Category: Vibrator Use

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12 Video Chat Sex Tips From Women In Long Distance Relationships

By Gabrielle Kassel

Thanks to the novel coronavirus pandemic, pretty much everything you used to do in person—work, happy hour, doc appointments, weddings—have all moved to Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Facetime. But sex? Yep. That too.

Katie, 29, a New York-based publicist is one of the unlucky lovebirds who has unexpectedly found herself in a LDR. “Pre-quarantine, my boyfriend and I probably had sex five or six times a week, and surprisingly the pandemic hasn’t changed how often we’re having sex, just how we have sex,” she says. “And I’ve gotta admit, video sex is way more intimate and fun than I thought it would be.”

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“COVID-19 pandemic or not, video sex with a partner can be totally hot,” says Zhana Vrangalova, PhD, professor of human sexuality at New York University and resident sexpert for sex-toy brand LELO. Think about it, you’re basically creating a personal porno just for your partner. “But unlike porn, video sex is a two-way street—you’re able to watch and hear your partner while they watch and hear you.” Hot, right?

But video chat sex can feel super awk at first, and there’s indeed an art to it. Here are tips from Katie and other women about how to make “special” video calls even better.

How to have video sex you actually enjoy:

1. Pick your platform wisely.

Before you even think about getting busy on camera, do a little research about the platform you’re thinking about using. Zoom, Skype, and WhatsApp, for instance, all have explicit rules against nudity and sexually explicit material. Sorry to break it to ya.

What platforms are video-sex kosher? At the time of publication, FaceTime and Telegram have no explicit rules against it.

2. Only do it with partners you trust…like, a lot.

About to accept a video call? Do a gut check. “Screenshots are absolutely a thing, so if any part of you feels like this person might take screenshots without your consent, opt out,” says Carly, 32, New York-based founder of Dildo or Dildon’t. Even if it’s been over a month since you’ve last got laid, no case of quarantine randies is worth some jerk having your nudes without consent or knowledge.

3. Schedule it in advance.

Feeling a little ‘LOL WHAT ARE DAYS?.’ Scheduling your sesh in advance just as you would for an IRL meet-up can help, says Maile, 30, a New York-based operations manager. “Scheduling video sex with my new boo helps make my days feel a little less monotonous, and it actually gives me something to look forward to.”

Plus, she says planning ahead gives her at least a few hours to figure out what lingerie she’s going to wear underneath her clothes, what toys she wants to have fully charged (important!), what lube she wants ready for use, and *exactly* where she’ll set up her camera (see below).

4. Figure out where you’ll set up the camera.

Your first instinct might just be to hold the phone. But getting freaky (read: orgasming) over video is way easier when you have both your hands to, ahem, aid in arousal.

Find a place to prop your phone up so that the lighting is in front of (not behind!) you, suggests Carly. “You also want the camera to be slightly higher up than you are,” she says. She invested in the GripTight Gorilla stand (shown here) so that she can set her phone up at an optimal height/place in the bedroom or bathroom or living room (hate to say it, but the best lighting may actually not be in the bedroom).

But if you don’t want to splurge on some video sex-cessories, Maile says, “I’ve been propping my phone up against a stack of books on my bedside table and it works just fine.”

5. Limit distractions.

Generally speaking, it’s rude as hell to check your cell or email when you’re out with your boo. But when you’re both (partially or fully) naked?? Well, *leaves meeting*.

Put your phone in do not disturb mode and disable your Slack and email notifications. “It can be hard enough to establish intimacy via video, so the last thing I want is a work email to interrupt the moment,” says Sarah Sloane, a sex educator who’s been coaching sex toy classes at Good Vibrations and Pleasure Chest since 2001.

6. Treat it like a date.

Don’t feel like you need to be naked, sprawled, and ready the second you answer the call. If you’re feeling romantic, make a whole damn date night out of it like Maile and her S.O. do.

“I may be living in a world of back-to-back meetings. But these video sessions aren’t that—these video sessions are what we’re resorting to in place of in-person date and romps,” she says.

So, she gets dressed up (lingerie underneath, of course), lights candles, cleans the apartment, breaks out a bottle of wine, and makes a fancy dinner. “We like to start with a drink, maybe some food, talk about our days, and when the mood veers toward the sensual or sexual, we let it,” she says. Modern romance!

7. Or have a quickie.

If you’re like Sloane and only have time for (or simply prefer) quickies, you’ve got another option: lean into sex-texting as foreplay. “We’re both working, so we like to sext all day long to build up the anticipation. Then, when we’re both unbearably horny and have a few minutes, we’ll hop on [camera] and get off together real quick,” she says.

8. If you’re nervous, say so!

Spoiler alert: These are unprecedented times that we’re livin’ in, and we’re all just trying to find ways to get our skin hunger met and feel a little less socially distant. So chances are your partner is just as new to this as you are.

“Telling my partner that I was nervous but excited helped me relax,” says new video sex aficionado, Angelica*, 31, a Texas-based accountant. “It turned out they were also nervous, which helped take some of the pressure off.”

9. Pull out the pleasure products.

The Womanizer may be your go-to, but Carly recommends bringing in toys that are way more ~visual~ than that. “You don’t want a toy that you just plop onto your bits, you want a toy that helps you put on a show.” Her suggestion? Opt for a thrusting vibrator like the Fun Factory Stronic G or Calexotics Shameless Tease. “I like to position them between my legs, then angle the camera down so my partner can see them rocking.”

Finger vibrators like the Dame Fin or Unbound Palma are good options too because your partner can still see your bits—and how you like to stroke yourself—even with the toy in the frame.

Oh, and take a tip from Sloane and ask if your partner has any sex toys that will really turn them off. You’re doing this together, remember?

10. Use lube.

Even if you don’t usually use lube during IRL sex, without your Babe’s hand and mouth in the mix helping to warm you up (or tbh, your go-to porno), it may take you a little longer to self-lubricate. And that’s where lube comes in. “Not only will the lube cut down on the friction, but it’s also visually sexy because it makes you look wet and slick on camera,” says Carly.

11. Make some noise.

It might sound a little “duh,” but when you’re video-sexing, in addition to not getting to touch your partner, you don’t get to smell or taste them. That’s why hamming up the audio component is a must. “All my partner gets is the sight and sound of me, so I really ramp up the dirty talk, moaning, and heavy breathing,” says Sloane.

If you’re feeling nervous about dirty talking, that’s A-OK, too. Katie doesn’t dirty talk at all, and she still has what she calls “orgasmic video sex.” “Instead of trying to say something more wild than I would if we were offline, I just let whatever moans and sounds that would happen naturally, happen,” she says.

12. Have fun!

“If there’s a silver lining in any of this,” says Kate, “it’s that it’s given my partner and me some more time to experiment with what feels good for both of us, have some seriously hot fun, and practice communicating our sexual wants and needs.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Sex Toys Became A Lockdown Essential

By Hannah Coates

We take our supplements, meditate religiously and practise yoga to still our busy minds – but how many of us will admit to masturbating in our efforts to maintain good mental health? It’s certainly an effective method of self-care – 78 per cent of us (that’s four in five people), say we feel happier and less stressed after enjoying an orgasm. And it seems that now more than ever, we’re in search of these positive side-effects. Online retailers have witnessed a spike in customers searching for “sexual wellness” – the term was up by 850 per cent on Cult Beauty in March, the month the UK lockdown began. Meanwhile chic sexual pleasure brands like Smile Makers have seen daily revenues double since the nation started staying home, and a 50 per cent uplift in traffic to its website from February to March.

More time spent at home, far less spent interacting with other people, and a significant reduction in the amount of touch (another endorphin-booster) we experience day to day, all means making time for self-pleasure and focusing on your own body has never been so important. And while in the past the social discourse around sex centred around its dangers and notions of virtue when it came to women, today – happily – female sexual expression is something to be embraced, enjoyed and shouted about.

“Smile Makers was started after our founders walked into a sex shop and found the whole shopping experience, branding and packaging quite vulgar and disrespectful to women,” says Cécile Gasnault, marketing director of the brand and creator of its Vulva Talks. “Even today, you think of a vibrator and the first thing that springs to mind is the big, phallic shape.” Conscious of a huge untapped market – more women in the UK own a vibrator than own a dishwasher – the Smile Makers team got to work on creating a brand that would open up the conversation around female sexuality, make it fun, and challenge the idea that female pleasure should revolve around a male perspective on what it might look like.

“My aim was to create a brand sold in mainstream retail, focusing on beauty and health stores, to send a strong message that sexual pleasure is important for overall wellbeing, a fact that has been scientifically documented in studies,” says Gasnault. From releasing a cocktail of hormones in the body that boost the mood and reduce cortisol levels, to alleviating pain and enhancing sleep, the benefits of self-pleasure are numerous – and within easy reach. All that’s required is knowledge of your own body. “We’ve also found that when a woman is comfortable enough with herself to own a vibrator and masturbate, she is usually better at vulva and breast check-ups too, so really it’s better for our overall health,” Gasnault points out. It’s also worth noting that studies have found a positive correlation between self-pleasure and improved immunity, too.

It’s undeniable that taking the time to connect with ourselves, our bodies and what we like and don’t like is as empowering as it is calming, and adding little moments of pleasure to our day – whether via a crafting project or a vibrator – can only be a good thing, especially when times are tough. Gasnault also compares masturbation and orgasm to a moment of meditation: “When you experience sexual pleasure, you’re really present in the moment – it brings you back to yourself.”

Unlike many of their predecessors, Smile Makers’ vibrators and toys won’t make you grimace at the sight of them – no exaggerated shapes, definitely no veins – just simple, sculptural and sleek products in pleasing-to-the-eye shades. With names like The Surfer (a gentle massager, perfect for foreplay), The Fireman (flame-shaped to go the extra mile on the stimulation front), and The Frenchman (tongue-shaped), there is truly a toy for every occasion.

