There was a time when the only male masturbator was your own hand, or of course someone else’s. Now times have changes both in terms of attitudes towards masturbation and the technology available to the creators of male masturbators. Now instead of using hands to pleasure yourself or some homebrew contraption of your own you can look at the market and consider which is the best hands free male masturbator.

Yes that’s right, hands free masturbation, not just your hands (with the help of a friend) but masturbating with out any hands on your penis.

First of all I’ll clarify. I’m talking here about mechanical devices to aid and augment masturbation. Not the electrical stimulation that, while it brings a lot of pleasure to many it has to be said quite a niche area and a little bit scary for most people. Especially when we’re talking applying electricity to your genitals as opposed to any other area of your body. I’ve never experienced it but for some electrical stimulation of the genital area can lead to powerful and spontaneous erection and ejaculation accompanied by intense orgasm.

No, here I’m talking about the use of all the engineering, materials and biological know-how that comes together in modern masturbators.

First of all consider the sleeves of a modern male masturbator. Given that the old, smelly-jelly masturbators are rapidly disappearing it’s no wonder that many men take to using modern masturbators. Early designs used plastics that contained phthalates, chemicals that modified the polymers to make them softer but were linked to health issues. These plastics also smelled rather strongly and could become sticky over time. Advanced isomers and TPR plastics avoid this problem making male masturbators much more pleasant to use.

The use of mechanical stimulation in male masturbators began with two design concepts. First was to create a masturbator without a case, often called a stroker for reasons that are self-evident. This type of device allows the user to control the pressure applied to the erect penis simply by flexing their fingers.  The second type used vibrating bullets within the masturbator to add more sensation to the user’s experience. Neither of these methods really led to a hands-free experience as such though having a stationary masturbator buzzing away around your shaft is rather nice.

Ingenious users could use hard-cased masturbators such as the Fleshlight jammed between pillows or under a mattress to give a hands-free experience. Used like this you can thrust into the device as you would with a partner. There are even special holders, usually in the form of a pillow to allow you to do this more easily than devising your own masturbator holder from the soft furnishings. They’re also wipe-clean too saving you on dry cleaning.

There is a final step to take before you can call any masturbator completely hands-free. By combining a hard-case style masturbator and an electrically driven form of reciprocating stimulation you can emulate a hand, or a mouth sliding up and down the penile shaft. Combined masturbators and penis pumps have been around for a while and with clever engineering these too can be combined into the best hands free male masturbators – not to enlarge the penis beyond its usual erect size but to emulate sucking sensations.

Bringing all these elements together, the mechanical analogue of a hand on your shaft, a sucking sensation and the ability to be able to just lay back and let a device do the work and you have a completely hands free experience.

Can this be taken any further? Well, maybe. A lot of work has been done with VR and male masturbators, linking them to the increasingly cheap VR headgear. That will arrive eventually but my experience of this enhancement to masturbation is that VR isn’t quite there yet and a good masturbator can be enjoyed in the company of a porn movie.