Premature Exclamations

A question of man-on-man timings

I have never, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to hear, much suffered from premature ejaculation. Though perhaps that’s because I’m so selfish that once I’ve ‘arrived’ the sex is by definition completed - and entirely on schedule.

Or maybe it’s because I’m homosexual. (Which is, granted, much the same thing.)

The concept of premature ejaculation, or ‘PE’ is stickily subjective - and by subjective, I mostly mean heterocentric. It conjures up the scenario of a gentleman releasing his baby gravy too soon after entering his lady friend’s front bottom. Or before he even achieves ‘coitus’. PE seems to be from the same 1950s teleological world as ‘heavy petting’.

There are different timings for what constitutes ‘premature’, but in 2014 a panel of experts from the International Society for Sexual Medicine somehow reached a consensus that busting your nut within one minute of penetration was too soon.

However, in 1948 the Kinsey Report, still the largest study of its kind, found that three quarters of men came within two minutes in over half of their sexual encounters - which suggests that by today’s standards a lot of men in the 1940s were having ‘premmies’.

Or they were in a hurry - which, given the vast numbers of them dying untimely deaths that decade, seems more sensible than pathological.

Since the 1960s and the rediscovery of the female orgasm, and given the generally slower arousal of female biology, there has been a lot more emphasis on prolonging the (hetero)sexual encounter. Or claiming that you did. Perhaps that’s why the NHS website for PE tells us that the average/i.e. normal time to ejaculation after ‘starting sex’ (‘sex’ is undefined) is 5.5 minutes.

In a nod to changing mores, it adds: ‘This time could be longer for men who have sex with men.’

Which must intrigue heterosexual men and women reading it. Gay sex lasts longer than straight sex? Is this because it’s so AMAZING? Or because it’s so AWFUL?