Have you talked to your Vulva today?

Months ago, I was invited to a workshop on sensual self-touch. Or let’s call it what every single one of my friends called it: a masturbation workshop. 

It was brilliantly held by two incredible facilitators, Oli Lipski and Valentine Bordet. Oli is a Sensual Intimacy Coach and the founder of The Queer Sensualist, a platform dedicated to queer pleasure education, and Valentine is the founder of  Self-Pleasure Club, a creative grassroots collective on a mission to empower people to explore their pleasure in holistic and embodied ways. Both have spent years cultivating spaces where pleasure, intimacy, and self-love are explored without shame and they built the sensual self touch workshop for people with vulvas.

But life happened, and I didn’t write about it like I intended. Now, freshly single, heartbroken, and grasping for something to fill the void, I’ve gone back to my pages of notes, unfinished streams of consciousness and my past essays and realised something: I fucking love my vagina. And if anyone is going to have your back during a horrendous break up and Venus retrograde, it’s going to be your very own quivering vulva. 

Entering the Temple of Masturbation 

It was a chilly Saturday afternoon when I arrived at the workshop. I was exhausted, having had maybe four hours of sleep, with no real sense of what to expect. Honestly, what was the worst that could happen? 

I pride myself on being the most charming person in every room I wander into so I planned for embarrassment, awkward silences that white people love and the familiar British sense of “oh, this is a bit much, isn’t it?” But no. What I got instead was a strange kind of warmth and a kind of sensual permission I didn’t even know I needed.

I was greeted by a room full of people in lacy robes, snacks in hand, and the unmistakable hum of laughter in the air. It reminded me instantly of a moment from my school days – a scene from the girls’ changing room right after P.E., except here, no one was judging anyone’s body. No one was hiding behind towels or rushing to put on clothes over sweat soaked gym kits. Here, we were allowed to just be. I had never met any of these people but there I was, naked except for a flimsy robe yet it felt oddly comforting.

During the first break after some vulva gazing, I stuffed my face with my first meal of the day – a glorious meal deal, while everyone else was daintily nibbling away on fruit and chatting in the semi-nude. It was a bit of a weird scene, I won’t lie. Like a school trip for grown-ups, but with more open thighs and less of the awkward puritanical “don’t look at me” vibe Gen Z got going on. 

When I made my way to the bathroom, I found myself staring at a wall of labia artwork – diverse, colourful, and each one unapologetically someone’s vagina. Then, the sound of two women’s voices floated through the crack under the door. One was softly crying, and I don’t know how, but I could tell she wasn’t sad. It felt like her tears were that of the relief of releasing something long-held. I wasn’t prepared for it, but that’s what this space had given them: permission to feel it all, without apology. I walked out to find them hugging, and for some reason, that small act felt like the most sacred thing I’d witnessed all day.

We were given anatomically correct worksheets – NSFW, of course – a stark contrast to the sex-ed pamphlets we grew up with, which might as well have been published by the Vatican (I went to a Catholic Primary School so this might actually be true). And as Oli and Valentine spoke to us about creating “new narratives of pleasure,” they directed us to touch ourselves, their voices calm but firm, our vulva Yodas. 

Valentine tells us: “Pleasure is the measure. Orgasm is not the goal.” I was skeptical at first – I mean, what’s the point of attending a masturbation circle, à la Betty Dodson in the ’70s, if you’re not going to orgasm? But their emphasis was on something much richer, something that’s often missed in the pantheon of media about sex. Pleasure, not performance. Connection, not completion.

Like all things, pleasure requires practice

What could they possibly teach me? My brain was already quick to dismiss the whole affair. I’ve had my share of solo kinky adventures, I’ve been spanked in latex in Berlin and I’ve got the t-shirt to prove it. But there was a moment when my internal assumptions were challenged and it wasn’t about mastering new techniques or chasing the perfect orgasm. It was about something so much simpler – the power of stopping when you don’t want to go further. Saying no without guilt. Walking away. Stepping back. Bowing out. And that, in its quiet simplicity, was what truly stumped me. 

We were asked to write down our yeses – what we know to be true about our bodies, our desires and what we crave. But when it came time to list my nos, my pen hesitated. What don’t I want? How do I distinguish a true no from cautious hopefulness? How do I know when I’m feeling fear, and when I’m simply curious? (The answer, of course, is that there isn’t a clear-cut one. It’s a practice. A language you learn through your body. I remember writing down in my notebook, can you read yourself? I still don’t know the answer to that.)

The climax of the day – forgive the pun – arrived during the “solo exploration” portion. Almost 30 women and nonbinary people sat in a circle in East London. We faced away from each other – we’d made a promise not to look. And there we were, in this sacred absurdity, engaging in the most intimate act, together yet apart: a room full of people having a little wank. How absurd. How beautiful.

The room grew warmer, as if the collective energy of so many bodies exploring their own pleasure had somehow made the temperature rise. Moans filled the space, some soft and subtle, others raw and guttural. The sounds were intimate in a way that made me internally ask myself: Am I really doing this?

A glass tumbles over, disrupting the rhythm, and I glance towards it in the beautiful chaos of it all. My leg brushes against the base of a giant monstera plant, and my foot arches over a root. My calves contract and I inhale the scent of coconut oil. The girl next to me is so loud, but truly, you go girl.

And yet, beneath that absurdity, I felt such a deep sense of awe. Everyone in that room was so courageous and brave, exploring their bodies without shame, without hesitation. The day had started with me puzzled by how many attendees seemed like strangers to their own bodies, like what was between our legs were aliens we were scared of making first contact with. I was the only one who reflected that I thought my vulva was beautiful in the opening reflections but by the end we were all united in our worship. Our pleasure was our own to explore but in that moment it was a shared experience. It wasn’t about perfection; it was about standing in your own wetness and vulnerability and simply saying, “This is about me, and this is what I want.’

I can’t remember whether it was Oli or Valentine, but one of them said with such wisdom: “If you’re not scared, nothing will change. Pleasure is unique. Your value is unique. You are unique.” And damn, if I don’t feel that truth in my bones today. 

Now, I sit with more unfinished stories in front of me, I ask myself again: What could they teach me? Everything. I am so angry and sad a lot of the time now. I miss when someone else instinctively knew the ways in which my body moved. I miss not having to think about my pleasure – when you’re in a relationship, you are a unit and this duty is shared. I miss not always having the sole responsibility for when I eat, when I sleep, when I fuck and when I come. 

But what Oli and Valentine showed me wasn’t how to touch myself differently, but how to love this body of mine – even when no one else will. To understand that this body will be with me for as long as I live, and if I’m going to participate in this experience we call life, I might as well always be performing my pleasure and for no one but myself. And for that, I will forever be grateful.