Female Masturbation

Female Masturbation - Changing the Perception and Behaviour on Female Masturbation

Student IDs: 1941781 1941775 1941815 1941217
Annastassia Schwan
Ariadna Ruiz Sánchez
Carmen Ratón Silva
Irene Velasco Pérez

Advocating to change this,

"It felt so good and I felt so horrible"

(Kaestle & Allen, 2011)

into this,

"It felt so good and I felt so good"

INTRODUCTION

Masturbation is considered a safe sexual activity like any other and most people define it as the easiest and best way to reach stronger orgasms (Masters & Johnson, 1966 in Kay, 1992). However, and despite being recommended as a way to familiarize yourself with your body or your sexual responses, not everyone is willing to practice it or even to talk about it (Zamboni & Crawford, 2002). More specifically, women are less likely to communicate previous masturbation. In the research conducted by Robbins et al. in 2011, just 48.1% of women reported masturbation in comparison with 73.8% of males. Other authors seem to be consistent with these statements. According to Oliver and Hyde in 1993, prevalence and frequency of this practice differ notably between males and females during adolescence being the largest and most consistent difference of any aspect of sexual behavior between genders. A possible explanation of these differences could be explained by the social-cognitive model of sexual development by Gagnon and Simon in 1973. “Their theory described a process called “scripting”, whereby sexual behaviors and attitudes are governed by their social context. According to this theory, definitions of appropriate sexual behavior and responses vary with economic status, age, sex, and education, according to the appropriate scripts for each group” (as cited in Clifford, 1978).

Besides, women are more prone to suffer from orgasmic dysfunction defined as difficulty reaching orgasm with rates from 7% to 15% among females. However, women who enter treatments as behavioural sex therapy have significant improvements in functioning and changes in orgasmic status. In fact, the two most common treatment choices for mitigating primary orgasmic dysfunction are systematic desensitization and directed masturbation (Andersen, 1981).

PROBLEM AND WHY THE PROBLEM IS IMPORTANT AND ITS’ EVIDENCE

Firstly, we wanted to develop a project about sex education because we thought that the educational system of our respective countries lacked good sex education, but it was a very general theme so we concreted and focused on female masturbation. After talking about it, we came to the conclusion that it was a taboo and was frowned upon by the society. During our adolescence, we could observe that among male sex the subject of masturbation was treated quite naturally unlike the girls groups which was seen as something bad and it was abolished of every conversation.

After investigating about the theme we could find some articles that highlighted the benefits of masturbation on women, some of their results showed that masturbation increases the probability of achieving an orgasm and have it more intense than in a sexual intercourse or genital manipulation by a partner (Kay, 1992; Kinsey et al, 1953 in Riley and Riley, 1978; Masters and Johnson, 1966 in Riley and Riley, 1978). Riley and Riley conducted a study to evaluate the role of directed masturbation in female orgasmic failure, they found that 90% of women who have a treatment based on masturbation were able to reach an orgasm by the end of the study. In addition, masturbation is a way of discovering what the person wants in her intimate relationships and putting it into practice when she is with a partner (Kaestle and Allen, 2010).

Other research focused on female mental health and self-esteem. A study carried out by Horne and Zimmer-Gembeck (2005) found that those girls who masturbate regularly showed greater ‘’self-development, well-being and social competence’’ which translates into an increase of self-esteem and self-knowledge and less anxiety about sexual intercourse which increases the person’s happiness; in the same study, results showed that those women had a better view of sex and more satisfactory relationships, in addition, they were more likely to have safe sex.

A study conducted by Fash (2016) had the spotlight on sex and menstruation. He found race and sexual orientation differences. White, bisexual and lesbian women had more positives attitudes towards sex while menstruating and also showed higher self-esteem, sexual satisfaction and better body image, in contrast with color and heterosexual women who had negative attitude towards sex during menstruation.

