On the subway recently, while semi-purposefully eavesdropping, I overheard a woman telling her friend that she no longer needed her vibrator because she had a new boyfriend. Her friend laughed in agreement. I attempted to not make a judgmental face, lest I blow my cover. Not once did this woman mention that her new boyfriend was a rock star in the bedroom or that he was giving her the best orgasms of her life. She simply correlated the having of a boyfriend to the idea that she no longer needed to masturbate.

This sentiment wasn’t novel; I had heard this exact sentence multiple times from various women throughout the past decade of my life, and the idea has always struck me as odd and archaic. A satisfying sex life with a partner is awesome and a base level of what women deserve in relationships. However, a relationship is not a substitute for masturbation. This is not an either-or situation.

Women can have both. I’m unsure why so many women—and let’s be real, cisgender women in relationships with men— believe they can only be giving themselves pleasure when no man is there to do it for them. Men certainly don’t make declarative statements like this when they enter into relationships. Masturbating shouldn’t be viewed as a consolation prize to a partner. Women deserve to have healthy and satisfying sex lives no matter their relationship status.  

By sheer luck, I’ve had the pleasure of spending my life surrounded by women who own their sexuality and eagerly share the most intimate details of their sex lives. In high school my best friends and created a holiday dinner party where we got dolled up, cooked our best homemade appetizers, snuck in a bottle of wine, and gifted each other the latest and greatest vibrators that our high school budgets could afford, which is to say no one received a Rabbit. I was lucky to have a group of friends who never associated masturbation with sex with a partner.

She simply correlated the having of a boyfriend to the idea that she no longer needed to masturbate.
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It wasn’t until college I realized this wasn’t the norm. During this time I had multiple women confide in me that they’d never masturbated, and for years I didn’t believe them. However, it’s been reported nearly 1 and 7 women have never masturbated in their lifetime, while 95% of men have reported masturbating. These uneven statistics give a clear picture of how women are made to feel about their sexuality.

It shouldn’t be surprising, seeing as we live in a culture that cultivates the idea that vaginas are inherently gross.  Most notably, we’ve been sold Summer Eve’s “washes” and douches, which have explicitly advertised the notion you can “fix” this gross/dirty vagina crisis. These products have been successfully mainstreamed despite the evidence proving douching can be harmful. The fear they are selling is working. In 2015, a study in Great Britain found that the majority of women have anxiety surrounding their partner’s perceived reaction to their body, and the fear surrounding their own bodies led to a discrepancy in overall sexual enjoyment.

Our lack of knowledge around female anatomy and sexual pleasure begins in the classroom. Only 13 states require sex education to be medically accurate, leaving the rest of country to teach whatever is deemed best practice at their school. Pleasure, consent, and LGBTQ topics are often lacking in these curriculums. In the school of pop culture we have celebrities such as DJ Khaled saying he wouldn’t give oral sex, despite believing a woman should be giving it.

Many of us grown up believing that keeping men sexually satisfied is our priority. Grandmothers, aunts, and older sisters have warned us that sexually dissatisfied men will wander. Examining this combination of societal constructs and constraints, it’s not surprising women don’t feel as comfortable seeking pleasure for themselves. Society wants women to fear themselves; it’s more profitable and ensures the patriarchy remains intact.

Right now, sex is still largely seen as for cisgender men. We center penetrative, heterosexual sex when we talk about and teach sex. To children, sex is defined as when a penis enters a vagina, as a means of reproduction, and we define the lack of having that experience as “virginity,” regardless of any other sexual activity. And there are still people who believe the clitoral orgasm is a lie, or that women don’t need or want sexual pleasure the same as men.

It shouldn’t be surprising, seeing as we live in a culture that cultivates the idea that vaginas are inherently gross.
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The fact is, masturbation is healthy and natural for everyone. It has a slew of positive side effects. It’s been proven to relieve stress, help you sleep better, boost your mood and relieve muscle tension. It can literally make you a healthier, happier person. But even if it didn’t, the act of masturbating— of understanding one’s sexual organs and being able to give oneself pleasure— is important on its own. The women’s movement wants equal pay, equal job opportunities, and access to safe health care.

