The Center for Sex & Culture (CSC) will hold the seventh annual Masturbate-a-Thon on May 25.
The fundraising event is one of many National Masturbation Month events planned around the U.S., Canada and Europe. National Masturbation Month seeks to raise awareness and dispel shame about this common sexual activity.
The CSC's Masturbate-a-Thon is a live group event where participants raise funds by getting others to sponsor them for the length of time they masturbate.
This year’s Masturbate-a-Thon event will be hosted by porn star Nina Hartley.
“Masturbation is a pleasure most people enjoy [at] some time over the course of their lives,” Masturbate-a-Thon founder and director Carol Queen, Ph.D said. “For many, it's an extremely important, fundamental outlet. We could all feel better about this if it was easier to talk about masturbation and acknowledge how common it is, and the Masturbate-a-Thon is one way to get us all talking.”
This year’s Masturbate-a-Thon will also integrate technology and social media, using the microblogging platform Twitter to indicate a “Twittergasm” — which is a post to a user’s personal profile that indicates they’ve just had a real orgasm.
“GameLink.com is building one of the very first adult communities of Twitter users through this year’s Masturbate-a-Thon event,” GameLink’s social media coordinator Stacie Adams said. “Twitterers will be able to participate by simply typing ICSW (‘I Came, So What’) or JOSW (‘Jacking Off, So What’) into their Twitter profiles and we will track these strings using Tweetscan, a popular tracking service.”
Masturbate-a-Thon supporters can join the Twitter community and tune in to the webcast on May 25 — and interested parties who prefer a private Masturbate-a-Thon can download the pledge sheet, stay home, participate and then remit by mail.
For additional information, contact Adams at (415) 865-5138, or email stacie@gamelink.com .
For more information on GameLink, visit the website.
For information on the S.F. Masturbate-a-Thon, visit its website.