Love Lives - #44 Female masturbation and the taboo surrounding it

Episode Date: July 27, 2018

This week on Millennial Love we're joined by writer and activist Scarlett Curtis to discuss the taboo around female masturbation. Scarlett recently launched a campaign called #girlswanktoo which seeks to demystify female masturbation.Why is it a gendered issue? Why is it important? And what can we do to break the stigma around it? We dive deep into all of this and more in this week's episode.Follow us on Instagram to stay up-to-date! https://www.instagram.com/millennial_loveSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/millenniallove. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines. And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like, and now that's what my grandma's on. Thank God phone a friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com Hello and welcome to Millennial Love, the Independent Lifestyle Desk weekly podcast on love, dating and relationships.

Hosted by me, Rachel Hosey, assistant lifestyle editor. And me, Olivia Petter, lifestyle writer. Dating today is a world away from what it was even just ten years ago. With dating apps, millennials are finding it harder to meet people than ever before. And even when we do, who's to say we won't be ghosted? So that's why we decided to launch Millennial Love as two longtime singletons in their 20s talking candidly about all of the things everyone is doing but not always willing to admit. Today we are so happy to welcome writer and activist Scarlett Curtis. Hi Scarlett. Hi. Thank you so much for coming. Later we're going to be talking about one of Scarlett's campaigns which aims to tackle the taboo surrounding female masturbation which is definitely one of those topics Rachel mentioned in

the intro that everyone is doing but not always talking about or is it I don't know we'll find out but for those of our listeners who might not be familiar with your work and your campaigns for the pink protest would you mind basically explaining briefly how the pink protest came to be and about some of your previous campaigns as well yeah so I'm Scarlett it's very good to be here I'm a big fan of this podcast um thank you I actually I left school when I was 14 because I wasn't very well and at 15 I started a knitting blog called teen granny um and I thought I was gonna be a professional knitter and it turned out I wasn't very good at knitting but I was going to be a professional knitter and it

turned out I wasn't very good at knitting but I was okay at writing about knitting so I carried on writing and I kind of was blogging and writing for different magazines and newspapers my whole teen years. I now write a weekly column for the Sunday Times style called the Generation Z Hit List. I'm technically Gen Z, not millennial. Are you really? Yeah, I don't know if that makes me... You must be right on the cut off. How old are you? Yeah, I'm born in 1995 and 1995 is the cut off. So I'm just scraped into Gen Z. We've got a Gen Z on millennial life people.

It's very exciting. And then I've been living in New York for the past four years. And around the 2016 election, I became very involved with a lot of feminist campaigning before that I'd worked for two years for an organization called the global goals which works with the UN to promote their sustainable development goals so I was doing a lot of that and I was doing all their social media and campaigns with them and then around the time of the election I got very involved with kind of more grassroots feminist activism and it felt so far off from all the like big NGO UN things that I've been doing and it felt so raw and organic and powerful and so I wanted to do something like that in the UK so we started the pink protest which I now run with Grace Campbell who's an amazing comedian and Alice Skinner who's an artist

and basically our goal is to create campaigns around young women and for like teen activists who maybe don't have the resources to do it all themselves so we make a lot of video series we do a monthly event um we organized the free periods campaign for amica george we met her and just thought it was amazing and built the website and organized protest we ended up changing the law we got 1.5 million going towards period poverty per year from the women's tax which was amazing and now we're just kind of doing a much less serious campaign but equally important but equally fun and it's all a lot of the way that you spread awareness your

campaigns and things it's all mostly on instagram isn't it yes so i think we really kind of lead with social media which a lot of other places that's kind of their fallback like i was only doing social media for the um because no one thought that it was important so they gave it to a 19 year old um this is what makes me laugh so much in every internship or workplace when i've ever done they were like young person do so yeah completely and then our whole campaign ended up being social. And by the end, I was like leading all this terrifying stuff that I had no right to be doing. But yeah, so we really leave it on Instagram.

