My introduction to self-pleasure was a priest’s admonishment about “wasting the seed.” When my own son turned 12, I took a radically different approach.

My introduction was absolutely nobody telling me anything for or against masturbation, and me simply noticing on my own that rubbing my dick happened to feel pleasant. I'm very happy to have grown up in this manner.

at the age of 13, when I got a stiffy, I did everything I could not to touch it.

So the priest scared you and turned you into a weirdo, got it. Also you're compliant to dogmatic authority figures. Gee, never woulda guessed! It's not like I've noticed that the SJW worldview looks a whole lot like a perversion of Catholicism or anything!

And so, when I was in my early 30s and my partner found out she was pregnant with a baby boy, I worried I’d pass on these inhibitions and tinges of shame.

Literally all you had to do was say fucking nothing.

When do people start doing it? How do you do it? What’s an orgasm like?—we phoned a longtime friend he calls his “uncle.” “If anyone knows about tween masturbation, it’s your uncle,” I told him. “He was obsessed, and did it all the time.”

So you can't even do the dirty work yourself, you've gotta phone the biggest perv you know.

Recently, when I went away on a writing retreat for a week, my son put all this talk into action. He brought himself to ejaculation on the toilet. I know this, because the first thing he did afterward was talk to his mom about it. He wanted her to know what had happened and also ask a question: It felt weird, but not great. Was that OK?

Fucking hell, this reads like a 4chan greentext story about about penis inspection day.

A couple days later, he called again, this time to tell me that he’d masturbated a second time, too roughly.

So your TWELVE YEAR OLD is already whacking it so hard that he's injuring his reproductive organs. Boy oh boy is this kid gonna be DISAPPOINTED by time he gets to actual sex.

Christ, I'm 35 and I have still yet jack it so hard I came blood.

“Did you ever consider using lubrication?” I asked.

Lubrication, huh? I'm gonna laugh my fucking ass off if this guy with his fruitcake believes about masturbation STILL went and got his kid circumcised.

He hadn’t. Nor had he considered how imagination plays into desire. He’d been going at it like a physical challenge, rubbing and rubbing until he ejaculated.

Of course he'd been going at it as a physical challenge! The main reason he's doing it is because you're fucking TELLING HIM TO! Holy shit, this is huge fucking red flag that this kid is only doing this for his father's sick approval.

I reminded him of how two of his favorite TV characters, Maya from Pen15 and Andrew in Big Mouth

Oh my god. A twelve year old watching that filth? When did he start watching?

A few nights later, before bed, my son called me into his room. “Dad, if I seemed emotional earlier today, it’s because I was touching myself and I had an orgasm.”

This. Is. Not. Normal.

I wish I could say it’s been healing to witness my son blossom open-heartedly into a sexual being, but the tide hasn’t shifted just like that for me. I’m hopeful, though, that one day I’ll experience such full-body joy without inhibition.

Your son is blossoming into someone who has centered his life around meaningless self-gratification. If he's like this at TWELVE, what the ever loving FUCK is he gonna be like at 20? How desensitized is he gonna be at that point? How far down the rabbit hole of needing more and more extreme things to get off to is he gonna be?

Kid's gonna be jerking off in his mom's underwear before he's even 15.