Woman's Hour - Late Night Woman's Hour: Masturbation

Episode Date: June 23, 2016

Lauren Laverne and guests discuss women and masturbation - is it still a taboo? Her guests this month are:Emily Yates, accessibility consultant and sex educator with the charity Enhance the UK.Irma Kurtz, who has been the agony aunt for Cosmopolitan Magazine since 1970. Ky Hoyle, the founder and Managing Director of the Sh! Women's Erotic Emporium.Stephanie Theobald, a writer whose most recent book Sex Drive is a memoir of her drive across America in search of her lost libido. Producer: Luke Mulhall.

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Welcome to Late Night Woman's Hour. Regular listeners will know that we pride ourselves on being unembarrassable on this programme, which is probably just as well, as tonight we're going to be crashing through taboos and brushing off the titters as we tackle the subject of female masturbation. Who's doing it? How often? Why is it still taboo? And is pleasure political? Come on, come all, as we investigate with my intrepid guests. Kai Hoyle is the founder of Sh Women's Erotic Emporium,

which has been going strong since 1992, I believe, Kai. That's right, yeah. Presumably you've changed the batteries a couple of times. Oh, yes, we've gone through many a rechargeable battery. Well, congratulations to you, 92. No, no, nearly 25 years old. There's a whole generation of women who've grown up with shush and its influence.

Their whole sexuality has been kind of within. Under your tenure. Well, with this massive shift that's happened. Emily Yates runs workshops on sex for people with disabilities and works on the Undressing Disability campaign. Welcome to you. How are you? Thank you. Very well. Thank you. Very well. Thanks for being here.

Cosmopolitan's first agony aunt irma kurtz has been helping readers since 1975 irma how big a proportion of your postbag relates to sex do you think and does it change well i'll tell you it related to sex more in the past when i first began And then along came a new breed of journalists. I called them sexperts. And they dedicated their columns just to sex. Frankly, it was a great relief to me. It was off your plate and not to theirs. Yeah, I got rid of it. Put that in the sexy columns.

Well, in a funny way, it's very limited what you do sexually. It's why and with whom and how. And that stays in the agony column. But just what you do and where you put it and how far this way and how far that way. Oh, thank goodness that went to some other department. All right. And Stephanie Theobald,

you've been described as a notorious lesbian author by one newspaper. Ten out of ten. I hope you had that embroidered on a cushion of some kind. Yeah. Vivienne Westwood said

one of my books made her vomit. That was quite a good one as well. It's a boilerplate all over the place. Potential Twitter bios. Yeah, absolutely. Excellent. Well, congratulations to you. Stephanie's going to be telling us,

among other things, about an American road trip which got her back in touch with herself, so to speak. Absolutely. Masturbation, foundational sexuality, gourmet masturbation, fast food masturbation. I'm sort of doing a boast, man. I will boast, actually. I'm like master's degree. I'm beyond the tittering stage. Tittering about masturbation is a real male thing, by the way.

But we can do GCSE masturbation. We can start there and I'm sure we'll progress. We are open to all forms of discussion on this subject I mean you know I like a bit of a tit in myself but we can see we'll see how we go um okay so I suppose we should start really by establishing why this is a subject that we need to tackle now Kai is this a conversation enough women are having I mean is it still a taboo it's becoming less of a taboo, but it still has these grounding in sort of shame and embarrassment that it's not going to be wiped out in the last 20 years. Goes back to the beginning

of time, you know, the creation of Christianity. But what it really goes back to is when women were forbidden in a way to have pleasure in sex. I mean, it was because it made us dangerous. Our job in the past was to keep one man happy and have his children. He, meanwhile, could go off and, you know, wherever he wanted to. Sire, yeah. And are we allowed to say jerk off whenever it pleased him? I don't see why not.

Start as you mean to go on. Irma, so a form of social control for you then? This whole kind of control of women's sexuality? I think it was a way of controlling women. It was to keep it on the quiet. I'll bet a lot of women were a little frightened when they found themselves

sexually aroused because they weren't supposed to in a way. It didn't come into a woman's way of life. Oh girls, I'm getting old, believe me, because I wasn't that old when it was still like that. Cosmos First Agony Anne, you know, you've been at this a long time. What changes have you seen over your tenure at the magazine?

