms: edge yourself over and over again, each time stepping up your arousal, and the final popping of your “cork” will be earth-shattering—or pretty close to it!

Exploring Anal Masturbation

Now let’s get to the “bottom” of anal masturbation, and take a look at how to enjoy your anus as part of your self-pleasure. 

First, basic anatomy and safety. Inserting anything into this part of your body should be done slowly, carefully, and with massive amounts of lube. If you think you have enough lube, you don’t. More is always more when it comes to lube and anal exploration

Never use any toy not specifically designed for anal insertion, like vaginal toys, fruits, vegetables, or lightbulbs (yes, really, that has happened). You’ll end up as a story doctors tell one another when you can’t get whatever you put up yourself out again. Anything that you want to insert into your anus should have a flared base, so it can’t disappear, and be specifically designed for this purpose (looking at you again, lightbulb…)

Why would anyone with a penis want to play with their anus in the first place?  

For one thing, the anus is jam-packed with nerve endings, which can be extremely arousing to stimulate during anal masturbation. 

Secondly, remember our old friend, the prostate?  Depending on your body, if you carefully insert your finger into your anus and feel around you’ll probably be able to locate it. It will feel like a rounded lump roughly four inches or so inside your rectum, and it’s located on the front wall (the side closest to your penis). 

And after gently stimulating it – sex toys built for exactly this are recommended – you might discover an amazing and powerful new way to come. A way that, with practice, and in concert with genital masturbation, can give you what many vagina owners are gloriously familiar with: having multiple orgasms!

Moving Away From Goal-Oriented Masturbation 

This reference to orgasms ironically brings me to another key masturbation tip. Any kind of sex, whether that’s with yourself or a partner, should be seen as a journey and not a destination. The pleasure is as much in having fun along the way as it is in any explosive orgasms. 

Try to frame masturbation as its own form of fantastic sex and not what you do when you can’t find a partner. Do this by dedicating time for self-pleasure and resisting the urge to rush to the finish line. Treat yourself to lubes, toys, and porn; play with new positions, and in no time, you’ll look forward to coming again and again – all while learning a lot about your sexuality.

Erectile Dysfunction Advice

Additional Editor’s Note:
Some of the language and imagery on the websites linked below is binary and bioessentialist in construction, and thus does not address the incredibly vast spectrum of gender, sexuality and gender experience. They do, however, offer advice, techniques and products that are difficult to find elsewhere, making them a useful starting point for learning about erectile dysfunction and performance anxiety. 

Killing Kittens is working to improve the language we use across our own sites, social media and editorial content, and is not affiliated with either Mojo or MyHixel.

Before wishing you well on your voyage to masturbation nirvana, I want to talk about penis owners who feel they’re having difficulty getting or staying hard. 

Many people still feel erections are the measure of how good a lover someone is, often compounded by the mistaken belief that porn is an ideal that everyone should try and emulate.

In reality, everyone with a penis has at one time or another stressed about achieving or maintaining an erection—and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s an anxiety that gets worse with the appearance of each grey hair, but which isn’t solely the preserve of older Toms. Lots of younger people report issues and concerns around erectile dysfunction too – Mojo, a company with a mission to help people experiencing these issues, has found that 30% of people with penises by the age of 30 report problems around getting or staying hard. 

The good news is the 21st century has provided us with some incredibly effective methods to treat erectile dysfunction and other sexual performance issues.

MyHixel, for instance, is a two-part system made of a self-heating, sleeve-type masturbator toy and a specifically designed smartphone app. 

Using the sex toy, penis owners practice working on achieving and maintaining their erections, inputting their results into the app which then provides them with useful information as well as step-by-step instructions on masturbation techniques to help them last longer,

Available as a smartphone and tablet app, and on their dedicated site, Mojo takes a similar approach, though without a sex toy component. 

Created with the aid of therapists and medical professionals, registered users select anxiety, erectile dysfunction, and other concerns they want to address. From there, they have access to exercises, pre-recorded lessons, and can even attend online events taught by sexuality experts.