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Do women need a masturbation manual?

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I have a problem. It’s called ‘the internet’ and ‘how to’ videos. 
 
It doesn’t matter what the ‘how to’ is about, if it’s got moving pictures – whether I understand it or not – I will watch it. 
 
How to make a cake in a cup? Got it covered. How to engineer a miniature scale version of the Sydney Opera House in cardboard? I’m on it. 
 
Whatever floats your how to boat, no prob my friend, the internet will provide.
 
I think I was programmed for ‘how tos’ from a young age. 

 In my teens, for better or so much worse, I got hooked on women’s magazines. And they were the font of How To. 
 
Mostly, how to feel shit about yourself: how to change your wardrobe, your face, your body, your soul…
 
There were also career ‘how tos’ and, of course, sex ‘how tos’: How to please him, give him a blow job, give him the best sex of his life…  
 
You know what would’ve been great? A ‘how’ to for women to please themselves. You know, all that wild, fierce female, feminist stuff. 

We can keep yammering on about how masturbation is the key to sexual self-empowerment, but we also need to be aware of these very simple stumbling blocks that keep many women from flying into the bright light of their own personal Shangri-La.

No. For that I had to wait a bazillion years.

OMGyes.com, a masturbation ‘how to’ for women, only launched in 2016 based on researching and collating information from about 2 000 women about how they touch themselves.
 
The result is the first ‘catalogue’ of masturbation techniques, which have now been identified and named, and explanatory videos by real-world women (as opposed to actors) showing you how to emulate these techniques on your own body.
 
‘Edging’, ‘hinting’, ‘consistency’, ‘layering’, and ‘orbiting’ are just some of the 12 methods that are unpacked by the women and I’ve only heard positive reviews by subscribers who use phrases like "changed my life" and "like getting help from a friend."
 
I suspect it’s really a good tool for anyone who wants to know how to touch the female genitalia.

Read more: Afrikaners and sex – teaching girls 'ordentlikheid' is dangerous

Currently it’s a subscription-based model (research into women’s icky fun sex stuff doesn’t get funded), but I’m hoping that at some point this becomes more widely – and freely – available. Because it’s powerful and necessary information.
 
Because not every woman automatically knows how to touch herself. 
 
Hell, not every woman believes she is allowed to touch herself and access her own pleasure without the intervention of anyone or anything else.
 
We can keep yammering on about how masturbation is the key to sexual self-empowerment, but we also need to be aware of these very simple stumbling blocks that keep many women from flying into the bright light of their own personal Shangri-La.
 
How to ‘manuals’ like OMGyes acknowledge and help with this. 

Watch their intro video here.

They provide a normalising platform for women who’ve been affected by the ‘taboofication’ of their own sexual bodies by unenlightened society, and outline valuable, structured information for individual pleasure and collective research.
 
And, as far as ‘how tos’ go, there’s a lot more value in that for everyone, than a cake in a cup or the millionth ‘how to blow him’ listicle.

Follow Dorothy Black on her blog or on Twitter.

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