TARGET AUDIENCE AND HOW YOUR PROJECT IS TAILORED FOR THEM

From the moment we decided what the theme of our project would be we knew what we wanted our target audience to be: women. We chose a sample of young women between 19-30 years old, but due to we uploaded the pretest and posttest in our social media we got some older (53) and younger (17) participants.

Due to the delicacy of the topic, we thought that the best way to measure masturbation is by using individualised test that females could do wherever they wanted to. It is particularly useful for including in the survey females who are too shy or feel shameless of talking about it in public.

To gathered the sample we used the snowball procedure. First, we placed some posters in the University of Warwick's female toilets (such as Oculus, Humanities, Chemistry, Arts Centre, Students Union and Library), of which only a few of them remained in place after a week and a half. Then, through our Instagram account, created for this project, we asked to Warwick’s societies, such as the Sexpression one, if they could help us spreading the survey in their Instagram accounts, unfortunately, this was not possible because some of them did not reply and others rejected our request.

Finally, we asked for collaboration in our personal Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp accounts. For the way we got our sample, we believe that practically all women were university students or had a university degree.

INTERVENTIONS

Before going into further detail below regarding the content of our interventions, we will briefly explain the structure of our interventions and the reasons for them. Our aim for the project was to gain a better picture regarding the understanding, attitude and behaviour around female masturbation. In order to do this, we needed to ask people. As we know it is a very sensitive and taboo matter for many people, we decided against interviews and chose to do an anonymous survey. The first survey was created for initial understandings. We asked questions such as their sex, gender, their relationship towards masturbation, their attitudes regarding it and their current behaviour. As our questions were very diverse, we had open questions, multiple choice questions and scalar questions (see appendix for surveys).

At the end of the survey, they were given the links to our blog and Instagram page. The media sites were one part of our ‘interventions’. The idea was to create ‘interventions’ around female masturbation that would change their understanding and attitude regarding it, and hence their behaviour. We would then do a follow up survey will very similar questions to measure if anything really did change. The second survey introduced many of the same questions from the first survey (for comparability) but also introduced some extra questions (e.g “Do you think you would change your behaviour?”). This question was introduced as due to the time constraints, we anticipated that people may want to change their behaviour, but did not have sufficient time to have done it in the one week window they had between the surveys. After the second survey was collected, we were able to compare it against the first survey and evaluate if anything had changed.

Posters

To attract initial attention and make the topic more salient. Two posters, one to advertise the first survey and the other for the second survey. It also advertised our Instagram and blog page.





Pre-Survey

As you can see from the pdf, the questions focused on understanding the individual’s current relationship with masturbation. It explored questions directly involving them and masturbation (e.g. ‘Which method/methods do you find easiest to reach orgasm by?’), but likewise what they think society’s attitude towards masturbation is (e.g. ‘I think most women who masturbate feel dirty’). We created the survey by brainstorming questions we think are relevant and looking at previous surveys used on the topic. Most of the scalar questions came from the 2013 research paper by Keels, Lee, Knox, & Wilson.

See Appendix A.

Post-Survey

The post survey had very similar questions to the pre-survey as we wanted to compare the answers to see if there were any changes in understanding, attitudes or behaviour. We added a few extra questions to further clarify some points and ask the participants regarding their future behaviour.

See Appendix B.

Instagram Page

The instagram page had eye catching pictures and short posts regarding the masturbation. It was meant to be something one could easily and quickly look at, i.e. those who were utilising the peripheral route. It always had a picture and a quick takeaway message from a research we read. If people wanted to know more about the topic, they would click on the link provided in the instagram post that would bring them to the our blog. Instagram received 41 followers and 217 views.

Link: https://www.instagram.com/female_masturbatio/



Blog

As briefly mentioned above, the blog was there to give the readers a more in depth understanding of the facts the instagram posts shared. It usually consisted of a summary of a paper we read that was related to female masturbation. We chose to summarise papers that clearly highlight the benefits of female masturbation, the injunctive norms (what people are actually doing) and to dispel some ‘myths’ or misunderstandings around the topic. The blog got 41 visitors and 132 views.

