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I think that most people are capable of showing restraint; strong emphasis on "most". You also have shit like burkas and Victorians being aroused by women's ankles...and on the other hand, you've got hippies at Burning Man running around buckass naked and calling it good.
Victorians also had porn and it wasn't confined to ankles. There's a lot of post-Victorian bashing of their immediate predecessors that gets repeated in pop culture as "how it was" and it's not necessarily so (as the song goes). You probably wouldn't have much chance of seeing a woman's ankles in ordinary life as women wore boots in the daytime, so seeing ankles would be confined to intimate moments, and that's where the prospect of prurience comes in. The swimsuit covers of Sports Illustrated are not simply showing off female athleticism, after all. In this NSFW article, you can see a postcard of two women with a man, one of the women is wearing boots, and it's not their ankles they are showing off.
Besides, the era of full nudes in art (much debated) isn't swooning over ankles alone.
Sounds plausible, along the lines of memes such as Dat Ankle.
Men have the burden of performance; a young man's responsible for both him being sufficiently turned on (hard) and her being sufficiently turned on (wet). Young women have much higher expectations for a man's sexual performance nowadays than the Victoria era, where perhaps a few polite thrusts in missionary could be par for the course.
A young man has to manage the entire sexual interaction—he's the head coach, offensive coordinator, and quarterback in one. When to change positions, when to spank and how hard, making sure to maintain proper depth and rhythm. For (a) chick(s) he's been banging for awhile, like a girlfriend or wife, the Coolidge Effect is always there. For newer chicks, he has to guess if the particular girl likes getting choked and slapped. If so, how hard? Does she want dirty-talk or will she find it cringe? Does she like getting it up the ass? Does she like getting spat upon in her face and/or mouth? Will she subconsciously or consciously think you're a pussy or otherwise find it boring if you don't call her a whore, make her call you daddy, choke or slap her, spit in her face/mouth, fuck her in the ass?
What's worse—regardless if it be a girlfriend, wife, or one-night stand, a chick might (not all women, of course) clam-up, guilt-trip, or talk shit if a guy is having performance issues (whether it be pushing rope or flying half-mast) instead of helping him out—thus exacerbating the situation.
All these factors can cause performance anxiety for young men, before or during sex, resulting in performance issues. And the foreknowledge of the burden of performance, the possibility or realisation of performance anxiety leading to performance issues can lead to evermore performance anxiety. It's like Ugh Fields, erection edition.
One partial solution for young men with performance anxiety is to always have Viagra or the like on hand, and do a few micro-doses in the hours leading up to a potential encounter. Another is to just be perma-blasting testosterone for bodybuilding reasons, such that a secondary benefit is where even minor stimulation can lead to immediate and rock-hard erections. It can also be a curse, however, when random boners pop-up and won't go away. These aren't guarantees, though, especially if/when alcohol and/or drugs are involved—and sexual encounters in ${CurrentYear} often involve such things.
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Only the naive and the autistic make somone else's restraint core to thier own identify.
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