By Elise Schuster, MPH, Co-Founder and Executive Director of OkaySo - a free app anonymously connecting folks with questions about sex to experts for personalized support.
I have been a sexuality educator for 20 years which has given me the pleasure (see what I did there?) of hearing literally thousands of questions that people have about bodies, pleasure, partners, and more. I currently run an app called OkaySo - young people create free accounts and can ask our experts questions about sexuality, identity, relationships, stress, and more. This means, of course, that we get a lot of questions about masturbation.
As most of us probably know, the vast majority of folks have no way to learn about masturbation from a source they can trust. Schools aren’t talking about it, porn is not educational, and many people feel too embarrassed to talk to friends. That leaves… Google? Ugh. No thank you.
That’s why we exist at OkaySo. We get the real questions, from real people. So, we’re here to give you a behind-the-scenes look into what those questions are and what we’re thinking about as experts when we’re answering them.
Is it ok for me to masturbate?
It may come as no surprise to you that this is probably the most common question we get about masturbation. There’s so much shame and stigma in our culture about masturbation, not to mention a school curriculum that actually lies to young people about the effects of masturbation, that it’s no wonder people aren’t sure. Some young people are taught, in school, that masturbating will affect dopamine levels causing depression (not true), affect muscle growth (nope!), height (also nope), or affect their ability to experience pleasure with a partner (spoiler alert: it’s the opposite).
So, there’s a lot of baggage to undo here. Often just saying “yup, it’s ok!” isn’t enough. People need to unpack the messages they learned about masturbation before they can let go of the shame they are carrying around. It can take some time and some personal introspection.
Is it ok for me to masturbate if I’m in a relationship?
Like so many questions about masturbation, this one runs right up against whatever we’ve been taught as we were growing up. Often in our very heteronormative, monogamous-focused society, people are told that their partner should be everything to them - able to satisfy them completely in every way. And while that may be the case for some people, it is certainly not true for most folks.
Often when someone asks this question, it’s because there’s some kind of mismatch in the relationship between how each person understands masturbation. Usually one person thinks it’s totally fine to masturbate in a relationship and the other person feels like it’s basically cheating.
When it comes to relationships, intimacy, and sexual activity, we often show up with a lot of ideas about what’s “normal” that might be completely different from our partner’s - all because of how we were raised. Part of growing sexually is taking the time to examine and question those ideas.
How do I masturbate? How does female masturbation work?
When do we ever (ever!!!) see anything that talks about, shows, or explains masturbation in any way? The answer is we don’t. So it’s no wonder people are confused. Where to touch, how to touch, what to use, how it should feel, when to stop… these are all really common elements of this question.
We are not raised to see sex as something we are allowed to be curious about, or that can be an adventure. We are raised to see it as a destination. We assume there’s a map with step-by-step directions when really all there is, is a compass, pointing us in a general direction but letting us find the way.
So.. the idea that masturbation is really just about trying things and seeing what feels good is a veeeery foreign concept to most folks. Frequently people want me to just tell them what to do. Or explain “the best way”. But that doesn’t exist! It’s the journey, not the destination.
Why can I orgasm from masturbation but not sex?
If your brain read this question and immediately assumed that folks with a specific type of body part were asking, think again! Yes, many people with a clitoris aren’t aware that it’s highly likely that they’ll need direct clitoral stimulation during penetration to orgasm. So that’s a very common reason we get this question. But… that’s not the whole story.
It’s also about how and when we get in our heads and what works about masturbating that is harder with a partner. When we’re by ourselves, we don’t have to worry about what someone else is thinking, how our body looks, if we’re taking too long, if they’re enjoying it… the list goes on. We can just be. And we can find a type of stimulation that really works for us.
When we’re with a partner, ALL of that can shift, making it much harder to tune in to pleasure and stay out of our thoughts.
That’s just a small glimpse into some of the most popular questions we get about masturbation on OkaySo and questions that, as a sexuality educator, I’ve been answering for decades. All of these questions speak to some fundamental truths that we don’t often learn about sex: that all of us are normal, that what we’ve been told is probably wrong, and that we get to carve our own path, whatever that may be.
If by answering these questions, I can help even one person feel less shame, fear, or stigma around masturbation, I’ve done my job.