Smile Makers products

There are other female-forward brands in the space, too, with Dame offering an array of products that are designed to “close the pleasure gap”, and are small and discreet enough to be used during sex with a partner, as well as with yourself. Unbound’s Bean is a palm-sized, all-bases-covered toy that uses targeted pressure while Lelo offer an array of different toys, with numerous pleasure-making settings. Then there is brands like Naked Grapefruit approach sex in a fun, accessible way. “The vast majority of our sex tech brands were founded by women, to target needs which have largely been ignored by a male-dominated industry for some time,” says Jenna Anderson, buyer at Cult Beauty. Vibrators have had a fashion makeover too, with Christopher Kane’s aptly-named “More Joy” 12-speed bullet vibrator selling out soon after launching.

Cult Beauty is just one of many e-tailers to have dedicated an entire section of its platform to sexual wellness – Boots, Feelunique and Look Fantastic all have sexual pleasure and wellbeing sections well worth a peruse. It’s not only vibrators on offer – there are mood-enhancing candles, intimate cleansers and lube, plus softening formulas for pubic hair and more. Wellness brands like This Works have launched products that aim to turn you on (try the Love Sleep Pillow Spray), with ingredients like ylang ylang and patchouli to pique feelings of sensuality. Sex and female empowerment is on all of our minds, it seems, a change that, according to Gasnault, has only really come to light within the past couple of years. “I think the Me Too movement played a big role in opening up the conversation,” she says. “Retailers became more open-minded in discussing female sexuality, and wanted to work with brands that were relevant for female sexuality.” Viva la sexual revolution.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Vibrators had a long history as medical quackery before feminists rebranded them as sex toys

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In the contemporary moment of sex-positive feminism, praises for the orgasmic capacity of the vibrator abound. “They’re all-encompassing, a blanket of electricity, that’ll course through your veins, producing orgasms you didn’t know you were physically capable of having,” wrote Erica Moen in her web comic “Oh Joy Sex Toy.” Vibrators today go hand in hand with masturbation and female sexuality.

Yet for American housewives in the 1930s, the vibrator looked like any other household appliance: a nonsexual new electric technology that could run on the same universal motor as their kitchen mixers and vacuum cleaners. Before small motors became cheap to produce, manufacturers sold a single motor base with separate attachments for a range of household activities, from sanding wood to drying hair, or healing the body with electrical vibrations.

In my research on the medical history of electricity, vibrators appear alongside galvanic battery belts and quack electrotherapies as one of many quirky home cures of the early 20th century.

Vibrating for health

The first electro-mechanical vibrator was a device called a “percuteur” invented by British physician Joseph Mortimer Granville in the late 1870s or early 1880s. Granville thought that vibration powered the human nervous system, and he developed the percuteur as a medical device for stimulating ailing nerves.

Current medical opinion held that hysteria was a nervous disease, yet Granville refused to treat female patients, “simply because I do not want to be hoodwinked… by the vagaries of the hysterical state.” The vibrator began as a therapy for men only. It then quickly left the sphere of mainstream medical practice.

By the early 20th century, manufacturers were selling vibrators as ordinary electric household appliances. The merits of electricity in the home were not as obvious then as they are today: Electricity was dangerous and expensive, but it promised excitement and modernity. Electric commodities, like sewing and washing machines, became the hallmarks of the rising middle class.

Vibrators were another shiny new technology, used to sell consumers on the prospect of modern electric living. Just as banks handed out free toasters for opening checking accounts in the 1960s, in the 1940s the Rural Electrification Administration distributed free vibrators to encourage farmers to electrify their homes. These modern electric devices were not thought of as sex toys.

Vibrating snake oil

In what may sound surprising to 21st-century readers, these appliances promised relief of a nonsexual variety. Users of all ages vibrated just about every body part, without sexual intent.

A 1913 advertisement for the White Cross Electric Vibrator in the New-York Tribune.

Vibrators made housework easier by soothing the pains of tired housewives, calming the cries of sick children and invigorating the bodies of modern working men. They were applied to tired backs and sore feet, but also the throat, to cure laryngitis; the nose, to relieve sinus pressure; and everything in between. Vibration promised to calm the stomachs of colicky babies, and to stimulate hair growth in balding men. It was even thought to help heal broken bones.

A 1910 advertisement in the New York Tribune declared that “Vibration Banishes Disease As the Sun Banishes Mist.” In 1912, the Hamilton Beach “New-Life” vibrator came with a 300-page instructional guide titled “Health and How to Get It,” offering a cure for everything from obesity and appendicitis to tuberculosis and vertigo.

As such advertisements suggest, vibrators were not standard medical treatments, but medical quackery, alternative medicine that didn’t deliver on their promises. Yet the electrical cure-alls sold by the millions.

The classic form of medical quackery in the U.S. market was patent medicine – basically useless concoctions made mainly of alcohol and morphine, sometimes containing downright damaging ingredients like lead and arsenic. After the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, the federal government began regulating the sale of patent medicines.

Vibrators and other electrotherapies were not covered by the new law, so they took up the market share of older medical concoctions. The White Cross Vibrator replaced Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup as a popular home cure rejected by the medical establishment.

In 1915, the Journal of the American Medical Association wrote that the “vibrator business is a delusion and a snare. If it has any effect it is psychology.” The business was dangerous not because it was obscene, but because it was bad medicine. The potential, acknowledged by doctors, for the vibrator to be used in masturbation was just further evidence of its quackery.

The Shelton vibrator’s motor head with various attachments, made by General Electric in the early 20th century.

A cure for masturbatory illness

Sex toy scholar Hallie Lieberman points out that nearly every vibrator company in the early 20th century offered phallic attachments that “would have been considered obscene if sold as dildos.” Presented instead as rectal or vaginal dilators, these devices were supposed to cure hemorrhoids, constipation, vaginitis, cervicitis and other illnesses localized to the genitals and the anus. Hamilton Beach, for example, offered a “special rectal applicator” for “an additional cost of $1.50,” and recommended its use in the treatment of “Impotence,” “Piles—Hemorrhoids” and “Rectal Diseases.”

The two most prominent scholars of vibrator history, Rachel Maines and Hallie Lieberman, argue that vibrators were always secretly sexual, but I disagree. Vibrators were popular medical devices. One of many medical uses of the vibrator was to cure diseases of sexual dysfunction. And this use was a selling point, not a secret, during an era of anti-masturbatory rhetoric.

Special vibrator attachments like the rectal applicator offered dubious treatments for dubious diseases: remedies for ailments purportedly caused by “ruinous and prevalent masturbation.”

Masturbation was thought to cause diseases like impotence in men and hysteria in women. Masturbatory illness was a pretty standard idea in the early 20th century. One of its surviving formulations is the idea that masturbating will make you go blind.

There’s no way to really know how people were using vibrators. But the evidence suggests that they signified medical treatment, not sinful masturbation, regardless of the use. Even if users were doing physical actions that people today think of as masturbation, they didn’t understand themselves to be masturbating, and therefore they weren’t masturbating.

By 1980, vibrators had been rebranded in the public imagination.

Rethinking the vibrator’s history

For most of the 20th century, vibrators remained innocuous quackery. Good Housekeeping even bestowed its seal of approval on some models in the 1950s. When the sexual revolution hit America in the 1960s, vibrators were largely forgotten, outdated appliances.

In the 1970s radical feminists transformed the vibrator from a relic of bygone domesticity to a tool of female sexual liberation. At Betty Dodson’s bodysex workshops, electric vibrations changed “feelings of guilt about masturbation to feelings of celebration so that masturbation became an act of self-love.” She and her sisters embraced vibrators as a political technology that could convert frigid anorgasmic housewives into powerful sexual beings capable both of having multiple orgasms and destroying the patriarchy.

This masturbatory revolt erased the vibrator’s fading reputation as a cure for masturbatory illness and replaced it with a specific, powerful, public and lasting linkage between the vibrator and female masturbatory practice.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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I’ll Handle This

Hey sex fans!

It’s Product Review Friday again.

This week we will feature another product from a swell new company, Kiiro, from Amsterdam.  If you missed last week’s edition, which featured our first Kiiro product, you can find it HERE.

I am delighted to welcome back Dr Dick Review Crew members, Hank & Glenn, for this review.  They’ve been away for a long time, but now they’re back and ready to introduce us to The…

TITAN by KIIROO  ——  $149

Hank & Glenn,

Hank: “HEY SEX FREAKS! We’re back…after a nearly two-and-a-half-year absence. And we’re rarin’ to go.”
Glenn: “I am one of the founding members of the Dr Dick Review Crew. I did my first review in October on 2007. Some of the other members burnt out along the way. Then back in 2014, I think it was, Dr Dick decided to close down the reviews only to revive them again in 2018. It’s been kinda spotty since then, but I think our reviews do a great service to those who read this blog.”
Hank: “I joined the Dr Dick Review Crew in August 2008.
Glenn: “A couple of months ago, Dr Dick asked us if we’d be interested in reviewing a brand-new, fancy-schmancy stroker that he scored from a company in Amsterdam. Hank and I have had the pleasure of visiting Amsterdam a couple of times in the past, so, or course, we said yes. Amsterdam is fuckin’ amazing and is one of the great sex capitols of the world.”
Hank: “You can say that again! We had a blast in Amsterdam. So, we were expecting a great product from this horned-up corner of the globe.”
Glenn: “This here is the TITAN by KIIROO, a high-tech male masturbator. It’s jet black cylinder is sleek as shit and looks pretty much like a Bluetooth speaker. It’s a little over 8.5” tall and about 3.5” wide, and weighs about 2 pounds. Its hollow internal sleeve is 7.5” long.”
Hank: “TITAN is a lot more than just a jerk-off gadget. It’s a toy for both individuals and couples. (More about the couple thing in a minute.) Like Glenn said, the overall design is very stylish. But will it live up to its hype? That’s what I want to know.”
Glenn: “I wanted to know that too. But first, we needed to charge the TITAN. A USB charging cord is included in the package. The initial charge took about 5 hours. Ya get about 40 minutes of play from a charge.”
Hank: “While it was charging, we decided to take a closer look at the

