If you’ve been browsing social media today, you may have read here and there that May is “International Masturbation Month”.
During a period of lockdown, it’s not a bad idea. Masturbating is a healthy way to pass the time enjoyably while staying shut up at home. Provided, of course, that you avoid trying to make overly risky homemade sex toys.
But what is this business about International Wanking Month? Is it approved by the United Nations? Where did it come from, exactly?
A little explanation of the origins of International Masturbation Month.
International Masturbation Month
National Masturbation Day began as an act of activism.
At a United Nations conference on AIDS in December 1994, someone asked Joycelyn Elders, then the United States’ public health administrator, whether it would be appropriate to promote masturbation as a way of preventing young people from engaging in riskier sexual activities. Her response: “I think it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps we should teach it.” As a result, the shocked US President Bill Clinton demanded her resignation.
On 14 May 1995, the sex shop Good Vibrations, an activist in the pro-sex movement, proclaimed the first National Masturbation Day in her honour.
Over the years, the event became International Masturbation Month. But alongside it, other “masturbation days” and events celebrating solo pleasures sprang up on various dates.
Among other things, the Masturbathon, a charity masturbation competition, takes place every year in San Francisco to support causes related to sexuality.
The masturbator brand Tenga also tried to launch its own wanking day, on 21 July. Why that date? In Japanese, “masturbation” is “onanii”. By stretching the pronunciation a little, 21 July (07/21) can be read as “o” (for zero), “na” (7 is “nana” in Japanese), “ni” (2 in Japanese), “i” (“ichi” means 1).
