The Ultimate Guide to Solo Sex

SOCIETY’S TAKE ON FEMALE masturbation is very important, because it both informs and reflects how we as individuals feel about it. When it comes to men, we talk about masturbation all the time. There are a million terms for it. In There’s Something About Mary, Cameron Diaz walked around with come in her hair, for goodness’s sake. But when it comes to women, all too often, it’s hush-hush. In this chapter we will look at why that is, why it shouldn’t be so, and what we can do to move past it and stop shaming women out of doing a terrifically healthy thing.

Orgasm is at the heart of female empowerment, and self-created orgasm—orgasm through masturbation—is one of the most important kinds of orgasms a woman can have. Sure, partnered sex can be amazing. But solo sex is about so much more than the end result. It’s about learning about yourself, both for your own self-knowledge and to lead you on a path to better partnered sex. How can you expect a partner to know how to get you off when you yourself don’t even know?

This guide is designed to help you understand why solo sex is so important and how to make it great, whether you have never gone down the self-pleasure path before or are already a regular player. Either way, practice makes perfect, and having a coach can only help you along your journey. Consider me that coach.

Whenever the topic of masturbation comes up, the “why I can’t”s come up too. Too many people have too many problems for too many reasons when it comes to masturbation. Religion. Politics. Society. Families. Friends. All of these barriers are understandable, but also unfounded, and certainly surmountable. You have to turn off the critics. They have no place in your bedroom. If things like shame or body image issues are at play, seek a sex-positive counselor who can help you work through them. And if disability or aging or other physical barriers are presenting a problem, your doctor can help you to discover if there are workarounds you can employ. There may be people out there who find masturbating impossible, or near impossible. But, for the vast majority of us, it’s a matter of getting out of our heads and discovering ways to allow ourselves this incomparable gift.

There isn’t a thing wrong with touching yourself—even if a history of abuse is among your challenges—and it’s one of the healthiest, most satisfying, safest activities around. It’s time to take back self-love!

Google “masturbation” and these arise as the most common searches: Masturbation is a sin in Hinduism. Masturbation is a sin in Christianity. Masturbation is a sin in Islam. Google “female masturbation” and you don’t get any suggestions at all.

It’s almost too simple. When it comes to masturbation, all humans want to do it, and yet all humans are worried about whether doing it is “okay” or not. Nearly every religion has something to say about it. And too many of those religions take issue with it even though they have no business doing so. Granted, this is a gross overgeneralization. But bear with me here for a minute as I try to wade through the social history of masturbation.

The myth goes like this: Men are physically larger and stronger than women. Men are creatures of the body. Brutes. They cannot control themselves or their desires. Their role on this planet is to impregnate and provide. Women are creatures of the heart. Softies. Their role is to care for and please others. (Read: men.)

Therefore, sexually, men can’t help themselves. They must get their sexual satisfaction, either by masturbation or partnered sex. When it comes to partnered sex, women are to be vessels, since this is what satisfies men’s sexual needs. And, since the man is satisfied by the act, the woman should be, too. If she is not, she must be somehow afflicted. And there is little to no reason for her to masturbate, because she doesn’t have the ever-present sex drive that men do.

This false logic has led to the commonly held misconception that penetrative sex should satisfy women sexually, as it does men, and that women don’t need to and shouldn’t masturbate. But neither of those ideas is true. Women orgasm from clitoral stimulation. You can hem and haw all you want. You can want it to be different. Coming at the same time as your partner is a lovely experience. So I get it. If you’re heterosexual, you want a woman to be able to reach orgasm from the same act that causes a man to come. When two women have sex, they want to come together, too, and they face their own set of challenges—I like to think of them as enjoyable challenges—in order to make that happen.

But we’re talking about anatomy and physiology here, and it simply doesn’t work that way. Not to mention that orgasm requires being relaxed and at ease, with your mind in the moment. So, focusing on your partner’s orgasm can make it tough sometimes to reach your own, further complicating the situation.