The problems haven't changed. It's a lack of self-esteem and why won't he? That problem is just eternal. Problems don't change. It's the means of expression that changes. And in a way, masturbation is a means of expression. And that does change. Emily, you think massively? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm 24, so I guess I'm kind of in the situation where myself and my friends,

we all know that everybody's doing it in a sense, but I still don't go out and have a drink with my girls and talk about masturbation. It just doesn't happen. However, you know, there's female-friendly porn now and we're very very very much encouraged to liberate ourselves sexually but I still think that conversation itself is a taboo and I think that's where the difference is with expression now so Stephanie is this back to the thing that

you were saying that you know we can kind of laugh about it among my friends and I we might joke about it in the way that I get what you're saying. It is quite a kind of male, juvenile thing, but we might make those jokes as well, but among ourselves, it's not really having that kind of frank conversation. It was funny because I was talking to someone about the show and apparently someone was saying about this show, but what is there to talk about masturbation?

What is there not to talk about? I mean, number one, the world's full of politics, it's boring and depressing, blah, blah, blah. Pleasure is political. This is the thing behind my book, Sex Drive, which is a memoir. It's driving across America

in search of my lost sex drive. Pleasure's political and that's what fourth wave feminism's about. It's about getting into your body and stuff. Masturbation, it makes you healthy,

it releases emotions, it takes you to altered states. But also the bottom line, and this is what I learned from Betty Dodson, who's my total guru. Betty's 87. She's been giving these workshops since the 70s.

She turned her flat in Madison Avenue. She used to have orgies, right, in the 60s, as you did. And she was like, why are all these women faking orgasms? Why would a woman fake an orgasm? Hence her work began. And she says, you know, the problem with women is our body image, and it all starts with the vulva. We all think, all of us, that there's something wrong with it.

It smells wrong. It's the wrong shape. it's wired wrongly. And so, you know, this is why we need to talk about it. And fourth-wave feminism is all about getting it into our bodies and just not being ashamed. OK, but, Kai, let me bring you in here, because, obviously, that's your stock in trade. Absolutely.

Getting women in touch with, quite literally, with themselves and with their bodies. Absolutely, and the amount of women who come in to us and say, I've never had an orgasm. They don't just come in and sort of launch generally. And then straight up to the counter. We can, you know, they... Service.

Now, listen here. No, they generally kind of, you can tell, because they'll do a great big sweeping circle of the vibrator table. And then they'll often say, I've never had an orgasm and I really want to buy a vibrator. I don't know what I'm looking for. It's a real kind of outfast. And often it's intergenerational.

We noticed a lot of women in their 50s and 60s, older women who'd never had an orgasm. And that really makes sense. I'm listening here. It absolutely makes sense. Because they weren't allowed to. They weren't ever given the idea that they could have pleasure. Their husbands were not kind of beasts who didn't care. Men didn't think women had pleasure. I'm sure. I think it happens for women of all generation. Orgasm is all around letting go and feeling free enough to be able to let go. And for women in

their 50s, they've been doing it for 20 years. It's not a thing necessarily of faking orgasm, you know, just for the hell of it. A lot of women don't know what an orgasm feels like. And the reason for that is that we're all told it's all around penetration. And it's not for the vast majority of women. It's a clitoral external stimulation. We're equal, but we're not the same. Boys, I raised one, are born with a little dangling toy and they very soon learn to play with it.

Do you know how many nerve endings a clitoris has? Lots. How many? Lots and lots. I don't know how many. I haven't written a book. Roughly, what do you reckon? I don't know, 800?

