Many years ago, a friend of mine made a video about female masturbation. I can’t find it online anywhere, but it was basically a collection of euphemistic images – mouses being clicked, kittens being petted, muffins being buttered - all set to a jaunty tune.

I bring this up because this week, Rachel Rabbit White is running a blogosphere-wide project on women and porn (she likes to push our comfort zones like that). She asked me to contribute, and while I thought it was a great idea, my immediate, instinctive response was: “Nuh-uh. Sorry, I can’t write about that.”

Not because I think porn is wrong. I don’t, although conversation on this subject matter over the past couple of weeks suggests that I have a somewhat different definition of “porn” to other people. I didn’t want to write about it because I didn’t want to be slut-shamed.

Much like my friend’s video on masturbation, there’s still a very real stigma surrounding women and porn.

Maybe it’s because there’s such a big media discourse at the moment about how “bad” it is (although my frustration with studies and porn, whether positive or negative, is that they always seem to find the results they set out to find), maybe it’s because most discussion about pornography focuses on men, but there’s a sense that porn is something that “nice girls” just don’t talk about.

The “appropriate” response is to either protest its misogyny or to blush, giggle and politely demure.

Of course, I’m well aware even by talking about why we can’t talk about porn I’m, well, talking about porn. But to me, this is the important question, and one that cuts directly to the purpose of Rachel’s project. As she wrote in her call-out:

[G]irls aren’t encouraged to talk to each other about porn— the same way we aren’t encouraged to talk to each other about masturbation. In girl-world, too often we expect our first orgasm to come from a partner. Then we expect our Sex-and-The-City approved hitachi-orgasms to come from our closed eyes.

So, why can’t women talk about porn? Or masturbation, for that matter? What kinds of conversations have you had on this topic with your friends?

Related: Ask Rachel: How do you deal with people you respect watching porn?
Why do we slut-shame?

Elsewhere: Lady Porn Day (Rachel Rabbit White)