4111Is masturbation less than sex?

I’m a sexually experienced woman who doesn’t consider sexual activity with another person the whole and sexual activity with myself the half. Masturbation is much more.

(This article was first published on Medium/Sexography (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre).)

Whenever my teenage self was asked how many sex partners she had, her idea of sex was very rigid. If the boy/man didn’t cum, it wasn’t sex (and he wasn’t counted as a sex partner). My orgasm played no role in the definition of sex. And not only did his orgasm count more than mine, but the encounter had to include vaginal penetration to count as sex. All other variations (mutual masturbation, online sex, giving/receiving hand or mouth, anal intercourse, and occasions when he didn’t cum) wouldn’t count for teenage me.

These two points alone would be enough to write a book about. Fortunately, I’ve overcome that definition long ago, and today, I see myself as open and free, with no urge to define sex whatsoever. However, one detail of my perception of sex stuck with me for a long time, and lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about it. It’s hidden in plain sight, and you might think I’m joking, but I’m not.

For my younger self, sex was, per definition, linked to the presence of another person. If I’m alone, it’s not sex.

I bet most people look at it that way.

Wer mein Blog nicht gleich heiraten, sondern mich lieber einmalig für einzelne Artikel unterstützen möchte, kann mir auch mit einer einmaligen Paypal-Zahlung das Leben versüßen und mir so mein Leben erleichtern.

From time to time, new studies pop up addressing the sexual activity of people, especially partnered people compared to singles. Most of these studies and polls focus on sexual encounters between two (or more) people when they ask, “Did you have sex during the last however many weeks?”. It’s no surprise that singles tend to answer no, which makes being single look bleak and joyless, as opposed to the erotic Elysium of a stable relationship (you can keep the irony if you detect it).

But I think it’s time to change what we see as “sex” because our civilisation, mainly western societies face a major change in gender roles and, thus, intersex behaviour.

For the longest time of sedentary civilisation, women depended 100% on the presence of a man in their lives, who would nurture them and their offspring. Simply because said civilisation, I call it the male civilisation, was based on banning women from property rights. Basically, women were forced into life-long relationships to survive because they weren’t allowed to own what they’d need (e.g. money, land, cattle). And said relationships were made to grant men access to sex whenever they wanted it. Since the brides were 12 to 14-year-old children, they were sexually inexperienced and considered “virgins”. It’s no wonder that for women and girls, the term “sex” always involved another person, i.e. a man; there simply was no “sex” in their life before marriage.

Fast-forward to today. Feminism challenged the economic dependency of women and made them strong and self-sufficient in almost every aspect of their daily life. Surely, the gender pay gap is a reality, and women are far from being as wealthy as men, but still, they are as economically independent as never before in the history of sedentary civilisation. Economic reasons no longer force them into relationships. That leads to changes in dating behaviour. Women become more choosy (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre) about their partners, more willing to send someone off as soon as they feel they don’t fit in their lives. The mere fact that popular dating platforms have more male users than female shows that women don’t necessarily suffer from being single.

Being single isn’t as scary as it used to be, especially for women — actress Emma Watson once said she is “self-partnered” when she was asked if she’s in a relationship. That basically means a woman can find fulfillment, joy, and happiness in being alone, while men suffer more from being single.

Entrance masturbation. We tend to see singles as somewhat deficient, their life, especially their sex life, as empty and pitiful. Single men as pathetic wankers and single women as completely asexual. But showing sympathy for people who masturbate because they’re single emphasizes the idea that an active sex life always involves another person. An idea that puts a certain pressure on all genders.

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Back to my younger self, this time in my late 20s and early 30s. I was single for roughly seven years, except for some short-time affairs.

As per the above definition, I lived sexless most of the time. But did I really live sex-less most of the time? Hell no.

I filled the time with masturbation, and today, I consider this phase of my life the main step to getting to know my own sexuality. I consumed porn like a lunatic and dug into all (legal) categories to find out what makes my pussy wet. Some categories didn’t excite me at all, others only for a short time, but some rang a bell (and still do to this day), showing me that I have sexual kinks and desires that won’t go away. I discovered that for my pleasure, penetration is far from being as crucial as society’s idea of sex made me think it was. I found out that the old in-out wasn’t remotely sufficient to make me feel the sexual excitement most men wish it would.

I discovered that my pleasure during vaginal penetration varies with angle, tempo, and penetration depth — in short: with techniques most men don’t bother to develop. And I came to the conclusion that the standard sexual encounter with a man and all the standard procedures often don’t satisfy me the way I can satisfy myself.

The idea of finding a relationship to have a real sex life still was forceful in me, and eventually, I found it. However, it didn’t work out, and now that I’m single again at the biblical age of 51, I remember how rich and exciting my sex life in my early thirties felt. Yeah, sexual and emotional encounters from time to time are nice, and I enjoy them thoroughly. But I’m no longer looking for that sexually exclusive long-term relationship. A state which would make me part of the official “sexually active” population.

I am sexually active with or without a partner. To me, masturbation isn’t a compensation for things I miss due to being single. To me, masturbation is a valid part of my sexuality that helped me to explore my lust and my body in the past and lets me take advantage of knowing myself so well in the present.

Maybe we should stop seeing masturbation as inferior and look down on people who masturbate, because they don’t have a partner. Stop calling it masturbation, start calling it single sex — it’s just another variation of sex, like anal sex and oral sex.

Sliding into a society with more and more singles would be a perfect start to show people that not having sexual partners doesn’t make them inferior, don’t you agree?

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