Understanding Fleshlight & Male Masturbators

Quick disclaimer: although not all men have penises and not all people with penises are men, in this blog article, we use the terms ‘man/men’ to refer to people with penises. This is so we can make it easier for folks of all genders who use search terms like ‘male sex toys’ or ‘sex toys for men’ to find information like this.

Historically, there’s been something of a double standard regarding how society views sex toys for men and the people who use them vs. their more widely accepted, mainstream female counterparts. This stigma may come from the idea that male sexuality is ‘simple’, and therefore a guy shouldn’t ever need or want anything extra for masturbation, but at Sexyland, we champion everybody’s right to pleasure, and their right to enhance said pleasure!

Benefits of Using a Masturbation Device

Considering how often men like to masturbate, the investment into a toy is often worth it for the variety alone. Forums like Reddit often receive questions about male masturbation frequency and the results always vary from person to person. A 2007 survey from the dating website CupidBay found that British male masturbation habits involve an average of 8 solo stroke sessions a week, and in 2018, the world’s largest masturbation survey (conducted by male sex toy company TENGA®) found 57 percent of men between the ages of 18 and 24 from all over the globe masturbate weekly (based on a sample size of 13,000+ men). More recently, a 2020 study by Womanizer showed that male masturbation statistics are triple that of women’s, coming in at about 155 times a year (or 3 times a week) compared to women’s 54 times a year (around once a week).

All of these surveys are from businesses rather than academic institutions and were conducted among the public for marketing purposes rather than publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals, so the results from these surveys can’t be held to the same standards . However, they do provide useful information about masturbation frequency, suggesting that most men masturbate somewhere between once a week and a few times daily. Whether you’re getting off several times a day or less, there’s no need to get hung up on whether or not how often you masturbate is ‘normal’, as long as it makes you feel good and is not disrupting your lifestyle and relationships or negatively impacting your health.

Not only is using a masturbator a great way to get more in touch with your body and understand what makes you feel good, there’s also a whole host of physical, mental, and interpersonal benefits to it too. Orgasming regularly is associated with improved sleep quality and mood, as well as a reduced risk of prostate cancer, and the orgasms you get from using a male masturbator are on a whole new level of pleasure! New sensations like vibration, rotation, and even air pulse technology can enhance orgasm intensity to amazing heights that you can’t achieve by hand, or even with a partner.

Understanding Male Masturbators

There are plenty of models of male masturbators on the market, though the one that probably comes to mind immediately is the almighty Fleshlight®. The meaning of ‘Fleshlight’ comes from the real-feel fleshy material the sleeves are made from and the hard, outer case that’s shaped like a flashlight. It’s such good branding and design that ‘Fleshlight’ is often used as the catchall term for men’s stroker toys in general, even though they’re really only one brand in a sea of options. Still, they are an immensely popular brand for a reason, offering a huge variety of strokers in different sizes, textures, colours, and even unique designs like the Fleshlight Freaks range for folks who have some extra-spicy fantasies…

A classic Fleshlight-style masturbator is designed to encompass the whole penis from tip to testicles while other models like the Fleshlight Quickshot™ are shorter and open-ended to leave the head of your penis exposed, meaning a partner can tend to the tip with their mouth or hands.

Other shapes of masturbators include styles with flexible ‘wings’, like the Fun Factory Manta or Lovense’s Gush wrap around the penis and can be stroked up and down to focus the vibrations (or the internal texture) where you crave it most.

Then there are ‘pocket pussy’ strokers, which are often caseless so the whole sleeve is able to be squeezed from the outside, giving you the perfect tightness with every stroke. They can be open-ended, which makes them easier to clean (more on this later), or have closed ends to create greater suction intensity for a ‘vacuum’ effect inside the stroker.

How Does a Fleshlight Work?

Does the Fleshlight feel like the real thing?

Yes in some ways, no in others. Let’s break down the construction of a standard Fleshlight sleeve:

• Fleshlight sleeves are sculpted into realistic anatomical designs and made from a proprietary blend of TPE called SuperSkin®, which was designed specifically to replicate the soft and squishy feeling of skin in intimate areas. The material is best-suited to water-based lubricant so everything glides rather than dragging against the skin.
• The material won’t start at a realistic body temperature, but it is responsive to temperature changes so it will warm up to a realistic body temperature as you use it, or you can buy the Fleshlight Sleeve Warmer Stand to heat your masturbator prior to play!
• Fleshlights are textured inside to enhance stimulation as you thrust in and out, and there are literally dozens of textures to choose from for different effects. However, real vaginas, anuses, and mouths don’t contain structured, symmetrical bumps, nodes, chambers, or whatever these tentacle suckers are:
  
  
• Some Fleshlights feature vibrating functions, which can enhance sensations during play but isn’t exactly similar to what a real person can do. It’s also worth noting that human orifices are full of pulsing muscles that contract and twitch in response to the person’s pleasure, though a select few men’s sex toys like Lovense’s Max 2 can replicate this 360° sensation.

