At the risk of ruining the effect of this slightly unconventional post, I need to spell out that this is a work of satire; meaning, that it isn’t to be taken at face value, or even seriously (though it does have some underlying serious issues worthy of an honest and world-changing discussion). It is a work of sarcasm, of humorous wit (if I may be so bold as to claim a level of wit for myself). If it offends you, I do apologize. I, too, find sexual abuse and rape to be offensive, and this post was a means for me to cope with one of the times the reality of this type of abuse smacked me in the face. I do hope you enjoy it in all its cringe-worthiness as I have the best of intentions in posting it. ~ Jeremy
Men are faced with a problem that our country has been ignoring for far too long. When I recently became aware of it, I searched for support and information in a multitude of places only to come up empty-handed, except for a few isolated people reluctant to admit that it’s a real problem, and only under the strictest anonymity. Yet, the news is filled with incidents every day that when analyzed as a whole can only point to the existence of an issue that affects the vast majority of men from their teenage years on and throughout much of their adult life. I can only presume that it afflicts them until the day they die, but so little research has been done on this issue that there’s really nowhere to find quality information about it (and zero scientific data available to the masses).
And so this is me reaching out to the world. Especially to men, as this is a problem that only affects males, though I would happily be corrected. Let us stop the cycle of shame and silence that has kept us from finding the support that we need and has held us back from being whole people. Let us break through the wall of shame that keeps us isolated so that we may rise up together to throw off this bondage that has afflicted us generation after generation. The affliction that I am referring to is that of explosae penus, or more accurately, atomosophallophobia, the fear of an (atomic) exploding penis.
Women just can’t understand the seriousness of atomosophallophobia (APP). How could they? They don’t own the appropriate appendage that poses a risk for anyone in a 2 ft radius, let alone the sad owner of said appendage. But penis owners everywhere intimately understand the threat that they pose to their friends, family, and loved ones.
I so wish there was an app for APP.
You see, from a semi-adolescent age, boys are taught that they are not to be expected to control themselves around girls, a truth that is also communicated to young girls, who are then instructed that it befalls them to make sure that they remain in control of boys’ sexual conduct. “Select carefully the clothes that you put on your body,” they’re told. “Don’t tempt a boy with friendly gestures,” they’re cautioned. But not once are they told of the real strain that boys are under; the impending volcanic eruption that continually threatens to consume us all.

Now that I am aware of APP, I completely understand. How could we add the responsibility of proper sexual conduct on boys when their every thought is focused on how they can keep their bastion of masculinity from obliterating the very people they care about the most? It is a testament to men everywhere that this doesn’t make the daily news – and, I suspect, to very carefully reported incidents that would otherwise blow the lid on the whole classic teaching on sexuality.
APP goes way beyond a debate about urges versus needs. In popular logical discourse, the argument is that men have actual sexual needs, not desires or urges. The feminist rhetoric counters that if it was a sexual need, it would really come down to a question of life or death, like the need for food, or water, or adequate shelter, or even the need for a good education. According to that line of thinking, “sexual needs” are a misnomer. No one actually dies from not having sex. These fervent world equalizers claim that men are quite capable of thought outside everyone’s pants (including their own), and should use their anatomically correctly placed brains to treat women with the same amount of respect that they reserve for their gender matching peers (the bar could be higher, I know, but I’ll save that discussion for another time).
It turns out, both conventional and feminist arguments are unfounded. Men’s brains aren’t stored in their manrod due to their overwhelming sexual needs (or urges) and men actually do have one very real sexual need, though they are generally completely unconscious of it: the need to survive by constantly defusing their personal sexual pipe bomb. I suspect that once APP was discovered (a couple centuries or so ago, perhaps?), all supporting evidence was swiftly destroyed when the implications of APP becoming common knowledge would be a certain threat to the reigning patriarchal system. And so APP was cleverly replaced with the concept of “men’s sexual needs,” to cover up for men’s one actual sexual need. Men’s sexual needs are a pure cultural construct, but men’s One Sexual Need, now that’s an actual matter of life and death! I don’t mean to offend more sensitive sensibilities, but if a penis were to actually explode, I’m pretty sure the owner of, or more accurately: the former owner of the aforementioned exploding penis, would most likely bleed out and die.
When evaluated from the perspective of a bleed-out, tending to APP far eclipses any sexual urge debate, or even the health benefits of regular pressure relief, or for that matter any question of sexual misconduct on the part of men. Questions of sexual harassment, pressuring women to have sex, demanding sexual favors, etc. can all be tied to a man’s subconscious fear that if they don’t let some steam out, they will quite literally explode.