So, here you have an entire society of women walking around sexually frustrated. Sex with their husbands isn’t doing it for them because their physiology is being ignored. They are told not to masturbate because it’s “unhealthy.” They are told by doctors that they are ill, that they have “hysteria,” when in reality they have blue box.¹

“Hysteria” is a term from the Victorian era, but sadly, this state of affairs hasn’t entirely changed today. Many women feel inadequate if they cannot orgasm solely from vaginal penetration, when in reality, vaginal penetration isn’t what causes most women to orgasm. They feel guilty about masturbating because of the virgin/whore complex, where women are somehow supposed to be virginal (read: mothers and housewives, but never sexual beings in their own right) and yet have sex with their partner—or, to put it less delicately, “a lady in the streets and a freak in the bed.” We are to be whores for our husbands and virgins to ourselves and the world.

Male control over female sexuality is the ultimate tool in the war against women and the maintenance of the patriarchy. In her book The Technology of Orgasm, technology and sexuality historian, writer, and researcher Rachel Maines explains, “If the penis did not represent the ultimate weapon in sexual warfare, claims to male superiority would rest entirely on the statistically greater potential of the male biceps and deltoid muscles, which did not in themselves seem equal to the task of sustaining patriarchy in Western civilization.”

In other words, it is about the penis being the ultimate symbol of strength and power and its needs and desires being paramount over all else. That way, only those with penises get to be the boss of things. When the penis is made king, female sexuality never has a chance to be any more than a loyal subject. To right this wrong, the clit must be crowned or the penis must be dethroned. An equal playing field is the only place to play.

The difficult thing about trying to explain and understand all of this is that it doesn’t make any sense. It is nearly impossible to explain and understand something that is without reason. It was obvious that women had sexual desire and it was obvious that having orgasms relieved women of these “symptoms,” and yet no one would accept the reality—that women are sexual creatures and that stimulation of the clit to orgasm is the only way to “relieve” desire. Since it was presumed and accepted that vaginal intercourse should be sexually satisfying to women—which, again, it is generally not—people assumed that women must be sick or diseased if they were not having orgasms, or if they were “suffering” from desire.

My research has been both incredibly informative and frustrating. In some ways, the truth is so incredibly simple. Women are sexual creatures with sexual desires who want and need sexual release. That is incredibly obvious and has always been incredibly obvious. But society and religion both want and need women to not be sexual, I suppose because they want women to need men so they will procreate. That’s the only thing I can figure, anyway. It’s great for women to want men. But it’s imperative that women know they don’t need men.

So instead of accepting female sexuality at face value, society had to instead make it a disease. When the cure (that is, penetrative sex, with the external bud of the clitoris being almost entirely ignored) didn’t work, it was the woman’s fault. Not the cure’s fault. But now we know the truth: Women are sexual. Women do need to orgasm. Women have a right to pleasure. And because so many people, men and women, still continue to believe that vaginal intercourse should bring women to orgasm, and neither men nor women want to change their sexual behavior, masturbation becomes not only necessary, but also mandatory. (If I ruled the world!) I say “mandatory” because women should really masturbate for their health. But the truth is, too many of us don’t do the things that are good for us unless we think we will drop dead or get punished if we avoid them. I honestly wish there were a way to require women to masturbate. It would bring spectacular change to women’s health, both mental and physical, and create a wave of change in women’s sexuality—both in how it is perceived and in how women view themselves as sexual creatures.

If women are not sexually satisfied, then they are sexually frustrated, and a sexually frustrated woman is not as powerful or as confident or as capable as she could be. Which of course is what some people want, what some men want, and what in some ways society and certainly religion want.