Can you use a Fleshlight in the shower?

Feel like getting wet and wild, or unwinding with a steamy self-love session? You can absolutely use a Fleshlight in the shower — there’s even a Fleshlight Shower Mount that suctions securely onto your tiled shower wall (or any other flat, stable surface) for hands-free fun at any angle in the shower! However, just like with human partners, water is not a good lubricant and can actually wash away both natural and manufactured lubricants. If you’d like to know how to use a Fleshlight in the shower, it’s a good idea to direct the water away from your masturbator while you’re using it. An added bonus of the steam and humidity of warm water is that it can help keep the lubricant from drying up so things stay nice and slippery for longer!

How do you clean a Fleshlight?

First of all, yes, you do have to clean a Fleshlight, after every session, no ifs, ands, or buts. Not only will doing so protect your sexual health since you won’t be introducing your sensitive genitals to an unclean environment full of bacteria, it will also help your toy last longer — lubricants and bodily fluids can both break down adult toy materials over time, so cleaning them after every use is essential if you want to be able to enjoy your toy for longer.

1. Start by removing the sleeve from the case, then give the case a wash before moving on to the sleeve. You can use a little liquid soap and warm water on the case, but we recommend using adult toy cleaner rather than soap with the sleeve as some soaps can contain harsh ingredients that may damage the material.
2. Fleshlight sleeves have openings on both ends, which makes it easy to run warm water through one end and out the other. (Water that’s too hot can damage the SuperSkin material, and water that’s too cold won't give you a thorough enough clean.)
3. With the water still running, reach inside either end of the sleeve and rub around the sides with your fingers to dislodge any leftover fluids that are caught in the crevices of the internal texture.
4. Add some adult toy cleaner like Fleshlight’s Fleshwash Anti-Bacterial Toy Cleaner to clear up any fluid remnants and sanitise the material so it’s hygienic and clean for your next round.
5. Shake out any excess water and let your Fleshlight dry out fully in a vertical position over a towel to drain out any remaining water before putting it back in its sleeve or storing away to prevent bacteria and mould buildup. You can simply use a paper towel to pat the case dry, but the sleeve needs to be air-dried. For sleeves with more complex internal textures, this can take a while, so you can use a fan or leave your sleeve in front of the air-conditioner to speed things up. Warm air like a heater or hairdryer can warp the sleeve material, so stick to cool or room temperature air.
6. Once the sleeve is completely dry, add some of Fleshlight’s Renewing Powder to restore the silky-soft and squishy skin-like texture of the material. Slide the sleeve back into the case and you’re done!

Tips for Masturbation Pleasure

• Up-and-down stroking is a feel-good go-to, but try experimenting with different stroke lengths and motions, like side-to-side and twisting the sleeve around your shaft and see what other sensations are available right at your fingertips! A self-coiling masturbator like the TENGA Spinner will even take care of the twisting motion for you so you can save your wrists from the strain.
• Curious about temperature play? Try a warming or cooling lubricant — Fleshlight even has their own formula for both (Fleshlube™ Fire and Fleshlube Ice)!
• Focus on the frenulum (A.K.A the ‘F-spot’) — this highly sensitive and highly underrated hot spot lives on the underside of the penis, connecting the centre of the base of the tip to the rest of the shaft with a small ridge of skin. It’s packed with nerve endings and Pacinian receptors, which are skin receptors that respond extremely well to rapid pressure changes in the skin, such as vibration and even air pulses! The Arcwave Ion is a totally unique masturbator that uses Womanizer’s Pleasure Air Technology to direct pulsating waves of air pressure right to the F-spot to produce a more intense, longer-lasting orgasm that has a more varied buildup. It’s so good that it’s widely regarded by fans to be the closest sensation a man can get to a female orgasm!

Ready to see how much higher your solo stroking sessions can take you? Shop Sexyland’s male masturbator toys online or check out the range at your nearest Sexyland adult store!