Blue balls are actually a myth, used to cover up the truth of APP. By the time a man actually had blue balls it would be too late: the chimney-path to relief would long have been ripped apart. Plus, as everyone knows, if it was a question of pressure in the balls, they would turn bright pink or red, like any other part of the body experiencing swelling, not blue.
It also seems to be common sense that when something experiences a dangerous build up in pressure, the natural thing to do would be to relieve it of some of the pressure. Like a pressure cooker. I remember once as a child when my mom didn’t set the relief appendage just right on the pressure cooker she regularly used and it ended up violently shooting up to the ceiling, bounced off, and threatened to strike my mother on the head! Pressure build-up is nothing to be trifled with! But as long as we’re focused on the fear of blue balls, APP is at no risk of being rediscovered.
This grand cover-up wouldn’t be such a problem if it didn’t directly affect how men treat women. “Men’s sexual needs” are used to excuse all sorts of horrible acts done to women. It is truly unfortunate that the Christian religion has taken such a strong stance against the self-relief of the build-up of sexual pressure, known as masturbation. Perhaps this is to encourage people to get married sooner rather than later, so that the relief of men’s APP can come ASAP through the divine blessing of matrimony (the only church-sanctioned way to get some relief). I don’t really know. Perhaps it is to hide from men the truth about their own design flaw, which, if they were cognizant of it, would probably send all of mankind (not womankind) into a well of depression (which, now that I look at the word de-pression, might be a helpful solution!).
It should come as no surprise that men, being denied the right to self-relieve their own sexual build-up, turn to pressuring others to do it for them. One form of pressure leads to another, and before you know it teenage guys are harassing their girlfriends to offer them some relief and married men are demanding that their wives relieve their penile pressure daily as their own marital right, and as their wife’s marital duty. If push comes to shove, it would be better for wives to take one for the team than to risk losing their husbands in what would surely be a most excruciating way to go: death by exploding penis. With that in mind, who can blame the husband who forces himself on his doting wife? He is subconsciously trying to save his marriage, not to mention his own life, when he relieves the dangerous pressure between his legs between her unwilling and selfish ones. When men’s One Sexual Need is considered, it is so easy to understand why so many women are sexually used and abused if necessary; it is but an act of self-preservation.
Some conspiracy theorists have tried to use human biology to bring men to their senses and turn them from their one-tracked obsession with their own sexual needs, claiming that the male human body has its own pressure gauge and will absorb seminal fluid into itself to save it from an unhealthy build up of pressure. These imaginative and unfounded claims have two major flaws: their information is so full of medical mumbo-jumbo no one can actually understand them, and shifting liquid around in the body (absorption) doesn’t actually get rid of the liquid, so it’s really just shifting the pressure to another part of the body. If this was even possible, wouldn’t we be hearing of cases of exploding fingers, or toes, or nipples (censored, of course) in the news? Or of “men’s finger needs” to cover up the reality of exploding fingers?
I know this whole concept of atomosophallophobia may be hard to swallow for many. Before you dismiss it as the pure fabrication that it is, I would like to offer a solution to the problem of men’s sexual needs, or One Sexual Need, that will make APP much more manageable for men, and hopefully reverse the epidemic of sexual abuses perpetrated against women. It’s so simple, but so effective. I call it self-pressure-relieving-mechanism, or SPRM. It has been found that SPRM can greatly reduce the urge to pressure others to satisfy a man’s own sexual need, a welcome relief to all. SPRM effectively enables men to take their sexual issues into their own hands, a much better alternative than trying to debunk the whole sexual needs myth altogether – for, without their sexual excuses, where would men be then?
In the interest of promoting awareness of men’s One Sexual Need, as opposed to their presumed sexual needs (plural), and providing them with the tool to manage it, I would like to start a social media campaign. I tried coming up with a good hashtag for it, but #SPRMforthewin #SPRM4yourAPP #SPRM4all and others didn’t quite have the right ring to them. After much thought and many sleepless nights, I think I finally have it:
And so I’m launching the #justmasturbate campaign.
Who’s with me? Please share this with your friends; for the sake of their partners, and for marriage, and plain old human decency.
~ Jeremy
Happily married to the love of his life, father of 6 amazing girls, and tired of hearing story after story of women and girls, wives, girlfriends, nieces and daughters, sexually abused by men, day after weary day. Grow up, men, and treat members of the opposite sex in the way you want to be treated (unless you want to be abused, in which case it’s time to schedule that appointment with a therapist – TODAY).
Interesting angle on an age old problem. I am marginally pleased that not much is said in main stream evangelical Christianity (except for the fundamentalists) about the big M. Neither condemning nor advocating it. I would like to see it advocated. Both for young men and women.