Men were the scientists. Men were the theorists. Men were the writers and philosophers and social thinkers. Men wanted to maintain their status in those roles, and women were raised to believe that men belonged in those roles, and so they did not fight to release themselves or fight for their sexual autonomy, or fight at all, really. Until they did—for their right to vote, their right to work, their right to support themselves and live freely and move about the world freely. Sadly, still today we see more men in positions of power, making more money, directing more research, serving as the baseline for all things.

All of this boils down to getting women married off and controlled. If women had sexual desires and needs like men, that would imply that they were equal to men, and that could not be tolerated. So it had to be that women were sick. It’s both hilarious and incredibly disturbing that women did and do accept this. It was deemed better to be thought of as sick than to be sexual creatures.

Female sexuality is a massive part of the women’s liberation movement, and there is nothing more liberating than to not have to rely on anyone but yourself for your pleasure. Which means there is an incredibly easy solution to all of this. If you are not enjoying sexual satisfaction with your partner, then take matters into your own hands. Masturbate. And if you are enjoying sexual satisfaction, masturbation is still incredibly important for maintaining your sexual autonomy and for improving your partnered sex, no matter how stellar it may already be.

Masturbation allows women to know their bodies. It allows women to know what it is that they want and need. It allows them to understand that—I’ve said it before and I can guarantee I’ll say it again—vaginal penetration in general does not lead to female orgasm, and when it does, it’s thanks to the internal “legs” of the clitoris, not to any nerve endings in the vagina itself (as there are very few). Knowing this can then inform our sex lives, whether we are gay, straight, bi, queer, or anything and everything in between. Once we know our bodies and our desires and what brings us to orgasm, then we can know what to tell our partners, what to ask our partners, and how to arrange our sex lives so that we can find satisfaction with a partner if that is what we desire.

In the past, to rebel was social suicide, and—in some ways—it still is. So women accepted their lot then, and some still do today.

If women don’t want sex, it should not be read as frigidity, it should be read as sanity. Why continue to want something that’s always unsatisfying?

Masturbating puts us in a state not only of satisfaction, but also of wanting, as contradictory as that may sound. The more we come, the more we want to come. So people should not be afraid of their female partners masturbating—they should encourage it, because if a woman is also having satisfying partnered sex, masturbating will cause her to want it more, not less. If the partnered sex is unsatisfying, that’s certainly something that needs to be explored. But in the meantime, masturbation can ease the sexual frustration. And when the partnered sex is good, masturbation only stands to make it better.

If a woman is masturbating, some say it’s a commentary about her being unsatisfied by her partner. That may be true, and no man wants to think—or to have others think—that he can’t satisfy his partner. But there really are three possibilities here. One: Perhaps it’s that she is so pleased with what he does that she wants it more often then even he can provide, which is an excellent compliment. Two: Maybe it’s true. Maybe she is unsatisfied. But instead of keeping her from masturbating, why not discover together how she can be satisfied during partnered sex? And three—now, hold on to your hats here—maybe it has nothing to do with her partner at all. Maybe she just enjoys masturbating. And that is the best reason of all for doing it.

If men understood women’s bodies and facilitated their orgasms more often, then women would want to have more sex with them. It’s not that we want orgasms any less than men do; it’s that we don’t want to do the things that don’t pleasure us. But even the best sex is not and should not be a substitute for masturbation, which is about knowing and connecting with yourself and constantly and consistently cementing your sexual autonomy.

The irony of all this is that Victorian doctors were prescribing orgasm because they knew that was what women needed—although they misunderstood why. They did not, however, generally prescribe masturbation, because that would empower women. What people didn’t (and many still don’t) understand is that when women masturbate, it empowers men too. It means that women know what they want sexually and can help men to learn how to please them, and isn’t that what good men want? To please women sexually? Masturbation is the answer, not the problem. It empowers us in everything we do outside of sex, as well, because feeling in control and capable and knowing yourself transfers to nearly everything and anything else we do.

