The Victorians acted as though sex didn’t exist; it wasn’t something that ‘nice people did’. This is quite surprising really, considering they were still having babies. Fortunately, evolution has made sure that the act of reproducing new people feels incredibly pleasurable; plus despite pretending that sex didn’t exist, they did still want to carry on the family line. This is a good thing; otherwise we wouldn’t be here now.
Unfortunately, pretending something of universal importance doesn’t exist means it’s not discussed. It was commonplace for a woman to enter marriage knowing nothing about sex or how babies were made. She would usually receive a highly ambiguous, mumbled discourse from her embarrassed mother regarding ‘her husband’s needs’, just prior to her wedding night and that would be it. Nine month’s later, she would then give birth to her first child, frequently still unaware that her husband’s bedtime fumblings were what caused it. This discountenance of sex and its resultant confusion, continued well into the 1950s.
Needless to say, during this era few women enjoyed sex.
Thanks to the invention of the contraceptive pill in the 1960s and the subsequent sexual revolution, sex came out of the closet. Suddenly, it was okay to ‘do it’. With the publication of ‘The Joy of Sex’ in the 1970s, the focus was shifting from being exclusively something that men enjoyed (simply because their biological make-up makes orgasm easy for them), to something that could be pleasurable for women too. Gradually, over the last few decades, women have started to embrace orgasm and sexual fulfilment and more and more research is being done on how women can reach the ‘Big “O”’.
Having been pushed underground for so long, sex now commonly receives media coverage. In fact, sex now sells. Some may argue that the media overly uses sex in order to market its publications. Whatever your view on this; if sex is a huge selling point, it does indicate how important it is to us.
Whilst women will now chat happily with their friends about sex, what about ‘solo sex’? Yes, we mean masturbation. If we’re completely honest, whilst we may really enjoy the act and do it as often as possible, we don’t like the word much. The word has negative connotations still attached to it, not helped by the fact that the dictionary definition right up to the middle of the Twentieth Century was ‘self-abuse’. We’re sure you’re familiar with the dreadful consequences masturbation was once believed to inflict upon those lowly enough to indulge in it:
- Blindness
- Short-sightedness
- Death
- Madness
- Hairiness
- Early-onset puberty
Fortunately, these misconceptions are largely a thing of the past. But we still don’t like the word. We had to come up with something else. Out of all the euphemisms for masturbation, ‘Exploring the Bush’ was our favourite; which is why we chose it as the name for our website. We also wanted to move away from the sleaziness that solo sex is still lumbered with; we think solo sex is fun and so wanted our website’s name to encompass this. Additionally, we see female masturbation as something that is exploratory; unlike its male counterpart, women reach orgasm in uniquely individual ways. [We don’t think we need to tell you which part of the female anatomy we mean by the ‘bush’.]
As two female, heterosexual friends, a year ago one of us happened to make a passing comment about solo sex to the other. Luckily, the other responded positively and since then the discussion of solo sex has been a common practice between us. We’ve learnt a lot. We’ve swapped tips. We like being able to openly discuss it between ourselves. Whilst solo sex may still not be as openly discussed as couple sex with other friends and colleagues, just having one person has made the world of difference.
We hope you too share your experiences of this most normal and common practice.
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