We always say that it's kind of digital as the first step to action. So, you know, we didn't, free periods, it wasn't, it was based on Instagram, but we had to have the protest so that it showed that all this action that's online has you know a real life space and people are actually going to show up um so I think we really try and straddle the two but we're yeah we're huge fans of social media activism so what

is the new campaign we have not said so the new campaign is called hashtag girls wank too brilliant um I don't know if that counts as swearing I mean it's the name of the campaign it's the name of the campaign yeah I don't think it's swearing i don't think it's right let's not get into that i feel like that will just perpetuate more swearing yeah and basically you know free periods was very heavy and it was a lot of meetings with politicians and kind of trying to properly change like legislation and stuff and we wanted to do something that was a bit more fun and i think the whole campaign's around trying to remove the taboo and stigma around female masturbation with kind of a focus on the pleasure gap so a research research study that came out last year

showed that there's a 52 pleasure gap which means that men are getting 52 more pleasure than women and there's just this whole thing around female masturbation where either you don't do it and you're missing out or you do do it and you basically think that you're scum of the earth and evil and you know what it really is saying is that as a society we value women's pleasure less than men's and that that isn't something that's valuable and beautiful and great and so we're just kind of wanting to talk about it. Yeah, well, good for you. And that's what we're here to do today. Yay.

Totally. We're going to talk the hell out of it. First, though, let's have a debrief. Dating debrief of things that have been going on in the world of dating. Well, there's been... I should do that every week. You have a very sultry voice, might I add. Oh, thank you, Rachel.

There's been a lot of celebrity dating stories going on. Oh, there has. Most recently, Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin are engaged. And I know it's... Congrats to them. Congrats to them. It's interesting because the way that the media has covered it so far is a lot of people are focusing on Selena Gomez.

Which I hate. It's like Selena Gomez which I hate it's like whenever I'm like it's like Brad and Angelina everyone's like how's Jen doing exactly it's like oh god poor Selena she must be absolutely heartbroken it's like no she's not she's fine she's on holiday with her mates she's absolutely fine did you see the posts he did about her today I did it sort of made me cringe inside my I don't think I've seen it it's very good it's all very very religion based yeah it is with quite a few typos might i add i'm sorry can someone explain what was posted so bieber posted basically there was loads of speculation that uh he had proposed to hayley baldwin on a trip in the bahamas no one knew if it was true tmz reported it that ever

reliable source of celebrity gossip then eventually bieber did a post on instagram black and white photograph of him and hayley all snuggled up and it was this long message being like the world's gonna be amazing now and I adore you so much this is what you know the world needs to see a proper marriage it was very you know evangelical but literally evangelical there's a lot of stuff yeah yeah there really was it sounds very holy as a now just to be like the world's now going to see a proper marriage like to be fair he did say my brothers and sisters will see a proper marriage yeah and he said my life my world is going to be amazing does he mean actual brothers and sisters or in like the holy no his actual

brothers and sisters. The holy siblings. Brothers and sisters in this world. Okay. I mean, how long have they been together? Well, sorry, I am obsessed with celebrity gossip. Please, you probably know more than me. I'm an expert here. Yeah, that's actually why I'm here. They have been friends forever. And rumours about them being on and off dating forever.

And I basically think what the post was kind of hinting at is that it's all just clicked into place it's a rom com he's looked up she's been there all along she's the love of his life and he put a ring on it it's quite sweet but am i am i right in thinking that wasn't he with Selena just not that long ago not to feed into that angle but going to church three times a day three times a day do you not see that day when they were packed going in and out of church three times? No. Yeah, it was amazing.

I mean, do you think they just had a lot of sins to repent for? I'm sure Bieber has many sins. Maybe female masturbation. Maybe. Oh, goodness me. But here's the thing. I mean, I don't want to sound cynical, but I obviously sound really cynical. But, like, so today, it's Wednesday, might I add,

and we had the sad news that Caroline Flack presenter of Love Island has called off her engagement I think the engagement hasn't even been that long only a couple of months maybe I mean at the beginning of Love Island this year and we won't talk too much about Love Island because I know we have loads of listeners around the world and sometimes we get a bit carried away and everyone's like what even is Love Island essentially at the beginning of the series she sort of showed off her ring to the girls in the villa and it was all very exciting. And she'd done all these interviews

about how she was so happy to have finally found the right guy, et cetera, et cetera. And they'd only been together a few months and they called it off. I know. She needs to go into the villa. Yeah, she does. Well, she said that, I think, in a tweet.