TITAN. The plastic shell has ridges on it to aid you in keeping a hold with lubed up fingers. There’s a power button and three glossy areas (control panel) where you place your fingers to adjust speed and vibration. There’s a side panel on the shell that opens to expose the sleeve. It’s kinda cool just to look at. The sleeve has three rods running through it. These rods have nine vibrating bullets (three on each rod) built into them. The sleek control panel on the surface of the unit controls the vibrating bullets offering a variety of sensations. I have no idea what the sleeve is made of, but it ain’t silicone. It’s too squishy to be silicone. It’s more like the SuperSkin of a Fleshlight. That means it’s porous and contains phthalates. Finally, a really flimsy clear plastic lid, like the kind of lid you’d get on a soft drink cup, covers the top.”
Glenn: “I was disappointed with the sleeve. I know from experience how difficult it is to clean and maintain super squishy materials like this. They feel good the first time ya use ‘em, but if extreme care isn’t used in cleaning it and thoroughly drying it, it will breakdown and you’ll have a huge mess on your hands. Yeah, and what’s up with this ridiculous lid? It doesn’t even stay in place.”
Hank: “The TITAN is pretty light weight and it’s surprisingly quiet too. There’s a bunch of other stuff in the box — user manual in a bunch of languages, quick set up guide, charging instructions, a warranty card, and a free trial for an interactive porn site. (The TITAN can sync with this porn site. It can also sync with another toy using a downloadable app for partnered use.) We didn’t use either of these two features, but they are available to anyone who wants them.”
Glenn: “OK, now that the TITAN is all charged up I offer Hank the first go at it. Nowhere on the box, or in user manual, or set up guide tells you that you can only use water-based lube. But, trust me, that’s all you can use with this toy. So Hank lubes up his big old dick and attempts to slide it in to the sleeve. Hank is heavy hung, so this takes some doin’. But once he’s got his chub situated, he begins to fiddle with the control panel.
Hank: “As it turns out, the three “buttons” on the control panel adjust vibration and speed on the three sets of bullet vibes on the rods embedded in the sleeve. This provides loads of different sensations up and down your pecker. I was impressed. You still have to use it like a stroker though. You have to pump up and down your dick. I got into a very satisfying rhythm while I was watching some of my favorite porn. In no time I was ready to unload a three-day supply of spooge.”
Glenn: “Hank has the best orgasms. He roars like a bear. When he was finished, he pulled the TITAN off his boner and set it down upright on our wooden computer desk. Remember how we said at the beginning that the sleeve was hollow? Well we had forgotten about that. When Hank picked up the TITAN to carry it to the bathroom, we discovered to our horror that all his jizz and all the lube he used ran out the hole in the bottom of the blasted thing. What a fuckin’ mess.”
Hank: “My bad! Now I had an extra mess to clean up and I had to do it super-fast so it wouldn’t destroy the desktop. Speaking of clean up, I suppose you can just run some warm water and soap through the inside of the sleeve, rinse, and let it air dry. But I like my toys really clean, so I had to open the side panel and roll the sleeve off the three rods with the bullets. This way I could thoroughly clean the sleeve. I set it aside to air dry. Because the material used to make the sleeve is so porous, just as we thought, once dry it was really tacky. It needed to be powdered before it could be used again. And, in order to use it again, you will have to re thread the sleeve back on to the rods with the vibes. And let me tell you, that is no easy task.”

Glenn: “If I wanted to use the TITAN, I would have had to use a condom. This material, whatever it is, is not designed for sharing. I thought that was too bad. But just for the hell of it, I went to the Kiiro site to see if they sold replacement sleeves. They do. There are two sleeves (They don’t say what the sleeves are made of on there site either.) and they are $39 apiece. Imagine if you had to replace the sleeve every couple months.”
Hank: “By the way, the whole Kiiro site is exclusively heterosexual. They certainly don’t do anything to welcome the gays.”
Glenn: “So there ya have it. A really great tech savvy stroker with loads of features for your (and a partner’s) pleasure. But there are a number of sometimes glaring problematic issues…I’m looking at you sleeve.”

Full Review ↪HERE↩!

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(Almost) Everything You Know About the Invention of the Vibrator Is Wrong

A Victorian doctor created the “vibratode,” but it was our great-great- grandmothers who saw its real potential.

By Hallie Lieberman

There’s a longstanding myth that still seems to hold about where vibrators first came from. It goes something like this:

Cut to Victorian England. A mutton-chopped, bow-tie-clad doctor stands in an operating theater, where the silhouette of a woman, legs in stirrups sits before him. He — serious, medical, scholarly — applies the vibrator to her genitals, bringing her to “hysterical paroxysm,” thereby curing her of her “hysteria.” (Perhaps he throws in some disparaging remarks about women’s suffrage, for good measure.)

The above scene, complete with suffrage references, actually appeared recently, in the animated series “Big Mouth.” But that’s only one recent instance. The 2011 film “Hysteria,” starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, centered its entire story around this myth about vibrators. “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries” and “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” repeated it. Sarah Ruhl’s 2009 Tony-nominated play “In The Next Room (or the Vibrator Play)” focused on it, as did the 2007 documentary “Passion and Power: The Technology of Orgasm.” Popular books from Wednesday Martin’s “Untrue” to Laura and Jennifer Berman’s “For Women Only: A Revolutionary Guide to Reclaiming Your Sex Life” have retold the story. It’s been cited in the academic literature dozens of times.

Every time I see this myth retold as truth, I sigh. I’m doubly frustrated because if anyone’s to blame, it’s me, not the writers of “Big Mouth” or “Hysteria.” I wrote a 384-page book on the history of sex toys, and I spent only a few pages debunking this story. I thought — naïvely it turns out — that I could focus on my own story and the myth would die. But it didn’t. So I co-wrote a scholarly article with Eric Schatzberg that debunked it again, step by step. When the Journal of Positive Sexuality published the article in August 2018, I declared victory. I shouldn’t have. The myth soldiers on. This is my attempt to kill it once and for all.

Why bother debunking this myth? Isn’t it harmless? Women getting orgasms at the doctor’s office: what’s not to like?

I like the story too. It’s sexy; it’s salacious; it’s doctor-patient porn in the form of serious scholarship that you can bring up at dinner parties. I myself believed it at first.

But the myth isn’t harmless. It’s a fantasy that contributes to the ways we still misunderstand female sexuality and that perpetuates harmful stereotypes that continue to resonate in our laws and attitudes.

Attempts to control women’s sexuality are based in part on the same beliefs that undergird the vibrator myth: that because women don’t understand their own sexuality they should not be the ones in control of it. It makes women seem ignorant, passive and easily duped by manipulative men. In other words, it perpetuates the myth that women lack sexual agency.

The myth can be traced to Rachel Maines’s 1999 book “Technology of Orgasm” (she wrote some earlier articles, but the book is what put this version of the vibrator’s history on the map). Published by Johns Hopkins University Press, “Technology” seemed like a well-researched scholarly book, with 465 citations and a plethora of primary sources, some in Greek and Latin; the problem is that none of them actually supported this story. (Ms. Maines has said she put forth her version as an “interesting hypothesis” and never intended it to be seen as established fact.) Nonetheless, the idea caught on and spread.

If you swap the genders you can recognize how much the widespread acceptance of this story is based on gender bias. Imagine arguing that at the turn of the 20th century, female nurses were giving hand jobs to male patients to treat them for psychological problems; that men didn’t realize anything sexual was going on; that because female nurses’ wrists got tired from all the hand jobs, they invented a device called a penis pump to help speed up the process. Then imagine claiming nobody thought any of this was sexual, because it was a century ago.

The idea that nurses were masturbating clueless men to orgasm as a mainstream medical therapy is obviously ridiculous. But why don’t we think the same story is absurd when it’s about women? In part it’s because women have historically been seen as ignorant about their own bodies, and female sexuality has been controlled and constrained by men throughout history. In contrast, men are viewed as knowledgeable about their bodies — at least knowledgeable enough to know when they’ve had an orgasm.

Yet Ms. Maines’s story was embraced not by sexist men but by feminist women. Why? The story has the benefit of being both sexy and reassuring. It portrays sexual knowledge as marching on a steady line of progress, from clueless Victorians to today’s sexual sophisticates. It also serves as a feminist fairy tale of sorts, in which women subvert patriarchal society by procuring orgasms from their doctors, paid for by their husbands.

Ms. Maines is right about one thing: the electric vibrator was invented by a physician, the British doctor Joseph Mortimer Granville. But when Dr. Granville invented the vibrator in the early 1880s, it was not meant to be used on women or to cure hysteria. In fact, he argued specifically that it shouldn’t be used on hysterical women; rather, Dr. Granville invented the vibrator as a medical device for men, to be used on a variety of body parts, mainly to treat pain, spinal disease and deafness. The only sexual uses he suggested were vibrating men’s perineums to treat impotence. Illustrations in Dr. Granville’s book on the invention of the electric vibrator show him using it only on men.

The true story is that the use of vibrators became widespread only when they were marketed to the general public, both men and women, as domestic and medical appliances in the early 1900s. Ads featuring men and women, babies and older people, promised vibrators could do everything from eliminating wrinkles to curing tuberculosis. When doctors did use vibrators on women, they assiduously avoided touching their clitorises. “The greatest objection to vibration thus applied is that in overly sensitive patients it is liable to cause sexual excitement,” the gynecologist James Craven Wood wrote in 1917. If, however, he continued, “the vibratode is kept well back from the clitoris, there is but little danger of causing such excitement.”

It was female consumers who embraced their erotic potential — covertly at first, until the early 1970s, when the radical feminist Betty Dodson began openly using vibrators as sexual devices in her masturbation workshops.

The myth of the vibrator has real consequences. The harmful idea that women are naturally sexually ignorant and that women who do have sexual knowledge and drives are outliers, has been the basis for repressive laws throughout history: from adultery laws that punished only women to honor killings to recent restrictions on birth control and abortion. All these laws and violence are about punishing women who have sex for pleasure, not procreation.

