Betty Dodson and Masturbation
Ten years ago, while working as a nurse practitioner providing sexual health care for teenagers, I wanted a handout or a webpage on masturbation to give to my patients. I was working at a school-based health center where I was pretty sure discussing masturbation techniques with teenaged girls would get me fired and run out of town. I just wanted a website that girls could access on their phones. I figured that directing them to information, rather than imparting the information myself, would shield me from parental and teacher wrath. But this information was not easily available.
In searching for online resources, I came across Betty Dodson. I am old enough to remember her. I came of age just during the last strong years of second wave feminism. But I did not know that Betty Dodson was still at it. Her website advocates for women’s sexual pleasure in a non-prudish, sex-positive style held over from the 1970’s. Betty Dodson died on October 31, 2020 at the age of 91.
Even at 90 years old, Betty Dodson was conducting BodySex workshops in her apartment in New York City, where women undressed, sat in a circle, and learned masturbation techniques. In 2020, she made quite a splash when she appeared talking about her philosophy and workshops in an episode of Gwyneth Paltrow’s, The Goop Lab.
As a teenager, I was fortunate enough to have benefited from some of the sex positive culture that Betty Dodson created. For sex education, my entire eighth grade class was ushered into the school auditorium to watch films. I remember a couple having sex on a quilt under a tree. I remember a man getting an erection and a woman with a “sex flush” on her chest from arousal. We learned about actual sex, not just the dangers of sex. Later, in college, the Motor City Midwives drove from Detroit to my college campus to fit a group of us with cervical caps. About ten of us sat on the floor, leaning against couches, naked from the waist down. The two midwives went from young woman to young woman, fitting each with a cap and teaching us how to insert and remove it. It is hard to imagine this kind of open approach to education and women’s health nowadays. So as glad as I was to discover Betty Dodson’s treasure trove of a website, I knew it was too radical for my teenaged patients.
At first, for my patients, I copied some pages from an out-of-print copy of Changing Bodies, Changing Lives. In later years, I found a few websites, like this one: Masturbation by Sexologist Lindsey Doe, PhD. (I just re-visited the site, and now you have to confirm your age to watch a fully clothed person talk about masturbation! My goodness.)
In 2015, OMGYES, radically expanded the conversation with tasteful educational videos that interviewed individual women about masturbation and then showed their technique in detail. However, a paid subscription kept it out of the reach of most of my adolescent patients.
Today, searching “masturbation for women,” reveals plenty of results. Here is a fun article from the BBC. How to Masturbate: A guide to dating your down under. And here is a great article for teenagers. 15 Things Every Girl Needs to Know About Masturbation. Then there’s Bustle.com, which has pages of articles on masturbation.
Thank you, Betty Dodson, for making masturbation and female sexual pleasure a priority for more than fifty years.