She was like, back to the villa I go. I very much feel like, well, what I read was, and, you know, obviously we don't necessarily, and I sort of always feel a bit bad commenting on celebrity relationships, but they said that he, the fiancé, had, you know, ended it and she had wanted to keep it quiet for a little bit, but he made it public. But I was sort of thinking, like,

she's, like, meeting so many of these hot singles all the time i feel like she'll get with one of the ones who comes out oh my god who would you go for we've discussed this before new jack jack yeah new jack new jack oh no no i'm not sure new jack i like i know he's quite muggy but i like wes i'm not a fan i mean i still physically fancy out of the most we can't go down I'm sure you Jack. I like, I know he's quite muggy, but I like Wes. I'm not a fan. I mean, I still physically fancy Adam the most. We can't go down to rabbit hole again. We've done, no, sorry.

It is a rabbit hole. We're stopping that and we're going to move on to our bio of the week. Yes. Our favourite bio from the week of swiping. This is from a man called Matt and his bio reads, Well, nobody's ever perfectly behaved, are they? I mean, you know, there are times when, I have to confess, when me and my friends sort of used to run through the fields of wheat,

the farmers weren't too pleased about that. Now, that made me laugh. You're going, what? Is it a Theresa May reference? Yeah. Yeah. me laugh you're going what is it a Teresa May reference yeah yeah yeah and the thing is I kind of like it because this is in reference to when Teresa May the British Prime Minister was asked in an interview what was like the naughtiest thing she'd ever done and she responded with this and needless to say people relentlessly took the piss out of her for it and um you know now she will no one will ever

forget the fields of wheat thing but i quite like this because i'm pretty sure he's typed out the exact the full quote the full answer yeah and when you start reading it you think where is this going and then he goes on to fields of wheat and i'm like i quite enjoy that i just realized that it was the full quote you know because I was like what's all what's with all the fanfare about well nobody has ever perfectly behaved but that's exactly what she said isn't it I think so okay so that makes it better doesn't really turn you on though does it I just quite liked it because it it it was different and it sort of gripped me and I was where is he going with this I mean it did end with like a classic like clap him six foot one can I say six foot one swipe right no matter what um can I just point out

that the runner-up to this week's bio of the week was also quite funny yeah should we sell this one as well yeah the runner-up this week the bio simply read hummus that turns me on I quite like that yeah brilliant oh I could bathe in hummus all day anyway needless to say I swiped right on Hummus. That turns me on. I quite like that. Yeah, brilliant. I could bathe in hummus all day. Anyway, needless to say, I swiped right on both these boys. So well done on your successful bios. Anyway, let us get on to the main topic of discussion today, which is female masturbation and the taboo surrounding it.

So ladies, where do we think the stigma surrounding female masturbation has come from in the first place scarlet i think you should lead with this one uh it's very interesting question and i think if i knew more about like history and art history i'd probably have a much more intelligent answer but i think in general in society we aren't comfortable with women having pleasure like you know historically sex is something that gets happens to women and isn't something that women instigate and there isn't anything more instigated by a woman than a woman having sex on her own uh and i think it's just it's not something we're comfortable with it's not something we accept it's not something we promote and I think all of that gets ingrained and then by the time you get to 2018

I really think women are perpetuating it themselves so we've had all this internalized we've had all this told to us over you know hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years and at this point I think probably most men would be fine if we talked about it more but we monitor each other you know we stigmatize each other we don't talk about it we think it's shameful at school we laugh at girls I mean no one I knew ever admitted to it but if someone had like I don't think we'd have ever spoken to her again you know and so it's become this awful thing that we're now like keeping up I think you're so right in that so much of it is linked to the way people talk about sex in relation to women, because when we're growing up, the main thing we're told is, do not get pregnant,

do not have sex, you'll get pregnant. And die. And die. And then there's the other idea, which is if a woman has a lot of sex, she's a slut, or it's a bad thing, she's dirty, it's looked on negatively and the other idea is that you know if a woman's having sex with a man it's always like the man begging and the woman sort of you know gives in yeah to sort of keep the man

happy and that's not always the case at all i also think on a more kind of technical basis like a lot of women don't really know what they're doing you know men it's very obvious we all have a hand gesture that we learn when we're about three that we know how to do it and with women like a lot of women have never even had an orgasm if they've you know never had a partner that has known what to do like it's a much more mysterious topic and I think we're all less educated on it and therefore it kind of gets swept under the rug totally I think male masturbation is also just a much more mainstream cultural phenomenon in terms of like pop culture in terms of films and tv shows

like it's always portrayed as kind of like a norm or a joke or just something that is totally standard whereas if you look at the portrayal of female masturbation in films and TV shows, the thing that springs to mind for me is that scene in Black Swan. You know, where she's on her bed and she's masturbating and it's seen as this very dark, shameful act. And then she thinks her mother walks in or something and she's really embarrassed.