Which brings me back full circle to where this chapter began. Masturbation is considered fine for men—it’s great, in fact—because they are understood to be sexual creatures. But for so long, women were seen as little more than helpmates to men and not as autonomous, sexual beings—and so the world couldn’t see that masturbation is just as important for women as it is for men.

The time has come to see the truth. We are sexual. We seek pleasure, too. We masturbate.

For me, language is always a good indicator of how we as a society feel about something, or how much or how little we understand it. If we have no words or only negative words for something, clearly we don’t get it or don’t want to get it. If, on the other hand, we have lots of language, particularly positive language, about something, we are clearly on board.

So I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how we talk about female masturbation. If I think about what I call it, or what I hear my female friends call it, I can come up with only a very short list. I tend to call it “taking care of business,” and I hear my friends say simply “masturbating.” But I was curious what kind of slang was out there; I was sure there was plenty. I was right, and it runs the gamut from the offensive to the ridiculous, with a stop at everything in between. Here’s a sampling of what I found:

The amazing disappearing-finger trick, airing the orchid, auditioning the finger puppets, battery testing, beating the clit, being the downstairs DJ, bruising the beaver, buffing the beaver, buttering the biscuit, buttering the muffin, caressing the clitoris, churning the butter, cleaning your fingers, climbing Mons Veneris, clit-flitting, clitting, coming into your own, couch hockey for one, cunt cuddling, cunt-hunting, diddling yourself, digging for clams, digging your own hole, dirty dancing for one, double-clicking the mouse, dousing the digits, drilling for fish, dropping in the manhole, engaging in safe sex, erasing the problem, fanning the fur, feeding the bearded clam, feeding the beaver, finger-painting, finger-walking to the Y, flicking the bean, flipping the breaker, fluffin’ the “muff”in, frigging, gash-lashing, genital stimulation via phalangetic motion, gentling the genitalia, getting a fat lip, getting a lube job, getting lost in the deep end, getting to know yourself, giving a noogie to your monkey, grabbing the goatee, greasing your hips, grinding the bump, groping the grotto, groping the beaver, handiwork, jilling off, mining the hole, a night in with the girls, oiling your holster, parting the pink sea, petting the kitty (or the pussy), playing the clitar, poking the flounder, polishing the pearl, riding the two-fingered cowboy, riding the unicycle, rowing the man in the boat, roughing the muff, rubbing one out, rubbing the button, rubbing the nub, scratching the snatch, self-abuse, shucking the oyster, slapping the lips, snuffing the muff, solo sex, spelunking the cave, squeezing the bean, squeezing the peach, stroking the magic lamp, stroking the nub, surfing the wet, tapping the keg, teasing the tuna taco, tenderizing the meat curtains, testing the plumbing, thumbing the button, tickling my fancy, tickling the taco (or the tuna or the twat), touch typing, twiddling the toggle, the two-fingered salute, the two-fingered tango, the virgin’s release, visiting the Batcave, watering the flower, waxing the dolphin.

These expressions are very telling as to how we feel about women’s bodies. Some of them are incredibly offensive, even downright awful. And I left off the ones that I couldn’t stomach. But what I found even more intriguing is the fact that I have never actually heard a woman use most of these terms, even jokingly. They are expressions that people have made up as jokes, and that’s the problem. We don’t really take female masturbation seriously. I’m not suggesting it’s a somber matter, like child abuse or world hunger or bioterrorism. But it is important. Not just the act itself. But what the freeing of that act from shame could ultimately mean.

Women have to be in control of their own bodies and their own pleasure. We have to stop minimizing and shaming female sexuality. It is incredibly ironic to me that men so often complain about women not being interested in sex, and yet those same men are not interested in autonomous female sexuality. Men want their sexual pleasure, but don’t respect that female sexual pleasure deserves equal importance—otherwise, why would women want to have sex? What’s the point of being little more than a human masturbation sleeve?

