Spicing Up Our Solo Sex Lives
....May's guide with my top tips for solo sex, somatic practices, writing prompts, a tarot spread, resource recommendations, and more to help us access more pleasure in our solo sex lives
It’s my favorite month of the year — the month that contains many of my close friends’ birthdays, the time when the temperature is usually my ideal of not being too hot or too cold, aaaaand perhaps what makes me love it the most, it’s thirty-one days of masturbation celebration!
That’s right, May is National Masturbation Month.
Solo sex (the term I use interchangeably with masturbation) is near and dear to my heart: it is the way that I have experienced some of the most intense erotic pleasure, how I learned how to orgasm, and it’s also one of the things that I’ve used to heal from the trauma of sexual violence.
It’s something that I love so much that if I had to choose one sex tip to give to people who have been socialized as women, it would be to develop a regular solo practice, whether or not you have a partner.
As the badass artist and pioneering sex educator Betty Dodson wrote in her book Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving, “Masturbation is a way for all of us to learn about sexual response. It’s an opportunity for us to explore our bodies and minds for all those sexual secrets we’ve been taught to hide, even from ourselves. What better way to learn about pleasure and being sexually creative? We don’t have to perform or meet anyone else’s standards, to satisfy the needs of a partner, or to fear criticism or rejection for failure. Sexual skills are like any other skills; they’re not magically inherited, they have to be learned.”
I believe that solo sex is especially important for those of us who have been socialized as women. I know that people who have been socialized as men have their own hang-ups around solo sex, especially when it comes to their porn use, but at least they were expected to touch themselves, and it was something that was joked about between them.
For those of us who have vulvas, masturbation wasn’t even joked about. When I was growing up, it felt like it didn’t even exist.
While masturbation has not been studied as much as it should (and the language is incredibly binary), the data suggests that there is a masturbation gap between men and women. For example, a 2011 study of adolescents ages 14-17 found that across age groups more males (73.8%) reported masturbation than females (48.1%). A 2023 study of adults found that approximately 60% of men reported engaging in masturbation in the prior month compared to only 36.5% of women. A 2017 study of adults found that 8.2% of men and 21.8% of women reported having never masturbated in their lifetime.
This gap has long term consequences for those of us who have been socialized as women.
As Betty Dodson says, “The way women are made to conform to this double standard is through the deprivation of sexual self-knowledge. Deprived of their own bodies, they have no way of discovering or developing sexual responses. At an early age, women are prohibited from touching their genitals with the threat of supernatural or real punishment. Information about the clitoris and life affirming orgasm is withheld, and women are installed with the idea that female genitals are inferior, that a woman’s main value lies in procreation and giving a man sexual pleasure. Without any sexual pleasure of her own, I woman may come to think of her genitals as being repulsive and a constant source of discomfort and shame. This kind of sexual repression is a vital aspect of keeping women in their ‘proper role’.”
So many of us feel or have felt shame about this sexual activity — but having a solo sex where we give ourselves pleasure is an opportunity to develop a better relationship with our bodies. It is a way to discover what we look like and what we feel like. It is an opportunity to give ourselves the knowledge about our bodies that we often relegate to our partners.
It’s a way to understand what gives our bodies pleasure, rather than relying on what our partners think might give us pleasure. It’s a way to go at our own time, our own pace, and to learn how to listen to the messages that our body is telling us – all of which can be extremely important as we heal from sexual violence or just from growing up in a sex negative society.
Masturbation is hugely liberatory. It is, as rupi kaur writes, an act of preservation. When we know that we can give ourselves pleasure, that we have an intimate knowledge of our bodies, we’re empowering ourselves to step outside the framework of what has been given to us and claim the pleasure that is innately ours.
This month in thecuriousclit, we’re doing a deep dive into masturbation! Here’s what I’ll be covering in this guide:
an oracle card for the collective
an everyday pleasure practice to include in your routine
adult sex ed: my top tips for expansive pleasure during solo sex
yoga practice to step into sensuality for your solo sex time
poetry & fiction writing prompts
a tarot spread
suggestions for a book, poem, music, and podcast around this month’s theme
While these practices cannot completely cover all of our different experiences, my hope is that these can be an invitation to explore, to unlearn, and to expand our felt sense of safety and delight in our bodies so that when we are having sex by ourselves or with a partner we can more easily let pleasure emerge.
I invite you to take your time in moving through this guide. Feel free to follow the activities in order, jump around, or skip whatever activities you would like!
It’s your body, your practice, and your choices are always welcomed and celebrated in this space.