In order to dispel the taboo and stigma associated with female masturbation, a group of five students from a city college has set up a safe, non-judgemental space for women to talk about their experiences and fantasies.
Oh My Hrithik (OMH), a user-generated content platform, was created by Kriti Kulshrestha, Kevika Singla, Vaishali Manek, Suparna Dutta and Mansi Jain on March 6. The third-year students of bachelor of mass media, Mithibai College, said the project began with creation of pages on Instagram and Facebook, and a website.
“OMH is a non-profit project. We started it with the objective of breaking the taboo that girls can’t speak about masturbation. Why must it remain a shunned topic? A girl should be able to say that she masturbated as normally as she speaks about the food she ate during the day” Ms. Kulshrestha said.
Ms. Kulshrestha said, “Hrithik Roshan, as we all know, is considered the Greek god of Bollywood and since we could not use Oh My God for obvious reasons, we went with the next best thing.” The group first generated content on their social media pages, where they would talk about female fantasies to tackle the taboo that society associates with it. Eventually, they got attention from female audiences across the nation and decided to conduct open mic sessions where women would share their stories about self pleasure.
Their first session was conducted at Miranda House College in Delhi on March 16, followed by the one at Cafe Palladio in Jaipur on April 26, both of which received an audience of about 25 women.
“On the occasion of International Masturbation Day on May 28, we decided to organise our first open mic at Silver Beach Café in Juhu. It was an interactive evening where 12-15 women attended and we spoke about issues that stigmatise the concept of masturbation. We also discussed how the concept of self pleasure is often associated with shame because it is considered immoral, or rather abnormal,” Ms. Kulshrestha said. Ms. Singla said, “We all come from conventionally close-minded and orthodox places such as Jaipur, Gujarat and Bathinda, but it is these different mindsets and experiences coming together that have made our project unique.”
She also said Mumbai has made them more open-minded and helped them overcome the hurdles they saw while building their project. This included financial challenges, hate comments, and individuals and organisations who shunned their initiative.
The journey has not been easy, with people often questioning their character and upbringing in their comments, but the group is striking conversations to break that thought process.
“We don’t know how long it will take to completely abolish the taboo, but we want to grow together,” Ms. Kulshrestha said.