The myth also reinforces the false idea that the history of sex moves on a straight line from repression to enlightenment. This belief can make people complacent, believing that we have advanced beyond Victorian attitudes. Yet we still live in a sexually repressive era where double standards abound: Sex toy advertising is restricted by the M.T.A., Facebook, Instagram, and other venues, while ads for erectile dysfunction products are allowed. The Trump administration has decreased sex education funding, promoted abstinence-only education, and redirected funds for preventing teen pregnancy to anti-abortion groups.
It’s time to be honest about our past: doctors didn’t invent vibrators because their wrists hurt from rubbing hysterical women’s clitorises. They invented vibrators as cure-all devices; those devices ended up curing very little, until our great-great-grandmothers put them toward their highest purpose. The real story isn’t as salacious as the myth, but it does have one important thing going for it: it happens to be true.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Tech Innovator Fighting to Give Women Better Orgasms:

‘It’s About Helping People Understand Themselves’

The Osé

By Aurora Snow

Lora DiCarlo won the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) Robotics Innovation Award for Osé, the company’s premiere product—“a robotic massager for hands-free blended orgasms.” A few months later, CES parent company Consumer Technology Association took the award back, calling it a mistake due to the nature of the product.

“There’s a lot more to that story than, ‘They took an award away and gave it back.’ When they took it away and called it obscene, that was too much. It was shocking. This is sexual health and wellness,” says DiCarlo, CEO and founder of the company. “When we challenged them, we pointed out their gender bias. They had male sexuality representation on the floor.”

Just a few years prior, a Mashable reporter chronicled his VR porn experience at CES. Thousands of attendees reportedly flocked to a well-known adult entertainment company’s booth to test-drive the new tech, and as a bonus participate in an intimate VR experience featuring explicit POV-style sex scenes, all filmed from a heterosexual male perspective. VR porn continued to be made available during the CES conventions that followed in 2018 and 2019, when DiCarlo’s award for her patent-pending microrobotic women’s device was rescinded. In a letter cited by TechCrunch from CTA to DiCarlo, entries judged “in their sole discretion to be immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with the CTA’s image will be disqualified.”

Though the award may have been temporary, DiCarlo’s presence has become permanent, in part due to the debacle. It caught fire, and the amount of support she felt was “jaw-dropping.” When CTA circled back to the company last year to make amends, DiCarlo seized the opportunity to make a difference—not just for her business but also for her industry. “We realize as women in this space, in this sexual space in sex tech, we understand that all boats rise with the tide. So when this happened to us last year at CES, one of the first things we wanted to do was shine a light on the disparities that other women in tech had experienced,” recounts DiCarlo. “We’ve kind of just grasped hands even though we are competitors and tried to raise each other up across the board.

“[We wanted] to take advantage of this opportunity to do right by not just ourselves, but the people who deserve to be at this show, in this industry. There is a lot of tech that is being done very tastefully, very respectfully, that doesn’t objectify bodies or demoralize women and that deserves to be in [this] show,” adds DiCarlo. “They said, ‘What if we give you your own section?’ We were like, ‘NO. You already did that.’” (AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo, aka the Oscars of porn, began in the 1980s as a part of CES.)

Recognizing sexual health as an unsegregated equal within the health and wellness genre is pivotal to addressing the stigma and bias that shadow it. “If it’s a constant conversation you are having then it’s something you slowly get used to, and the awkwardness melts away over time,” says DiCarlo, who’s focused on broadening our sexual-wellness dialogue.

“I was very surprised by how little we know about our bodies,” says DiCarlo. “In the amount of people we surveyed, we found a staggering amount of women didn’t know exactly where their clitoris was or exactly how to locate their G-spot, and even fewer straight women knew how to identify those structures.”

To develop the ideal product and mimic her experience without a partner, DiCarlo says she “wanted something that didn’t vibrate, that moved like human partners do.” At first she was focused on creating a product to replicate her experience, but as DiCarlo gathered data for the project she began to see this as an opportunity to give back, to create a better society. “It’s become a purpose-driven mission that is much bigger than Lora DiCarlo. It’s about helping people understand themselves and understand others.”

In DiCarlo’s pursuit of a hands-free self-pleasuring product with biomimicry, she made a startling discovery: women had hardly been studied this way. “In order to fit multiple bodies, you need data about multiple bodies. I’m pre-med at the time so I know how to look for that information and I find it doesn’t exist. Nobody’s ever gathered it before, no one’s asking about women’s clitorises,” says DiCarlo. “No one’s asking where they’re positioned on most people’s anatomy, and then half the people don’t even think the G-spot exists. Which is ridiculous.”

Proactively surveying people to better understand not only the issues they encounter in the sexual health and wellness space, but also what motivates or prevents them from exploring their interests, has become a company-wide quest. “It’s data-driven, it’s curious, we’re trying to solve problems that exist within sexual health and wellness by creating and using new technology in order to solve these problems,” says DiCarlo. “We’ve had vibrators for 80 years, we’re due for an overhaul.”

Gathering data only solidified DiCarlo’s belief that sexual pleasure is health and wellness. “We send out multiple surveys asking: What are the problems? What do people want to explore, and what is stopping them?” says DiCarlo. “We asked people, ‘Why do you masturbate? Why do you use toys? Why do you explore your body the way that you do?’ The top three answers were: 1) to sleep better, 2) they wanted to reduce stress, and 3) was better mood in pursuit of pleasure. To me all three of those screamed health and wellness.”

Sexual health isn’t a new concept. The World Health Organization (WHO) implemented the term nearly 50 years ago, which today is defined as “a state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being in relation to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction or infirmity. Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having pleasurable and safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination and violence. For sexual health to be attained and maintained, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected and fulfilled.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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‘Sex tech’ aims to rise above negative image

Sex toys have cautiously been allowed into this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas

Sex toys are for relaxation. For education. For healing after childbirth. For long-term or long-distance relationships. For women’s emancipation.

And also… for pleasure.

But manufacturers aiming for respectability tend to save this argument for last.

“Sex toys have an extremely negative connotation,” said Jerome Bensimon, president of Satisfyer. “So we’ve rebranded ourselves as a ‘sexual wellbeing company.'”

The company has gained attention for its pressure wave technology used for clitoral stimulation, and has plans to launch a smart phone app for controlling sex toys, in particular by using voice commands.

At its booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, vibrators and Ben Wa balls sit alongside mini vibrators shaped like ice cream cones.

After some ups and downs, “sex tech” is testing the waters this year.

As recently as last year the display likely would have been banned.

At the 2019 show, the Consumer Technology Association, which runs the expo, stripped the Ose massager of an award for innovation, saying it was disqualified for being “immoral,” “obscene” and “profane.”

After an uproar, the CTA reversed itself and returned the prize to Lora DiCarlo, the company which manufactures the Ose.

Sex toys “are consumer electronics just like any other but are not treated like that,” said Janet Lieberman-Lu, co-founder of Dame Products, which manufactures small devices for clitoral stimulation.

Given their widespread use, “sex toys are by definition mainstream…. They’re more adopted than a lot of products at CES.”

Her company has taken New York City’s public transportation system to court, complaining that it allows advertisements for erectile dysfunction medications and ads that contain humorous references to sex — but not for sex devices.

Crave shows its wearable vibrators at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show

“When you say that male sexual function is healthy and necessary but vibrators for women are obscene, you’re saying that men are supposed to be able to have sex and women aren’t supposed to be able to enjoy it,” said Lieberman-Lu.

“That’s what leads to rape culture.”

– Starting the conversation –

Entrepreneurs in this industry, many of whom started out in conventional consumer electronics, medicine or cosmetics, say pleasure and health go hand-in-hand.

Given that school textbooks only recently began including information on the shape and size of the clitoris, they say they are on a mission to educate the public.

It is often “much easier to talk about health than pure pleasure, which can involve fear of rejection,” said Soumyadip Rakshit, CEO of Mystery Vibe, which develops vibrators that deal with both erectile difficulties in men and postpartum vaginal scarring in women.

To open up, people often need a catalyst.

“Everyone is keen to talk about it but no one wants to be the first,” he said.

“If someone does that for them, a company, an article, a doctor… it makes that so much easier.”

Ergo-Fit presents its sex toys at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show

Elsewhere on the showroom floor, Gerard Escaler, chief marketing officer at Lovense, explains how a male “masturbator” works.

The tubular objects have internal sleeves and are pink when intended for straight users and translucent for gay users.

The Hong Kong-based company offers several internet apps for use in long-distance relations — with a partner or with online erotic performers like “cam girls” who sell access to live web video.

Lovense also is developing a virtual reality game for the male sex toy with female characters. Visitors have to imagine the contents, however, since the imagery, even if artificial, is not allowed during the consumer expo.

But the “sexual wellbeing” industry, which could swell to nearly $40 billion by 2024, according to a forecast from market research firm Aritzon, may have good reason to maintain an air of mystery and controversy.

Without the storm it created last year, the $300 Ose vibrator might not have taken off quite the way it did, said Lora Haddock DiCarlo, founder of the eponymous company which produces it.

“When we did our presale with Ose, after its long-awaited release at the end of November, we hit our yearly sales goal in five hours,” she said, as she road aboard a transparent mobile showroom plying the streets of Las Vegas during the show.

The roving booth, like a fishbowl on wheels, displayed the catch phrase: “The pleasure is all yours.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Masturbation Is Self Care…

And Women Are Better At It Than Men

By Kathleen Newman-Bremang

When you think of self-care, you probably think of sheet masks, Sunday-morning meditation or Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations podcast. You probably don’t think of masturbation. And yet, it can decrease anxiety, improve your sexual relationship with your partner, and help you sleep better. And, it turns out women may even enjoy it more than men.

In her experience, women, on the other hand, are more “planful and more thoughtful with masturbation,” says Milhausen. “It’s more of a special occasion since they are doing it less often. Women may be setting the stage more — maybe they are finding some erotica to read, maybe they are using a vibrator.” An assist from vibrators during the act is also why some women are getting the most out of masturbating: The study showed that 54% of women used a vibrator during their last self-love sesh and 46% of these vibrator users said it was very pleasurable.