8,000, right? And how many does a penis have, a nerve ending? Three. Nearly, 4,000. So basically, we're Lamborghinis, they're bicycles, right? And how many does a penis have? Three. Nearly, 4,000. So basically, we're Lamborghinis, they're bicycles, right? So we need more attention, we need to talk about it more. And this workshop, I mean, if I had the money,

I would send all my friends on a Betty Dawson masturbation workshop. She's the lady who wrote Sex for One, isn't she? She wrote Sex for One, world's only bestseller on female masturbation. So basically, it's two days. First day is genital show and tell. Second day is you get in a circle and you masturbate in a circle. I was going to say, when you say masturbation circle, Stephanie, so quite literally.

Yeah, yeah. So you go in there. It's fantastic, man, because it's like, she's lived in this apartment. It's in 1962. It's like, you know, Janis Joplin's going to turn up any minute.

It's fantastic. So you turn out. So no fuss and facts. You take your clothes off. You sit in a circle. So the first day you do genital show and tell, you're up there. You spread your legs

and Betty does it first and she says, you know, it's the clitoris. And you learn urethra. I'd never seen my urethra right. I mean, I'm bisexual. I've slept with a turntable, you're up there, you spread your legs, and Betty does it first, and she says, you know, it's the clitoris, and you learn urethra. I'd never seen my urethra right. I mean, I'm bisexual, I've slept with a lot of women, but it wasn't a sexual thing, and it wasn't a medical thing. It was like Wonder Man.

It's all about the inner labia and outer labia. There's this yoga teacher who's like, oh, I've got too many, my labia's too big. I'm like, no, it's fantastic shape. And this other girl was a lawyer going, oh, that's a heart shape, that's like an angel. And Betty's like, you know, I divide that up into architectural forms. There's the Renaissance, the Gothic.

I had a girl in here the other day, 25, you know, simple forms, art deco, simple lines. Fantastic. But at the end of day one, you're like, oh, that's amazing. So you go home, then you come back, and day two is the actual masturbation circle. And Betty's, we should talk about vibrators. The Americans, I found, are really into vibrators. A woman, she she was there I left when I was too young don't they right she's

got five kids and she was she's fantastic she's like every day I must I go away in the bedroom and 35 minutes I masturbate and after a while that becomes Annie Sprinkle who's this fantastic former porn star turned performance artist she calls it medibation to be if you masturbate every day for 35 minutes imagine that's going to become a form of meditation. Because the Norway chick comes, the Spanish chick comes, and then she goes, on the end of Euro, she goes, come on London, fake it!

So this happens, and then I'm like, finally, thank goodness for that. And it is this mad energy, and she says it's the highest form of tantric energy. You know, 13 women in a room masturbating, but it turns out she goes, you're not done yet, honey. She gets out her massive great it's called the magic wand and then suddenly i'm in like outer space this mad fantastic orgasm i thought have i ever had an orgasm before my life so that it was amazing experience so by this point you know done this a general show so you're

talking about it's like you know you're like you're talking about a cup of tea you know so that like totally inspired me and set me off around america meeting all these amazing 1970s families who are much more interesting than anyone today. Sounds like quite the experience. It's a great weekend, man. Yeah. Get over there. Forget that.

Quite the afternoon from Stephanie. OK. Emily, let me bring you in here because we're talking about whether this whole subject is taboo and I know that you are tackling some very specific taboos in your work around disability and sexuality tell me about that well I'm a wheelchair user myself and I work for an amazing charity called Enhance the UK and we basically work to get rid of that taboo and the fear factor that surrounds disability but particularly disability

and sex I guess we're in a situation at the moment where it isn't just about masturbation it's a much bigger picture than that at the moment because there is still such a taboo that surrounds disability and sex. At the moment unfortunately for many people women and men that have disabilities it's not necessarily about masturbation it's about sex and relationships education and education really is the key word we are in a situation where parents are able to opt out and their children aren't able to get sex education they're not able to get inclusive and accessible education so really what we're wanting is a bit more of an educational step before we can even look at

things like masturbation which of course we should all be talking about and is this where the undressing disability campaign came from what happened is we got a group of disabled women together we all took our kit off took loads of pictures and then exhibited them in the gherkin in london last year so how was it tell me about that yeah it was a wonderful experience um there's a really good friend of mine called mary and she's got dwarfism and she just basically got a kit off and was really really confident and there was me there that was quite shy and she just really really changed my own attitude of my body being able to see some another woman with a disability there that was really really confident about the way her body looked and how she felt about it was absolutely phenomenal for