So female masturbation is important because pleasure is important. But more than that, it’s important because it cements a woman’s place at the sexual pleasure table. Valuing female masturbation means valuing female sexuality. We can’t demean women’s bodies and their sexual desires and then wonder why they are insecure and uninterested in sex. It just doesn’t make sense.

Masturbating is about accepting your body and your sexuality and your whole self. It’s not just about orgasm—although orgasm is nice. It’s about taking care of yourself. Women can get so wrapped up in eating right and exercising and meditating. But what about tending to our sexual selves? That deserves as much attention as—if not more than—anything else.

Perhaps a bit of the problem has to do with language. When I talk about feeling sexy or attending to one’s sexuality, I’m not talking about wearing stilettos and red lipstick and sleeping with everyone in sight. I’m talking about being in your own power.

Please forgive the woo-woo language. But there just aren’t great words for this conversation, because we don’t talk about it enough. Being in your power simply means being confident and feeling good about yourself, feeling whole. Think about the last time you had a stellar orgasm—that heady, delicious feeling of being the most glorious creature on the planet.

Now imagine starting every day with that feeling. Imagine how the world would look to you. It’s like seeing the world through your own rose-colored orgasm glasses. Call me silly if you will. But test it out, if you dare. For one week, start and end every day by masturbating. You’ll walk a little taller, sleep a little better, worry a little less about what other people think of you. You’ll trust yourself and your body, because you know how to make yourself feel good.

After reading and researching female masturbation as much as I have and surveying more than 160 women, I decided to pose some very specific questions to a few experts in the field to see what their thoughts were. I had a particularly enlightening e-mail conversation with Dr. Anne Katz, PhD, RN, FAAN who is an AASECT-certified sexuality counselor and clinical nurse specialist at CancerCare Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. (AASECT, or the American Association of Sexuality Counselors and Therapists, is a “not-for-profit, interdisciplinary professional organization…of individuals [who] share an interest in promoting understanding of human sexuality and healthy sexual behavior.” www.aasect.org)

When we began our conversation, she wrote, “Let me preface these responses with the caveat that attitudes and behaviors have changed—and the research about masturbation may not have caught up with societal trends and generational changes.”

I found this comment alone incredibly telling, as it spoke to exactly what I was finding. There is lots of research out there. But, as I mentioned earlier, it can be hard to trust, and it doesn’t necessarily mirror the anecdotal information that one finds. In other words, books and papers say one thing, and the people you talk to say another. As always, the truth is somewhere in between.

Katz says that a belief about female masturbation commonly held by both men and women is that it is “a poor substitute for partnered sex.” I was particularly interested to hear this, as it seemed to me to directly contradict the AdamandEve.com survey I cited earlier, in which four out of ten women said that they prefer masturbation to partnered sex.

I think of masturbation as a way to empower partnered sex by making women more whole as sexual beings on our own. That is, if I am a fully actualized sexual person coming together with another fully actualized sexual person, we are going to have better sex than if either or both of us were not so. I would like to stop comparing masturbation to partnered sex and instead think of it as way to inform and improve partnered sex.

Because most of us want equal sexual partners, I have to wonder why, in general, we don’t take issue with male masturbation. But there is a huge block when it comes to female masturbation. Katz explains some of the reasons for this:

General attitudes towards male sexuality are more accepting of all kinds of sexual activity. Also, male arousal is hard to miss, and there is an acceptance that even boy babies are going to touch their genitals, in part due to availability—but female anatomy is more “hidden.” Also, the focus of female sexuality is (erroneously) on the vagina (internal) as opposed to the vulva (external) and clitoris.

And that’s when I found myself nodding my head vigorously. Indeed. Female sexuality has been such a cloudy issue for so long because our bits are not as self-explanatory as male parts are. As long as we continue to think that the vagina is the focus of female sexuality, it will be impossible to understand female pleasure. And if we don’t understand female pleasure, how could we possibly understand female masturbation?