We often discuss equality in relation to things we can see and count, how much women make per dollar compared to men, the percentage of women who hold congressional and senate seats, the number of female CEO’s, etc. While it’s more difficult to quantify female sexual pleasure, it doesn’t make it less important in the overall picture of equality. Women figuring out what they want sexually is just one of the ways for them to figure out what they want everywhere else in their life. By equalizing pleasure, women are prioritizing themselves.  

I hope that woman on the subway learns that having a boyfriend doesn’t mean she needs to stop masturbating. Masturbation is a way to helps us equalize pleasure and allow women to focus on their wants and needs, outside of a relationship. Each aspect of our lives that we take ownership of and view as having value brings us one step closer to general equalization across all platforms. By leaving one out we will continue to have inequality, all the pieces matter.  No matter what, women deserve healthy and satisfying sexual lives. This does not have to include a partner.

Maybe you were just calling to let me know I accidentally wore the shoes from the spa back to my room. If so, I apologize, and the rest of this doesn’t apply to you.

In the event that you somehow caught a glimpse of me and were trying to save me from embarrassment, I’m not embarrassed.

I know all the reasons you think I’m embarrassed.

I’m supposed to be embarrassed because I’ve done something dangerous.

A woman’s naked body is deemed a danger. If someone finds it attractive, people fear it could be violated. And they fear that if that happened, that would be the body’s fault. As if striking up a conversation and deciding if you’d both like to have sex were not a viable option.

People fear that if someone were to find it unattractive, displaying it would be wrong, because a woman showing her body is supposed to be just so. As if my private time were a strip show.

I’m supposed to be embarrassed because being sexy is being bad.

I’m supposed to be embarrassed because I’m aware that my genitals respond to pressure, though I’m allowed to say my tongue responds to food and my throat responds to water.

People are afraid of a woman in touch with her body because a woman in touch with her body is in touch with her needs, and a woman in touch with her needs doesn’t put up with people who act like they don’t matter. Which means she doesn’t put up with the world.

I’m not just talking about masturbation anymore.

The only thing scarier than a woman in touch with her needs is a man in touch with a woman’s needs. He’s disturbing the whole order of things. He’s ceding the throne — and betraying the other men it seats, the ones who thought he had their back.

A friend of mine once told me he’d never tell his friends he’d gone down on women, because that would make him seem submissive.

In the same conversation, he asked if I liked when a guy came on my body. When I said “meh,” he actually seemed offended.

People are offended by a woman who feels her own pleasure without offering it to someone else, who enjoys her own body rather than just enjoying it vicariously through someone else. Even if it’s as innocent as leaning into the jets of a private hot tub.

I was 5 when I first masturbated in a hot tub. I didn’t knew what masturbation was; I told my friends the jets massaged your private parts. I didn’t know what an orgasm was; I told my friends it starts tickling too much and then you stop.

Was that 5-year-old dirty? Was she tempting? Was she slutty?

Because I’m no different from her now.

Like her, I’m just experiencing my body, not as a sight but as a source of sensation.

When you move from sight to sensation, hierarchies disappear. A woman can enjoy being inside her body no matter how “beautiful” or “ugly” it is, and that’s scary. If women aren’t deemed dangerous for being beautiful, they’re deemed dangerous for being “ugly” and feeling good anyway.

A naked man is not dangerous unless a woman’s looking at him. In fact, the only thing more embarrassing than a naked woman is a woman’s glance at a naked man. A man, being looked at, cedes his throne.

By entering this jacuzzi, I’m climbing onto that throne without permission. I’m refusing to deny the reality that I have a body. I’m refusing to ignore my needs or feelings. I’m proclaiming that the tingles in my spine and the heat between my legs deserve attention with no more and no less attention than a man’s.

I realize that phone call was probably about my shoes or something else irrelevant to this. But the momentary panic it induced is relevant. Because I feel it — that fear of being caught inside my body.

I know I’m not supposed to be in here. I’m supposed to be on the outside looking in, looking with the same eyes as whoever might’ve spotted me.

And for a second, when that phone rang, I thought the jig was up. I thought, “shit, now they know I know. They know I know I’m a person. They know I know they’ve been lying.”

And for that second, I was embarrassed.

But then I remembered that 5-year-old, and the tickling jets. She was innocent, and so am I.