Wow. You go right for the meat, don’t you?

I had to think about this. “Importance” isn’t an easy thing to measure since it’s relative to so many factors…

I think the most important thing I’ve gotten out of my involvement and participation in JO clubs is a strong sense of sexual self-possession.

What I don’t mean by that is narcissistic self-absorption, and I don’t mean that I’m more objectively centered on my penis. I mean that I have developed a strong sense that my body, my cock, my sexual response, my whole life is completely my own. I am fully responsible for my cock and fully in charge of what happens to it and who interacts with it. I am also fully freed of responsibility for the pleasure of others. In other words, if I’m attempting to give pleasure to a sex partner, and they’re not having it, it’s not my fault or responsibility. There’s no need to take it personally. Either our energy just doesn’t match up at that moment or we have no natural, mutual chemistry. It’s nobody’s fault.

Mutual pleasure is then a mutual gift, a generosity of intimate being and something that should always be viewed as a generous gift, not a duty or routine. This is why, in new member orientation, we put a strong emphasis on the ownership of each cock being solely vested in the man it is attached to. A man owns his own penis and is in charge of it. Fully accepting and embracing that concept is, I believe, an essential part of true manhood.

It does not mean being selfish, but it means not surrendering responsibility for your actions to anyone else. It is true maturity, and it is a kind of true honor.

All my opinion, of course… my personal philosophy and ethical code.

But I do suspect that it is not just me, but part of a common experience available to all healthy men. When we discover masturbation as boys, and partly as an outcome of keeping it to ourselves for a time, keeping it private, I believe there is common potential for an experience of original self-possession with respect to our penises and by exploring them, our real sexuality. There’s a sense that “This is mine” and, “This is magical.” At least until it becomes more or less routine as we get older.

Our culture teaches codependency in myriad ways in almost every corner of our lives. Codependency and addiction in general embody a breakdown in the appropriate placement of responsibility—in placing our own responsibilities in others and taking on those that do not belong to us—and the recovery of a sense of real responsibility is an essential element of recovering a healthy life.

This is something I got deeply in the course of participating in JO clubs. From my communications with other long-time Jacks and organizers of clubs, including original New York Jacks lore, this sense of all of us being in charge of our bodies is common in the culture. I think it’s something that not all, but many men who are drawn to JO clubs can and do experience, and reflecting on this question, I believe it is not only something I personally have experienced, but the single most important thing I’ve gotten out of it.