I recently had a conversation with a gay male friend of mine about guys masturbating in the sauna at the gym. He commented that guys could do that surreptiously with no problem, but women couldn’t. “Why not?” I asked. He mimed a woman inserting her fingers into her vagina and vigorously moving them in and out, and I laughed. “Is that how you think we masturbate?” I asked.

It’s no wonder that female masturbation lives in such shameful shadows when so many people don’t even understand what the center of female pleasure really is—the clitoris, of course. We have to start from the beginning. And knowing the female body and how it works is definitely the beginning. As a gay man, my friend very likely gets his knowledge of female sexuality from popular culture. And pop culture defines sex as intercourse and depicts that intercourse as pleasurable to women—and so the myth continues.

Which makes me wonder: What kind of societal shift would have to take place to make female masturbation more acceptable? According to Katz, “A negation of the myths and taboos—and open discussion about the normalcy of [masturbation] and the benefits for all women of any age.” Hence this book. Hence my imploring in the first chapter that we make female masturbation visible. I don’t mean diddling ourselves in public. I mean talking about it and thus normalizing it by doing it and discussing it and telling the solo-sex naysayers that we have no need for their unhealthy and dangerous shaming ways.

As Katz explains, guilt, shame, low sexual self-esteem, not knowing what feels good or how to communicate that to a partner—these all negatively affect women psychologically in such a way as to inhibit their sexual growth and health. And that’s just not acceptable. Women—as much as men—deserve to be happy, healthy, whole sexual people, and masturbation is a big part of that.

Normalizing that idea requires that we include positive depictions of female masturbation in the media we are constantly consuming—which means we need to get to work, because right now encouraging messages are scarce. The same goes for sex education in our schools: Very little—if any—information about masturbation is included in the curriculum, and, Katz says, what is taught is dependent on district policy and subject to the whims of social and religious mores, parent groups, and other outside influences. Too often, that means that nothing is included.

When I asked Katz what she felt should be taught, she suggested simply drawing the Nike swoosh on the chalkboard—you know, the ever-present “Just do it” swoosh.

After I stopped giggling, I realized she’s totally right. She says, “I am not being snarky—but we ALL do it and we all SHOULD do it and I just don’t understand why this remains such a taboo!” Indeed.

Since schools are not going to do the necessary teaching on this front—not for the foreseeable future, anyway—parents are going to have to step up to the plate. So what should parents tell their daughters about masturbation? “That it is natural and normal and fun and the best way to learn about your own body,” Katz says. “It relaxes you and reduces stress and helps you to fall asleep. It is a great way of delaying sexual activity and it feels good. And everyone does it—maybe not all the time and not in public places—but we have ALL done it, and many of us continue to do it even while in healthy and good relationships, because solo masturbation is about just ourselves and we deserve to have the pleasure.”

I love that message. And I hope that every parent will say exactly that to their sons and daughters. That is the only way to move female masturbation into the light. Too many women today don’t masturbate or feel guilty when they do, because, in Katz’s words, “no one teaches young women that it is okay and normal...more than allowed, and rather encouraged.”

That, coupled with all of the taboos out there, is what keeps most women from masturbating. One of the primary taboo-creators and perpetuators is organized religion. Which religion, exactly? “Most if not all,” says Katz. “Religion is a social construction that acts as a form of social control, and it is mostly to the detriment of women.”

Like so many other issues we face as women, the taboo around female masturbation stems from the fact that we have constructed a society that does not value women, or their bodies, or their pleasure. It may not be a popular thing to say. But it’s a true one.

We have to tell the truth. When it comes to kids, we have to tell the truth right from the start. And we have to keep telling it, to ourselves and to one another. Society is not a “them.” We are society. So, if society is the problem—and in this case it is—we are the only ones who can change it.

The good news is that the change is totally in our control, and it’s a very rewarding process. As women, we have to masturbate and we have to talk about masturbating. We have to joke about masturbating—three cheers for Amy Schumer! We have to include it in pop culture. We get to make it normal simply by expressing what comes naturally and making it normal.