me because i could really relate to that i mean that's a really good point it's not just about sex it's about around sex it's like getting into your body yeah um and doing naked pictures one of the women at the workshop betty dodson she does this like photos she calls it phototherapy you go out somewhere middle of nowhere you take all your clothes off, you take photos of your body. So that's a form of masturbation. There's lots of ways you can be sexual. Absolutely, that is so true. And one of the things that we do say

is that for many people with disabilities, penetrative sex isn't always possible. It isn't always a possible thing, but you can be sexual and you can be sensual in so, so many ways that don't have to involve penetration i was gonna say is that something that oh my god if i could wave one magic wand i would just get rid of all these concept this concept of four plane sex yeah get rid of that separate sex and because what we mean here is is you know sex which means something

going into the vagina and so sex becomes this much more sort of all-encompassing thing which you know might involve that but might not and but definitely involves body image and how we feel because the thing that is both coming out here from about is that most women don't see what other women look like yes i mean what one of the other things that's coming through here as well as this, the part that this plays in sexual identity, because I think masturbation, the way that we talk about it culturally and, you know, the way that we joke about it is as this kind of activity that young people do, you know, teenagers do. It's the time when you're kind of working out who you are and what your tastes are. But I imagine, Stephanie, that you're going to take issue with that because it's about kind of how that can change over the years. It's brilliant, man. It's non-age-specific.

It's got nothing to do with race, got nothing to do with your socioeconomic group. The other thing about masturbation that it does, as Betty's talking about relationships, is that Betty Dodson, she hates all that, the goddamn Barforama, Prince Charming, romance. You know, we do so many things in the name of romance, which makes so many bad choices.

And if you know how to masturbate, if you know how to have an orgasm, you know, you don't need to have some terrible relationship. We're not going to get rid of romance just by... Oh, no, of course not. Well, everyone who writes to me, to an agony aunt, has a romantic problem attached to the sexual

problem. It's all I want to do it... But again, it's this thing of, you know, it's movie sex and real sex. Well, I usually tell them to teach him how. Yeah, exactly. I mean, once you know how, you can tell somebody else how. But we don't know how, and what we have drummed into us,

we'll have a relationship, we'll have passion. Even after 20 years, we'll have so much passion that, you know, I get thrown up on the kitchen, you know, on the kitchen side side and he ravishes me that's how women are taught about about what good sex is and and what a relationship should be well it's we're not talking about how you know that kind of passion does decline you can't have that kind of first week's passion we'd all be dead we'd all be dead if you were doing it like that. It changes.

And what we should be doing is giving, because the thing around, that I know around women and sexuality is that we share. When we do share, it's around kind of, we're then given permission to think other things and to behave in other ways. That's why things like Fifty Shades of Grey was such an amazing phenomenon

because women were sharing it amongst themselves Emily you want to come in here one thing that I was just going to say is you were talking about romance and I was just kind of thinking in my head isn't that the beauty of masturbation that it doesn't have to be romantic isn't that like the great

you don't need to think about feelings this new thing I had that weekend is called because masturbating people have a problem I mean it sounds like a medical procedure or a legal procedure it's terrible but she was saying

what do you do she goes I went I went masturbating which is great masturbating means you know have a night with yourself sex with other people is good you know you have that

if you love of course it's different but actually it's a lot of hassle attached to all that so getting rid of the romance I think it's very very beneficial

for a lot of women these junkies getting rid of is a very strong... I think in this context, it's being able to look at them separately, I suppose. So with that in mind, let's kind of talk about the physiology a little bit. Now, Stephanie, you've kind of referred to this already, but I know that you're going to want to talk to me about the clitoris and why it's important that we know about it and we don't just refer to vaginas.

Well, it was funny because I was writing Sex Drive and I didn't realise this. The clitoris is actually bigger than a penis, right? But it's all inside us. We have an erectile system, you know. The vagina of it is not a hole, it's a muscle. And the shocking thing is that it's been ignored in anatomy books for 26,000 years.

