There’s always a good language story to be had from Sweden. Keen to stress increasing sexual liberation across the country, a campaign has been launched to find a new word for something which currently doesn’t have its own term. The search is on for a word for female masturbation.

The Swedish Association for Sexuality Education launched a national search for a new word, and more than 1,000 suggestions poured in from the public. The list has now been narrowed down to 34 and next June the panel will decide whether ‘pulla’, ‘selfa’ or something else will emerge victorious.

Kristina Ljungros of the association said: “The absence of one commonly used word for female masturbation suggests that we still don’t have gender equality here in Sweden. Hopefully this is another step towards that.”

By this argument, the same could be said of England. An identical exercise could easily be carried out for this language, as it seems to be equally lacking linguistically in this respect.  A recent Huffington Post piece helpfully suggested flicking the bean, or air out of the orchid, which I think just confiirms that English is as backwards as Swedish when it comes to this linguistic oversight.

So can you see a campaign being launched in the UK to come up with a suitable term? No, me neither. I guess, like so many other aspects of our modern lives, well have to wait for the Swedes to lead the way. Let’s just hope they don’t let IKEA have the final say-so. Billy Bookcase anyone?