There was a time when being gay was considered a mental disorder. There was a time when female sexual arousal was pathologized. Still today, female masturbation—at the very least—carries an “ick” factor. We simply have to wipe that out, one conversation—and one stroke—at a time!

It’s no wonder that society’s take on female masturbation is so negative and backwards. The information we get is unclear at best, downright dangerous at worst, and generally lacking all around.

In my mildly scientific and remarkably informative survey of 164 women, when it came to what they were told about female masturbation, this is how the results broke down: Five said they masturbated before they ever learned anything at all about it. Two said they were told to do it. Twenty-nine said they were told that it was wrong to do it. Four were told to do it in private. Four were told it was healthy. Five said they heard nothing more than jokes about it. Twelve said they don’t remember being told anything at all. Sixteen were told that guys do it, but not girls.

As for how survey takers heard about masturbation, here’s the lowdown: Only two said they learned about it in school. One said it was mentioned during “one of those sex talks.” Five said they overheard others talking about it. Two said they learned from porn. Seven read about it in a book. One saw her mother doing it. Thirty-five said they learned solely through self-discovery. One learned from a Google search.

Survey takers seemed to encounter nearly every possible reaction. Some said they were encouraged. Others said they were shamed for even asking about it. Some were told to wash but never touch themselves. And others were taught about nearly every other element when it comes to sexuality, but never masturbation.

Mother: 18

Books: 16

Peers: 14

Media: 9

Teachers: 7

Church: 3

Grandmother: 3

Aunt (including one case in which the aunt was a child herself ): 2

Cousin: 2

Family: 2

Internet: 2

Adult friend: 1

Brother: 1

Camp counselor: 1

Grandfather: 1

Survey takers’ ages when they were first told about masturbation—those who were told anything at all, that is—also varied greatly, from kids (eight respondents) to pre-teens (twelve respondents) to tweens (ten respondents) to teenagers (five respondents) to adults (two respondents).

Naturally, far too many women were never told a thing about masturbation when they were growing up. An equally disturbing number say they were told it was wrong, or that it was a sin. One survey taker said, “I never even knew about it until I was nineteen years old. That’s when I began watching porn and saw how other girls touched themselves. Didn’t even know what a clit was until I was nineteen.”

And things don’t necessarily get better as we become grown women. One survey taker explained, “When I was an adult, I thought that we weren’t supposed to talk about it [with friends] and I was very embarrassed.”

One quote that particularly made my blood boil was this one: “I think I was around sixteen [when I learned about masturbation]. I heard men making reference to desperate women doing it.”

If you ever wonder about the great sexual divide that exists between men and women, you can rest assured that it is fueled by ignorant statements like this one. Obviously these men are to be pitied. Their own low sexual self-esteem requires them to ridicule female sexuality, which they fear and do not understand. Still, it is no excuse for those comments. If you ever hear anyone—male or female—make such disparaging remarks, take the time to correct them. Feel sad for them, yes. But then educate them. That is the only way that attitudes will change.

The religiously motivated commentary is the some of the most damaging and disgusting. One survey taker wrote,

I was originally told when I was about twelve years old not to touch myself, that it was a mark of the beast/devil if I did...I would go to hell once I passed, but [masturbating] would make me blind while living on the face of the earth. That my soul would be condemned to hell for eternity.

There were a couple of answers that made me giggle and smile. So I had to share them with you, too.

[I learned about masturbation from] my best girlfriend in school. She said it was amazing, and I said, Why masturbate when we could just have sex? So we then proceeded to have sex.

My mother told me that good girls didn’t do “that.” She never explained what “that” was.

All I knew was from a sex ed video I saw in class that was honestly very confusing to me. Particularly because it was accompanied by cartoon pictures of fireworks!