26,000 years ago, the Willendorf, the Venus of Willendorf, you know, that chubby little, tubby little stone artefact. She's got a really finely defined vulva. That was 26,000 years ago. It was found in Austria. So, Kai, you were saying that there hasn't been a lot of research done on this. So tell me what you mean by that. Well, the clitoris was discovered in 1998 by Helen O'Connell. In 1998?

In 1998. In terms of its full structure internally, it had had a couple of references medically in other textbooks. It's not been fully explored in Grey's Anatomy, which is the surgeon's Bible. Wow. It was only in 1998 that she discovered it and shaped it, and it was only in 2008 where it was sonically photographed. What has this all led to?

Tell me about some of the innovations that are being made in your field and the changes that you've seen since 1992 in your field. In my field of sex stories, of which I am an expert. In the sex story industry. Well, I mean, there's been massive, massive changes. When I first started Shush, I started it because I went shopping in Soho. You know, I was a young, liberated woman. My parents were feminists.

You know, I thought it was my right. And yet I went into the sex shops. And I literally had... I was told, ooh, we don't get many women in here. And literally, any woman who was there was the blow-up type. That was it. It was just porn. And all the toys that were there were all phallic. Great big eight inches of throbbing.

We always call them Throbbing Mr Big Johns. They're all like that. And it was just the most alienating, horrible experience, icky. And it was just not for me. So I literally, I came back from that shopping experience and started Shush. But what the problem was, was finding any toys that weren't phallic, weren't for penetration. So it was this kind of male gaze thing.

Because, of course, men don't want to think, oh, actually 80% of women don't orgasm that way. Men and women have all been so focused on penetrative sex. Exactly. That's all it is. So the research has been, it's kind of created a change, you know, what we're learning about women's bodies. That's the thing, talking about, and also there's money now,

women make money and so people think, oh, there's going to be money. But I think it's good and I do think this is part of the second sexual revolution. What about, it's always seemed to me that women have more erotic zones everywhere. I mean, you know, this little bit bits at the end here and that little bit there. I think something like 29% of women can orgasm through their nipples so you know I think so I think you see I don't

Steph I don't think you should necessarily it's Betty's thing the clitoris and certainly it is the vast majority of women's things but for me it's really important not to preach to women you know we really need to just we really important not to preach to women. You know, we really need to just, we really just need to say, there you go, give permission. You know, whatever works, right? One of the sort of big moments in Shushu's history that really taught me something was around

permission, because Cosmo phoned me, it was 1999, I think, and they said, oh, we're writing an article about female masturbation. They'd phoned me previously, you know, for years, but they'd always focused on toys for couples. This was the first time they were focusing on toys for women themselves. It was hugely revolutionary. 1999, you know, it's not that long ago. And they said, what toy do you recommend? I recommended the rabbit because I'd just pretty much discovered it. And it is an amazing toy for exploring all sorts of different sensations.

The rabbit had been featured in Cosmo in previous articles, but that was all around, you know, toys with your partner. This was the first one that was just toys for you. We sent out 600 rabbits in one day. And what that taught me was that it's not actually about teaching women, you can say, here are all the pleasure bits and explore, but you don't say, don't be dogmatic, because then we're just, all we're being is the same

as women have always had as a dog. I couldn't agree more, absolutely. With that in mind, in the spirit of exploration, Emily, I think you have got a website that you want to tell us about. Yes. Come on. There's an amazing website called OMG Yes. Basically, there are so many different levels to the site,

but you can subscribe to the site, a one-off subscription, and it's very, very interactive. It's just basically full of videos of women talking about their personal experiences and what you were just saying there, Kai, was very much about not having pressure but having fun and enjoying the experience and that's one thing that I really, really discovered.

