or maybe it's, "here son, make sure you practice getting aroused by the right gender."
Oh sure, that actually does happen sometimes, and I'm sure sometimes too it's simply a half-assed token substitute for the real "One Big Talk" that a father is too embarrassed or uncomfortable to have with his son. I was more making a generalization about the most likely attitude usually underlying something like that.
I also was taught that masturbation was a disgusting act, but sometimes I wonder if I had any brothers, would I have been taught the same thing?
Well, there's no way to know for sure, but I'm pretty sure you
would have, and also that said brothers would've gotten the same message...Certainly for my generation (I'm just about 11 years older than you), most boys grew up absolutely no better 'informed' or 'validated' concerning basic sex-ed stuff (safe sex, emotional aspects, anatomy specifics etc.), let alone masturbation, than most girls did-- **if we're talking what came specifically from their parents**. Rather, just like girls, they usually had to learn most of it from a mixture of friends, brothers, and embarrassing personal experiences. Which is to say, fathers overall have never been any better or worse at offering information and guidance on these things than mothers overall have. And as a parent today, I absolutely do not get the impression that that fact has changed much (though parents of both sexes
have gotten better about discussing sexual matters openly--not all certainly, but enough that we can safely say times have changed, which is great).
What
is different, and unfortunately this remains true to a considerable degree, is the parental 'double standard,' where girls' sexual (and really just in general dating) activities tend to be watched and intervened in far more than boys', by parents of both sexes. Which can be destructive in all kinds of ways. But this shouldn't be confused with how 'well-informed' a child was by their parents, nor how 'positive' and 'healthy' a view of sexuality their parents gave them--a boy whose dating activities are often ignored while his sister's are watched like a hawk (or whose friends more readily joke about masturbation than hers do, etc.) is not at all necessarily a boy who has any more of a clue what the hell he's doing or getting himself into than his sister does.
Certain sects or denominations of some religions (conservative Catholics or ultra-Orthodox Jews, for example) really do teach that masturbation, for both sexes, is 'sinful' and 'disgusting'--that it encourages lust, or (for boys) 'wastes' semen, and so on. If that's your parents' background, and assuming they're not so petrified as to never mention sex at all, then yes, both sons and daughters are likely to have that message relayed to them. I do think it's true that boys are far more likely to hear that message 'counteracted' by their peers later, which is why I agree it's particularly good to convey to daughters that it's normal and natural to enjoy this. But it's not at all uncommon for men from those kinds of backgrounds to be carrying around some pretty immense hangups and guilt/shame complexes because they had the horror of 'wasting seed' and 'having lustful thoughts of women other than your wife' pounded into their heads in childhood, then of course they go and do it anyway--who doesn't?--and wind up unable to emotionally reconcile the two.
I don't know that it's
necessary to aim for girls and women becoming 'more like men' in terms of openly alluding to the topic among peers in a nudge-nudge-wink-wink sort of way (which isn't to say it'd be bad if it happened). Part of the reason why the male equivalent gets more attention is simply because it's harder to keep it entirely private--girls definitely have their own litany of adolescent mishaps where certain things become publically obvious in an embarrassing way, but inconveniently timed erections and trips to the bathroom for clearly non-hygiene-related 'relief' are not among them. You kinda have to have a sense of humor about things like that, because it'd be way too humiliating if you couldn't. It's a good bit easier for girls to keep masturbation fully discreet.
I'm also having a hard time buying this idea of presenting masturbation as an 'alternative' to sexual activity as usually defined; that just doesn't seem credible to me. Sure there's a connection between the two, but generally speaking people don't decide to become intimately involved with someone merely because they'd like to have an orgasm. Anyone can achieve
that much on their own anytime, and I think most teens are plenty smart enough to figure that out.