1. Slow Learner
Posted May 25, 2008 at 11:44 am | Permalink | Edit

They don’t experience orgasms, and don’t know how to get there, and are scared of reaching one.

*puts up hand*

Not because I was afraid of getting addicted, though. I simply had no idea how to proceed: for whatever reason, I didn’t figure masturbation out as a teen (possibly because I never figure anything out without research and analysis, and written instructions just don’t tend to be available to bookish teenage girls with limited net access and a thing about Rules). In the last few years, I discovered the internet, and some instructive websites… but nothing really did it for me, and, now convinced that I was somehow dumb for not mastering these things on my own, I didn’t have the guts to really experiment.

I didn’t know what arousal *was* or how to process it. A patient man came along and enlightened me on many such things, and tried (very hard) to teach me to take care of myself, but no luck. I bought a vibrator, and still no luck. I had no idea what I was supposed to be feeling like, or how long I should persist, or how to build up tension. I think perhaps I mistook the initial plateau for ‘damn, that didn’t work’.

It was a case of not being able to orgasm until I’d had one. Eventually, by a lucky combination of emotional intensity and perfect alignment, one took me by surprise, and henceforth I have been able to repeat the process with the aid of batteries. It’s still bloody difficult a lot of the time, though.

Until I knew there was a payoff at the end of the effort, and exactly what it amounted to, I couldn’t be bothered investing time and energy into an attempt which would probably fail anyway.

also- FANTASTIC blog. If i’d found this earlier in my life… I probably wouldn’t have figured out how to masturbate, but any number of other things might’ve gone over a lot more smoothly.

2. Scribe Called Steff
Posted August 22, 2008 at 10:28 am | Permalink | Edit

SLOW LEARNER — Thanks so much. Yeah, in a male-centred world where everything’s about penises, a lot of women just never realized it had to be about them and their organs, too. Hopefully the kids today are learning what generations before ‘em missed out on.

Thanks you. :)

As for getting women to masturbate, I don’t know. I guess blogging is a good start, as is talking about it openly, but really we need some kind of outreach service. If only we could travel the world promoting masturbation!

Anyways, I don’t masturbate. Purely because it does nothing for me. This is more than likely down to the self-loathing I have after a crappy childhood. After reading some of what you have said, I am trying to change the way I think about myself, slowly but surely.

Keep it up, love your work.

I finally started doing it in college when I was wondering what an orgasm felt like, but it was still my secret shame. Even when a guy asked me to do it with him, for him, I refused, because it just seemed so… I dunno. It still made me feel guilty to enjoy myself, and even moreso if someone was witness to my weakness. Ya know?

It was actually only recently that I was able to admit that I masturbate to my husband. I mean, he knew I did it, and I knew he knew, but it was something that I liked to ignore in the hopes that he wouldn’t give it much thought. The first time I did it in front of him, I was self-conscious, but he did love it so much, and after I got over myself, so did I.

But you know, last night was the first night I used my favorite vibe on myself with him there. I can have anal sex with him, I can talk dirty to him, I can shop around for another girl for us, but I just can’t let him see me [whispering] mas-tur-bating. But oh, the joy of having him beside me, doing pleasurable things to me while I was doing pleasurable things to myself.

Really, those 40% should be doing it, with their partners or without. I’d like to think that writing about it frankly, as you’re doing, and continuing to hammer home that It’s OK to Be a Sexual Person is the best thing to be done. I, personally, am elated to have recently found all these intelligent sex blogs that aren’t all about prurience, but about the human sexual experience.

I dunno how down with a masturbation party I’d be. I’d find it odd, but I could sure see the allure for others.

I’ll have to tell the strange story of walking in on my bro and his buddies when they were 15 and I was 13, sometime. Whew.

I sure as hell HOPE you’re joking. “If we LET women masturbate…”

Gee. Maybe if your WIFE was “in touch with herself,” she’d be interested in having sex with you more than four times a month.

Just a thought.

You’re sexually starved ‘cos she doesn’t what she likes — and because you might not know how to do what needs to be done.

But don’t give me any bullshit about LETTING a woman do a goddamned thing.

I *really* hope you’re joking. Because if not, then you’re just another sexist prick that makes the stereotype of opressive orthodox religions far too sadly valid.

Madam — I have one ex lover I think about often, wondering where he is, wishing I didn’t handle it the way I did. Que sera sera. It’s amazing the footprints we leave when we walk out of a life.

Autumn — I can understand your line of thinking, actually, and I respect that. But perhaps what you need to do is change your mindset — it’s not the act itself that is the last vestibule of yours, but rather, the environment and mood you set in which to do it. And if you choose to share it with a man — and I guarantee you, the odds of it improving your sexual experiences with him are pretty damned high — you can control the experience so that it’s not much like the environment or setting you’d use for a solo/solitary experience.

Perhaps if you establish distinctions, you’ll better be able to let go of the possessiveness of the experience?

I do believe that most men realize they’re being trusted with something if a woman masturbates in front of them, so I think they understand that intimacy and that trust. Most do, anyhow. I believe it’s why so many of them get so aroused at the notion.