And that was a huge Academy Award winning film. But it's not exactly what you want. No, and it's a totally wrong portrayal. The only thing I can think of that's like a positive portrayal of maybe female masturbation is like in Sex and the City with Samantha. Yeah, but even then it's like, oh my God, that's so extreme. And what is that machine? And I don't want anything to do with that. It's terrifying.

You know, if you're a teenager. I think whenever I think about it, I always think I, just to tell my story um I started masturbating as a teenager like so many women do and I come from a very progressive very liberal family I've got three younger brothers and my mum and dad talked to all of them about wanking you know and it was something that was kind of very much acknowledged your parents spoke to you about it yeah but my they never really spoke to me my mum says she did but I think I was too young and I don't remember it whatever so whenever when I did start I genuinely thought I was evil like I thought it was a sign that there

was something wrong with me I was so shamed about it every time every night that I did it which wasn't every night but when I did it I was like never again like that was the last time like it's so gross if any of my friends found out it's so disgusting and I always remember what you're saying about films there was this one scene in Gossip Girl which obviously I was obsessed with as a 13 year old um where like it began the episode began it vaguely looked like Blair had been touching herself thinking about Chuck and I must have watched that about a million times because I was like someone else does it like it's not just me it's Blair from Gossip Girl like she's doing it too like I'm not a freak I'm not weird like I didn't invent this uh and that's another thing I think loads of girls think they invented it or they're

the only one and it's this weird you don't even know why you feel bad about it you just know that it's not meant to happen and it's not right and yeah so yeah and friends don't talk about it like even though most girls start doing it when they're teenagers it's just not something you talk about with your friends when you're that young like I mean now you know granted my my best friend has bought me two vibrators but that was I think she bought me the first one when I was like 20 years old and it was was her way of being like, look, you need to do this because you don't do this. So I'm going to buy you one. And it was like her birthday present to me. But also it's this amazing like feel where no one talks about it.

And then as soon as you do, it's never shameful again. You know, like I'm now on a podcast talking about it, going from that. And I think the reason we wanted to start this is because so many awareness-based campaigns, it's really hard to change things. And awareness normally doesn't have the impact you want it to have. And with this, if anyone listens to this and thinks that no one else does it, it's already worked.

That's all it is. And I think our only ask with the campaign is talk about it. Talk about it with your friends. Talk about it with your mum, talk about it with people that you would have been ashamed about it and it is so easy to get over, like it's so easy. I think people are embarrassed because, they're embarrassed because it's intimate,

it's not something we have have experience talking about so obviously when you're going to do it for that first time with people talking about i mean leave it at that please um then of course i completely understand you might feel a bit nervous or a bit awkward but i know when i was a teenager no one spoke about masturbation it wasn't until I went to uni I think that me and my girlfriend started talking about it and actually Olivia I was in a similar position my friends kept saying they were gonna buy me a vibrator really actually they never did because and this is the kind of the most hilarious thing so as lifestyle journalists we um get sent a lot of things from PRs and um i was sent my first vibrator that's

amazing because obviously we write about relationships and love and sex and dating and everything and so there you go cheers to that pr it's also it's an expensive one it's worth like i'm not talking about that one that we got recently i was also my first one i was gonna say was that your first one no but i did both get given one that was worth like 100 quid but they don't have to be can i say you can buy them in the aisle at boots not even behind the counter oh yeah that was my first one they're these tiny little purple ones you can buy in boots and you just like get it with some quavers and some plasters and you're fine they've got self-checkout now as well that's true we should also say and this is not a sponsored podcast at all but there's a brilliant website called love honey which my

friends originally um uh recommended to me and they have all sorts on there including tiny little ones bigger ones and you know everything arrives in very discreet packaging there is no mention of what it is on the box so if you are sort of you know maybe you want to experiment but you don't you don't want your parents or whoever you live with to know that you've just ordered a vibrator then that's quite a good place to go completely we've also got on our pink protest.org website we've got a whole page of well one of the things we did for the campaign was we got all these artists to do these amazing pieces of work they're amazing so there's an artist gallery there there's a playlist called songs

