What is masturbation?

What is masturbation?

To masturbate means to stimulate yourself in a sexual way. This can be done by hand, or with sex aids - some highly-sexed women can even do it by rubbing their thighs together. And a tiny minority of women can do it with no genital contact at all, but simply through caressing their breasts.

Such stimulation often leads to orgasm, but not invariably, as many women enjoy stroking themselves and experiencing pleasure that does not necessarily culminate in a climax.

Most men have masturbated, often beginning at a fairly young age.

Women tend to start masturbation later however, and it does not tend to be such an automatic activity as it is for most men and boys.

Furthermore, even once a woman has learned to masturbate, she will probably do it less than the average man - and it seems that far fewer women than men do it regularly.

Various people have speculated on why this is the case. But most agree that it is to do with basic sex drive.

It does appear that if you compare the sex drive of an average young woman and an average young man, then the man is likely to be the more highly sexed of the two. This is partly because a woman’s fluctuating hormones tend to mean that her desire for sex is not as constant as a man’s is.

Another reason for masturbation being less important to women than men is that a man’s sexual apparatus is all outside his body and he is focused on the pleasure his penis provides him from a very young age.

Women’s sex organs are less obvious. For example, the clitoris - which is the main organ of pleasure in most women - is hidden away under the labia. Also, though this is less the case now than it used to be, girls have traditionally been brought up to be more modest and secretive about their bodies.

Even so, many young women nowadays will enjoy masturbation prior to experiencing love play or intercourse with a partner. But vast numbers of females do not discover masturbation till their late teens – and some never do it at all.