On women and masturbation

I think all women should own a vibrator. One of the most shameful things society thinks women can do is admit that they are horny, that they sometimes gratify themselves, that they self-pleasure, maybe even a little more than men. It's uncanny, wrong, awful, disturbing, creepy, all the bad adjectives. Because why in the world does a woman want to pleasure herself? I remember scrolling through the streets of Instagram one afternoon, and there was this guy. He was working out, in this sexy way, with the grunting and straining, whimpering. There was this visceral need for me to have him. I couldn't, obviously. But I could pretend I did. I could close my eyes and imagine him underneath me. I could barely finish the thought before my roommate burst through the door. She kept going on about her day and how stressful our uni was, none the wiser. However, I was ashamed of myself, disgusted even. I had almost pleasured myself, and that was such a disgusting thing to do. I mean, I'm a lady. We don't do that, right? I have no idea where the shame and guilt came from. I am a person, a human being with a body that had needs and functions, and because of that, I have these feelings and these needs I sometimes want to satisfy. That's all there is to it. There's no Bible verse saying I shouldn't "DJ," no criminal reason either. You know what really stumps me? Men. Men don't seem to have those same limitations. When a man goons, or rubs one out, or one of the many names they have for it, it's normal. I mean, there are extremes to it, like there are extremes to everything, but it seems almost expected that a man should relieve himself. Weird, even, when he doesn't. We can talk about men's pleasure without making it controversial. We joke about their erections. We make jokes about how often they masturbate. We hear about their sexual exploits and, depending on the situation, might even laugh about it. But women are expected to be desirable without being desiring. It's soo ridiculous to me. I believe the first step to unlearning these this things is to stop fearing them. And by fear, I also mean discomfort. Let's have conversations about our bodies. Women's anatomy shouldn't be so scary and mysterious. We should be allowed to talk about pleasure and desire without it feeling controversial, dirty or like we're revealing some terrible secret. Because the truth is, sometimes women are horny. Sometimes we want to have sex, sometimes we want to touch ourselves, and sometimes we want neither of these things. It's not shocking. Maybe if we talked about these things more, they wouldn't feel so shameful. Maybe we would stop treating female pleasure like some forbidden knowledge that women aren't supposed to possess. Right? All this to say, as a woman, you really need to have a vibe.

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