to masturbate to if you want to check it out and but there's also a really good page of resources that has got loads of like female founded vibrator companies there's an amazing one called unbound there's the website called oh my god yes which is a lot of kind of instructional how-to videos oh that's great yeah which a lot of people actually use as um porn while they're doing it uh but yeah and there's loads of resources and brooke as well as i mean you guys had alex from brooke on it the other day but she someone from brooke came to our panel event to talk about it and they have loads of resources so fantastic check it out yeah more people need to know about that that sounds like a right little yeah i was gonna say a well of information it's not the right thing is it fountain i don't know and i think it's also so we had this event called hashtag girls went to um which we kind of didn't

tell people much what they were getting into so just loads of girls in the basement being like what am i about to do um but all it was was a all our artist gallery and then a panel which was amazing but we ended up talking a lot about porn and I think that's another thing that's really hard to talk about you know I have watched porn from a really young age as loads of people do but I think for women it's especially hard because so much porn is so objective object objectifying yeah it's misogynistic and horrible and there are i mean the thing we were talking about is there are a lot of amazing female porn directors but they are all you have to pay for it and i think actually if you are someone that watches porn and likes porn it is worth

thinking about paying for it you know it's not very much and all those resources are on our website but the reason porn is free is because these people aren't treated well. And I think, yeah, it's a really hard topic to talk about in terms of all of this. This episode is brought to you by Google Pixel. I'm Jessi Crookshank. I host the number one comedy podcast called Phone a Friend. I also have three kids. I need help making every day easier. So I switched to Google Pixel. It's a phone powered by Gemini, your personal AI assistant. Gemini can help you summarize your unread emails, suggest what to make with the food in your fridge, and it helped me achieve a family photo where everyone is smiling at the camera. I didn't think it was possible, but it is with Google Pixel 9. Learn

more at store.google.com. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not, just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton.

Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. One thing I would say is we keep saying women don't talk about enough, women don't talk about enough. And I don't know what guys are like when they're just with guys. But it's not like guys are like, oh, well, I'm just off to go and... Well, a lot of them are.

I actually would say a lot of them are. A lot of my male friends, they really talk about it. No, they just don't talk about it to me. No, they all talk about it together and they really do talk about it. Do they? Yeah, but also joke about it. We'll be like, oh, yeah, he's probably having a wife. There's a big thing of people on study leave i

think it's a very popular activity during study leave for teenage boys god it's so funny i actually just remembered as you were speaking about this i wrote an article not that long ago about an event that was being hosted at a university in germany i think in berlin and it was a group of students coming together to do like a female masturbation workshop and yes i was about to mention that were you so lots of professors complained do you remember and it was like this really controversial event and people were trying to shut it down and it was just it was like a two hour seminar it was like a workshop i think yeah sort of a practical aspect and a yeah practical a theory yeah yeah yeah like a test like a sexy driving test yeah but people were really angry about it yeah that's really interesting yeah I think it is I mean

it's a topic that scares people yeah you know it's women taking control of their own bodies and their own pleasure and someone that was on our panel from Brooke actually said that she likes to call masturbation self-sex um because it is sex it's just sex for yourself and I think that's terrifying to a lot of people because like rather takes men out the equation yeah it's interesting isn't it I actually found incredibly refreshing a few weeks ago I was out with a group of friends and we were having we had some food and some drinks and it was sort of the end of the night and one of my girlfriends just went um well I think I'm gonna call it a night probably go home get into bed touch myself and go to bed fantastic that's amazing I just love that you just said that yeah because

I think you know maybe plenty of us were thinking the same thing but you just said it and I was like yes yeah yes queen I love it for you um and I think that's the type I think that's that kind of a brilliant way kind of to help remove the taboo and the stigma or whatever just do it in a really breezy way yeah and i think that's the way more men talk about it you know it's just like it's not like they're talking about it all the time i don't think many men have masturbation workshops but it is something that's talked about and obviously if you have no shame about it like this doesn't bother you but I

think a lot of people like I did when I was younger do feel like great great deals of shame and self-hatred because of it and that's just self-hatred that doesn't need to be there totally and it's one of those things that if you speak about it in a way that shows that you're ashamed people will respond yeah in a way that is like oh well that's something to be ashamed of whereas if you just say it like your friend did it's like oh okay well she doesn't care that's casual so yeah that's totally a normal thing to say but would you guys not think though like i know it's so much it's considered so much more normal amongst men but i i would i would think that it's not necessarily something that's super positive.