Link: https://letstalkaboutfemalemasturbation.wordpress.com/

PSYCHOLOGICAL TECHNIQUES

Persuasion is defined as the action of convincing someone through reasoning or argument. Traditional interventions on behaviour change tend to focus on cognitive models which focus more on factors people consciously think about (Dolan et al., 2012). This emphasises more a systems 2 thinking. MINDSPACE is a useful mnemonic that explores the effects on our behaviour that result from contextual rather than cognitive influences (Dolan et al., 2012). MINDSPACE focus more on a context model and acknowledge people as irrational and inconsistent. Hence, utilising more system 1 thinking, which is our more automatic system. We thought this was appropriate as it has been acknowledged that “behaviour is significantly influenced by factors associated with the context or situation we find ourselves in” (Dolan et al., 2012, p. 265).

Through our interventions, we focused on the M,N,S,A and C; messenger, norms, salience, affect and commitment. Messenger focuses on the automatic reactions the viewer has towards the perceived authority of source of information (Dolan et al., 2012, p. 266). Individuals are more likely to act on information when the messenger has similar characteristics to themselves. We combined two types of authority in our interventions. Higher authority in the form of academics from the field, which we based all our research on but likewise of similar authority as we are advertising the topic. As our target audience are female students, which we are too.

Norms we will further go into in the social proof section. We are more affected by what we see or think others are doing rather than what we ought to be doing (Dolan et al., 2012). This we highlighted by mentioning the number of females that masturbate.

Salience is based on the research that we are drawn to things that are novel, accessible and simple (Dolan et al., 2012). We tried to implement this in our survey posters and instagram page by making them eye catching and keeping the text sweet and simple. As the topic was not in the everyday discourse, it should be a novel topic to the majority of viewers.

Affect relates to the fact that emotional associations can heavily influence our decision making (Dolan et al., 2012). As female masturbation is not a topic that one everyday talks about, we expected people to feel surprise, shock, embarrassment and curiosity when coming across the posters.

We employed commitment via two main ways. Firstly, in the pre-survey, we asked the participants to give us their email address so we can contact them regarding the second survey. Secondly, in the post survey, we asked them if they will change their masturbation behaviour. By actively ticking a box confessing that they would, it should increase the likelihood of it being fulfilled as research shows that the very act of writing a commitment has an impact, even if there are no penalties or rewards (Cialdini, 2007).

However, we did not want to ignore the cognitive aspects of persuasion in change of attitudes and behaviour. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) explains how persuasion message functions in changing the attitude of the viewer (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The model explains the various ways we can process stimuli, why they are used and respective outcomes on attitude change. The ELM argues that information processing can be processed via two ways; the central route or the peripheral route. Under the central route, the information presented (e.g. the argument) will be much more scrutinised and relevant. Hence, on the viewer’s end, motivation and ability to attend to and process the information is needed. It requires much more involvement on the viewer’s end, but results in attitude or behaviour changes that are more enduring over time, resistant to change and more predictive of behaviour. On the other end of spectrum, the peripheral route is used when the receiver does not have sufficient motivation or ability to process the information. Unlike via the central route, where the information presented is relevant, the peripheral route will rely on heuristics and general impressions. For example, if someone is giving a speech, rather than focusing on the arguments the speaker is making, the receiver could focus on their credibility or attractiveness.

We have attempted in using both routes to persuade our target audience. By default, individuals who immediately take part in our survey due to the subject matter, should be using the central route as that would take interest and ability to complete it. Simultaneously, for those who were not directly piqued by the topic, we used the peripheral route by creating eye catching posters to attract more individuals. Applying Cialdini’s Principles of Social Influence (Cialdini, 2007), we utilised commitment, social proof and liking the person who is persuading you. Commitment as once they have completed the survey, they are asked to put down their email for the second survey. Social proof as once they realise that their friends are taking part in the survey, they will believe that is the appropriate behaviour and hence also take part. Finally, as we sent the surveys to people we know, due to their relationship with us, they should want to take part. Nevertheless, once their attention was drawn, either it via the central or peripheral route, we anticipated that the central route would take over as only those who had the motivation and ability would follow through with the survey. The central route was our target route as information processing via the central route results in more lasting, resistance changes.

