Masturbation May: Tackle the Taboo with the TENGA #doitinmay Challenge. Part One.
Masturbation May is finally upon us, and TENGA has something special planned this year. To help spread the positive message of self-love and self-pleasure as far as possible, we’re launching the #doitinmay challenge! Let’s take a look at just how important Masturbation May is, and how you can support the cause!
2020 was a big year for us, despite the troubles the global pandemic caused. We commemorated 25 years of Masturbation May, 15 years of TENGA and 5 years of our TENGA Global Self-Pleasure Report. Sadly, a lot of planned celebrations had to be cancelled due to the disruptions. In 2021, TENGA wants to celebrate Masturbation May in a big, but safe, manner with our online Masturbation Challenge!
What is Masturbation May again?
As we’ve covered in a previous Masturbation May blog, this month-long celebration originally began as a day. The first-ever National Masturbation Day was celebrated on May 7th, 1995. Sex-positive retailer Good Vibrations declared the day in response to the firing of the then Surgeon General of the United States Jocelyn Elders in 1994.
She spoke at a United Nations conference about AIDS and was asked whether masturbation could be considered a method to help prevent young people from engaging in ‘riskier’ behavior. She commented:
“I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught”.
Unfortunately, she was ‘forced to resign’ over this comment and her thoughts on masturbation at the time, and though teaching about masturbation might have improved somewhat (especially with the prevalence of the internet allowing people to research for themselves more than ever), the stigma around masturbation still persists. Something we’re working tirelessly to change.
The Benefits of Self-Pleasure
Masturbation May isn’t just a fun excuse to up your weekly self-pleasure regime, but it can also lead to some amazing benefits for your health.
Our annual 2020 TENGA Global Self-Pleasure Report has shown how beneficial self-pleasure was for us last year and looks like it will remain so going forward.
TENGA has been advocating the benefits of self-pleasure since its inception. From our regular blog posts on how masturbation positively affects your body, to our efforts to spread the positive message of masturbation via our aforementioned Self-Pleasure Report and CSR work.
Over 80% of Americans now considering masturbation to be a form of self-care, many (over 70%!) used self-pleasure as a way to deal with the stress of the pandemic.
With self-pleasure having such a positive effect on peoples lives in such a difficult year, we can see a shift in the perception of masturbation more than ever. This year more than ever we can proudly say: self-pleasure is self-care!
What is the Masturbation May Challenge?
This brings us to our Masturbation May Challenge; our way of safely celebrating this month’s message in a big way! All month, we’re asking you to make more time for masturbation and self-pleasure, while posting about the power of pleasure with the campaign hashtag #doitinmay. All this to help open up discussion about the subject and to help reduce the taboo of self-love.
Although our sign-ups for being an official Challenger are closed, there are still two ways you can take part!
1) Share the campaign hashtag #doitinmay!
The campaign hashtag #doitinmay will be counted daily throughout May, and will be shown on the scoreboard on the official page. The scores will count towards some amazing rewards when we hit big milestones for everybody to enjoy! This means, the more we enjoy self-pleasure and the more milestones we hit, the bigger your reward gets!
2) Cheer for our Masturbation Challengers!
Cheer and support our Masturbation Challengers by engaging with the Challengers’ tweets (Like, Retweets and Comments!). There are points for each form of engagement, which will be counted once the Challenge is over.
There are some great prizes depending on the final number of points achieved!
As you can see, the more you participate in Masturbation May yourself, through supporting our official Challengers, using/posting our hashtag #doitinmay and with engagement, the more prizes can be potentially won!
You can read more about the further details, the official Challengers and the prizes down below:
US Masturbation May Page
EU Masturbation May Page
We’ll be posting every day during May to encourage everyone. We’re going to work our hardest this way to break through the remaining taboo of masturbation as much as possible. So, as we’ve said once before:
“Enjoy this Masturbation May — masturbate! Celebrate masturbation! Talk about it! Indulge in it! Normalize it!”
We look forward to seeing you all enjoy your Masturbation May as much as possible… and good luck!
-S
