Meditation, manicures, massages, and masturbation? Self-care comes in many forms, with some people including masturbation in their routine as an activity beyond sexual pleasure, to relieve stress or empower themselves. This practice challenges gender norms and the stigma society places on women. Female self-pleasure has carried stigma throughout history with women traditionally being judged or looked down upon for openly enjoying sex.

A 2020 study of sexual double standards found that because men are socialized to be more sexual than women, their attitudes towards sex are not as negative. This gendered attitude in regards to masturbation results in women internalizing guilt and negativity with this behavior, according to the University of Minnesota study.

Women have taken online to document their path towards breaking down the shame society attaches to masturbation and self pleasure, many of which are tied to cultural or religious ideologies. In 2019, journalist and freelance editor Irina Gonzalez wrote about her struggle to find ways to better her mental health as a Latina who was taught to prioritize others over herself, until she started regularly masturbating.

“Masturbation can be a form of stress relief or self-intimacy—an escape from the mundane, or a form of self-soothing,” Dr. Janet Brito, psychologist and certified sex therapist, told Gonzalez in an interview for Oprah Daily.

For Natalie Lee, doula and author of “Feeling Myself: How I Shed My Shame to Find Sexual Freedom and You Can Too, inspiration to challenge her views on sex and pleasure came after becoming a mother.

“Having girls was a bit like holding up a big mirror to me, a mirror that hadn’t been tainted by society,” said Lee.

She originally created her platform Style Me Sunday as a fashion blog, but it evolved into much more as she began documenting her journey to removing stigma from her approach to sex and masturbation.

“I think it’s really important that women especially do take control of their life, because that tendency is to rely on your partner to pleasure you, and I think that’s a false story that we need to get away from because it disempowers us,” said Lee.

Stigmatization of female pleasure

Shame surrounding sex and pleasure stems from multiple sources, with roots in culture, religion, and even medicine.

One of the earliest documented negative views on the “shameful deed,” masturbation, dates back to the year 1054, in a letter written by Pope Leo IX.

“We have over 10,000 years of explicit Catholic prohibition against masturbation, and that has been since affirmed and reaffirmed by various popes,” psychology professor and author of  “DIY: The Wonderfully Weird History and Science of Masturbation” Dr. Eric Sprankle said in a Feb. 2023 podcast. He explained that Mormons, Jews and Evangelicals follow similar views, with sexual behavior outside of marital love considered a sin.

The widely-considered father of psychoanalysis, Sigmud Freud, contributed to the stigmatization of female pleasure by pushing the idea that women should only reach orgasm through vaginal penetration with a man. He was convinced that people with vaginas experienced “penis envy,” realizing as children that they lack a penis and viewing it as a deficit. He believed that penis envy could contribute to mental illness and to prevent this, women needed to refrain from masculinity, including clitoral stimulation, in order to embrace femininity and accept their assigned gender role.

According to Psychology Today, until the 20th century physicians believed that women did not experience sexual desire and that male ejaculation sexually fulfilled women. Although these ideas are shifting, there continues to be differences between the sexes.

In 2022, the “Women Get Worse Sex: A Confound in the Explanation of Gender Differences in Sexuality” study explored the idea that women seemingly desire sex less than men, finding that women have worse experiences with sexual intercourse than men, and that  differences in anatomy, stigma, sexual violence and sexual culture catered to men contributed to this. Women are also socialized to expect negative consequences from sexual behavior – including pain, unwanted pregnancy, and stigma – in ways men are not.

The orgasm gap

Research published in the 2017 Archives of Sexual Behavior points to evidence of an orgasm gap, or differences in the frequencies in which heterosexual men and heterosexual women experience orgasms. According to the report, 95% of heterosexual men said they usually or always orgasmed, while only 65% of heterosexual women reported the same.

The number is much higher for lesbian women, with 86% reporting that they usually or always experienced an orgasm during sex.

According to the study, women were more likely to finish when sex included deep kissing, manual genital stimulation and oral sex. Women finished more frequently and were also more likely to ask their partner for what they wanted.

Lee says it’s important to engage in these conversations and ask questions to ensure all parties reach the end goal.

“What are your boundaries? How do you like to be touched? When do you like to be touched?,” said Lee. “There’s nothing sexier than showing that you want to know more about somebody, and that you are really interested in what they say.”

The National Library of Medicine reports that 10% to 15% of women have never experienced an orgasm.

Some experts believe that female anatomy and the distance from the clitoris to the vagina – which varies by person – impact whether an orgasm can be reached by vaginal penetration alone.

“I suspect that for a large proportion of women, orgasm from intercourse alone is just never going to happen and knowing that might give women some solace,” Kim Wallen, professor of behavioral neuroendocrinology at Emory University told ABC News.

Evidence also suggests that there is a strong link between the female orgasm and the mind, with women needing to be both physically and mentally stimulated, according to the HuffPost.

“I just think women often have to go out and actively find their own sources of information, to start thinking about it differently, to start enjoying sex, to get rid of the shame. A lot of sex and self-pleasure is about how embodied you are, how present you can be in the moment, and how relaxed you can be,” said Lee.