I don’t like masturbating. To me, masturbating is like Bob’s Burgers. I really seem like someone who would like it, but I just can’t get into it. And I have really tried to get into it.
The first time I tried masturbating was in college. The year was 2010. Imagine, if you will, a pre-Pitch Perfect America. I was a freshman in drama school and I met a boy at improv team auditions. But no, he wasn’t there to audition. You know those guys who hang around school after they graduate? He was that guy but specifically for his old college improv team.
Despite the five-year age difference, we had a lot in common. We both were theatre kids. We had cringey Tumblr accounts. We both loved Harry Potter and Joss Whedon. (Not anymore!) I thought the only major difference between us, due to the age difference, was our experience levels. I was a virgin. He was not. He started making some moves toward sex (took off his fedora), but I had no idea what I was doing. So, he, an empath, said: “Hey, it’s no rush. Let’s slow down. Why don’t you show me how you touch yourself, m’lady?”
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It had never even crossed my mind to masturbate. Sure, I knew what masturbating was. I saw American Pie 2. But I thought only boys did it — not girls. Growing up, I only even considered masturbating once. It was after watching the Sex and the City episode where Charlotte gets addicted to her new vibrator, the Rabbit. This was the first time I ever heard about women masturbating. I asked my mum if girls masturbated in real life like they do in Sex and the City. She said, “Absolutely not!”
I didn’t want to masturbate, so this was super validating to me!
My college boyfriend, however, thought this story was… bizarre. He said my mum had lied to me, that girls do masturbate, and my conservative upbringing probably repressed me. It was in this moment, looking into the confused eyes of a horny improviser, that I discovered it was weird that I didn’t masturbate.
So, he bought me a vibrator. An expensive one. Lelo brand. Cost over $100. He told me to masturbate with it.
“You need to touch yourself to know what you like.” A dedicated Male Feminist, he was serious about closing the orgasm gap and saw it as his duty to help me overcum (pun intended) this masturbation issue. The rationale was simple: once I had brought myself to orgasm, then he would be able to bring me to orgasm. We were in a group project, and I needed to carry my weight — I had to do the research so he could get the A.
"My body wasn’t telling me to masturbate — my boyfriend was"
So I spent my summer break learning how to love myself. Literally. I put the vibrator where it goes, moved it around, yada yada. It felt good, but I wasn’t sure how to escalate it — and I…didn’t really want to? I was listening to my body and my body was telling me to hurry up or I was going to miss the newest episode of How I Met Your Mother.
I tried masturbating millions more times, but it never stopped being boring. So eventually, I did listen to my body — and I didn’t masturbate anymore. Because my body wasn’t telling me to masturbate — my boyfriend was.
The more I heard about orgasm, the more pressure I felt. What was I missing out on? Why didn’t I ever physically crave an orgasm? Everyone else does! I’m the problem — I’m dysfunctional! I felt like a dog that keeps eating plastic, my natural desires are wrong and it’s stressing out everyone who loves me! I’m the person who just isn’t interested in cumming — what’s wrong with me?
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A few relationships later, I fell in love with a girl I met online and experienced the canon sapphic event of being long distance with a lesbian who’s still in love with her ex. And when that situationship ended, I relapsed and started fucking yet another Male Feminist. (Red flag!)
This Male Feminist also really wanted to fix my “never orgasmed” problem. I was so tired of being this freak who can’t cum. Ten years had passed since I first was told to orgasm, but I’d still never had one! If I wanted to leave my sheltered upbringing in the past and evolve into an empowered, sex-positive feminist, cumming — I was told — was the key. This male feminist, like everyone before him, believed I’d only achieve my first orgasm through solo masturbation.
"I felt like I was performing masturbation for no audience"
So, he bought me a vibrator. A cheap one. Kirkland brand. Cost like $15. He told me to masturbate with it.
“You need to touch yourself to know what you like.”
This was the second time I committed to exploring masturbation. So, I gave the vibrator the old college try! You know, put the toy where it goes. Moved it around. Tried to spice it up by playing with my boobs. It was sexy, but it wasn’t stimulating. Does that make sense? I felt like I was performing masturbation for no audience. I just couldn’t get turned on alone — I still don’t understand how anyone gets turned on alone.
Around this time, I was working as a professional ice cream flavour namer (copywriter for an ice cream shop). We were working on a Pride flavour and my boss, a proud queer woman, pitched the name, “Stone Butch Blueberries.”
I didn’t get the reference but laughed anyway because she was my boss. As soon as I got home, I googled “stone butch” and discovered there was an entire sexual identity based around not wanting to be touched.
"My relationship with pleasure defied classic heterosexual stereotypes"
I borrowed the Leslie Feinberg book from the library, and every page gripped me. I wasn’t a stone butch (a lesbian who doesn’t like being touched during sex and instead derives all sexual satisfaction from satisfying their partner), but I was different. Like Feinberg, my relationship with pleasure defied classic heterosexual stereotypes. I had never felt so seen before.
I was screwing a different guy (a subset of Male Feminist known as Leftist Softboi). We talked about my orgasm “problem” and I suggested we try something new: using a vibrator during partnered play. And then, one day, this Leftist Softboi finally answered my pussy’s riddles three. Well really, he doesn’t deserve any credit. It was all me. I finally tuned out everyone else’s prescriptions of masturbation and focused on the person-to-person connection I knew I needed. And I had my first orgasm.
And it was…not that great? All this work? All this talk? All these years of shame? Just to feel THAT? Climaxing is so anti-climatic.
Cumming didn’t affect my life or how I view sex at all. Didn’t awaken a dormant desire to masturbate. Didn’t give me this brand new “knowledge” of what I like in bed. Having an orgasm didn’t do anything I was told it would do. Everything stayed the same.
That underwhelming orgasm shattered me. I had so many questions. Why had I felt so forced to work on this orgasm mission when orgasm never would have even crossed my mind if everyone else wasn’t telling me how important it was? What other boxes did I let the world put me in?
What if, instead of trusting everyone else’s well-meaning advice, I learned to love all the parts of myself I was taught to hate? I started to work on loving myself — for real this time — and realised I was in love with one of my friends. I told her — and we immediately spent a month uninterrupted in my bedroom/kitchen. (I have a studio.)
"t’s so nice to have a boyfriend that’s a girl"
So, I bought myself a strap-on. That’s right, now I’m the boyfriend and I’m buying the sex toy! You need to be in touch with yourself to know what you like.
One time while I was topping my girlfriend, she asked me to pretend to cum inside her with my dildo dick. So I dusted off my drama degree and gave my best performance of how cis-men sound when they cum: “Fuck shit fuck fuck fuuuuuck! Do you want to watch a YouTube video?”
Then she said, “It’s so nice to have a boyfriend that’s a girl.”
Faking an orgasm with her was hotter than any “real” orgasm I’d ever had. It was hot because I was paying attention to her desire and she was paying attention to mine. We’re listening, we’re impulsive, we’re in the moment! Our sex life exists just between us — no judges, no rubrics, no outside opinions.
I discovered that my sexual liberation doesn’t need to look like your sexual liberation. Which, duh, sex is personal. But it’s so tempting to think “feminist” sex or “empowered” sex or even “queer sex” should mirror certain practices or include certain sex acts. Good sex shouldn’t be measured in orgasms! Foreplay, penetration, orgasm — they’re all sex and they should all happen in any order. “Foreplay” and “finishing” are such stupid words because they reinforce this step-by-step approach to sex. So many limiting beliefs are sewn into the language we use.
Sexual liberation doesn’t follow a script. All I know is I don’t like masturbating. And no one is going to make me feel guilty about it anymore.
