How do you masturbate? I personally like to take my time and pretend I’m in a Britney video, while blasting ‘F*** With Myself’ by Banks. But don’t worry, it’s cool, we all get ourselves off differently.
Iconic!
It’s cool if you feel uncomfortable with me telling you how I spend some me-time (but also, it really shouldn’t be such a big deal). That’s because I’m here to share one of the most exciting and innovative ways to learn about different women’s experiences with clitoral stimulation with you.
As someone who has been interested in sexuality and gender studies for ages, any new development or innovative product aimed at increasing women’s pleasure intrigues me. Unfortunately, data and genuine advice on masturbation with a personal emphasis are still fairly uncommon. Your average Cosmo or Elle sex features or other websites tend to be very heteronormative, focus on male pleasure, and incite shame, because they either provide us with generalized formulas that are discouraging to young women or abandon the topic entirely because it’s just ‘too diverse’.
But all that changes with OMGYes.
Me after discovering OMGYes
A website that aims to educate and enhance pleasure for women based on extensive research, OMGYes is exactly what we needed to destigmatize female masturbation and encourage women to talk openly about their pleasure.
The website is based on a University of Indiana and Kinsey Institute study involving over 2000 women from ages 18-95, which is ‘the first ever large-scale representative study about women’s pleasure’. OMGYes showcases explicit content surrounding female pleasure, but it is purely educational. It’s so refreshing (sadly) to see a realistic portrayal of women masturbating, one that doesn’t aim to get the audience off.
The website created quite the buzz when it was mentioned by Emma Watson in an interview with Gloria Steinem (yay girl power!), and not only teaches women different ways to orgasm, but also shows how to experience different types and intensities of climax.
Even Emma Watson uses it!
The website is structured around seasons, or sets of techniques. Each season contains 12 different loosely grouped techniques, which are then presented in depth and personally by different women, who each have their own take on the categories. While every woman is different, the study has found certain overlaps in technique amongst women, and in each chapter of the season OMGYes presents you with statistics, showing you how representational it is.
I also think it’s really cool that the website works with different presentations. Each technique shows videos from different people talking about what they find pleasurable, videos of them demonstrating the technique on themselves, as well as interactive demonstration. Additionally, the chapters all have detailed diagrams, visualizing pressure, rhythm et cetera. Alongside this, research data is directly presented through statistics and facts about the specific technique, including common challenges. While the website represents queer women, it is not trans inclusive, which is pretty much the only downside.
Perhaps the most innovative thing about the website itself is the touchable simulation – that’s right, real vulvas with real people attached to them, giving you real feedback as you try out the different techniques presented. It definitely feels weird to touch a virtual vulva at first, but I love the interactive videos for their realism and de-stigmatization of cis-women’s genitalia. The demonstration is actually sensitive to pressure too – so it gives a more accurate representation of women’s response to touch, which of course is very different in each specific individual. I would definitely recommend using a device with a touch-screen to do the interactive video simulations; it’s a lot more intuitive than fussing about with a mousepad.
Besides showing the variety of masturbation techniques out there, OMGYes really showcases the difference between the interviewed women – what gets them off, or what they don’t like, is discussed alongside different sexual anecdotes and general chat about sex and self-discovery which humanizes the whole experience. It also highlights the variety of vulvas out there – most of us don’t look like a stereotypical porn star, and we certainly don’t masturbate like we are trying to turn on a male audience.
Not only does the demonstration teach you the technique, but it also trains you in sexual communication and response. The responses are customized to each woman so you get exposed to an array of different kinds of corporal and verbal signals. This emphasis on communication with a partner, or even yourself, is really cool and important – good communication with your partner or yourself is, after all, the main ingredient to incredible sex. Debbie Herbenick, an Indiana University researcher, explains that part of the reason why we find it difficult to communicate about masturbation is that we simply don’t have the shared vocabulary to express the vast multitude of motions, techniques, and rhythms that each woman uses. So the website not only exposes you to new techniques but also helps you define what it is you like and communicate it, so it can enter public and private discourse about female sexuality.
All in all, I highly recommend OMGYes. Even if you already have your own self-love routine down, it’s just really interesting to learn about new ways to reach your happy-place, and how other women do it. The way OMGYes educates, enables and contributes to discourse is, in my opinion, brilliant and way overdue, so I am proud to be supporting the continuing research about women’s pleasure and conceptualization thereof through words.