And we're talking with them at the moment about representing women with disabilities in their videos as well, which i think will be a really really innovative thing to do and crazy that it's innovative but it will be innovative kai what do you what do you see you know you described earlier that woman you know kind of coming into the shop and doing that big circle like kind of very tentative tentative glide past like i think i'm not sure if this is the harbour dashers or not, just

checking. Like, you know, when people have, when they've let their defences down and they kind of really go for it and they decide to explore all of this stuff, what does it do for them? What does it do for them? And I don't mean do for them in the kind of immediate sense, I think we can all guess, but like, you know, what's the knock on?

It's kind of almost, you know, it's such an empowering thing that happens, almost like consciousness raising. You know, if we're talking about 1970s feminism, it's like, you know, they come in absolutely petrified because it's an incredibly intimate thing that they're sharing with us, really revealing. They're coming in and saying, I masturbate, essentially.

If they're coming for a vibrator or they're coming in for, you know, a toy for their partners and they're sharing something else that's intimate and different and out of this kind of norm. Vibrators always will be incredibly popular with women because they work, they're fabulous. You're going to jumpstart the engine. Well, I mean, one of the biggest problems is the medicalisation of female sexuality.

And that goes right back to the Victorian era, doesn't it? And that's hysteria and the hysterectomy, the kind of etymology of all those terms. And the separating of it. So today's hysteria is called female sexual dysfunction. I don't think you can start to label something until you've actually

really just allowed women to have this free reign. To discover themselves, to not feel body shame. All the things that we're talking about in this table, to know what we look like downstairs is what normal women look like and not just cut the nips and tucked of porn stars, which is mostly where we get our references from.

Yeah, I think the consciousness-raising groups, that's what I got from my research for Sex Drive. I love that idea. And I wish we could have, you know, instead of going to some pop-up restaurant, we kind of hang out at a friend's house, get a speculum, have a look at the cervix. It'd be fun, right?

And you could have, you know, like you do in your shop, you know, to work, you know, vibrators. Don't worry. We don't get the speculum yet. I think it would be a good idea to talk about it more too. Fully clothed in a public place, but talk about it and about how you feel and help each other too. No, that's...

Give suggestions. I mean, I do think the actual taking... I mean, there's a woman, Nicola Canavan, her name is. She's in Newcastle. She does these workshops, and it's based on a Greek thing called anasirami, which is basically lifting the skirts. And so she takes women outdoors, they lift their skirts up.

It was the idea that, you know, you could make the crops grow, we could ward off demons. It goes back to many different cultures. And the Bay thing, OK, it's the 70s, but you will sit in a circle and that's that idea of sisterhood, you know, that sisterhood. You do regret it. There's a big diversity of people and it was really great and we don't have that now in a sophisticated 21st century.

Well, I mean, this brings me on to the next thing that I wanted to talk about, really, because obviously, you know, it's a solo activity, essentially, that we're discussing here tonight. But what about the kind of knock on in your life, in your relationships with other people, whether that's a partner or or someone else? I'm really interested in that. I mean, Emily, you know, what do you think? What do you see? For me personally, I really love the fact that I can do both. And for me, one doesn't have an effect on the other. It's two totally separate things. One of them's to do with my identity and my personal power. And another one's to do with my relationships.

And as we were saying, the kind of emotional, romantic situations that go on through that, that you can't necessarily get out of masturbation. So I think it's absolutely beautiful that we can have both. There's the idea if you masturbate too much, oh, you're going to lose your sex drive. No, your sex drive's going to increase. So if you masturbate a lot, you do get your libido back, you do get your sex drive back.

No, Stephanie, this is my question to you. So you actually, hearing you talk, it's hard to believe that you were coming from a place and this this story began because you were feeling like you'd lost your sex i got ill uh about 10 years ago it was a pain syndrome it's called vulvodynia means pain of the vulva suddenly from thinking i couldn't have sex just like falling off a log i couldn't have an orgasm that's how i got into the hippie stuff right so i did all these things and that's how i ended up partly um I was at Betty's. You know, because people say, oh, sex is not important.

You know, it really is. After two years of that, it's like really depressing. That's the other thing I learnt from the book. You know, what you like at 20, you might not like at 40. And women's bodies change, you know. So it's a constant process of discovery. Yeah, it's just change happens. You don't know what's going to happen.

