“How often do you guys masturbate?” was one of the first questions to come up. One of my female friends directed the question at the two males in the group. They answered immediately and unembarrassed, discussing it with each other and bonding over how similar their answers were. One of them then threw the question back at the females in the room.
The four other girls in the room all said the same thing: “I don’t."
Later on, one of the girls admitted that she lied. Despite all the intimate details of our lives we had shared already, and despite how easy it was for the guys to discuss masturbation, female masturbation seemed to be in a completely different category, one filled with a deep sense of humiliation.
This wasn't the first time I’d seen something like this. My guy friends in high school would often openly discuss porn and masturbation.I knew guys who would watch porn together. It has always been the assumption that almost all males masturbate, and all the guys I know have been completely unashamed in acknowledging it. And yet, during these conversations, the females around would never contribute. I dated a guy in high school who, when he and his male friends started discussing masturbation, covered my ears as if it wasn't something I was fit to hear. And if masturbating ever came up in “Never Have I Ever," none of the girls would put down a finger, even though we later discovered that we all should have if we were playing honestly.
So why weren't we being honest? Why is masturbation so acceptable in our society when it comes to men, but so tabboo when it comes to women?
While there is no proven answer to these questions, I think that it ties back to the traditional, sexist beliefs that women are simply objects for male pleasure and reproduction. It ties back to the traditional ideas that women are supposed to be pure and proper beings with no sense of sexuality until a man wants them.
Over the past few decades, women have fought against these stereotypes in numerous ways. Through fighting for equality in the workforce, through being more open about their sexuality, and through the recent anti-slut shaming campaigns, we see women working to prove that they are more than just baby-makers, and that they are allowed to take control of their own sexuality and actually have sex for pleasure. But the taboo of female masturbation is one of the few gender-based double standards that feminists have yet to acknowledge.
At first, I didn't think that this double standard was really worth putting effort into changing. It was another annoying example of gender inequality, sure. But in comparison to other gender issues, this one seemed relatively harmless. It was upon reading a rather disturbing line from E.L. James’ best selling series, Fifty Shades of Grey, that I began to take the issue more seriously.
It had been explicitly stated a few times throughout the Fifty Shades series that our protagonist, Ana Steele, had never masturbated. At one point in Fifty Shades Darker, Ana’s romantic interest, Christian Grey, claims that Ana’s body is his. In response to this, Ana thinks, “Yes, my body is his…he knows it better than I do.”
While I doubt that most people really think that a man who knows their body automatically has possession of it, I realized that a lot of women honestly don’t know their bodies as well as the men they have been with do (for the purpose of this article, I am only going to be talking about sex between men and women, although it could be applied to anyone of any gender). It made me realize that there is a danger in a society telling an entire gender that they should feel ashamed of exploring and understanding their own body and taking control of their own sexual pleasure.
Women who don’t masturbate because they know society doesn't find it acceptable, or because they didn't know that they even could, are left completely dependent on men for any physical pleasure. If they experience any sexual desire, they are incapable of satisfying it on their own in the same way that so many men do. This idea that women should only partake in sexual activity with men, and should be ashamed if they explore their sexuality on their own, furthers the belief that women are only sexual objects for men to enjoy, and their own pleasure is unimportant. Women have the right to discover their anatomy instead of leaving it up to a man to discover it for them.
I have a number of female friends who say they've tried masturbating before but didn't feel anything. While some people really won’t find any pleasure in masturbating, I think that the majority of women who claim it doesn’t feel good simply haven’t discovered what works for them yet. Our bodies are different and we won’t all enjoy the same thing. There are many different ways for females to find sexual pleasure, and it can take some exploring to figure it out. Planned Parenthood gives a great description of the different ways females masturbate and experience sexual pleasure by knowing their anatomy. It also highlights on the tools they can use, from their hands to various sex toys.
Since society has made female masturbation a virtually off-limits topic of discussion, we are reinforcing the idea that women should be ashamed of their sexuality. We are reinforcing the idea that men are more entitled to sexual pleasure than women.
I think it is about time we start trying to break down the taboo of female masturbation and start working towards ending this double standard, as we have so many others. Regardless of our gender, we are all equally entitled to be sexually independent, take control of our own body, and to respond to our own sexual desires. And absolutely nothing should be able to convince us we are wrong for doing so.
Sarah Cummings is sophomore creative writing major from New York. She has an obsession with all things cats, an addiction to her Netflix account, a love for Disney Channel Original Movies, and a bad habit of thinking up stories much more often than she writes them down. You can find sarah on Facebook.
Image: Corbis