Ellen Wang ’25
Editor-in-Chief
50 people attended “Destigmatizing Masturbation,” a Tiernan Field House Wellness Monday Event and guided discussion, on March 3.
TFH Peer Health Educator for Healthy Relationships and Sexual Health, Belén Padilla ’25, facilitated the event co-sponsored by Scripps Advocates (where she is co-president), The Queer Resource Center (where she is a Student Associate and Leadership and Engagement in Gender and Sexuality Coordinator), and the Intercollegiate Feminist Center.
“Belén brings great energy, a sense of humor that when you talk about masturbation and self-pleasure, you kind of have to have,” A.D. Jaime CGU ’25, QRC Queer and Questioning Mentorship Program Graduate Assistant Head Mentor, said. “In society either you have to talk about it in shame or it has to be very clinical, instead of something that silly humans do.”
Opportunities for partner and open discussion was interspersed with a presentation covering health benefits of, laws against, and guilt surrounding masturbation. Boba was available and vibrators were raffled off at the end.
“I believe the audience was really engaged, especially during the discussion sessions, and I hope that similar info sessions and seminars continue because this stigma around masturbation is not going to go away overnight,” Jaime said. “People have to know that it’s actually good for you.”
Padilla has led a number of popular events surrounding sexual health across their roles on campus.
“I also facilitated ‘Oral Skills for Vulvas’ last [Scripps Advocates Sex Week.]” Padilla said. “We had 140 people come to The Motley, and there were more people that were waiting to be let in. I think people really like these events, and also it’s a topic I’m interested in.”
The first iteration of this event also drew a crowd, with 75 people packing the Tiernan Wellness Room last semester. Outside of receiving feedback about switching to a larger venue in Vita Nova, Padilla mentioned attendees requesting a demonstration.
“I wouldn’t personally do that, but I found YouTube videos which do the job,” Padilla said. “Also, they wanted tips. So I put tips. I really wanted to be more gender inclusive as well … but I felt it would have been a longer event.”
Padilla reflected on further areas for improvement within the restrictions posed by her job. They noted Scripps’s policy of only admitting students assigned female at birth as an issue that influenced what she was allowed to include in her “Scripps-focused” programming.
“Because of my job description, I have to have it more centered on women — which was one of the criticisms I got, that it was very cis women-centered, which I recognize, and I’ll talk about it with my boss to see if that’s something that can be changed for the future,” Padilla said.
Attendee Chi Adi PZ ’26 discussed the layered difficulties of gender inclusive programming at Scripps.
“Often, gender non conforming and trans experiences are put at the margins,” Adi said. “At the same time, I don’t put the kind of responsibility on one individual to do that, because there seems to be a broader cultural thing at Scripps … In order to truly design a gender inclusive talk on masturbation, you have to have a talk with six other people, higher ups, who then have to give you permission.”
Adi pointed to the frequency of falling into rhetorical pitfalls of reductive ideologies when talking about sexual pleasure as symptomatic of a lack of spaces for unpacking gender issues on campus.
“I think it’s very common for cis women to define themselves in opposition to men, so a lot of the conversations seem to be framed like, ‘we masturbate because we’re taking power back from men,’” Adi said. “My identity isn’t all about men. Like, it just feels good … It’s really essentialist, and it often becomes transphobic.”
Adi observed that college students’ discussion of sex is either nonexistent, or overexaggerated in reaction to the culture of silence. She posed a more neutral approach to the topic as a healthy medium.
“You can pull away from a whole ‘fight the power’ type of narrative, and instead talk about it in a ‘What is this as a human experience’ way,” Adi said. “I think in that sense, it actually ends up becoming more of an inclusive conversation.”
Photo Courtesy of Ellen Wang ’25