Like you said, a guy might be like, oh, he's off having a wank or whatever. That's still meant in quite a negative way. Completely. And I think that more is more of a sign of the shame we have around sex anyway. And I think that is also one of the reasons we've gotten into such an awful place as a society with porn because that's not something that's really well it's talked about but it's not something that's talked about enough because people are watching these horrendous horrendous porn films from the age of about 11 or younger and I think in general that's a kind of bigger

conversation where if we were all less shameful about born about sex we wouldn't have these kind of issues no i completely agree it's the whole stigma needs to be worn down but obviously we all agree that there's more of a stigma around it for women yeah and the pleasure gap as well like you mentioned earlier i think it's like 93 percent of men will orgasm during sex compared to like 39 percent of women nothing and feed that's why female masturbation is important because it encourages women to explore their sexuality alone and that is probably gonna make them more likely to never gonna be able to teach your partner what to do if you don't know what to do

yourself exactly that really is the kind of be on and all it like yeah you can't go around blaming anyone if you've never kind of properly had a look around i know absolutely when i lost my virginity the guy was like what do you like and i was like i don't know yeah like horses grammar six foot one boys from Clabham irrelevant yeah that's why it is important isn't it teaches you what feels good to you and also I think you know the goal isn't to catch up with what men are doing the goal is kind of do something interesting that is just for women and how amazing would it be if all women were masturbating and talking about it and watching like ethical porn that wasn't you know hurting people and I think it's like we can

do better you know we don't we don't have to kind of follow in the same footsteps and I think as well we should point out that there's no there's no normal there's no oh if you do it five times a week that's too much if you do it once a month that's like there's no like I feel like do it whenever you yeah I actually forget about it loads like you know when you're like in a bit of a groove and doing it regularly and then sometimes I'll go like a year and I just completely forget and then I'm like oh that thing that's nice yeah about that yeah why don't i do that you're like ah i know it's almost like when you don't eat chocolate for three weeks somehow yeah and then you're bringing again

and you're like christ alive this is delicious yeah exactly forgotten it's so good yeah completely but i have there is also an interesting angle it's something you don't hear about it's um so i interviewed a bunch of guys on this very interesting reddit community that's um well there are two actually there's a community of guys who've given up porn and community of guys who've given up masturbation they're different things but obviously we hear a lot more about guys getting addicted to masturbation than women yeah i'm not i don't mean guys getting addicted to women you know what i mean yeah um and i don't know is are there examples of that maybe there are but again it's not something we hear about yeah i just read a really interesting novel called

mrs fletcher by a writer called tom parotta um which i guess is written by a man so i don't know if it's but it's about a mom who could also be a woman just writing under a man's name because maybe i think he's quite a famous author but maybe um but there's a in it it's about a mum whose son leaves home and then she becomes addicted to internet porn and it's very interesting about kind of porn and sex and how it's affecting us and the way that her brain changes like once she's watching porn that's really interesting that is interesting I was I mean the only thing that springs to mind when you talk about women being addicted to masturbation is again sex and city when Charlotte gets a rabbit I love that and like her friends have to literally come and commandeer her sex toy

like you have not left the house in like three days but I mean it's the type of thing that if you you know you've never used a vibrator or any you know a sex in any capacity we've never masturbated like you know i know some people some women are very good at you know getting their kicks just using their hands some of us can't and um you know and then you know once you you get that have that pleasure for the first time you're like christ this is just something i didn't know was a thing yeah completely and you know it's it is something that we are all entitled to something that we did at our event which was really fun which people listening to

this could take part in um is we were because we're saying like wank is a kind of horrible word and then female masturbation is very clinical and we everyone was dj she was like i'm djing oh yeah because of the kind of film yeah um but i thought that was quite funny i quite like flicking the bean i don't like flicking the bean i think it's really gross it's quite funny yeah it sounds a bit aggressive to me yeah it feels like also what if you didn't know what to do and then you just started flicking and then that could be some real damage. But if you have a better name,

please tweet. Yeah, are there any better names? I quite like DJ. I'm going to go with DJ. Do we need a new word that is just solely for the act of women masturbating? I don't know. Because men don't particularly not very nice word which I think feeds into this idea something dirty or shame yeah and also we use it as an insult like we need to

pick something I don't know absolutely if you've got any suggestions yeah send them in yeah please let us know we want some better words all right guys wrap up our main discussion point that's okay scarlet i'm gonna ask you what are your main tips what do you think people need to do or should be doing to sort of both feel better themselves about masturbating and also what can we all do to help sort of combat the stigma and the taboo I think you know for yourself like just know that everything's okay like whatever you want to do with your own body is completely fine as long as you're not hurting yourself but you know if you don't want to do it don't do it if you want

