Hot on the heels of the recent viral success of the How to Make Me Come Tumblr, a new website is cashing in on the long-awaited breakdown of our societal taboos around discussions of female sexual pleasure. OMGYes aims to educate its users (who might be owners of vulvas and vaginas themselves, or have partners who are, or both) to create better, more enjoyable orgasms. It uses sexual pleasure research to underpin the techniques, which focus on 12 key methods, including “edging”, “rhythm”, “multiples” and “staging”.

The website recently garnered attention when Emma Watson announced she was a paid-up subscriber. But what makes OMGYes unique is its explicit, educational content, which includes videos of diverse volunteers demonstrating different methods on themselves, as well as a touch-screen tutorial where users can practice and improve their own technique. Given the number of videos online that portray female masturbation as a turn-on for the straight male gaze, there is something fantastically refreshing and really quite arresting about seeing the same content repurposed for women’s own empowerment and pleasure.

The videos are down-to-earth and straightforward – demonstrations rather than screaming orgasms, which seems a bit odd at first. But you soon realise that this only feels strange because we are so unused to seeing women talking frankly and naturally about their desires and bodies, instead of performing a stereotypical, panting response to massage a male ego. As Lydia Daniller, co-founder of OMGYes, points out: “It’s pretty clear to anyone who goes to the site that it’s a poor substitute for porn if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s much more like sitting and talking with close friends.”

Thanks to online pornography and Hollywood stereotypes, many people still believe that every woman will have a satisfying orgasm from (often fairly brief) sexual intercourse, every time. In reality, according to Cosmopolitan’s recent Female Orgasm Survey, only 57% of women usually orgasm from penetrative sex with a partner, compared with 95% of men. For many, foreplay and clitoral stimulation are essential. This is a problem if you or your partner don’t know where (or what) the clitoris is – a situation that is more common than you might think.

The website uses sexual pleasure research to underpin the techniques, which focus on 12 key methods. Photograph: omgyes.com

The idea for OMGYes was sparked by a conversation among friends, “sharing some pretty explicit details about the ways we like to be touched,” and the realisation that “it was really helpful hearing other people’s insights about pleasure,” says Daniller. When she put out a call for women to participate in the videos, she says: “The response was overwhelming. Which just goes to show how ready women are for this topic to be out in the open.” The women in the videos are not actors, but “real people inspired to share their personal experiences” and to “set the record straight about how people actually experience pleasure”.

What is most exciting about the website is that it is indicative of a move towards a more frank and open discussion of female sexuality, in a way that has previously been stigmatised. We have discussed, joked about, portrayed on film and openly accepted male sexual urges for decades, there has long been a double standard preventing similar openness about women’s orgasms. (There have even been numerous reports indicating that films showing women enjoying sex receive higher age ratings, and that the ratings system sometimes considers female orgasms more worthy of censorship than rape scenes.)

The refreshing move towards a more down-to-earth discussion of such matters is happening more widely, too – perhaps fuelled in part by the frankness of social media, where activists have battled for the right to portray and discuss other taboo topics, such as menstruation, without censorship. Meanwhile, even mainstream media outlets are catching on: last year, Teen Vogue ran an article on its website with masturbation advice from young women.

Not all of what OMGYes presents is revolutionary: the importance of feedback (which the site describes as “signalling”) is hardly a new concept in increasing sexual pleasure. My one bugbear was that the site, which does a brilliant job of breaking down stereotypes and stigma around masturbation and genitalia, more than once uses the word vagina when what it really means is vulva or labia. When you’re touching the external parts of the genitals, it’s your vulva – not your vagina, which is internal. It’s also not cheap, at $29 (£20), which will price some out of the experience, and the site is age restricted to 18s and over – which seems a shame, given that young people are bombarded with online pornography and are, arguably, some of those most in need of frank, helpful information about taking control of their own sexual pleasure.

Our societal attitudes towards sexuality have, thankfully, shifted enormously since the days when graham crackers were invented with the deliberate aim of being so bland that they would help to curb the excitement that leads to masturbation. But I look forward to the day when the idea that we need a website to “demystify” female pleasure will seem as strange and outdated as the old myth about masturbation leading to blindness. And hopefully OMGYes, as well as other conversation changers like it, will help to herald an age of openness that will eventually render such technology unnecessary – in the same way that a similar site about male pleasure would seem largely redundant.