Illustration by Anna Suldit

The whole month of May is International Masturbation Month. Oh yes. Someone, at some point, decided that we need an entire month to celebrate sexual self-love. I am not sure what people do the other 11 months of the year, but I definitely believe that this sexual practice deserves some more attention. So to celebrate this pleasurable activity and the month devoted to it, I decided it’s time to do some research and have a little talk about it.

The dictionary defines masturbation as “the stimulation of one’s genitals for sexual pleasure”. There are, however, many ways how this stimulation can be archived. We have the help of visual or audio material, we can use our hands, feet, pillows, toys (to name only a few). But the general mechanism remains: The person who gives is also the person who receives. Solo sex is safe, free, practical and uncomplicated. It is sex with a person, who wants to have sex when you want to have sex. It is sex with someone who has time whenever you have time. Someone, who knows exactly how and where to touch you. No wonder masturbation is one of the most common sexual activities. It is usually also the very first sexual activity we engage in. But masturbation somehow still comes with certain stigmas: Solo sex just doesn’t get the same treatment partner sex does. But why do we enjoy talking about sex with someone else more than talking about sex with ourselves?

In a strange way, masturbation challenges and deconstructs our ideas and concepts about sexuality. In a monogamous relationship, masturbation could be called cheating, because it’s sex with someone else than your partner. Masturbation is queer, because it’s sex with someone who has the same gender as you. It is incestuous, since it happens with someone to whom you are blood related to, someone in your family. Masturbation before you turn 18 is sex with a minor. But above all, sex with yourself simply doesn’t fit our sense of performance mentality. We like to talk and brag about our sexual adventures and how many people we have slept with. But our social capital doesn’t benefit from tales of masturbation. On the contrary: One does it (at least that’s the stereotype) when you simply couldn’t get anyone else. Masturbation is the sex of lonely losers. The aspect of quantity is especially crucial in this discourse. When you tell someone, that you had sex with your partner five times in one day, or maybe had sex for several hours, most people look impressed. However, if you tell someone you already masturbated five times today, or masturbated for several hours, we would likely ask: What is wrong with you? Is that healthy?

Health plays a major role in the history of masturbation. For a long time, masturbation was just something people did, without making too much fuzz about it. It was a part of human sexuality, after all. But in the 18th century, things got seriously weird. In 1712, an anonymous pamphlet was published in London with the title: Onania; or, The Heinous Sin of Self Pollution. This booklet described masturbation as a dangerous sin that would make you sick and eventually kill you. The word ‘onanism’ is actually derived from the biblical person ‘Onan’ in the book of genesis, who decided to not cum inside his dead brother’s wife — as he should have, but instead pulled out and spilled his semen all over the floor. As a consequence, God killed him. (I am just realizing that a variation of this could easily be a storyline from Game of Thrones). Linked to this biblical story, the pamphlet became a huge success and spread like wildfire throughout Europe. Soon people were convinced that masturbation was evil, an act of self-harm and lead to various diseases and mental illness. By the end of the 18th century, it had become common to tie the hands of boys to the bed during the night or to stuff their hands in mittens. Other pediatricians recommended to attach small bells to the child’s hands, to warn the parents of any unwanted hand movements. Luckily today we have realized that there are lots of health benefits to masturbating. Studies show it can help prevent cervical infections, as well as reducing the risk of prostate cancer, stress and depression.

To the left: 16-year old masturbator. To the right: 21-year old Non-masturbator. In: Emery C. Abbey, The Sexual System and Ist Derangements, Buffalo 1875

But it wasn’t only a question about health. 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau added a whole new moral and ethical layer to solo-sex. He claimed that masturbation was a form of mental rape, as one often is visually fantasizing the act of having sex with a person, who might not have consented to serve as your object of desire. In a sexual fantasy any person is helplessly exposed to all the things we want to do to them. Maybe a reason why we tend to keep our masturbatory practices to ourselves is because, in our minds, we also imagine those sexual desires that in reality seem socially unacceptable or even morally reprehensible? After all a sexual fantasy cannot only cause intense feelings of lust, but also feelings of shame.

In his book Solitary Sex: A Cultural Hisory of Masturbation (2003), the author Thomas Laqueur concludes that there are three main reasons why modern-day masturbation is experienced as problematic. One, there is no real object of desire. Instead, our imagination can run wild. Anything is possible in a sexual fantasy. Second, it is boundless. To masturbate you only need yourself, every person has access to it at all times. There is a never-ending supply and the potential of limitless consumption. Third, masturbation is generally private, far away from the control of anyone else.

The loss of sexual control played an especially large role when it comes to female masturbation. By mid-19th century, more and more medical texts specified the clitoris as a center for female sexual pleasure. But why oh why is the clitoris located outside of the vagina, where women* can so easily access it? Why is the clitoris not hidden somewhere deep inside, so that it only can be stimulated by (male) penetration? The epiphany that women* actually could experience sexual pleasure without men, without penises and without penetration, posed a real threat to male sexual dominance. For a very long time (and actually still many places in this world today) women* weren’t supposed to experience sexual pleasure unless it’s for men to watch and enjoy. Even today many women* learn to perform sexiness long before they actually experience any sexual pleasure for themselves. By the way, additionally to the gender pay gap, we also have a gender orgasm gap. Statistically, men simply have more orgasms than women*, especially when it comes to heterosexual sexual encounters. So in a world that still puts male heterosexual pleasure in the center of its attention, masturbation can thus be a feminist act, an act of rebellion. Self-love is political and radical, because it means taking control of your own body, your own sexuality; it can be very liberating not to depend on others to experience sexual pleasure. Masturbation is a form of feminist self-care. As Audre Lorde writes: “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

I do need to add that I believe that feminist self-care is about figuring out what is good for you and your body. It means including the entire spectrum of women’s* ways of masturbating and respecting women’s* choices around masturbation. If you prefer a glass of wine and a good TV-show over a date with your vibrator: go for it. It is your choice. I am not trying to say that every woman* needs to masturbate (sexuality obviously is way more complex than that) but I believe it is a feminist issue to foster healthy attitudes towards masturbation and finding ways how women* can safely explore their sexuality in a world that mainly focuses on male pleasure.

In Broad City (oh, this TV-show is so brilliant and funny and queer and empowering), there is a scene where Ilana Glazer prepares her masturbation session: The music is on, she lights the candles, puts on her earrings and her lipstick, she rolls out her yoga mat on the floor, wears sexy underwear and arranges a mirror, so she can watch herself. She has the porn picked out, the vibrator ready. She is ready. Maybe we should try to approach solo sex the same way we’d approach sex with a partner. Maybe we too need a playlist, lipstick and candles. After all, sex with yourself might be the longest, most consistently satisfying sexual relationship of your life.

Oh and also, its international masturbation month. Let’s celebrate.