The History of National Masturbation Month
How the firing of a high-ranking government official led to a celebration of self-service
Let’s face it: Masturbation sells itself. As soon as we realized during adolescence that there was a whole host of pleasure we could give ourselves downstairs, no more convincing was needed. So you’d think that a national month dedicated to masturbation isn’t really necessary.
But back in the nineties, it was, according to the staff at San Francisco-based sex toy company Good Vibrations. In order to shed light on why National Masturbation Month, which occurs every May, was created, as well as the stigmas about masturbation that still persist to this day, I spoke to the company’s sexologist Dr. Carol Queen — who is also the Founder of the Center for Sex & Culture and author of The Sex & Pleasure Book: Good Vibrations Guide to Great Sex for Everyone*.
“This idea that just mentioning masturbation in public got this woman ousted was horrifying to us.”
Why did Good Vibrations create National Masturbation Month?
The way that Masturbation Month got started was, at the very end of 1994, the then Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, the country’s first female and…
