'Why I was masturbating wrong for 20 years'
Slip under the covers with Ebony Leigh, an insatiable sex writer who's done the leg work. Delving in to all things erotic and taboo, she's Yahoo's answer to Carrie Bradshaw, if she was a Samantha.
“You can masturbate in literally any way that feels good for you.”
The pronouncement from Sydney Sex Coach Georgia Grace sounds glaringly obvious, right?
"Of course you do what feels good for you," I hear you say. "Isn’t that a given?"
Well, let me tell you. For this former private Christian school girl, no it is not. In fact, I’ve spent a good deal of my life thinking that what I was doing was not only wrong, but somehow shameful and embarrassing. And that is totally messed up.
But when it comes to the taboo topic of masturbation, we’ve got little to go on. Because in reality, it all comes down to seven minutes of screen time.
“The main thing to remember about porn, is that it is there to arouse you,” Georgia explained to me.
“It's there to turn you on. It’s there to give you entertainment. And the same goes for any kind of movie that you watch.”
Except when you’re a teen (or say, in your entire twenties), you don’t know any of this, and you take what you see at face value. And it’s like, a lot.
RELATED:
“When we look at porn, we might see people responding to touch or orgasming really quickly, and a certain type of body and what it can do, such as squirting, gushing, ejaculating or climaxing on demand,” Georgia said.
“All of these things, that could be hours and days worth of production to lead up to that point, but of course they want to make sure that you're getting your seven minutes of solid arousal, so often it is not reality.”
And there’s the hard truth. That women don’t just lay back, place their fingers between their legs and orgasm right away. Yet, it’s what I grew up to believe. And that if you weren’t doing it like that, you were wrong.
The Sex Education we all needed
It wasn’t until I watched Sex Education’s Aimee Gibbs in a minute-long masturbation frenzy on Netlix in 2019, the year I turned 30, that I even realised you could do it any other way.
Like on your knees. Or on all fours. Or sitting up. Or in a chair. Or against a cushion. Or on your stomach, which was exactly how I’d been spending my time since I discovered that it felt good as a pre-pubescent kid. And never with my fingers inside myself, because I personally just don’t like doing that, but rubbing the side of my hand against my clitoris.
With the weight of my body on the heel of my palm, the intensity was precise, and while I wouldn’t call it a full-blown orgasm, I experienced a euphoric release of sorts. And until 30, I’d never gotten off any other way.
“Lots of people like lying on their stomach,” Georgia reassured me, “And the pressure it can provide."
“It can also be really useful for those who like to grind or hump and to be up against a surface.”
Three years ago, that one-minute clip completely shook my ideals of what masturbation was meant to look like and my two-decade-old feelings of shame and embarrassment.
And I felt seen.
2019 was also the year I bought the first vibrator that I would actually use. A small hot pink bullet. A significant downsize on the giant sparkly rabbit variety that I was peer pressured into buying at my first sex toy party when I was 22. It had been so large and gaudy, I couldn’t even get my head around the idea of it being inside me before I stashed it in a plastic bag and threw it out on bin day.
Instead, this modest device was cute and compact, and with a bit of a how-to from my best friend, it soon became my battery-operated bestie. With it on my clit, I was able to come on my back for the first time in my life. And not a halfway euphoria, but a fully-fledged, mind-blowing orgasm.
The bottomless side to solo sex
As Georgia explained, there are infinite ways to get yourself off.
“You can masturbate standing up, kneeling, sitting, or in the shower with the showerhead. You can masturbate with toys, tools and with lots of lube.”
But while the number of areas or positions you can get your body into are unlimited, Georgia specified that it’s what you do with your body that really matters.
“A lot of the time when people masturbate, they’re quite still, quite tense and sometimes not really conscious of their breath,” she said.
“But hip thrusts can be really powerful and useful for people with vulvas to build arousal in their body and it’s a really great technique.
“By bringing movement and breath into your body, there is the opportunity and capacity to feel even more.”
The plentiful perks of masturbation
If you’re still not sold on masturbation, and trust me, you should be, Georgia talked me through every glorious benefit of self-love.
“If we’re looking at orgasm, it is the releasing of endorphins and feel-good neurochemicals like oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin that can support you in feeling really good, boosting your mood and relieving stress,” she explained.
“A lot of people identify that when they're stressed, masturbation is a really great thing for them to do because they have that surgence of feel-good neurochemicals and they feel like they can get on with their day.”
Well, that just sounds like great productivity if you ask me.
But in my recently acquired experience, one of the best benefits of masturbating is learning about your body and how you like to be touched. Georgia agreed.
“Masturbation is one of the most important tools that I teach my clients because they need to learn about their body in order to communicate that with others,” she told me.
“It also gives you all this information that you can bring into a sexual experience with someone else.”
Why porn will always have a place in my bed
So maybe porn’s authenticity is questionable at best, but I haven’t had the desire to give up on my guilty pleasure.
Like a lot of women, I am complex and multidimensional, and I need a lot of mental stimulation to get off. Whether by myself or with a partner. Porn is also a great outlet to explore sexual tastes and desires, and find out what works for you.
The good thing though, is that the future looks bright.
“In recent years, we’ve seen some incredible filmmakers, producers, brands and businesses who have started to create porn that does more accurately reflect sex and pleasure, and what people can expect,” Georgia said, to which my inner teen squealed with delight.
So while that side of the industry catches up to reality, I’ll be taking my pornography with a greater awareness that what we see on our screens is more far-fetched than we realise.
“If you’re wanting to watch porn, just be really clear and critical in the sense that, ok this is there to turn me on. It’s not there necessarily to teach me about my body and pleasure,” Georgia reminded me.
In forgiving these failed lessons, I’ve dropped any sense of shame or embarrassment I ever harboured around masturbation. Because if this Sex Coach has taught me anything, it’s that it’s ok for you to do you.
“It's really exciting and useful to know when masturbation can be used for you, if you're stressed or anxious or wanting to connect with your body or your partner, but also because it feels good,” Georgia said.
“I think as a society, we don't often champion or speak to the importance of feeling good, and it is okay to do something just because it's fun, and it feels good and it's orgasmic.”
Message well received. Happy playing, readers.
Never miss a thing. Sign up to Yahoo Lifestyle’s daily newsletter.
Or if you have a story idea, email us at lifestyle.tips@yahooinc.com.
