Generally speaking, masturbating at work is something that tends to be discouraged in most professional settings — unless of course you’re Matthew McConaughey’s character in Wolf of Wall Street explaining how his active workplace masturbation habits (plus lots of cocaine) are the key to professional success, and suggesting Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort adopt a similar routine.
Well, just call Erika Lust Matthew McConaughey’s character in Wolf of Wall Street (no one knows his name, doesn’t matter) because the indie filmmaker has officially sanctioned workplace masturbation on her set, encouraging her employees to take 30-minute masturbation breaks during the work day. Of course, authorized masturbation breaks are much less surprising coming from the offices of an erotic filmmaker than a more traditional workplace environment, but the move still marks an important step in normalizing masturbation and acknowledging the many mental health benefits it can provide.
Lust says the initiative, which launches this month in honor of National Masturbation Month and will continue throughout the year, aims to de-stigmatize masturbation and the role it can and should play in everyday health and wellness. Additionally, Lust hopes the move will also enhance her employees’ workplace productivity and satisfaction.
“With the pandemic and the huge shift in how we live our lives, I began to notice that my employees had become somewhat agitated and were performing with less energy than before,” she told Dazed. “So, knowing that there’s only one thing that will make everyone feel good, I’ve set up a private masturbation station for them to enjoy. I value my employees and I know that when they feel good, we do good work.”
Lust is definitely onto something. As sex therapist Ian Kerner told InsideHook last year, “Masturbation is healthy. Masturbation is typical, normal, and people masturbate for very different reasons: sometimes to relax, sometimes to experience pleasure, sometimes to enjoy a fantasy, and sometimes to relieve anxiety or self-medicate against some kind of difficult mood or emotion.”
For many of us, the workplace is often a source of anxiety or other “difficult moods or emotions,” which would seem to make masturbation an ideal coping mechanism for the work-related stress many of us experience on a daily basis.
Of course, lest we forget the great Jeffrey Toobin Zoom Dick Incident of 2020 — which one Jeffrey Toobin would probably very much like us to forget — it’s important to remember that context is key when it comes to a workday self-pleasure session, and there’s a very fine line between permissible behavior and a fireable offense. Particularly as many of us begin to re-enter physical workplaces after over a year of working from home (and probably taking more than a few midday masturbation breaks from the privacy of our own home offices) some revision of our workplace boundaries may be in order.
There’s a time and a place for workday masturbation breaks. In a designated “masturbation station” set up by your employer for your workplace-sanctioned 30-minute masturbation break? Great. On a Zoom call with your co-workers? Not so much.
Personally, I’m not sure I would feel comfortable excusing myself from my desk and making my way to the office “masturbation station” to take my 30-minute masturbation break while all my coworkers know where I’m going and why, but maybe that’s exactly why we need this campaign. Perhaps someday, in a sex-positive future free of shame and stigma, taking a masturbation break during work will be as commonplace as stepping out to grab lunch. In the meantime, however, it’s probably best to keep your workday masturbation sessions limited to your home office and off of your Zoom calls.
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