You go with your body. Exactly. The body isn't going to stay. So we've talked about sex toys quite a bit. You go with your body. Exactly. The body isn't going to stay here. So we've talked about sex toys quite a bit. And what about in relationships, Kai? Do you see people kind of buying alone or buying to use in a relationship? Probably the split is, I don't know, 60-40, I would say. Vibrators, I would say most women are buying to use with themselves. But of course,

they are great little things, especially if you find it hard to orgasm with your lover to bring to bed. And if your partner's a male, you do, then there are certain toys that we would recommend over other toys. As long as you keep the sex fun. It's fun. It's one of the great fun things you can do. But, you know, in France, and we used to say it too, when you were reaching climax, you'd say you were dying. Le petit mort. Oui, le petit mort. And I think that's maybe why a lot of old people take it easy. They can do it. But I've talked to several friends of mine who are in their 80s and 70s even,

and it's the breathlessness and the heartbeat. Oh, not with my mum. It scares them. No, my mum too. Let's bring the mums into it. Come on, everyone. My son would say the same. But it's true.

It's interesting. Of course women in their 70s and 80s are having sex. And of course, you know, one of the interesting things that's happening in the shop is that women are bringing in their daughters. Well, we're actually going to start a workshop because we think that that's really, really necessary. Oh, really?

Well, these girls are having so much pressure. These are teenage girls who have the same hormonal rages of boys and these are responsible parents who realize that now because we don't often you know we don't like girls sexuality blossoming sexuality boys we make all these jokes about socks and emily i think you wanted to come in on the as our our young youngest panelist here you know teenagers is a recent memory for you you know how do you respond to what Kyra says? I think what you've just said there is absolutely phenomenal. And coming from a disability perspective,

I think personally it comes back to inclusive sex education, be that in schools or be that by a family or however that may come about, because we've got a massive, massive it you know it's an epidemic really that deaf and disabled young women are twice as likely to get sexually abused um than their than their non-disabled counterparts and a massive massive part of that is that they sit in sex education lessons or worse still they don't get any sex education whatsoever but you know they're watching these videos if the deaf are hard of hearing they can't remotely relate sex education whatsoever. But, you know, they're watching these videos. If they're deaf or hard of hearing, they can't remotely relate to this video.

If they're disabled, the bodies within these videos don't remotely relate to the bodies that they're in. And it's an absolute travesty and there's a real, real problem. I think it's so important to have decent sex education. There was that programme where the girls were taken aside and before that they put up with all this nonsense from these boys about what they can get from the girls. The girls get taken off, you talk about the body,

you have a consciousness-raising session, whatever you call it. Then the girls go back with the boys and they're like, actually, no, I'm not going to do that, no. You know, I'm a proud body, solid, you know, and I think that's really important in British schools. I mean, on the subject of technology, we did do a show about internet dating a while back, which Emma was part of, and one of the things that

came up a little bit there was that there were lots of brilliant things about technology and that it had done for people's lives and for their love lives but actually there was also a kind of flip side to it and there were problems, there could be problems that you know some of the humanity was kind of factored out

you know how do we stop that happening? I think we still remember that porn is, you can have a fast food masturbate. It's not a medibation, you know, it's not you know, fantastic, it's 35 minutes. You know, you want to get off quickly. And that's the other thing, you know, women will often say, oh, but when I masturbate, it's not just the physical, you do have an image,

a story in your head often. And they go, oh, but is it feminist enough? My thing is like, no, the dirtier, the nicer, the better. Porn takes you out of your body. You know, you're looking at someone else's fantasy. So my goal, which I finally when I went to California, is to masturbate and not just not think of anything, have a blank mind to get into your body.

