You have to love those Swedes – in breaking news they have now given us ladies something other than a furniture store to fight with our partners in: a word for female masturbation.

After calling on the general public for submissions, and after sifting through 1200 letters, postcards and emails, last week The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU) settled on ‘klittra.’

A combination of the Swedish words for ‘clitoris’ and ‘glitter,’ klittra was chosen because it “highlights the importance of the clitoris for pleasure.” An important tip, yes, but just not one I think us ladies need to be educated on. Blokes however, feel free to take notes.

While a term that incorporates ‘glitter’ is much prettier than something along the lines of the unpoetic ‘flicking the bean,’ the idea of getting sparkly metallic dust anywhere near the inside of my underpants is about as enticing as an offer of sex on the beach.

The last time we combined glitter with our downstairs area the world ended up with vajazzling and I think we can all agree that was a terrible mistake. (Although finding out a bloke was more attracted to your vagina if it was wearing jewellery was a handy way to separate the marriage material from the chaff.)

According to RFSU spokesperson Kristina Ljungros, “When it comes to masturbation, people mostly think about men doing it and we don’t think of it as common for women. If we don’t have a word in the language, how can we even talk about it?”

Did I miss the memo? I didn’t think we weren’t talking about it because we didn’t have a word for it but because announcing you’re late to dinner as a result of giving yourself a good going over isn’t really considered scintillating mealtime conversation.

The RFSU also suggested that introducing a word for female masturbation was important because the absence of one “suggests we still don’t have gender equality here in Sweden.” I’d have thought a more accurate measure of inequality would be rates of pay rather than the number of times you’ve told someone you spent the afternoon with your hands down your pants, but maybe that’s me?

With over 1200 suggestions from native speakers of a language where the word for ‘final sale’ is ‘slutspurt,’ the mind boggles as to what didn’t make the cut. The two options that klittra narrowly beat were ‘runka’ and ’pulla,’ both of which make liberally dusting your private parts in scratchy glitter sound like a pain free picnic.

The problem with each of three shortlisted words however (pulla is pretty self explanatory and runka means ‘to jerk off’) is that they’re all lacking in discretion. Surely the whole point of coming up with a new word is so women can talk about it without having to explain things literally. But these chosen alternatives are about as clandestine as saying “I’m just off for a quick vagging.”

And while anything that helps people communicate is a good thing it remains to be seen whether klittra will get the official nod and be inserted (pardon the pun) into the Swedish dictionary. In a world where words like grrrl and FOMO make the cut in international dictionaries, a word that’s actually trying to do some good probably deserves its place. But the only way it’ll be officially recognised is if enough people adopt its use and make the word commonplace.

So if you’d like to see klittra survive there’s only one thing to do ladies: close the door, get out the rainbow sprinkles and do your bit for linguistics.

Source: dailytelegraph.com.au

What do you think of klittra? What do you prefer to call it? Let us know below!