So what if the singer simulates masturbation in her new video, You Da One? The boys in pop have been doing this for years

It's not often that Twitter really causes me to despair, but on Monday, a woman I usually consider an intelligent, open-minded, articulate feminist, did just that with this demand: "Rihanna: please take your hand off your vagina, we can all see you, you utter, utter disgrace to womankind."

I, like millions of finger-twitching teenagers across the world, have just watched Rihanna's video for You Da One. And, while I certainly wouldn't recommend vigorous masturbation while wearing leather dungarees (one word: thrush) I am struggling to find the source of this tweeter's horror.

Sadly, she's far from alone. The Vice website's Jamie Taete introduced the same video with the statistical observation that Rihanna spends, "11% of the above video with her hand on her vag (seriously, I timed it. Gross.)"

Really? Gross? OK, I find fishnet tights about as sexy as industrial beard nets, but gross? Because she occasionally has her hands near her 'nads? Not in her vagina, you understand. Just in front of it.

As a chubby, long-haired child of the 90s, I can well remember watching Bobby Brown, Vanilla Ice, Michael Jackson, even Boyzone honking their trunks like a fog horn. Marky Mark founded an entire career on it. Clasping your hands about your nethers was just one of the things, like rolling up your jeans or wearing bomber jackets, that was acceptable in the 90s.

Which isn't to stay crotch-caressing stopped dead in 1999. Justin Timberlake, Chris Brown, Usher, Ne-Yo, even Justin Bieber, have all been known to "do a Michael" and throw their hands down under.

So, over a decade later, are we really disgusted that women are as capable of locating their urinal tract as men? Are people such as yumyum533 and toocaly leaving posts like "What's with her grabbing her crotch … ewww" and "Where is the part she don't touch her vagina?" under the video for You Da One purely because Rihanna has ovaries? Does being female, in itself, render crotch-fondling inappropriate? Does the fact that Rihanna spends 11% of the video with her hands within spitting distance of her genitals really make her a "terrible role model"?

It seems asinine to argue a hinted display of female masturbation is more damaging than, say, a mimed blow job (Katy Perry) a faux lap-dance (Nicki Minaj) a street orgy (Kylie) or a little light anal sex (Pussycat Dolls). Last time I checked, the only damaging side-effect to a bit of digital relaxation was the need to wash your hands.

Not that I was always so relaxed about manual relief. Despite occasional hints from women such as Madonna or the Divinyls that it was OK to touch yourself, the one girl who ever admitted to masturbating with the shower head at my school was ostracised from the rest of her class for two years. So imbued were we with a sense of shame, horror and disgust at onanism that, although I'm sure we were all rolling around like piston engines in the comfort of our own homes, to admit it to others was like shouting from the dinner queue that you ate dogshit.

It depresses me that while the mimicking of various sexual acts has been normalised in the world of music videos, the only truly safe, healthy and easy way for women to explore their sexuality – yes, I mean masturbation – has internet commentators throwing their hands up in horror.

Call me a wanker, but I for one would love to walk into a school disco to find the same number of girls grabbing their gussets as boys fishing beneath their flies. I just wish Rihanna's song was better.