A group of young girls is driving a conversation on female sexuality across cities, says Team Viva
Women don’t pleasure themselves. May be the adventurous and experimental ones do. Or so goes the urban myth. Although the dark ages have passed by when self-pleasurers were threatened with punishments like blindness, madness and impotence, there is a glaring discrepancy in the way male and female masturbation is referenced in mainstream conversation today. But women across cities are themselves taking charge of talking about their biological needs and cravings thereby normalising them as part of social habits.
#OMH (#OhMyHrithik), a platform that normalises female fantasies and eradicates the stigma around self-pleasure in the country, recently started discussions around it to make the act guilt-free. Founded by five 19-year-olds from different parts of the country, who happen to be classmates in their college in Mumbai — Kriti Kulshrestha, Mansi Jain (both from Jaipur), Kevika Singla (from Bathinda), Vaishali Manek (from Gujarat) and Suparna Dutta (from Kolkata) — the platform has been making waves online as well as offline as it has held sessions in Delhi, Mumbai and Jaipur.
Kriti says the idea emerged out of a random conversation with her group of friends. “We realised that people feel so shy to admit or talk about it even though they might not personally hesitate to do so. And it is not just about women but men as well to some extent. However, female masturbation gets the wrong, salacious attention because people don’t ‘expect’ women to be indulgent,” she adds.
Until recently, even acknowledging that some women masturbate as an ordinary self-care ritual that was as routine as any exercise, felt odd. Part of that also happens to be the result of faulty sex education classes. Then there is the home ecosystem. Where fathers and sons have what is called a “man to man” talk, most women don’t have any conversation between themselves or their mothers on selfie sex. As a result, for most women self-pleasuring is like a hidden truth or a forbidden territory. Therapists list many benefits of female masturbation like decreased anxiety levels to increased immune response. They claimed that not only is it one of the most empowering experiences one can have, it helps in generating self-awareness about what women want and what they lack.
Latest studies are eye-openers. Around 95 per cent of males and 89 per cent of females revealed that they have masturbated. In fact, it is the first sexual act experienced by most males and females. In young children, masturbation is a general part of a growing child’s exploration of his or her body. Psychology suggests that children, as old as nine, start to touch themselves as a part of their curiosity about their bodies. Most people continue to masturbate in adulthood, and many do so throughout their lives. However, the study further revealed that while they talked about it in the public space, there were judgements made around their character.
The study also revealed that while around 28 per cent of women fantasise about men with muscular thighs and abs, 64.6 per cent women fantasise about being dominated sexually. Fifty seven per cent women also fantasise about group sex.
The girls tell us that they have observed a common pattern during their sessions, which do not aim to do any therapy or motivate — women just want to have conversations and ease their minds over it. Kriti tell us, “We begin by sharing our experiences and the challenges we have faced while expressing ourselves. At first, they are a bit conscious but when they gradually start relating to our incidences and stories, they also open up. And eventually, it’s just conversations that remain.”
And when we look at Bollywood, it seems as though sexuality comes naturally to men. This is why when recently actresses Kalki Koechlin (in Margarita With A Straw), Swara Bhasker (in Veere Di Wedding), Kiara Advani (in Lust Stories) and Shweta Tripathi (in Mirzapur) enacted self-pleasure scenes in their respective films, there was a controversy, trolling of the actors, censor cuts and ‘A’ certificates to the films too. However, it is also a positive sign that the Hindi film industry has at least begun to delve into female sexuality openly.
Kriti says, “It’s good to see mainstream media and cinema taking up female sexuality and showcasing it as something that is normal. It is inspiring. In fact, one of our inspirations was also Kiara’s unfathomably mind-blowing role in Lust Stories.”
She continues to add that the title of their initiative ‘#OMH’ is just a name that replaces ‘G’ in ‘OMG (Oh My God)’ with Hrithik. “Hrithik Roshan has been a Greek god and one of the most dashing actors in Bollywood. It does not say that it is ‘just’ about Hrithik but about all the men who women have fantasised about. We just use it as a term here to validate their fantasies and tell them — Women, it’s normal.”
