Just flip the switch

I was listening to a few Beach Boys tracks the other day when I heard the lyrics, “I’m picking up good vibrations. She’s giving me excitations.”

Of course, I’ve heard the song before, but now that I’m a sex columnist, it made me think of guys and their comfort with personal machines that wiggle and buzz.

I wondered whether guys are happy enough, on the whole, to engage in a little erotic play with their partner — as well as her battery-powered pal.

So I called the most sexually knowledgeable person I know: Dr. Debby Herbenick, an associate director and assistant research scientist in the Department of Applied Health Science and The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University.

Herbenick, 33, is also the face behind www.mysexprofessor.com and the author of “Because It Feels Good: A Woman’s Guide to Sexual Pleasure and Satisfaction,” and I must have been a mind-reader to get in touch with her to get information for this column, because last year she conducted a nationally representative survey (2,056 women, 1,047 men) investigating women’s use of vibrators in sexual partnerships.

In October, she presented some of the findings — which were also recently submitted for publication in a national journal — to the American Public Health Association.

According to the study, more than half of women have used vibrators with a partner, and almost half have used them alone. More interesting to me was the fact that almost half of men have used a vibrator with a partner, and about a fifth have used one alone.

“Even though it’s a common perception that men may feel threatened or intimidated by women’s use of these products, most men in fact feel positive about women’s use of these toys alone or together,” Herbenick said. Many men, she added, even find that vibrators take pressure off them.

Herbenick said there was a dearth of research done in this area.

Clinically, she said, vibrators have been prescribed for years for treating anything from genital pain to erectile dysfunction. But doctors report that many patients still worry that using a sex toy is not common enough to be “normal.”

“This kind of information gives them permission to do something that will enhance their sexual lives or their sexual health in general,” she said. “It’s something we’ve been wanting to do for quite a few years.”

Exchanging meat for sex

Not long ago, I wrote a piece for indy.com’s Dining Guide about how much I hate vegetarians. I got it from all angles for that one, but I stand by my words. And now I feel vindicated, if only in a small way.

German scientists have discovered that female chimpanzees prefer sex with males who deliver them meat. The study, by the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, sheds light on relationships in hunter-gatherer societies. In fact, one researcher said the findings “strongly suggest that wild chimpanzees exchange meat for sex, and do so on a long-term basis.”

Now, I’m not suggesting we should take three years of observed habits of 49 chimps from the Ivory Coast and draw conclusions for human society in the Western world ….. or am I? The researchers said also that evidence from studies on human hunter-gatherer societies suggests that men who were more successful hunters had more wives and more offspring.

I can only hope.