to do it be proud of it like don't think that there's anything wrong with you because millions and millions of women are also doing it and then I think just talk about with your friends like you know so much activism is really hard and it is to do with going to protests and signing petitions and this all it literally takes is next time you're at brunch being like so guys I bought a new vibrator the other day and I promise you because I never thought I'd talk about this with my friends ever and now i'm running a campaign on it as soon as you bring it up people will be fine with it like no one's gonna laugh at you no one's gonna be mean no one's gonna be rude and chances are most of your friends already do it and if they don't you will be their favorite friend of all time because you will introduce them something great i love it whenever i'm with my

girlfriends and we talk about stuff that we just never spoken about before like for example one dinner party recently we all started talking about upper lip hair and the different things we do like bleach thread wax and we were like we all do this it gives you a real buzz like it just makes you feel amazing I remember the first time I talked about watching porn with a friend and like before it was like 20 and had never talked about people and like thought it was so shameful and gross and me and my friends talked about it and it was amazing I was like I want to be friends with you forever like I feel so like unashamed and it's a great thing you can do completely it's very refreshing yeah it's

empowering as well just like the solidarity of it all like we're all doing the same things we're all having the same anxieties you know we're all going through it together so we may as well talk about it and i think we don't realize how toxic shame can be like i think shame is the most evil emotion and i've had so much shame throughout my life and it's just horrid and you don't have to live with that and it's also the only thing we can combat ourselves like you know i don't know i was really i was really physically ill for a while I've been really mentally ill and none of that is fixable but shame about all those things is genuinely fixable and so all you have to do is talk about it so right and I would also just like to sort

of finish on saying that also it's totally okay if you don't really have any desire to masturbate yeah don't do it that's okay too you're saving time yeah learn to play the piano yeah or just like or actually learn to dj yeah fantastic excellent tips all around guys let's do a dating disaster thank you very much for sending this in um i will begin the story. Until a year ago, I was single for three years. I really enjoyed it and unlike most, I loved Tinder dating. After Winter Fling ended in tears, I matched with someone on Tinder who caught my eye. Despite being a male model and a personal trainer, most men on Tinder in Dublin are personal trainers, inverted commas, FYI, I decided to give him a chance because admittedly i was shallow and he was hot we met on a friday after work brackets my work he was in quote marks in

between shoots at a local casual tapas bar being a friday i ordered myself a glass of wine he told me he was off the drink i ordered a few bits to share. He ordered the steak. Well done. And nothing else because he was on a diet. I knew at this point he was not the man for me. The date consisted of him bad-mouthing his exes to me and ex-wife was thrown into the mix too. The last girl he was with, he told me, was lovely and carefree. He thought he saw real potential until he saw her naked. She had fake boobs. I want to note that at this point I had had a breast augmentation when I was 23. It was something I always wanted to do and I'm very happy with my modest 32c.

I didn't make a comment at this point and let him proceed to tell me how fake boobs are cheap and nasty. They were invented for porn stars and strippers and any girl that has them either has daddy issues or no real job prospects. By now I was silently fuming. I know plenty of women, myself included, who have fake boobs and are thriving in their ambitious jobs. Who had them done to boost their self-esteem or, for medical reasons, were left with little option. He continued for a solid five minutes while I was fuming into my patatas bravas. There was no way I was going to let this chap get

away with bad-mouthing women like that. So, for feminism and all that, I turned on the waterworks. I actually started fake crying at the table. I told him that four years ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer, brackets not true. I told him that I had to get a double mastectomy, not true.

And as a result, I had to have full reconstructive surgery, also not true. I wanted a result, I had to have full reconstructive surgery. Also not true. I wanted to put him back in his box and it worked. He didn't touch another piece of his cremated steak

and we got the bill. Safe to say, I never saw him again. That was until I found out he's actually a mascot for a rugby team in Ireland. Hashtag male model. That's amazing.

