Reducing COVID-19 Stress: Why Is One Suggestion Still in Quarantine?

Articles in the media offer a plethora of advice for coping with the stress and isolation of COVID-19: doing yoga, taking walks, meditating, making art, journaling, emailing/talking over the phone, and stocking extra food and supplies. These are all excellent, if somewhat predictable, suggestions. 

However, so far one stress-reducing tip has not made it into mainstream print: to self-pleasure or to have sex with a partner leading to orgasm. Orgasms decrease stress because they increase dopamine and serotonin, the feel-good hormones, and they increase oxytocin, the hormone that decreases the stress hormone cortisol. Though there is plenty of solid scientific evidence to back up this statement, the press doesn’t seem to offer sexual pleasure as a way to feel better during this crisis.

Why is the press being so prudish when the pleasure of an orgasm could offer all of us needed relaxation and moments of normalcy?

This is an important question.

Is the mainstream press fearful of a backlash from some political conservatives and many religious groups? Many religions believe masturbation—or as I prefer to call it, self-pleasure—is sinful, morally corrupt, and harmful spiritually and physically. (Remember the admonition that masturbation could make you go blind?)

Self-pleasure is still stigmatized, especially for women. Women have been signaled out for shame around sex since Eve tempted Adam with the apple (often seen as a metaphor for sex). In this interpretation of Genesis 1, Eve’s sin cast out humans from the garden of paradise forever. If you think Eve as a sinful seducer is just an old story no one believes in anymore or associates with sex, just go to Google images and type in “sexual pleasure and women.” Scroll down and notice the sexually suggestive photos of women, men, and apples.  

To erode the stigma around women pleasuring themselves, women need encouragement to experience orgasm through self-pleasure. The statistic of women reaching orgasm through sex with a partner is grim—only 25%, according to Elisabeth Lloyd in her book The Case of the Female Orgasm (Harvard University Press). Lloyd drew this finding from a thorough analysis of 33 studies over the past 80 years.

Moreover, many women self-pleasure, but many feel guilty according to Laurie Mintz, Ph.D. in her Psychology Today article, “Masturbation 101: Letting Go of Guilt: Despite research finding self-pleasure to be healthy, it's still mired in guilt” (May 30, 2018). In a casual survey of female students in her class, Mintz found 89% masturbated but 33% felt guilty. Her colleague Joyce McFadden found 70% of her female students felt guilty for masturbating. 

Women being uncomfortable with their own sexual pleasure is the subject of another article by Robin Hilmantel in “Motto,” a section of Time, “Still Shy About Sex? You’re Not the Only One”(April 16, 2016). In it Sarah Sommers (creative director of VProud that produces the video series “You’re Not Crazy” about women’s mental-health issues) says, “I think too many women are uncomfortable taking control of their own sexual pleasure and understanding what feels good and how to make themselves feel good…Much like anything else, the more it’s talked about, the less scary and unknown it becomes so it’s important to hear other women talking about female pleasure as comfortably and casually as they would discuss anything else.”

During this coronavirus crisis, the pleasure of orgasm could help everybody sequestered at home and especially parents—many with young children. Imagine the strain these adults are under. In the best of times, partners caring for small children find little privacy to have sex together in daytime, and at night they may just want to fall asleep. Shouldn’t we suggest these couples take turns watching children during the day to carve out private time to lie down, relax, and have the opportunity to self-pleasure?  

Partners with school age children could teach them to occupy themselves to allow their parents undisturbed alone time together. An Irish Catholic friend told me her mom and dad, who had seven kids, did this successfully in the 1950s. In 2020, isn’t it time the press included these suggestions, freeing orgasm through self-pleasure from the pejorative quarantine it has been in for centuries? 

Certainly mindfulness, yoga, meditation, and relaxation techniques bring people into the present moment calming the body and increasing feelings of safety. Orgasm does that too and is more fun and less work.  

Finally, COVID-19 gives the mainstream press an opportunity to help women legitimize orgasm in general and to view it as a powerful stress reducer. As stated, orgasm increases the feel-good hormones dopamine and serotonin. Orgasm also increases oxytocin, the hormone that reduces cortisol, the stress hormone. As we are now in a stress-and-fear pandemic, any release of oxytocin (playing fast and loose with Hamlet’s soliloquy) “’tis a consummation…devoutly to be wished.”

Good Article: Opinion: “What Will Happen When Americans Start Having Sex Again?” By Peggy Orenstein, The New York Times, April 17, 2021.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/opinion/sunday/sex-stds-stis-covid.html