I HAVE A WEIRD HANGUP ABOUT SEX TOYS
Once when I was eight, my friend Jessie and I were playing in her mom’s closet and we found a giant, vibrating dildo. When we brought it to her mom (the same mom who’d told us that masturbating on hot tub jets would “scramble our eggs”) to ask what it was, her mortified face and swift recovery of the object tipped me off to the fact that the dildo was both very important to her and very embarrassing. I recognized that it was a fake penis, and I knew what sex was, so I was able to put two and two together. When I was 12 or 13, I would look for dildos in other people’s houses—those of friends, and even a bunny I was pet-sitting. When my search was successful, I almost never took the dildos out of their drawers or boxes, or even touched them. I just wanted to stare at them. They were intriguing in the way that moon rocks are. They felt like portals to some unreachable, mysterious, and very exciting realm.
Fast-forward to the summer before my first year of college. My mom generously offered to buy me my first vibrator, but when we went into the shop to actually buy one, the salesperson assumed my mom and I were partners, and I immediately no longer wanted the vibrator. During my second year of college, a woman I was having sex with pulled out her vibrator while we were in bed. I didn’t like the sensation—too intense. It also freaked me out. In recalling the incident to me recently, she said I was so embarrassed by the object that my shame alienated her.
I’d never owned a dildo or a vibrator until recently, which embarrasses me to admit. My curiosity about the pleasure potential of sex toys had not surpassed my weird shame about them until a few weeks ago when I put a condom on the back of my husband’s hair clippers (the guard was on!) just to see how the vibration felt. (Outside, not inside! And don’t try this. It was a Very Bad Idea.) It was . . . a little much for me? Later, I bought a real vibrator that I tried to use for a few days but just didn’t really like. I could come with it but not as intensely as without it. Maybe it was the color, which is this terrible Microsoft blue that kind of makes me cringe. (The saleslady swore I would not be bothered by the color once I started using it. She may have been wrong.) Maybe I just don’t love the sensation of vibration. Maybe I don’t need a vibrator in my life. I’ve been perfectly happy without one. Or maybe this is a Thing caused by Patriarchy BS that I should try to get over. I’m not sure.
It’s easy to be able to articulate a sex-positive logic all day yet still have weird patriarchal and puritanical voices deep in your conscience preventing you from enjoying otherwise good and harmless things. I want people who have hang- ups they can’t seem to shake to know that even the girl who is willing to tell the world she tried masturbating with hair clippers has hang-ups too.
WHY I STILL THINK IT’S IMPORTANT FOR EVERYONE TO HAVE ACCURATE INFORMATION ABOUT SEX TOYS
Sex toys can include vibrators, dildos, vibrating dildos, anal plugs, anal beads, clit suckers, strap-ons, or even oblong vegetables washed and dressed in a condom. Then there’s all the fun BDSM toys like leashes and collars, whips, and gags, which are awesome too but which I don’t get into in this book. Sex toys can be used all over the body in many creative ways wherever they feel good—nipples, neck, ear, nose, booty, and so on. Sex toys can be used alone or with others.
Sex toys are really awesome for a lot of people. They would not have had a projected $29 billion global market in 2020 otherwise. A 2017 study by the business data platform Statista found that 25% of “adult females” in the United States use sex toys several times per week.
Another 2009 study of 3,800 “women” in the United States found that over half of adult “women” report having used a vibrator. Vibrator use was found to be significantly related with positive outcomes when it came to desire, arousal, lubrication, orgasm, and overall function. The study concludes, “Vibrator use among women is common, associated with health-promoting behaviors and positive sexual function, and rarely associated with side effects.”
It’s often said that vibrators are addictive or that they desensitize your parts. The 2009 study found that only 16.5% of vibrator users reported numbness, that it lasted more than a day for only 0.5% of respondents, and that most re- ported it as only a very slight numbness. A lot of articles on the internet ad- dress the question of whether or not vibrators are addictive. Sex therapists, ob-gyns, and sexperts have all weighed in and the consensus seems to be: if you get used to coming with a vibrator, you might get lazy about doing it other ways. But that’s far from the same thing as addiction.
Sometimes sex toys are also called sexual aids because, for some people who rely on sex toys, the term toys may make them seem like an indulgence or a luxury. Sex toys can provide what might not otherwise be possible for people with disabilities, for people who have a hard time coming, for people whose partners can’t or don’t want to use their own parts, and for a whole host of other people for whom sex toys are very, very useful. This kind of difference in terminology and conceptualization—sex toys as sexual aids—can potentially change what insurance companies are willing to cover when it comes to sex ual health. Still, sexual aid is also not a great blanket term because, for people having queer sex outside of the penis-in-vagina model, sexual aid can make it sound like the body parts they’re working with are somehow insufficient or imply that sex isn’t sex if a real penis isn’t involved.
THE FIVE SEX TOY COMMANDMENTS THAT WERE (NOT) LITERALLY TRANSCRIBED BY MOSES ON MOUNT SINAI
- Thou shalt not stick something in your butt that does not have a wide base that will keep it from getting sucked into and stuck in your butt. The wide base part has to be really strong and wide. You’d be very surprised what can get sucked into an One study that looked at best practices in getting things out of butts reported objects found in butts including a body- spray can, bottles, dildos, sticks, a water hose, a corncob, and a pointed squash. The vagina has a cervix that closes one end of it so things (bigger than spermies) can’t get stuck in there. But the butthole hath not!
- Thou shalt not stick anything dry in an anus; always lube up!
- Thou shalt not stick something in a vagina that was just in an anus with- out washing it
- Thou shalt not use broken toys! As Liz Duck-Chong, trans health promo- tor, filmmaker, writer, and host of the sex ed and sexual health podcast Let’s Do It, says: “It is potentially unsafe to use sex toys that are damaged, including glass, wood, or hard plastic toys with chips, cracks, or stress If you are at all unsure or worried about a toy being dangerous, throw it away and buy a new one.”
- Thou shalt not use dirty toys! Be as “dirty” as you want sexually, but don’t be literally dirty about your sex toys. Sex toys can be vehicles for bodily fluids, which can transport STIs from person to person. So use the same safer-sex barriers and precautions you would use with body parts. Also, they can grow bacteria on them if you don’t wash them after use. A few studies have found an association between not washing sex toys and BV. So you really shalt keep them clean. Duck-Chong suggests: “When not using them, store cleaned and dried sex toys in an enclosed location protected from dust, dirt, food, or pet debris, and before use, consider giving toys a quick wash in hot water.”
Reprinted with permission from Pussypedia: A Comprehensive Guide by Zoe Mendelson, illustrated by Maria Conejo (Hachette Go), available from Amazon or Bookshop.