Women/Sexuality
Some Women Just Don’t Like Masturbating
Here’s why.
The idea that a great handful of women out there have never masturbated still confounds me.
According to Indiana University’s National Survey Of Sexual Health And Behavior (NSSHB), 37 percent of women between the ages of 30–39 hadn’t masturbated within a year — which doesn’t mean they’ve never masturbated at all but it’s likely that even if they do masturbate during other periods — it’s probably not much.
The numbers do vary a little bit with other age groups of women who were asked the same question but not by that much. For me, these numbers are intriguing.
I’d like to think we’ve made some sort of progress regarding female sexuality and the growing knowledge of our female bodies.
Alas, there are still many women who have either never tried touching themselves, or perhaps they tried it once and then never did it again.
There are many women who simply don’t get anything out of masturbation. They just don’t like it.
Additionally, many women in the world still have a conflicting relationship with the idea of female masturbation. It’s still burned into their brains by their upbringings that masturbation is “bad,” “dirty,” or simply “wrong”.
As a child, I was never encouraged to explore my own body by a parental figure nor was I ever discouraged from it. It was never spoken about at all. I discovered it on my own at age 11 and I’ve been using masturbation as an act of reducing anxiety and as a sleep aid ever since then. Plus — it feels really great.
It’s hard for me to imagine anyone else missing out on that kind of pleasure.
However, I’ve realized that I need to understand that my experience with my own body and sexual pleasure is not the same as everyone else's. Many women suffer from the scars of past sexual trauma and abuse which unfortunately associates their sexuality with something disturbing and unpleasant.
Shame, embarrassment, and guilt are a few of the main emotions many women still associate with the act of masturbation. They may feel these emotions due to cultural or religious influences from their childhoods.
Some women simply don’t know how to masturbate or never quite got the hang of it. Other women don’t have that intense of a libido to even feel the urge to masturbate OR they rely strictly on sexual intercourse with their partners to feel sexually satisfied.
In one of my articles, ‘Why Orgasms Should Matter To Every Woman’ I stated that between 10 and 40 percent of women have trouble even reaching orgasm at all during sex so it’s possible that close to the same amount of women have issues reaching orgasm on their own as well.
For me, quite often, reaching orgasm with my own hands is actually much easier and much faster than having intercourse with my partner. That said, the act of masturbating does help my body achieve orgasm more intensely when I am having sex so — practice makes perfect, I suppose.
For me, YES. For others — maybe not.
And that’s OK. It’s OK that not every woman is the same as me, that not every woman pleasures herself, and that not every woman feels the same way about her sexuality.
I do think it’s disappointing that so many little girls are taught that their bodies are shameful, however, many grown women feel that masturbating takes away from the emotional and spiritual connection with their partner and they prefer not to masturbate for that reason.
All in all, each woman should be in charge of her sexual autonomy and sexual choices. Just because I think female masturbation is fabulous that doesn’t mean other women do — and it doesn’t mean I have to try and force them to see my point of view on it.
It still boggles my mind that many women don’t masturbate or even like masturbating, and sometimes I wonder about all the orgasms being missed out on around the world.
But that’s just me.
