Ejaculatory timings and masculine identities

Sexual intimacies – including orgasm and ejaculation – are subject to temporal regulation. The timing of orgasm is not simply a matter of physiology; cultural assumptions and ideologies frame how this embodied experience is worked up, felt and made sense of. Researchers distinguishing between ‘clock time’ and the ‘natural’ timings of the body argue that modernity is characterised by attempts to regulate bodies by bringing them into line with normative temporal expectations of behaviour.I argue that ejaculation, which is ‘out of time’, is firmly positioned as a failure of the neoliberal masculine subject, and that professional and commercial interests collude in offering mechanisms for men’s rehabilitation towards the perfect intercourse performance.