Social proof is not only used to attract individuals to take part in the survey, but a technique that we heavily based our interventions and project around. Often in uncertain situations, we tend to have the assumption that others around us have more knowledge regarding what is going on and hence the appropriate behaviour towards it. Hence, as Cialdini simply puts it “we view behaviour as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it” (Cialdini, 2007, p. 116). As female masturbation is not a common topic one talks about, there is a lot of uncertainty around it. Thus, people are uncertain about how to act regarding this topic and would evaluate others around them to guide their behaviour. By bringing this topic to the forefront through making individuals engage with it (taking part in the survey, reading our social media sites, telling their friends about), we hoped they would see others engage with the topic, and hence follow suit. We supported this even further by publishing information from a research paper regarding the information they had on female masturbation. It was meant to highlight the ‘normalcy’ of masturbation and reassure the readers that it is an activity that individuals take part in, even if they do not talk about it. We purposely used natural frequencies (8 out of 10) as humans can better understand and process it (Gigerenzer & Edwards, 2003).

We believe that social proof was vital because like many things, masturbation is heavily shaped by the social norms surrounding it. Research has shown that even though people feel pleasure from masturbation, they likewise feel shameful or stigmatised. Report shows that these guilts are influenced by perceived social norms as there is lack of communication regarding this subject matter, especially within families (Kaestle & Allen, 2011). Most individuals learn about masturbation through peers and the media. Lack of communication in families regarding the topic was often interpreted as something we do not talk about, as it is something we do not do. In some instances, individuals were not even aware of it. By creating the survey, putting up posters, having our social media sites, we wanted to make the discourse more present to change the problem regarding lack of communication (Kaestle & Allen, 2011). One interesting, unplanned outcome is that we had strangers come up to us (people who did not personally know us but knew we were doing the project) to talk about the topic and share very intimate details that one usually did not talk about. This was important as from our personal experience, this was a topic that even we would not usually talk about with close friends. We hoped that the survey, our posters and social media sites gave people an accessible and convenient chance to start talking to their peers about the subject.

RESULTS

Due to the nature of the variables (nominal and ordinal in exception with the age, which is quantitative), the statistic analysis that we carried our for our study are purely descriptives. It means that we are only taking into account frequencies analysis. For doing them, we used the R program. We will divide the description of the data in several sections:


General data of masturbation practises

To begin with, our sample consisted of a hundred sexually identified as females from 17 to 53 years old, being 23 years the mean. We deleted 3 males from the data and 101 non-finished surveys. Most of the girls had experienced an orgasm at least once (89%) and 9% were not sure about having reached it. Likewise, 66% thought it would have been useful for them to have had more information about the topic when younger. Apart from that, the majority of them had ever masturbated (99%) and they normally do so a few times a week (38%) or a month (30%). To continue with, 19% of the women reported feeling uncomfortable when talking about masturbation. Regarding with the views of this practise, 56% reported a maximum positive view with only 1% having a light negative view. However, 58% thought that it is generally negatively viewed. In the same way, 6% expressed feeling that people who masturbate are doing something wrong and 10% that are more promiscuous. A little higher, 22% thought women feel dirty when doing it, 14% feel guilty and 16% said it is a male’ thing. To end with, a 58% were opened to change their behavior regarding their masturbation practises and 32% casted doubt on it.

Within the open questions, female reported stimulating the clitorix, using the fingers or sexual toys as the most common ways to reach easily an orgasm. Also, a lot of girls reported feeling more relaxed, with better self-esteem and relieved after masturbating.

All the frequencies and percentages (as our sample was of 100 girls, both are the same), created with R, are in Section 1 of Appendix C.


Relations among their openness to changing their behavior and the rest of the information provided in the survey.

