Clicking the mouse. Auditioning the finger puppets. Paddling the pink canoe. Finger painting. There are a whole lot of silly euphemisms for masturbation, and research shows most women over the age of 18 have done it at least once. But how often do women regularly masturbate? FiveThirtyEight crunched the numbers and found out.
FiveThirtyEight's Mona Chalabi analyzed Indiana University's National Survey Of Sexual Health And Behavior (NSSHB) to create an infographic illustrating how often men and women masturbate according to age. The NSSHB collected data from 5,865 Americans between the ages of 14 and 94 between March and May 2009.
While masturbation is a normal, healthy and (definitely) enjoyable experience, it looks like we have yet to shake the taboo surrounding women and masturbation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, men masturbate far more frequently than women do.
Infographic credited to Mona Chalabi and FiveThirtyEight.
As Chalabi points out, women are less likely to try masturbating, however, there is still a large gender gap when it comes to routine masturbation. Only 7.9 percent of women between the ages of 25 and 29 masturbate two to three times a week whereas 23.4 percent of men do.
This is one gender gap we can close all on our own. So, let's get to it.
To read more statistics on masturbation head over to FiveThirtyEight.