In a new study by Trojan (yes, the condom brand) and the non-profit Sex Information and Education Council of Canada (SIECCAN), researchers surveyed 1,500 Canadians between 18 and 24 years old. They discovered that while men masturbate more often — twice as many men than women said they masturbate at least once a week (65% of men compared to 35% of women) — women were more likely to report their last self-love experience as very pleasurable (38% of women compared 29% of men). According to Robin Milhausen, a sexuality professor from the University of Guelph who worked on the survey, the male results could be a case of too much of a good thing (most men masturbate at least three times a week, she says). “I think that this generation considers it just another thing to do during the day without much thought,” says Milhausen. “It’s just an itch to scratch, just part of their routine.

Sex-educator, advice columnist, and founder of FindYourPleasure.com, Cynthia Loyst links the increase in women feeling comfortable to use toys and be open about masturbating to pop culture. “Over the past few decades, there’s been a huge surge in representation of female masturbation in mainstream media — from shows like Sex and the City, Girls, and You, to online magazines like Goop featuring sex toys and YouTubers giving full reviews [of vibrators]. Female self-pleasure has finally come out of the closet.”

There’s still work to do, she adds. The shame and stigma surrounding female masturbation is a reason both Loyst and Milhausen give for why women still masturbate less than men. For women who are still too embarrassed to engage in some solo fun, Loyst recommends reading erotica, watching ethical porn, sexting and investing in some lube as some easy ways to incorporate self-love into your self-care routine. Sheet mask optional

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Your Guide to the 12 Main Types of Sex Toys

Great news: There are even more out there.

By Gabrielle Kassel

There are ~almost~ as many designs of sex toys as there are sex positions–trying to pick one that fits your preferences can be harder than finishing your first CrossFit WOD. But most can be relegated to specific categories. To our rescue, sex and relationships educator Sarah Sloane (who’s been teaching sex toy classes at Good Vibrations and Pleasure Chest since 2001) breaks down 12 of the most common types of sex toys with info on the benefits and best-use practices for each. (Related: I’ve Tried 100+ Vibrators—and My Favorite Looks Like a Banana)

(Keep in mind: This list is far from complete—if you have Q’s about toys like nipple clamps, handcuffs, pinwheels, spreader bars, fetish gear, etc. don’t hesitate to ask the expert at your local sex shop!)

Wand Vibrators

Vibrators are probably the most common type of sex toy, and when you hear the word, likely you visualize the infamous Hitachi Magic Wand, which (as its name suggests) is a wand vibe. (Fun fact: It was introduced in the ’70s as the “Cadillac of Vibrators.”)

“Wand vibrators typically offer vibrations at a higher RPM, so they’re more intense than other vibes,” says Sloane. “They work really well for people with vulvas or penises who enjoy a strong sensation, or who have difficulty getting fully aroused without intense stimulation.”

Wand vibes can also be used for applying stimulation to your non-nether regions—they double as a back and shoulder massagers, a ~teasing tool~ to trace on someone’s bod, or a very intense nipple toy, says Sloane.

The Magic Wand isn’t the only option; try the SmartWant by Lelo or the Fairy Mini Wand by Better Love.

Clitoral Vibrators

According to Sloane, clitoral vibes have emerged as their own category. They’re typically much smaller, less phallic-shaped, and are intended specifically for (yep) the clit. “These are best for people who like direct clitoral stimulation,” she says.

That said, there are a variety of shapes and sizes under the clit vibe umbrella. For instance, the Eva II by Dame has wings that wrap around the labia so that the bzzzbzzz is applied directly to your bud, while the Form 2 by Jimmyjane has little “ears” that can surround your button with pleasure. Or, you can go with a more straightforward bullet vibe like the We-Vibe Tango which looks like (obv) a bullet. There are also clit vibrators that look like everyday objects like lipstick and/or a necklace—fun!

Clit Suction Toys

True to their name, clit suction toys use air pressure to create a gentle sucking. “They’re a very, very different sensation than vibrators; people who really love oral sex or the feeling of a partner curving their tongue around their clitoris and folks who find vibration patterns too intense tend to like these,” says Sloane.

Sexpert tip: If you’re trying a clit suction toy because your clit is ultra-sensitive, first use it over your panties to warm up, then apply a dab of lube to the tip of the toy. “Super sensitive clitorises typically need more warm-up than going from zero to a suction toy,” says Sloane. Makes sense.

Want to give one a try? Here are some of the Best Clit Suction Toys On The Market at the Moment.

Dildos

ICYWW, dildos are qualified as a dildo if they’re “anything vaguely phallic shaped that is meant to simulate penile penetration,” she says. They can be any length or girth—there are ones that are two inches and ones that are monster-sized.” She says that people who enjoy the feeling of being penetrated or like the feeling of fullness in their vagina or anus might enjoy dildo play.

Note: While dildos are meant to simulate penile penetration, that doesn’t mean that all dildos look like realistic penises. In fact, most don’t—there are even some that like icicles, tentacles, or candy canes. (That said, if you are looking for a realistic dildo, no one does it better than New York Toy Collective).

Butt Plugs

Butt plugs are great for experimenting with anal play. “They can teach your body to accept anal penetration and train your sphincter to relax around different sized toys,” explains Sloane. But, lest you think butt plugs are *only* a stepping stone to full-blown anal, she says, “they’re awesome for stimulating the ring of nerves around the anus.”

What’s the difference between using butt plug and using a dildo in the butt? “I tell people that dildos are more dynamic and meant to be taken in and out, while butt plugs typically go in and stay in to give a sustained, feeling of fullness,” explains Sloane. Plus, butt plugs have a flared base, which means they can be used safely without being attached to something like a harness. (See more about why butt plugs need a flared base here.)

Ready? Start here: The Best Anal Sex Toys, According to Sexperts

G-Spot Toys

Thanks to their slight curve or expertly positioned bump, G-spot toys make it easy to apply firm pressure to the G-Spot (which, yes, does exist). For your first G-spot toy purchase, Sloane recommends what she calls an egg-on-a-stick toy. “They’re great starter toys because they can be used internally and externally, for G-spot or A-spot play, and are typically pretty inexpensive.” She recommends the G Slim Classic by Blush Novelties (which is under $10!), or the Frisky by Doc Johnson (which is under $15).

A-Spot Toys

Speaking of the A-Spot—an erogenous zone a little further back than the G-spot and technically known as the anterior fornix erogenous zone—there are toys specifically meant for A-spot stimulation. Typically they look like long, narrow variations of the G-spot toys, says Sloane. For a vibrating A-spot toy, try the Lady Bi-violet by Fun Factory. And for a non-vibrating option try the 7.5-inch Pure G-spot Metal Wand by Njoy which Sloane says is A+ for A-spot play.

Rabbit Vibrators

A rabbit toy is a combo of an external vibrator and a G-spot toy. “It has an external part that usually looks like rabbit ears that provides vibration to the clitoris, while a second attachment goes inside the vagina for G-spot stimulation,” explains Sloane. She says this toy is best for people who find duel sensations pleasurable, or those who want to experiment with blended orgasms.

Shopping tip: “Make sure the toy you purchase allows you to control the vibrator patterns of both legs separately, because usually the G-spot and clitoris need different intensities,” she says. The INA Wave by Lelo and the Jack Rabbit by Calexotics are both good options.

Prostate Toys

Built for people with prostates (of the male sex, for the most part), the function of these toys is to provide direct sensation to the prostate—some vibrate, some do not. “They’re a slender, curved toy that’s similar to G-spot toys,” says Sloane. “They provide direct sensation to the prostate, and are a great option for people who want to explore prostate play but don’t want to use their hands.” Lelo is one of the best-known brands for this corner of the market. (Related: How to Prepare for Anal Sex, According To Experts)

Anal Beads

Unlike butt plugs which typically go in and stay in, anal beads provide the sensation of the anal sphincter opening and closing. “As you insert the beads, the sphincter opens up and then closes, giving you a teasing bloop-bloop sensation,” says Sloane. Maybe you’ve heard that pulling them out as you orgasm can create a more intense orgasm, she confirms that’s true—for some folks. “Other people like them because they have more mass to them, so can create a sense of anal fullness.” You can buy vibrating beads, like these VeDo Beads or ones that don’t, like these 50 Shades of Grey beads by LoveHoney.

Just remember, the anus is not self-lubricating, so you’re going to want to use a toy-compatible lubricant—and lots of it. For maximum glide, Sloane suggests lubing up the entire length of the toy, not just the first few beads. (Related: Everything You Need to Know About Lube).

Cock Rings

“Cock rings were originally created to give folks with penises a longer, fuller erection because they compress the blood vessels; they can also make the penis more sensitive,” explains Sloane.

Now, there are vibrating cock rings which offer the same effect, while providing a buzzy sensation to the wearer and the partner being penetrated. “They’re also a great way to turn dildos into vibrating dildos for strap-on sex,” says Sloane.

Oh, and she says these babies cheappp. Both Durex and Trojan make one for under ten bucks.

Glass and Metal Wands

These may look like G- or A-spot toys, but Sloane says, these deserve their own category. Why? “These non-vibrating wands are an awesome option for people who have discomfort or pain with penetration. They are frictionless and go in smoothly, and can be a great bridge to penetrative sex for people who need slower, more gradual dilation,” she says. (Related: Why You Might Be Experiencing Pain During Sex).

Plus, glass and metal toys are great for temperature play because you can warm them up or cool them down. Trust, it’s H-O-T. Check out the Fifty Shades of Drive Me Crazy Glass Massager or Stainless Steel Massage Wand by Njoy.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How to Have Sex if You’re Queer

What to Know About Protection, Consent, and What Queer Sex Means

By Yana Tallon-Hicks

Happy Pride!

Rarely does traditional sex education tackle pleasure for pleasure’s sake, how to have sex for non-reproductive purposes, or the wide spectrums of sexualities, bodies, and genders that exist. Instead it tends to cover penis-in-vagina penetration only, pregnancy risks, and STI/STD transmission, leaning heavily on scare tactics that may not even work.

Traditional sex ed is failing us all, but when it comes to standardized sex education in the U.S., the LGBTQ community is especially left out of the conversation. A GLSEN National School Climate Survey found that fewer than 5% of LGBTQ students had health classes that included positive representations of LGBTQ-related topics. Among self-identified “millennials” surveyed in 2015, only 12% said their sex education classes covered same-sex relationships at all.