So there are many types, different ways to masturbate. Stephanie, you've said that pleasure is political. Now, tell me about this, because I think this is very, very interesting. And it's this idea, I think you kind of referred to it earlier, that women have to put pleasure back on their own agendas. Every woman. So, you know, it's not about kind of going to

America and doing a whole road trip. It's just an ordinary woman listening to this. No, I know because I don't want to alienate people because I know, I've done this crazy stuff and I actually ended up masturbating in front of 40 people in the armoury in San Francisco and whatever but you don't have to do that that was good you don't have to go that far you don't want to but you know it's good to know I mean trying to work out this how to do the hashtag thing but no pleasure is political and we forget pleasure masturbation it's like it's a it's a it's a moment of exceptional consciousness

you know like you have a bath alone just just taking time and you know it's all about mindfulness stuff now well yeah let's have some And, you know, it's all about mindfulness stuff now. Well, yeah, let's have some fun mindfulness. You don't have to wear sackcloth. Five minutes, go to your bedroom, have a little private time, you know. Because I was thinking about this and I was thinking, I wonder what the world would be like if, and obviously everybody has their own version of it,

but if women did decide to put their own pleasure back on their to-do list, I wonder what the knock-on would be. I mean, fantastic. It would be great. It would be mellowed out. For their daughters and for the next generation, it would go on. You say back on the list. It hasn't been on the list for very long. Exactly. I don't think you need to... I mean, I love the magic 35 minutes.

I'm kind of... I'm going to speak to you. What happens if you go to 35 minutes you know not a minute straight through the ceiling i mean i do think even though i'm not into kind of like you know you must you must you must do that you know the thing around women's women's lives is that they're busy and they get busier as with kids and older parent and all that stuff they just get even more busy and and and as as women and girls we're not socialized to be the takers we're socialized to be the givers and the carers and the nurturers. So we're not actually taking our own pleasure

and doing something for ourselves. We're not taught it and it doesn't come naturally, whether or not it is natural. So I do think it's really quite good if you just do an experiment. Just do it for a week. Mastodating, whatever you want to call it. Jilling off. Well, I mean, want to call it. Jilling off. Well, I mean, there's the issue.

There's the issue is that we don't have a word. We don't have words. I mean, Sweden. We have to choose what we have, you know. Hang on, Sweden. Well, Sweden actually addressed this last year because they wanted to create a word for female masturbation in order for it to start to have a vocabulary about it.

And they came up with it. Apparently everybody proposed words and voted on it and their word for female masturbation is clitra. Clitra? Clitra. I quite like that. She-bopping is one I quite like. There's a classic rock track called She-bop.

Oh, there we are. Homage 2. There are quite a few songs about it, actually, specifically from a female perspective. There's a real pro-women, women's energy system thing going on again. It's a new wave. And there's this one amazing woman called Mama Junior and she just takes this sort of sex in the city crowd.

She's an aspirational talker. One of her things is you get up in the morning, you do a sexy dance in front of the mirror naked. Then you do an angry dance in front of the mirror naked. Choose your tunes. And then with that

whirling dervish energy, you go into the office and you sock it to them because that's female energy. Male stuff is all about burning out, reaching goals, you've got to be exhausted.

No, women, we work differently, you know. So for me, that summed up getting into your body. And anyone can do that. That's also getting into yourself. Yes. It's more than just getting getting into your body. And anyone can do that. That's also getting into yourself. Yes.

It's more than just getting into, your body is part of yourself. And we, for too long, have neglected that part of ourselves. Emily, you know, we're talking about getting into your body. You know, what's your response to that? Because for some disabled people, that's difficult. You can dance in front of the mirror naked in the end. Absolutely. I can and I don't. Tell me.

You know, we're in a state of such competition, not just as people but as women. If we had a stronger sense of self and a stronger celebration of self, that would only be a beautiful thing. And I think specifically for people with disabilities, but not just for people with disabilities, you know, the more strength we can have in our self identity and the more power

that we can give to ourselves, that doesn't have to be in an aggressive manner or in an outwardly arrogant manner but to have that kind of fulfilment within yourself internally we should all have that and if masturbation can help me to do that then please do

Well that's all we've got time for thank you very much my guests this month kai hoyle stephanie theobald emily yates and irma kurtz thank you very much i'm sarah 11 and for over a year i've been working on one of the most complex stories i've ever covered there was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth.

How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.