By Lucy Hubbard

University of Maryland students hosted a Self Intimacy: Pussy Power event on Wednesday to discuss women’s sexuality and pleasure, as a part of a larger gender empowerment project.

Students gathered in WMUC’s Live Room for an interactive workshop. This is the second workshop of the Finding the Clit series, a slew of discussions around women and their sexual identities. 

According to Maru Kang, a senior psychology and biology major, this presentation is part of a group project for PSYC336, Psychology of Women taught by Monica Kearney. 

“[Our professor] realized a few years ago that students are leaving the class or the lecture feeling a little bit discouraged after learning everything,” Kang said. “So her goal was to kind of create a project or an assignment that would allow us to take what we’ve learned from the course material and then come up with an intervention locally to help kind of solve some of these issues, at least on a micro level.”

Attendees participated in a Kahoot game before discussing masturbation and women’s sexual identities. The presentation focused on how masturbation is not often discussed among women, which the group attributes to a larger misogynistic culture. 

“I think a lot of the stigma around specifically women masturbating is deeply rooted in purity culture and misogyny,” Kang said. “So we view it as kind of like a gendered issue.”

Senior psychology major Jeymi Menendez-Solorzano said the event was a way to address the stigmas around female pleasure and counteract the shame women often associate with masturbation. 

“Masturbating has been a tool that has been used to oppress women,” Menendez-Solorzano said. “It’s like a small subset of something that’s way bigger.” 

After the presentation, there was a workshop by a local business, Toys n Us. The small business sells sex toys and hosts workshops where they teach how to use the toys safely. The co-owners, Summer and Milani, asked the audience questions and rewarded correct answers with condoms and lube. 

“I think it’s also more engaging because you have that physical toy in front of you,” Kang said. “And there’s an interactive aspect where people can put lube on their hands and then feel the vibrations. I think that really adds to it the engagement from the audience.”

According to Milani, these workshops aim to destigmatize masturbation for women.

“It’s a part of being human, sex is a part of being human,” Milani said. “And it’s just not fair that one gender has it easier than the other gender when it comes to it. It should just be something normal that everybody can talk about.” 

There are two more events left in the discussion series. There is a sex and communication workshop on April 12 and a women’s intersectional identities discussion on April 19. Both events are in the WMUC Live Room and run from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Featured Image: Toys ‘n’ Us owners present different sex toys and gives brief demos on April 5, 2023 in College Park, Maryland. Photo by Lucy Hubbard.