Experimenting sexually with yourself will help you be a better lover to others.

If there’s one thing, a history of denial and male-dominated media has left us with it’s a lot of ground to catch up on when it comes to being sexually understood, both by each other and ourselves.

The problem gets even trickier when you consider how difficult it can be to admit ignorance or talk about lesbian issues in a negative light – we don’t need to; there are more than enough senators willing to do that for us.

I still cringe when I see lesbian sex advice (or ‘tips’ as tabloid titalliationists often call them) that follows the ‘operating tricky machinery’ school of the female anatomy: ‘Fiddle here, crank the shaft, get some wd40 and ice cubes, 30 seconds on each of the erogenous zones (mileage may vary), and she should be purring like a dream.

It’s how my brother’s teenage magazines would talk about female sexuality – and who can blame them? Vaginas are like alien technologies to most teenage boys and, unfortunately, a lot of teenage girls too.

It’s not about complexity, it’s about understanding.

No tricks, tips, or magic moves can help you. In the same way, girls who struggle to love themselves often struggle to love others well; we struggle to fuck each other when we can’t even get off properly.

Do you want the best tip you’ll ever get for good sex? It’s not as easy as ‘insert part a into slot B and doesn’t involve dressing up as cops (a crime), a schoolgirl (creepy), or woodland animals (it was Halloween, and I was 17) – learn how to masturbate, how to get yourself hot, and how to get off.

Learn where and how you like to be touched, and learn how slow or fast you like to take it. Try fantasising, toys, porn – heck, you may as well try all those ‘tricky machinery’ tips you read about! There’s nobody else in the room, so you can do what you like (I think that’s the law).

Then someday, perhaps, we can get to a place where we all know what we like, are comfortable enough to share it, and can do away with all the cringy, worthless, misguided, and masculine ‘advice’.