Only the women who had never reached an orgasm, who did masturbate, have a very positive view of doing it, think that it is not something wrong or something of males, that women who practise is are not more promiscuous for that and feel comfortable talking about masturbation were against changing their behavior of masturbating (10%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 10%, 10% and 8% respectively). However, only a few subjects complied with the first requirement and not one girl had never masturbated, as we saw in the last section. Besides that, those who were less agreed with the statement that women who masturbate feel dirty (7% vs 2%), who felt less feel guilty when doing it (7% vs 1%) were less willing to change their behavior regarding masturbation than the ones with opposites thoughts. This is not that much clear for the ones who thought that masturbation is viewed negatively (4% did not want to change the conduct vs 6%).

This data is in Section 2 of Appendix C.


Changes of behavior between the two test (pre and post test)

Before starting with the analysis, we have to say that we could only count on 31 females to compare both tests as they were the only ones who did completely the two of them or who, at least, wrote the same nickname in both. Hence, we deleted data of 82 females.

Among them, 100% had ever masturbated. Some thoughts that changed were, in the first place, the one related to: “Women who masturbate feel dirty”. While in the pretest, 16 girls (51,6%) reported against the statement, in the posttest 18 did so (58%) and they were more women who completely disagreed with it (10 vs 4). The latter also happened with the statement “I tend to feel those who masturbate are doing something wrong” as 25 people completely disagreed in the second survey in comparison with 20 in the first. We also observe this with the items “I feel guilty in reference to my own masturbation” and “Masturbation is more a males' thing rather than a females' thing.” but less drastically. On another view, females masturbated more often, as in the pretest 11 reported masturbating once a month and 8 once a week and in the prettest, 9 did it once a month and 11 once a week. In addition, 3 person who reported doing it few times a year disappeared in the second, although it also disappear one who reported doing it daily. No changes were found in the item “Are you open to change your behaviour regarding masturbation?”. Not either significant differences were found in the other items, probable because it may be difficult to detect them only by using frequency statistics.

This data can be found in Section 3 of Appendix C.


Reports about whether female changed or nor their behavior regarding masturbation

Within the posttest, 15 female reported having changed their understanding regarding female masturbation versus 10 who reported having not (43,4% vs 32,3%) and 14 their views or attitudes versus 9 (45,2% vs 29%). Also, 17 reported that after participating in our are more willing towards talking about masturbation vs 5 who said they are not (54,8% vs 16,1%). Almost all of the females reported that it is a topic that needs to be talked about more (29 girls: 93,5%) except one who casted doubt on it,. All this is illustrated in the graphic 1 below.

See also Section 4 of Appendix C.



Graphic 1. Behavior Change in Female Masturbation. It is expressed in frequencies and created with Excel.

DISCUSSION

We deem that it is really interesting to provide some statistics about the masturbation practises of our sample. It is useful not only to understand the following analysis, but also because it gives us a general idea of the masturbation data nowadays in a young population. Hence, we have found out that still in this century there is a portion of girls who cannot distinguish if they are having an orgasm. More sexual education is needed. As we have also seen, almost every woman masturbates usually, which means that the idea of masturbating as a male thing does not reflect reality and, for this, it is no really useful. What seems to be a stereotype is the fact that “Female masturbation is negatively viewed”. The majority of females agreed with it and, however, almost everyone viewed it positively. For future research, a survey among the male population and more aged people could be carried out to explore this further. In another vein, from the data we may say that the girls who need less to change their behavior (because, for example, they reported being less fearful to talk about masturbation or having more positive views of it) are actually were less willing to change. However, we do not know if the opposite girls are more willing to do it, and it does not seem so. More data from this particular sample is needed, as our was not really representative,

The data which compared the “Are you open to change your behaviour regarding masturbation?” item with the other items was specially important for us. This is because, as our aim is to change behaviors, it may facilitate the search for the target population who are less prone to change the conduct and thoughts about masturbation. It may also indicate which are the specific views necessary to change if we want to change behavior. However, we are only exploring frequencies, so we do not really know yet if these thoughts are truly causally linked with the rejection of being more open toward masturbation.

