It doesn't question why male masturbation has been normalised in the discourse on sexuality across the world and even in a largely conservative Indian society, and female masturbation is a taboo.

As soon as I click on the now viral video titled 'Girls openly talk about Masturbation || Delhi Edition ||", YouTube's sincere algorithm suggests that I should also watch 'Which animal has the largest P*****' and 'Girl pees in public: Shocking reactions?'. I choose to ignore YouTube's thoughtfulness and put such enlightenment on hold to proceed with the video at hand. It had been slathered all over Facebook and Twitter over the past week. Several websites seem to have carried it, applauding the makers of the video for doing a great service to womanhood and sexual liberation. It couldn't just be a nauseating, exploitative click-bait video again, right?

Only, this time YouTube's algorithm was spot-on.

This is what the video does. It has a man with a microphone who seems to have caught hold of six young girls in Delhi. He then goes on to ask the girls if they masturbate, how frequently they masturbate, what they do to excite themselves, what it felt like to masturbate for the first time and if they have been caught red-handed ever.

These six girls, to their credit, answer the questions pretty straightforwardly, only punctuated with the customary giggle that accompanies any conversation about sex at that age.

The makers of the video, an organisation called called Nisheeth TV, offer no comment on their behalf in the video itself. In the description section, that most YouTube users ignore, there's a line saying that the makers believe that women have a right talk about sex and sexuality freely.

It's not difficult to surmise how the video came around: a bunch of people woke up to the click-bait potential of a video which has 'masturbation' and 'girls' in the title, rounded up six girls who were willing to talk about masturbation, asked them personal questions about their sexual activities, uploaded the video on YouTube and sat back celebrating as it reached nearly 2 lakh views.

They neither felt the need to contextualize it with a comment on how women in India are predominantly denied freedom of even talking about their sexuality, how a staggering number of women don't even know that they can pleasure themselves and a huge number nurses one myth too many about masturbation.

Firstpost's Lakshmi Chaudhry wrote in a column on Open magazine, "For all the rah-rah rhetoric about our sexuality in these enlightened times, auto-eroticism remains a males-only domain. Sex columns that dole out advice on everything from threesomes to anal sex are inundated with queries about male masturbation with nary a word on the female kind. The most frank discussions of the female orgasm invariably assume the presence of a partner."

In fact, it's not something typical to India. Female masturbation doesn't figure even in the most progressive conversation about female sexuality across the world - it's as if it doesn't exist!

Writing for The Telegraph, Rebecca Holman quite rightly sums up the general perception about female masturbation - that it's a 'dirty little secret'. "And then I remembered the one dirty little secret we’re all harbouring. The one thing we can’t talk about, even amongst our closest female friends. Female masturbation," she writes in a column titled, "Girls everywhere masturbate. Why can't we talk about it?"

The video makers claim to have wandered around 'Delhi streets' asking girls about masturbation. Strangely there's not a single girl in the video who seems squeamish about talking about her sexual activities to an unknown man with a camera. Then again, the video has the man asking the same questions to the same six girls over and over again.The ones who balked probably never made the cut. Even if the video is not a spontaneous one, one has to applaud the girls who are talking to the interviewer with great nonchalance.

However, what the video in its entirety does is more problematic than liberating. The video doesn't have an anchor explaining the intention of the video. The video has no one talking about the the place of female desire in a dominantly patriarchal society. It doesn't question why male masturbation has been normalised in the discourse on sexuality across the world and even in a largely conservative Indian society, and female masturbation is a taboo. It just exposes six young girls to a largely exploitative, misogynistic and abusive virtual society, making them seem like aberrations to the norm, rather than gutsy young women who are comfortable with their sexuality.

Emphasising the fact that masturbation is not as much out of the normal, as a conversation around it, Emily Shire wrote in Daily Beast, "In 2002, Pennsylvania State University found women “reported more communication overall than did males on all topics, except for masturbation”. Specifically, these other topics that women felt more comfortable discussing included: STIs, contraception, abstinence, sexual feelings, menstruation, and rape. None of these are exactly the delicate talking points for a pearl clutchers’ tea party."

Here are a few questions that a video that really wants to bust myths around female desire could have asked: Why do you think female masturbation is such a taboo? Have you tried talking about it with friends? Have you been shut up by peers for trying to talk about it? Have you read about it in women's magazines? Have you ever felt guilty or ashamed about masturbating? Did you ever have the notion that masturbation is only for men?

But obviously, these questions aren't half as voyeur-friendly as a young girl recollecting how it really felt like masturbating for the first time. What the video really seems to say is "Look we found these six girls who admit to masturbating. Want to know how they do it?"

"I think it's a really mysterious thing," says a young woman in Michele Meek's 2008 video Conversations with Women: Masturbation. "I think also, it is really ignored. How often do you hear any reference to women masturbating?" asks her friend in this video, an intelligent, informed an empathetic attempt at talking about female desires and social perceptions around it.

The women being interviewed about their own sexual experiences respond with equal amounts of confidence and embarrassment and in the process also talk about taboos, fears, apprehensions. They hold up a picture of an average woman in a society where rules are made by men - struggling to understand her desires and deal with how the society chooses to talk about it. It's real and effective. But let's face it: there's nothing 'entertaining' about it. In seven years (it was uploaded in 2008), the video has garnered 2 lakh views. While the Indian one has already gotten over a lakh views in a few days.

Here's one possible difference: Meek's video is slotted under 'Education'. Nisheeth TV's video features in the 'Entertainment' category on YouTube.