The good, and even possibly great news is that not being boxed in by the narrow definitions of sex provided to us via traditional sex ed means that we are free (and perhaps even empowered!) to build our own sex lives that work uniquely for us, our partners, and our relationships. But we still need some info in order to do so.

Let’s talk about what classic sex education might’ve missed about how to have sex if you’re queer, from what sex between queer people means to how to keep it safe and consensual between the rainbow sheets.

What Queer Sex Means and How to Have it

Redefine and self-define sex. Sexual desire exists on a spectrum just like gender, sexuality, and other fluid and fluctuating parts of our identities. From Ace to Gray-Ace to Allosexual and everywhere in between and beyond, check in with yourself and your partners about how they experience sexual desire (if at all).

Similarly, “having sex” can mean a million different things to a million different people from making out, to certain kinds of penetration, orgasmic experiences, etc. You get to decide “what counts as sex” to you which is especially true when it comes to sexual debuts — a necessary and inclusive term for self-determined first times that looks beyond the traditional, heterosexist version of “losing your virginity.”

Honoring the identities and bodies of ourselves and our partners with respect, kindness, compassion, and tenderness is crucial and can feel even more precious and rewarding when you’re queer. Truly pleasurable sex — regardless of your identity — starts with a sense of safety, clear communication, confident boundaries, active listening skills, and self-awareness.

Check in with yourself first. Active consent starts with knowing yourself and what your boundaries are. Though an important piece of practicing consent is asking your partner for permission and for their preferences, it can be easy to forget to ask yourself similar questions. What do you want out of a sexual experience? Where are you confident you don’t want to venture now, yet, or maybe ever? What are you super excited to explore?

This check-in can help you determine what you want from sex and what queer sex means to you. This is when you can think about experimenting with sex toys, whether you’re interested in penetration, and what kind of touch feels good to you.

Sometimes we don’t even know where to start if we’re not sure about what our options even are. Scarleteen.com or Girl Sex 101 (much more gender-spectrum-inclusive than the title suggests) are both great resources that can get some of your questions answered. You can also find more information here.

Name your own bits. Body parts, especially private body parts, can be complicated territory for LGBTQ folks, and understandably so. One of the main goals of sex for many of us is to feel good in our bodies. The first step to this can be feeling good about the terms we use for our body parts. Try on one or a few that might work for you, communicate them to your partners (especially new ones), and ask them how they like their bodies to be talked about or touched.

Gender roles are bendable roles. You don’t have to adopt traditional gender roles in sex unless you want to. Media mediums from PG-13 sex scenes to X-rated porn can create clear splits between what’s considered being “sexually masculine” (being the do-er, taking control, knowing the ropes) and being “sexually feminine” (being the receiver, being passive or reactive, being led rather than initiating the sexual interaction).

Just because you identify with being masculine, feminine, or somewhere in between doesn’t mean you need to act a certain way or do anything in particular in your sex life. You can be a Ferociously Fierce Femme, a Passive Prince of Pillows, a Non-Binary Take-Charge Babe, or any version of your sexual self that follows what feels good, affirming, and right to you and your partners.

Talk about sex outside of a sexual context. Talking about sex with your potential or current partners before the clothes come off can be a great way to keep clear-headed communication and consent thriving. Sexual interactions are vulnerable, exciting, and can get your body and brain functioning in all new ways. So, sometimes it can be easier to talk about your feelings about sex, your enthusiastic Yes-es, your definite No’s, and your curious Maybes over coffee or text first, in addition to in-the-moment communication about consent.

Make an aftercare plan. We know that consent, permission, and pre-sex talks are all important parts of a healthy sex life, but we can forget to think about what happens after we have sex (besides water, a pee break, and snacks, of course). This is aftercare — or, how we like to be interacted with after sex has ended.

Aftercare preferences can include what we want to do immediately after sex (cuddle? watch Netflix? have some alone time?) and can also include what happens in the upcoming days or weeks (check-ins over text? gossip parameters? is there anyone you and your partner definitely do or don’t want to dish to?).

No matter your aftercare preferences, a post-sex check-in conversation about how things went, what you’d love an encore of, and what you might want to avoid next time (if you’d like there to be a next time) is always a good idea.

Always keep it consensual. Consent starts with asking permission before any sexual touch or interaction begins, continues with checking in about how things are going, and ends with talking with each other about how the sexual interaction went overall so that feedback can be exchanged and any mistakes can be repaired.

True, enthusiastic consent thrives in a space where each person feels free, clear-headed, and safe to speak up about what their No’s, Yes-es, and Maybes are.

Safer Sex for Queer Sex

Hormones matter. Even though testosterone hormones can decrease your risk of unwanted pregnancy, folks on T can still become pregnant, so make sure to use condoms if sperm is likely to be in the mix. Estrogen hormones can slow sperm production, but if your body is still producing sperm, an egg-creating partner could still get pregnant, so put your favorite birth control method to work.

Starting or ending hormone therapy, whether it’s testosterone or estrogen, can impact your sexual response, your desire levels, your emotions, and even your sexual orientation — so don’t be surprised if these changes crop up. Find safe people to talk to about any complicated feelings this may trigger rather than keeping them bottled up.

Condoms aren’t a one-trick pony. Though the gym teacher might think that putting a condom on a banana tells students all they need to know about wrapping it up, they’re usually doing little more than wasting a high-potassium snack. Condoms can help reduce pregnancy and STI/STD transmission risk for all kinds of penis-penetrative sex (vaginal, anal, and oral) so they’re important to learn to use correctly. But, they can also be used in other ways. Condoms can be put on sex toys to help with easy clean-up, or if you want to share the toy with a partner without getting up to wash it (just put on a fresh condom instead!), and can even be made into dental dams.

Gloves are another important piece of latex (or non-latex if you’re allergic) to keep…on hand…in your safer-sex kit, as they can prevent transmission of fluids into unnoticed cuts on your hands and can protect delicate orifice tissues from rough nails or your latest catclaw manicure (Pssst: if your nails are extra long and pointy, you can put cotton balls down in the tips of your glove for extra padding).

Lube is your friend. Lube is a great addition to all kinds of sex, but comes highly recommended for certain kinds of sex. A good water-based lube (avoid the ingredient glycerin if you’re prone to yeast infections!) can add pleasurable slip to all kinds of penetration, is latex-compatible, and reduces friction from sex toys or other body parts.

Lube can also be put on the receiver’s end of a dental dam or a small drop can be added to the inside of a condom before you put it on to create more pleasure for the condom-wearer.

Anal sex especially benefits from lube as your booty doesn’t self-lubricate like the vagina does, so it can be prone to painful tearing or friction during penetration. Using a thicker water-based lube like Sliquid Sassy for anal sex reduces friction, increases pleasure, and decreases chances of tearing which, also lowers risk of STI/STD transmission.

Sadly, no one is immune to STIs. Though it’s true that certain sex acts come with greater or lesser risk of STI/STD transmission, it doesn’t mean that certain partner pairings are totally risk-free. The Human Rights Campaign’s Safer Sex Guide (available in both Spanish and English) contains a helpful chart that breaks down the health risks associated with specific sex acts, complete with barrier and birth control methods that’ll help lower your risk.

Remember, some STIs/STDs are easily curable with medication, some are permanent-yet-manageable, and some can be lethal (especially if left untreated). So, knowing the difference and knowing and communicating your status are all important pieces of your sexual health. You can continue to lower STI stigma while reducing rates of STI transmission by keeping conversations about sexual health with your partners open and non-judgmental.

Sex toys need baths, too. When choosing sex toys, it’s wise to pay attention to the kind of material your toy is made out of. Medical grade silicone, stainless steel, glass, and treated wooden sex toys are all, for the most part, non-porous, meaning that they can (and should) easily be washed with soap and water between uses, between orifices, and between partners.

Sex toys made out of cyberskin, jelly rubber, elastomer, or other porous materials have small pores in them that can trap dirt and bacteria (kind of like a sponge), even after you wash them! This means that you could reintroduce dirt and bacteria to your own body causing bacterial or yeast infections for yourself, or you could pass bacteria or STIs to a partner via the toy. You could avoid these porous materials entirely (check the packaging to see what your toy is made out of) or you could use a condom on them every time like you would a body part.

For more tips on building a culture of consent in your communities and relationships, head to yanatallonhicks.com/consenthandout.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Lube, Butt Plugs, and Bondage, Oh My!

Just another day at your friendly neighborhood sex shop

By: Emma Chekroun

Having a part time job in college isn’t uncommon. Some students wait tables, others have jobs through their university, and some, like Haydin Wellens, a junior at the University of Minnesota, work as a cashier at a sex shop. Similar to other students, Wellens goes through his week’s worth of classes before working eight to nine hours on the weekend. Wellens fights exhaustion and tries to keep up with homework while working his late night shifts. The highlight? Much better party stories.

Wellens revels in the opportunity to talk about his job. “People will be talking about their jobs, and I usually start out with I work at a sex shop and…” pause for reaction. What usually comes next is smiles and stares of anticipation.

That anticipation lingers. There is something exhilarating in talking about and going to sex shops. Staring wide eyed at all the toys and tools that decorate the walls is enough to make anyone feel eager and anxious. 

While customers may only dedicate a few hours to browsing a sex shop, for those maintaining these glimmering palaces of self-love, it’s a lifestyle. 

Not Just a Job

Vincent Valcroft, assistant manager at Bondesque near Uptown, said he loves building people up through his work at the BDSM and fetish wear specialty shop. “I get to contribute to something that helps people,” he adds, “to bring greater wellness, meaning, and pleasure into their lives and relationships.”

Wellens, cashier at Lickety Split, and Cat Charles, website manager at Smitten Kitten, both said the best part of their jobs was answering questions and giving customers a safe space to ask them.

Charles said it’s “delightful and fun” to have sex as the subject manner of work. They enjoy making sex a normal and comfortable topic for shoppers.