The answer I was most excited to read, although it was truly the only one of its kind, was this one: “An informal informative explanation was given to a group of us girls in my class by an older woman who explained that it felt good and you should do it as often as you felt the urge. By this time I was doing it quite often anyway.”

The comment that broke my heart was from one young woman who said, “My mother told me when I was five, after I had figured out how, that it would give me cancer.”

I can’t recall where I got the information officially. I just recall touching and rubbing myself. Then eventually pushing the limits to using Barbie doll legs to insert into myself.

It felt like empowerment.

I remember hearing very little about the clitoris. Most discussions about masturbation just involved putting things in the vagina...and most of them were jokes.

My mom had me read Where Do We Come From. She also had a vibrator under her bed, which she said was for headaches. I remember it wasn’t very good for headaches when you put it on your head. I got the idea to put it somewhere else. It was awesome. I thought I invented it. I showed this to other little girls I was friends with.

I was sixteen. My older cousin had an enormous collection of vibrators. I used one and haven’t stopped.

I discovered masturbation on my own, probably around age four or five. But—I don’t recall hearing the word or understanding the concept until I was in maybe sixth grade. I don’t recall if I heard it on the playground or via the variety of colorful euphemisms heard on Beavis and Butthead, lol.

I was thirteen, and a neighborhood boy told me what it meant, and that only horny girls do it.

I can’t remember how I found out about masturbation, but I know the information was imparted by my mother without shame. I was probably around twelve years old. Somehow she appropriately encouraged me to explore my body and figure out how to bring myself to orgasm.

As a kid I was raised in a way that meant sex education happened at school. Couldn’t really talk to my parents about it, and the period chat was bad enough! Turns out my parents weren’t sexually active themselves for most of their marriage, which certainly explains a thing or two.

One of my first memories about masturbation was from middle school. I remember boys were very vocal about masturbation and at times that filtered through to how they flirted with me, and my female friends. For instance, I remember more than one boy getting stuck on this question: “How many fingers can you fit?” As I grew up, I found this question very interesting, because often the association with more fingers was more impressive. At the same time, more fingers was tied to the idea that you were experienced. So early, before the boys probably even knew what it meant, they had these faulty ideas of experienced girls being “loose.” Of course as you grow up you (hopefully) learn the politics of loose/tight and how the body works.

It seems only appropriate to end this discussion on solo sex and society with some insight from the woman who I would call the high priestess of female masturbation—Betty Dodson. Betty Dodson, now in her mid-eighties, is the author of the wildly famous bestseller Sex for One and still holds Bodysex workshops in her Manhattan home in order to educate women on the power and pleasure and sanctity of female orgasm.

In an e-mail conversation, I asked Betty why male masturbation is discussed so freely and female masturbation is not. Her answer: “Sexual double standard. The unspoken agreement. Men are entitled to lots of sex because it’s ‘natural.’ But women are to be chaste because it’s more appropriate.” In order for that to truly change, in order for female masturbation to become more “acceptable,” she says we need a shift when it comes to equal rights for women all across the board, from politics to work to pay to sexuality and contraception.

She said that our lack of acceptance of female masturbation strongly affects women psychologically, which is why it has to change. “It keeps women ignorant of our capacity to enjoy sexual pleasure... The natural exploration of masturbation establishes nerve pathways from the clitoris to the brain’s pleasure center.”

She blames shame- and fear-based parental and religious views, as well as negative messaging from peers and society at large, when it comes to why some women don’t masturbate. As for what we should be telling our daughters about masturbation, she told me, “Nothing, unless she asks. Then she needs to know it’s a natural activity that’s positive and healthy.”

But what stuck with me the most about our conversation is just how vital she says masturbation is for all women throughout all the stages of our lives:

“Masturbation is the foundation for all of human sexuality. It’s our first natural sexual activity, the way we discover our genitals and the good feelings they provide us when we touch ourselves.”

1 The female equivalent of blue balls. Special thanks to my sister, Rebecca Block, for helping me coin that.