Erika Lust provides her Barcelona employees with a dedicated masturbation space.
Furthering her advocacy for the emotional, sexual, and physical benefits of masturbation, adult entertainment filmmaker and production company president, Erika Lust, is allowing her team to take 30-minute self-pleasure breaks.
“With the pandemic and the huge shift in how we live our lives, I began to notice that my employees had become somewhat agitated and were performing with less energy than before,” Lust told Dazed.
Her solution was to provide her Barcelona employees with a dedicated masturbation space.
Cat, who is in charge of comms and content, also told Dazed that the policy has been extremely popular:
“A masturbation break at work can result in more focus from your employees, less aggression, more productivity, and better teamwork.”
Using masturbation as a tool for managing stress
In May, Lust combined her new policy with her support of self-pleasuring by releasing an ASMR recording of her staff enjoying themselves to coincide with International Masturbation Day.
Other companies joined in as well. Allbodies, specializing in online sexual education classes, partnered with Lust to help promote the event, while Fun Factory provided sex toys.
Talking about its many benefits, Lust told The News Democracy: “The truth is masturbation can help people manage stress, regulate their sleep, and connect with their body and sexual desires, among other advantages.”
Lust also produced Masturbation Conversations, a short documentary available to watch on YouTube.
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People are already self-pleasuring on the clock
According to a 2016 informal survey by TimeOut, 39 percent of those polled said they masturbate at work.
The reasons varied from trying to recover from a hangover to releasing tension. Though one person explained, “If you get on a sex app like Grindr, and you have guys asking you to take naughty pictures and telling you what they want to do to you, it tends to… distract you.”
While TimeOut wasn’t striving for scientific accuracy, so many people freely confessing to self-pleasuring while on the clock says a lot about how popular it likely is.
Will masturbation breaks become the norm?
By giving her staff permission to have masturbation breaks, Lust openly encourages what the participants in the TimeOut survey already know: At-work-wanking can be more of a pro and less of a con.
It also does wonders for getting the word out that masturbation is okay.
As Planned Parenthood puts it: “Masturbation isn’t unhealthy or bad for you at all. Masturbation can actually be good for your health, both mentally and physically.”
Image sources: Scott Sanker