Education also takes an important role in working at a sex shop. At Smitten Kitten, every employee is trained in the store’s sex ed curriculum. The shop also holds periodic free sex workshops, such as “Anal 101.”

Bondesque also holds workshops centered around BDSM, which Valcroft hopes contributes to a “holistic kink experience” in the store. Meanwhile, Wellens takes on an informal education outside of work, utilizing the internet to be better informed.

“I love figuring out how the different toys and interests work,” Wellens said. “Doing research into products on my own time doesn’t really feel like work.”

Education is a major way these sex shops pay it forward to the community. A shop’s attitude also has a big impact on its workers and the community. Wellens described how his manager created a position for him when he applied to Lickety Split back in June of 2018 and how that contributed to the family-like workplace he enjoys so much.

Valcroft went as far to say at Bondesque it’s “not a sale, it’s a celebration” and described the fun and explorative setting he strives to achieve at the store. When the community you and your store are a part of branches off into a spectrum of gender identities, orientation, and age groups, it’s important to “celebrate people,” Valcroft said.

Funny Moments

Even a community saturated with pleasure and support has its occasional negatives. From drunken shoppers to more dangerous exchanges, it’s not always easy being the purveyors of pleasure.

Wellens has had his fair share of run-ins that range from hilarious to horrifying. One particularly frightening story involves a knife and customer named Jelly; “we learned he was called Jelly after the fact,” Wellens clarifies.

Jelly became irate, yelling slurs at Wellens’ co-worker. Wellens went on to say, “He got super frustrated and pulled out a knife.” He adds, “It was more funny after the fact,” although that seems hard to believe.

Wellens’ stories only get wackier from there. At one point, a man came in waving around a sizeable chunk of marijuana for no apparent reason. Drunk frat guys have played leapfrog, Wellens added. “One time a guy bought a cock ring,” Wellens continues, “and tried to put it on in the store.” This patron wasn’t drunk or high—just “very excited,” Wellens clarified.

For Valcroft, there hasn’t really been one defining hard part of his job, except maybe when “the gimp gets loose,” he explained, only half kidding while a devilish smile spread across his face.

But all laughs aside, the world of sex shops, is just that: a world.

There’s a Whole World Out There

Even sex shop workers encounter kinks they’re not familiar with. A resounding response from all three sex workers, no matter the kink, is that sex shops are a judgment-free zone. Don’t be afraid to have questions, just leave the nitty gritty personal experience out, according to Wellens.

Your kink isn’t that weird, Charles assures. They also encouraged beginners to be open to new experiences and not be discouraged if something doesn’t work out for you.

Valcroft described BDSM and fetish as a “journey,” which the other sex workers agreed with—it’s a journey to find what you like.

Lots of communities are included, so there is a good chance you can find what you are looking for. Smitten Kitten specifically identifies as “queer-centered.” Every shop mentioned here has some form of gender expression or cross dressing inventory, gender expression involving toys, and other items for persons in the transgender community to express their identity. This can include strap-ons or realistic artificial penises.

A tour of Bondesque illuminates several kinks that fall under the radar of popular culture, such as sex toys for electrosex, which involves electrostimulation, and is surprisingly safe. There are also tools/toys for medical fetishes and latex fetishes.

And yes, for those interested in feet, Lickety Split sells silicone feet, according to Wellens.

Aside from kinks, a few new things discovered this week through interviews, an anal workshop, and a sex shop tour: silicone lube is not good for silicone sex toys, fetish parties are like raves mixed with fashion mixed with latex, and there is something out there for practically everyone. Most importantly, sex shop workers make a rewarding career not only out of selling toys but also out of making comfortable environments for sexual deviants and newbies alike.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Psychological Benefits of Sex Toys

By Victoria Lim

There is no doubt that sex is great. However, it can use something to make it more passionate and wild from time to time. The best thing to achieve that is to find the right “hardware” for your games and let it all play out really really well.

Besides making sex better, sex toys can bring many different benefits to the table, or into the bed, however you like it (this is a judgment-free zone). But among all the physical benefits, there are some psychological ones, too.

Eliminating shyness

Some people are shy about their sexual lives or talking about sex in general. What is more, at the very mention of sex toys even they can get all giggly and blood rushes to their cheeks like they are teens again. However, what not many of us know is that if you get over it and talk about sex toys, you can actually feel more confident to talk about sex.

Sex toys are not a taboo anymore and everyone uses them; either with their partners or by themselves. So, if you are able to talk about them in any way, be sure you will be more free to talk about sex with your partner, for example. You will eliminate that shyness, guilt or embarrassment you might be feeling, and your sex life will get better and more satisfactory in no time.

“Cure” for sexual dysfunction

There are both men and women who can have sexual dysfunction, and sex toys are something that can aid in that. For example, there are women who suffer from anorgasmia, which means they can hardly reach orgasms while having sex. That is why vibrators and relaxing sex toys, are recommended. As far as men are concerned, a helping hand of sex toys can make them climax without having to get an erection. There is no harm in trying kinky toys like Hustler Hollywood has, for example, and giving it a shot.

Plus, if you manage to finally get that orgasm, there is no doubt that your confidence will rise. Another positive thing is that they will take the pressure off of you because you won’t be overthinking what you’re doing in bed. You just need to relax and let the toys do their thing. And, at the end, you will feel confident about your relationship, things will get back on track sex-wise and you will relieve stress!

Great sex equals a great relationship

You might have that spark with your partner, but things are bound to get boring sometimes. That is why you need to communicate. Surprisingly or not, sex toys will lead to better communication with your partner. Even a simple visit to the sex shop with your partner will make you communicate better. You do need to be open about what you want, like and dislike, so it is a great way to get to know each other better.

Furthermore, you will learn how to “navigate” your partner better. Without the toys, you might feel shy about telling him “a bit to the left” or her “to use less teeth”, but with sex toys, things can change. If you’re using vibrators you will be more relaxed and open about where he or she needs to go in order to hit the spot. Plus, some toys can reach places no man or woman has ever touched.

According to Bustle, you can say that sex toys can improve your honesty and communication because they will spark the conversation and make your relationship even better.

They just make you feel good

The mental benefits of using sex toys are almost the same as the benefits of sex. But double the dosage! Sex boosts your confidence, but with the use of sex toys, you are even more confident because you managed to go pass that stigma and taboo.

Sex leads to increased intimacy, love and trust in a relationship, but with the toys, you two can get even closer. This is because your aforementioned communication is better, you made that special bond when buying sex toys and you learned new things about each other and your bodies. Plus, a lot of oxytocin is released after each passionate, sweaty and successful round in the bed, which only leads to stronger relationships and more respect towards each other.

After all this, we can say for sure that sex toys are beneficial. Forget about all that kink-shaming and go a little wild. Your relationship can use a little something new and fun, and your partner will be happy about it, too! Not to forget about that confidence boost and more happiness in your lives. So, take your partner’s hand, find the toys you both like and go on an adventure of kinky fantasies and plenty of fun.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What’s So ‘Indecent’ About Female Pleasure?

A consumer technology innovation award was revoked from a company that makes a hands-free sex toy. The reason, some believe, is that the product is made for women.

Lora DiCarlo, the company behind the Osé sex toy shown above, was stripped of an award at CES. Its products were deemed “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image.”

By Valeriya Safronova

A personal massager, a sperm counter, virtual-reality pornography, something described as “the world’s first ebook-driven sex toy”: All of these products have been exhibited at CES, the country’s largest consumer electronics convention. Two of them won awards there.

So Lora Haddock was surprised when Osé, a hands-free sex toy she designed with a team of engineers from Oregon State University, had its CES Innovation Award revoked after three weeks. In an email explaining the convention’s change of heart, which Ms. Haddock shared with The New York Times, a representative cited a clause in the awards’ terms and conditions that disqualified products deemed “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image.” (CTA refers to the Consumer Technology Association, which runs CES.)

“I was shocked,” Ms. Haddock, 33, said, “and then I was angry.” The award “signified a shift in inclusion,” she said. “And then it was actually, no you’re obscene and you’re indecent and immoral, and you’re not innovative at all.”

Last year, CES had more than 180,000 attendees from around the world and racked up more than 100,000 mentions in media outlets, by its own count. For start-up companies like Ms. Haddock’s, exhibiting at CES is crucial for attracting investment. It’s all the more important for sexual wellness companies, which by their nature have a difficult time placing ads on platforms like Facebook, in magazines and in public spaces.

Evie Smith, who handles public relations for Lora DiCarlo, promoting the Osé at an event near CES.

ohn Parmigiani, the director of the Prototype Development Lab at Oregon State University, first met Ms. Haddock in 2017, shortly after she had officially started her company, now called Lora DiCarlo. Over the years, Mr. Parmigiani — who has worked with companies like Boeing and Daimler Trucks — had become a go-to person for entrepreneurs seeking expertise in mechanical engineering.

“I went into the meeting with Lora having no idea what her product was,” Mr. Parmigiani said in a recent interview. “The third sentence she said was along the lines of, ‘I didn’t have my first blended orgasm until I was 20-something years old.’” Mr. Parmigiani said he was briefly taken aback but he kept listening.

“I thought, it’s a little out of my comfort zone,” he said, “but there’s nothing wrong with it.”

Ms. Haddock had used a term that describes a sexual climax reached from simultaneous external and internal stimulation. Her first blended orgasm, which Ms. Haddock said occurred at age 28, “knocked me off the bed onto the floor. I laid there wondering, how do I do that again?”

That wasn’t what sold Mr. Parmigiani on the project.

“I gave him a list of 52 functional engineering requirements that would be needed to produce this product,” Ms. Haddock said. “And that’s when he lit up.”

Ms. Haddock, who previously worked in health care and served in the Navy, is a self-described anatomy nerd. She knew she wanted her product to be customizable, so she started gathering data for where the G-spot and the clitoris are located on different bodies. “I tried to have that conversation with every single person with a vagina that I knew,” Ms. Haddock said. “I literally asked them to measure it with their hands and a tape measure.”

