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Masturbation is a great stress reliever, so why do we still act shameful about it?
By Chrystal Bougon — Written on Jul 13, 2017
Male masturbation — it's everywhere you look from late night TV to songs on the radio. In fact, it's become so commonplace to talk about male masturbation that it's even become a joke. Men get to have all the fun making love (to pies and socks and all sorts of other imaginative things).
So why don't we talk about female masturbation on the same level?
Even in my 10 years in this business of selling sex toys (and talking to more than 10,000 women about it), women masturbating is still rarely discussed and women almost never admit to doing it. Why is that?
Why are there no cute jokes and funny euphemisms for women who masturbate? Where are the female equivalents of "rubbing one out," "rosy palm," "sex with someone you really love," "spanking the monkey" or "choking the chicken"? Men talk about this a lot! And most importantly, they talk about it with no shame.
I think in this instance, one of our greatest strengths becomes our biggest weakness. As women, we put taking care of others ahead of taking care of ourselves, both in life and in sex. This trait is beautiful and admirable, but it means once it's time to relax and enjoy ourselves, we can't seem to find the time. We can't just relax and enjoy without thinking about reciprocation. Therefore, we rarely make time to just pleasure ourselves.
Thanks to our anatomy, it becomes a little more difficult for us to squeeze in time to masturbate. Unlike men, it's not so easy for women to masturbate in the shower before work or rub one out real quick before we hop out of bed in the morning.
On top of that, many of us need a little mental masturbation before the physical stuff. Men get hard and masturbate, but turning on the female body requires a little more effort. It happens, obviously. But still, why is it so taboo for women to admit they masturbate? There are plenty of reasons why women shouldn't be ashamed of masturbation.
The saddest part about all of this is a woman's clitoris has only one function — it is there purely to give us pleasure. The clit solely exists to bring a woman to climax. It has no other purpose, just the one important function. So why all the embarrassment? The penis has multiple functions and men don't seem to have any embarrassment about using it for self-pleasure.
Though the stigma persists, at least there are some women out there who found the bravery to talk about the subject.
Think of the Cyndi Lauper song "She Bop" and The Divinyls song "I Touch Myself." Like me, Cyndi believes that "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "there ain't no law against it yet." Granted, those songs came out back in the 80s. But more recently, Tweet's song "Oops! (Oh My)" also helped bring the topic to light and put a more positive spin on it.
So now, I have a special new mission to help people understand why women shouldn't be ashamed of masturbation. I want to get women masturbating and talking about masturbating. I want to work to elevate the concept of masturbation and help women to let go of the stigma that goes along with self-pleasure. Whether you prefer vibrators or your own two hands, get home, get comfortable and get off.
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Chrystal Bougon is the owner of an online romance store www.BlissConnection.com and has been selling sex toys and lingerie for the last ten years. She opened a brand new plus size lingerie store in San Jose called Curvy Girl Lingerie, which focuses on plus size lingerie and helping women to get in touch with all of the pleasure your body is capable of.
