A Game That Wants To Teach Women How To Masturbate

[MadrasT]

A Game That Wants To Teach Women How To Masturbate

And here I thought people were joking when they said we're slowly turning everything into a game. Nope. Gamification has a new target, and it's female masturbation.

Now, masturbation on the whole has a stigma. Hairy palms, what have you. But some would say it's especially bad with women given societal pressures to maintain purity. Purity, although an outdated and useless concept, is often seen as incompatible with a sexual woman. The stats from the graph above, taken from the Gamification website—which show that women aren't so into masturbating—are used as evidence that there's a problem with female masturbation. (Here's some more statistics, if you're curious—although, you can assume there's some wiggle room here; not everyone will be honest about this subject) Edit: the X axis on the graph above is as follows: not in the past year, less than 1x a month, once a month, more than 1x a month, less than 1x a week, more than 1x a week, almost daily, daily.

Enter HappyPlayTime, a mobile game that hopes to "rebrand the entire concept of female masturbation through education and light-hearted games." It has what is probably the cutest vagina mascot ever—yes, I know that sounds absurd, but it does.



Friendly, neighborhood vagina. Jesus christ, you'd think this was a joke. But it's not. They're completely serious about tackling the issue...

More at link: http://kotaku.com/some-of-the-reactions-to-this-article-disappoint-me-t-512014297

Every single asshole on the internet has congregated in the comments section on that article. Sweet Mary Mother of God it's a clusterfuck.

[mike_c]

1. hello kitty....

Snark intended, but DAMN! That's actually a pretty cool mascot design. Jerry Falwell would have stroked out just looking at it.

I can only imagine the idiocy that congregated in response, because I'm not gonna read their screeds. On a somewhat different note, it never occurred to me that anyone needed to be taught to masturbate. But if the result is more people enjoying their sexuality, more power to 'em!

[redqueen]

2. VULVA, FFS!

What is the problem with using the right terms for our body parts?!

I blame those goddamn "vagina" monologues.


And yeah, I'm not going anywhere near those comments. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck no.

[Shivering Jemmy]

5. Lost battle

I think.

[redqueen]

8. Perhaps...

But just like the sex=gender idiocy, which also seems like a lost cause, I will still try to call it out.

[Shivering Jemmy]

9. Happy warriors.

World needs more of you.

[redqueen]

10. Aw.

Thanks!

I'm more of a happy/ragey/utterly depressed and dejected warrior though... It goes in cycles

[redqueen]

3. THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS

But beyond this, the stigma around female sexuality on the whole is tricky. What can be seen as "normal" amounts of masturbation? As compared to men? To quote game developer Merritt Kopas, the game runs with "the assumption that if women aren't doing the same things as men or as frequently as them, that there's something wrong with them." Lillian, a friend of mine, makes another astute observation: "Sex and masturbation are already gamified. Competitive. Who can be the best at sex who can find the most g sposts. It's not helpful." Couldn't "gals, you can do better!" be seen as shaming, too?

Here's game developer Anna Anthropy chiming on on the game:

there’s this unfortunate idea of “sex positivity” i encounter all the time that essentially just shames people for not having enough sex and pressures them into doing it more. making masturbation into a universal competition is going to achieve only that: people are going to get pressured into using their bodies in the ways that are arbitrarily defined as normative.

On that note, I can't count the number of times I've heard men whine about how much better women's orgasms seem. Well maybe one reason for that is we don't desensitize ourselves by overindulging. Just sayin.

[MadrasT]

4. YEP - THAT

Exactly

The whole premise seems to be "women should masturbate more"

[ismnotwasm]

6. Oh Hell no

I'd rather my husband just keep his skills. He'd take it a personal failure anyway

[redqueen]

7. More like "women should be more like men"

"gals, you can do better!"

Seriously?