With regard to the second survey, we know now that asking for a nickname to remember may not be a good strategy, as a lot of people had forgotten it. For future research, other things can be used such as assessing the same people twice in some particular place. However, it may provoke a bias in the responses due to the bias environment and also it may lead that the shy girls reject to do it. Conversely, it also looks useful to carry out some statistics with quantitative data.

To end with, the majority of girls reported having changed their behavior. However, we cannot know it accurately as we do not have direct measures of it. On The other hand and due to the delicacy of the topic, we deem that conducting a survey is a good way of measuring masturbation.

LIMITATIONS

The original plan was to have a few weeks for ‘interventions’ before releasing the second survey. However, as we ran into administrative issues (ethics and other forms), our time was drastically cut short. We had planned to do a workshop, collaborate with Sexpression, be active on social media, go around and talk to people, stand at the piazza and have an information stand. Due to the time constraints, we only managed to create our social media sites. We emailed Sexpression but they never got back to us. As the time for intervention was very short, we did not manage to post as many things as we originally planned, and we do not think it gave the participants enough time to truly engage themselves with our social media sites. What was supposed to be three weeks’ time for interventions, got reduced to only one week, which we believed greatly impacted our ‘interventions’.

Besides, our sample was directed to university women, hence we cannot generalize completely our results. This can be a limitation according to Gerresu et al. in 2006, where they claimed that women who were young, white and well educated reported higher levels of masturbation.

Apart from that, while we were analysing our data from the post-survey we realised the answers of one of the questions could have been interpreted in two ways.




While it can be interpreted as our view towards masturbation changed it can be also interpreted as our behaviour (the action) of masturbation changed. For this reason, we did not use them for the analysis.

HOW THE PROJECT CAN BE EXPANDED IN THE FUTURE

In order to see higher results, it would be interesting to have more time to set up other interventions. Group therapies where show data through games, increase conversations about masturbation and give techniques, would provide a stronger intervention. Besides, it would be interesting to collect data in different cultures to measure its impact on the differences between women and men.

Another study collecting male’s data would show us differences between genders (such as who masturbate more often and if they feel guilty or ashamed of their masturbation).

Also, as all of us know, the view of women’s sexual life seems to have changed over time but it is still a problem the lack of sex education. Because of that, another new future intervention to really see that change and solve the lack of information. In order to accomplish it, sex education conferences in schools should be provided and compared with a cohort sequential design how the view of masturbation would change among cohorts.

REFERENCES

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• Cialdini, R. B. (2007). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. New York: Collins.
• Clifford, R. (1978). Development of masturbation in college women. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 7(6), 559-573
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• Keels, M., Lee, Z., Knox, D., & Wilson, K. (2013). Lecture Versus Dvd and Attitude Change Toward Female Masturbation. Education, 134(2), 212–217. Retrieved from http://offcampus.lib.washington.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=93663154&site=ehost-live
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• Riley, A., & Riley, E. (1978). A Controlled Study to Evaluate Directed Masturbation in the Management of Primary Orgasmic Failure in Women. British Journal of Psychiatry, 133(5), 404-409. doi:10.1192/bjp.133.5.404
• Robbins CL, Schick V, Reece M, et al.(2011) Prevalence, Frequency, and Associations of Masturbation With Partnered Sexual Behaviors Among US Adolescents. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 165(12), 1087-1093. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpediatrics.2011.142
• Zamboni, B. D., & Crawford, I. (2002). Using masturbation in sex therapy Relationships between masturbation, sexual desire, and sexual fantasy. Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, 14, 123–141. https://doi.org/10.1300/J056v14n02_08

APPENDIX 

As we could not upload files onto the blog, our following appendices can be found under this link:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oiyRxPelVDG7m6HC8hnu1eqL5C0_pjDf?usp=sharing 
Appendix A - Pre_Survey FM
Appendix B - Post_Survey FM
Appendix C - Statistics