Osé, which will be available this fall for $250, expands, according to user preference, once placed on the pelvic girdle. It doesn’t vibrate but uses gentle, autonomous motions and air flow to enhance stimulation. Eight patents associated with Osé are pending. The team that built it includes Dr. Ada-Rhodes Short, who specializes in robotics and artificial intelligence, and Lola Vars, a current doctoral candidate in design-focused mechanical engineering at Oregon State University.

In follow-up emails, officials from CES and the Consumer Technology Association appeared to step back from the earlier assertion about the product’s violations of the morality clause, writing instead that Osé did not fit into the robotics and drones category, nor into any of the other product categories.

“It certainly is a robotic device if you look at a definition of a robotic device,” Mr. Parmigiani said. “There is no justification. Lora DiCarlo should have won the award.”

In a statement provided to The Times, Gary Shapiro, the president and chief executive of the Consumer Technology Association, said: “We have apologized to CEO Lora Haddock for our mistake, as the Lori DiCarlo product does not fit into any of our existing product categories and should not have been accepted for the Innovation Awards Program. CES is a professional business show, and porn, adult toys and sex tech products are not part of the event. CES is a large show with over 4,500 exhibitors. We acknowledge there are inconsistencies in exhibiting companies, and these will be addressed.”

But Ms. Haddock believes that what happened was more than an accidental oversight or a clerical error. So she published an open letter accusing CES of gender bias last Tuesday, Jan. 8, the first day of the convention. It is not the first time the trade show has been accused of gender bias: In 2018, numerous people in the tech industry criticized CES for having no female keynote speakers for the second year in a row, a failing CES attributed to “a limited pool when it comes to women in these positions.”

This year, of the 89 judges for innovation awards, 20 were women. CES said that it is committed to diversity, and pointed to its announcement this year that it will invest $10 million in venture firms and funds focused on women, people of color and other underrepresented start-ups and entrepreneurs.

On display at CES was a wide array of female-oriented products, including breast pumps, fertility trackers and skin-care tools, but critics point out that many of them exist to enable women to support something or someone else. “They’re in service of fertility, of society as a whole, of the household,” said Ms. Vars, the technical director at Lora DiCarlo. She noted that a sexual health company that has exhibited at CES for years, OhMiBod, won a prize in 2016 for its Kegel exerciser. “It’s something construed as good for men’s pleasure or fertility,” Ms. Vars said. “I hear that as a joke from men: ‘I like to sleep with women who do their Kegels.’”

“Sexual health wellness is something that can only happen behind closed doors, especially for women,” said Polly Rodriguez, the chief executive of Unbound, a company that makes lubes, vibrators and other sexual wellness products. Ms. Rodriguez has never applied to CES because of its reputation for gender-based discrimination. (Earlier this year, Unbound was in the news after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority rejected the company’s ads on the grounds that they violated rules against obscenity.)

But other female-driven sexual wellness products have gone the way of Ms. Haddock’s.

Karen Long, who has been in health care technologies for more than 20 years, was told that her company’s libido enhancing device, Fiera, did not qualify for the health and technology category in 2015. A later email from convention organizers added: “As a practice, we don’t allow sexual wellness products at CES.”

“We’re a consumer product that’s very clinically driven, with studies to support our product, validated surveys, OB-GYNs on board and everything,” Ms. Long said.

“We’re all sick and tired of this,” Ms. Haddock said. “It’s not just about our product. It’s about something bigger. It’s about really embracing an understanding of human sexuality, of recognizing innovation. When you call something obscene just because it has to do with a vagina, technology as an industry starts to lose out.”

Liz Klinger, the chief executive of Lioness, which makes a smart vibrator for women that collects data about sexual arousal, was similarly appalled. (She applied to CES in 2017 and was rejected.) “They said they weren’t going to include any new adult products in this space,” Ms. Klinger said. “That they had bad experiences in the past and didn’t want any new products on the floor.”

Later she found out that another applicant was approved to rent an entire room to show VR porn.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The sex trends experts predict will be huge in 2019

By Ellen Scott

You might not think that sex has trends.

Sex is sex, right? There can’t be that much you can change about it.

But sex trends do indeed exist, whether in terms of the tech we’re using to get off, the type of relationships we have, or our views of sexual acts.

The good news is that as long as you’re having consensual fun, it really doesn’t matter if you stay ahead of the curve.

If you are keen on being at the cutting edge of sexual stuff, though, you’re in luck, as sex toy brand Lelo has just released their predictions for the top sex trends of 2019.

Just do everything on the list then pat yourself on the back for being the trendiest, sexiest person ever. Congrats.

Open relationships and polyamory

Of course, polyamory is not a new concept. But thanks to documentaries (oh hey, Louis Theroux), celebs and influencers sharing stories of how polyamory and open relationships can work, the idea of non-monogamy is becoming more widely accepted.

Think of how BDSM was pushed on to everyone’s radar by Fifty Shades Of Grey. The same sort of thing is happening with polyamory.

Sex dolls

Not the ones you’re imagining, blow up ones with holes for mouths.

We’re talking fancy sex dolls made to feel and look incredibly lifelike, made with silicone and internal skeletons for a more human feel.

Artificial Intelligence

With the rise of household devices such as Alexa and Google Home, it’s no surprise we’ll start using artificial intelligence in the bedroom, too.

This can range from vibrators that collect your data and adjust to give you an orgasm every time to sex robots who respond to dirty talk and adjust their personalities to fit your desires.

Yes, the techphobes among us will be freaked out, but 2019 will be a cool year when it comes to seeing how far we can take sex tech.

Being single

Blame Ariana Grande.

Lelo reckons that in 2019 we’ll see more women remaining happily single later into their lives, with no desire to get into relationships.

Self-dating will be on the rise, as will treating yourself to all the toys you could ever want to provide satisfaction solo.

Male pleasure

Will 2019 be the year we finally accept that men can enjoy sex toys too?

The sex toy market will launch a bunch of new male sex toys this year, including prostate massagers and masturbation sleeves, which will hopefully normalise something that’s, well, very normal: using tools to masturbate more effectively.

New sensations

Vibration is great, but Lelo says 2019 will see the rise of newer, fresher ways to stimulate pleasure.

The brand’s Sona sex toy, released in 2018, uses sonic waves to stimulate the clitoris, to drive pleasure much deeper in the body.

You’ll also spot more toys that use pulsing or suction.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Sex Toys For Men:

Are They Taking Over The World?

by:

The sex tech industry is booming and you’re the last one to know. How do you feel about that? If I were you, I’d feel lame as hell. So, why not do something about it? They’re all gonna laugh at you either way. At least you’ll be having back-to-back orgasms while the nay-sayers snicker behind your back.

Our beloved gods of good sex have bestowed upon us a myriad of perverted pleasure products that pique every nook and cranny of our depraved interests. It’s time we took advantage of that. In today’s world, it’s possible to find a male sex toy that can do just about anything you can imagine. In fact, some manufacturers still know how to surprise me, believe it or not.

As John James, the Sex Toy Expert, I know all about sex tech and the products that have come out of its catacombs in the last few years. I’ve made it my life’s mission to “stay on top” of every sex toy I possibly could (pun most definitely intended). The results haven’t always been pretty but they’ve almost always been fun.

What Is Sex Tech?

I’m a gentleman and a scholar but even I don’t know the actual definition of “sex tech”. My best guess is that is has something to do with sex toys and technology. As far as I’m concerned, they can fuck off with their technical jargon. For our purposes, the term “sex tech” refers to any sex toy or arousal product that utilizes some form of technology in its design, features and/or functionality. Got it?

What Kind of Toys Are We Talking about Here?

One of the first questions I get when introducing someone to sex tech is, “So, what kinds of toys use technology like that?” I suppose it’s because most people only know about the traditional stuff, having little to no experience with the world of luxury brands and tech-savvy features. That’s okay though, because ole J.J. is here to help.
First of all, there are 5 main types of male sex toys that generally have a techie component or two. Know them and find your way to some of the best orgasms you’ve ever had. Ignore them and keep beating your meat like your granddad.

  • Masturbators
    Known for their durability and simplicity, handheld masturbators allow for manual manipulation of your penis and a fully customizable experience for you and/or your lover. Often made with pre-programmed speed or intensity settings and graced with the ability to connect via Bluetooth or internet for a real-time sex session, today’s masturbator isn’t the simple pocket pussy of yesteryear.
  • Automatic Blowjob Machines
    Once I tried an auto-blow device for the first time I started to wonder why the sex toy industry even bothered making anything else. These things are amazing and I’ll tell you why: Not only do they feel almost exactly like a real deep-throat knob-job but they also work without manual manipulation and can (sometimes) link up to other devices. While some masturbators do that too, only automatic blowjob machines simulate the kind of shameless, enthusiastic head you have to pay good money for.

FUN FACT: Many masturbators and auto-blow machine models come with orifices and/or skin-like sleeves that have been molded after famous porn stars.

  • Torsos
    If you want to get REAL nasty, go for a humanoid torso that has tech-friendly features like touch-sensitive controls, sync-motion, vibration and Bluetooth connectivity. Among the most high-tech (and most expensive) male sex toys on the market, torsos are also among the most realistic in terms of visuals and can sometimes be have their hyper-humanistic skins and canals warmed.
  • Prostate Massagers
    There are a lot of p-spot stimulation toys out there that are designed with high-tech features and pleasure-seeking settings. Although usually not as futuristic as the auto-blow machines or the torsos, prostate and perineum massagers come in all shapes and sizes from beginner to pro. The higher-end models can be synced to Bluetooth, smart phone apps or other toys for an interactive or long-distance party.
  • Cock Rings 
    A staple of the modern-day bedroom in my humble opinion, the cock ring is a must-have for any contemporary pervert with something to prove. A good high-tech cock ring can be controlled via wireless remote or smart phone app, plus it’s generally rechargeable and waterproof. Made for discreet guys who like safe restriction and convenient kink, well-made cock rings with high-tech features bring out the animal in any man.

The Final Verdict

Doesn’t it feel so much better to be “in the know” about male sex tech and the options that currently flood the market? I know I feel much better having schooled you on what’s up. If variety is the spice of life, then an existence without several high-tech sex toys must be an extremely bland one. I, for one, have better taste than that.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!