​Sex-quest: Swedish women come together to find word for female masturbation

A Swedish sex-ed group has launched a competition to make up a special word for women “flying solo.” The taboo topic of female masturbation has no name in the Nordic language, but the organization has already received over 1,000 suggestions.

The competition to find a “casual and lascivious” word was launched last Wednesday by RFSU – a national non-profit organization that “works for an open, positive view of sex and relationship issues.”

The organizers have whittled down the suggestions to a shortlist of 34 words - "klittra", "pulla" and "selfa" among them.

The Swedish public can choose the three most appropriate words between now and Sunday. In June 2015, the RFSU's committee will organize the final vote to choose the new name.

"Rather than sit around amongst ourselves talking about it, we thought we would launch a nationwide competition," Kristina Ljungros, a spokeswoman for the association told The Local. "We are trying to put sexuality on the agenda – the positive aspects, not just the negative ones like sexual abuse. We want to focus on the good parts, the lust."

The idea of the contest came up at a biannual meeting of the RFSU group last year.

“A good word can answer questions and puncture the myths. A good word can be used and understood by many without feeling embarrassed or uncomfortable,”said the leaders of the organization in the press-release.

"When it comes to masturbation, people mostly think about just men doing it and we don't think of it as common for women... the absence of one commonly used word for female masturbation suggests that we still don't have gender equality here in Sweden," Ljungros said.

The absence of the term is actually a global problem - the dozens of euphemisms and slang words do not count.