It's no secret that guys like to masturbate. They don't even try to hide it. One can look around any college classroom and safely assume that virtually every man there has jerked off at least once in his lifetime.
But what about the girls? Which ones secretly touch themselves at night? Now that's an interesting game to play instead of taking notes.
Female masturbation remains a touchy subject. I remember early in my freshman year here, some of my hall decided to play "I Never" as an ice-breaker. There were about 12 people playing, maybe 10 were female. One girl said: "I've never masturbated."
"Wow, that's a shame," I thought to myself as I put a finger down. To my utter surprise, only four others put a finger down, two being the only boys playing.
The fact that only a quarter of the girls playing had masturbated, or would admit to masturbating, was a little shocking to me.
Its true that my being raised in San Francisco has greatly desensitized me to such precarious terrain as female (or male) sexuality, but it's clear that the stigma of girls touching themselves is not merely based around liberal versus conservative viewpoints.
As mentioned earlier, male masturbation is completely acceptable in American media. We expect it. The girls who masturbate in movies, however, seem to represent either impassioned lesbians who reject all-male contact, or poor, pathetic, outcast girls who couldn't get a real boy if they tried
(Remember the opening scene of "Not Another Teen Movie?" I know, you tried to block it out).
The point is, girls masturbate. Kinsey's 1950s studies on sexuality showed that 62 percent of women reported having masturbated before. The numbers have only gone up from there, but girls aren't talking about it any more than before. It's rare that a girl will jump into a guy's discussion about masturbation with her own experience.
Why should any of us feel embarrassed about touching ourselves? Even among other women, it is an uncomfortable subject. Society has taught us to think of a girl who masturbates as either a nymphomaniac or a reject, and as a result we cringe away from the topic.
A close friend's ex-boyfriend nearly ended the relationship when he found her vibrator one day. He thought that the fact that she was masturbating when he wasn't around indicated that she was unhappy with his performance.
This was, in fact, completely untrue. She was actually so happy with their sex life that she would get horny just thinking about it when she was on her own, and needed to do something about it.
But his reaction seems to be a common one among the male gender. Somehow, a girl admitting that she masturbates translates to, "I'm not interested in your dick. I have one at home that's much better than yours can ever hope to be."
While this argument may be true for some women, it by no means encompasses the entire female masturbating community. And it certainly should not be taken as a threat to male virility.
Although, let's face it guys, until we're able to achieve orgasm more often from sex with you than with our hand, it will remain a staple in our routine. Because really, why am I to blame if you can't find my G-spot?
This does not mean I encourage telling your guy about your diddling techniques on the first date.
But at the same time, I also don't think many girls appreciate hearing story after story of guys blowing their load by themselves in their rooms (and there are plenty of those kinds of stories, on JHUConfessions alone).
"Masturbation is not the sexiest act," a sophomore at the University of Chicago said in response to the subject. "Sex can be loving or erotic. Masturbation? We associate it with a guy, one hand and a dirty video, or with a porn star, fake moans and exaggerated hand gestures."
I am not saying that it's a crime that fewer women masturbate than men. Nor am I insisting that every woman who does so shout it from the rooftops.
I only wish I would stop receiving surprised, slightly affronted looks whenever the masturbating question pops up in "I Never" or "Truth or Dare."
As a country, and as a society, we have made a lot of progress in accepting the female gender as capable of being both sexually appealing and independent of male control.
However, we still have a ways to go before girls are comfortable leaving their vibrators anywhere but far back in their sock drawers.