I mean, it's a very funny story and I have so many reactions to that I mean also I think it's hilarious the fact that he you know said he's a personal trainer a male model and Livy and I were actually just discussing earlier how so many guys just make up the professions on their dating app so maybe women do it too I don't know but they all say they're an entrepreneur or something and really they're just unemployed yeah they do actually I was talking to a guy the other day whose job description was good at lovemaking oh god yeah um I think this is actually really interesting story because it

brings up the topic of plastic surgery very topical very topical not to bring it back to Love Island but in Love Island this girl called Megan who has had a lot of plastic surgery as we now know because someone has obviously sold an old photograph of her to the press and you can see what she looked like before she she does look like a different person she does look like a different person but equally I think it's very wrong to shame someone for getting plastic surgery if that's something that they want to do and they have the money to do it who cares you know yes it's it's unfortunate that some women feel like they have to conform to certain beauty ideals and spend thousands of pounds to do that but who

the hell are we to judge well this is kind of my thing as well like I totally can see why this woman did what she did but I sort of feel like maybe a better way to go about it would have been not to pretend she had breast cancer but just kind of say what you just said yeah i wish she just said i had a boob job and i love it and it's fine i think it kind of ties to the female masturbation thing like do it or don't do it like there's women's just be allowed to do whatever they want with their bodies and plastic surgery is one of them and it's fun and if you can afford it do it like also it's hilarious because this guy thought he knew like fake boobs were so awful

and he was looking across someone who had them and he clearly couldn't even realize exactly but also even if he could like it just doesn't matter yeah i hate things like that i know it's really frustrating it's like just let women do what they want don't judge he sounds like an awful human to be honest like if you really hate megan's plastic surgery like work to change the beauty standards don't work to like shame her for not getting it done you know work to get more real bodies represented on tv or in magazines like stop you know using the magazines to shame this woman for doing something that's very natural and fine the comments and the memes about megan are just so cruel it's horrid i do i mean i don't want to get into a massive debate about this now because it's not what we're meant to be doing

but i do kind of see the point that some people have argued that like i don't want to sound woman by any means but i do kind of think in some i'm just worried about the effect of on a particularly younger viewers watching love island who see that she is clearly the most popular with the men and i don't want younger viewers to think like oh i i'm not good enough as i am i need to change my body again like discover feminism like the you know the reason the men are attracted to that is because of beauty standards and like it's all you know that show isn't it's great and it's fun and i'm absolutely addicted to it and i watch it every day but it's by no means representative of the real world or the real dating world or real women or real men you know the way that they're just look at josh and kaz's date in the

field yesterday like the overproduced like 10 different angles soft lighting like think of that as the whole show like this is not the real world if you want the real world like you know go watch trying to think of a good show first date first dates is really good it's very i think yeah but i mean it's produced obviously it's a reality show but i think it's quite representative they have people of all ages disabilities it's really they do that quite well what just don't watch anything just hang out with your friends and talk about your own dating life just listen to millennial love listen to millennial love and all your problems will be solved we're keeping it real guys you know like i can tell you guys don't just like skinny girls with big boobs take it from me as a non-skinny girl with small boobs

on that note probably time to wrap up thank Thank you so much for listening, everybody. We hope you have enjoyed this episode of Millennial Love because we've had an absolute blast. And if you have enjoyed it, we would be so, so grateful if you would subscribe, if you have not already. Also rate us, review us. Every single one counts and really does help other people discover the podcast and is really wonderful for us to receive.

And please keep sending your dating disasters and dilemmas. We haven't done a dilemma in a while. We'll do a dilemma where we solve the problems because we're so wise. You can email them to us at millennial.love at independent.co.uk or you can DM us on Instagram at millennial underscore love. You can also join our Facebook group,

which is facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash millennial underscore love. You can also join our Facebook group, which is facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash millennial dot love. Thank you so much, Scarlett. You have been a delight. Thank you for having me. Can you remind everyone where they can find you, where they can find the Pink Protest, all the info? Yes, so you can read my column every week

in Sunday Times style. You can follow me on Instagram and Twitter at Scar Curtis and then our group is called the Pink Protest we've got Twitter at Pink Protest Instagram at Pink Protest Instagram we do a weekly thing called on Wednesdays we wear pink and protest where we put in action every week so if you're looking to do a bit more in your life it only takes five minutes every week and it's something different every week which is really fun um and yeah go to our website pinkprotest.org and under the cash under the girls wank to page you can find our artist gallery and resources about wanking and porn fantastic

i think everyone's gonna go check that out i know i am i haven't done it already um have a lovely week, everyone. We'll see you soon. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. And all through the house, not one person was stressing. Holla differently this year with DoorDash. Don't want to holla do the most? Holla don't. More festive, less frantic. Get deals for every occasion with DoorDash.