Musings

12 Days of Girly Juice 2021: 10 Perfect Songs

Kate Sloan

Music was, as ever, a huge part of my life this year – and, as ever, I’m gathering 10 of my favorite songs into a blog post here, and writing little essays about how they made me feel as I listened to them on repeat all year long.

Originally this list was titled “10 Perfect Sex Songs,” but this year I’ve changed it to simply “10 Perfect Songs,” because the way I feel about music is just so much bigger than its applications for sex. But plenty of these are very, very sexy nonetheless.

The best way to read this post is to hit “play” on the embedded player above each song before you read about it, so you can get a sense for the vibe of the track while you read. (Trust me, these songs are gooooood.)

As always, I’ve collected these songs, along with all the previous years’ selections, into a Spotify playlist which you are welcome to check out. I hope you enjoy this year’s picks!

Daniel Bedingfield – “All Your Attention” (buy it on iTunes)

Don’t want to share you with the stars in the night / I only want you to only want me / Now, then and forever / Even jealous of the sun in your eyes / I want you looking at me, only me / I want all your attention

When I got my very first cellphone at age 13 or so – a petite silver Audiovox flip phone – one of the first things I did with it was figure out how to create custom ringtones. I remember spending hours after school painstakingly editing music files into ringtone-friendly lengths and formats, so that familiarly bright musical stings could punctuate my days. One of the very first songs I set as my ringtone was this one.

I’d been enamored with Daniel and his music for quite some time, but particularly with this song. At that age, it struck me as one of the most romantic things I’d ever heard: the narrator of the song (or, in poetry parlance, the “speaker”) is beseeching his partner/crush to let everything else in her life fall by the wayside so as to focus her entire attention on him. This spoke to me deeply at that age; I was struggling with the same desperate adolescent longing to be someone’s central focus in a romantic way, particularly since boys were not exactly flocking to date me, with my blue-bracketed braces, zitty skin, and total lack of self-confidence. I dreamed of someone being as obsessed with me one day as Bedingfield seems to be with his mystery lady in this song.

That said, like many things I enjoyed at age 13, this one barely holds up. To a modern, progressive ear, it lands as selfish, whiny, manipulative, possessive, even abusive – but under the veneer of sexy sentimentality and melodious romance. I still think it’s hot and sweet in its own way, but only when I’m able to envision it as depicting a consensual kinky relationship, rather than real-life scary obsessiveness. Love can make us want to behave in inappropriate ways at times, but that doesn’t mean we have to let those impulses move beyond the realm of thought and into the land of reality.

Bo Burnham – “Sexting” (buy it on ITunes)

I’m getting hot at just the thought of what I’d do to you / ‘Cause in my head, I’m in your bed and getting through to you / They made the internet for nights like these / I love you, baby; send a picture of your tits, please

I didn’t know what to expect when my spouse and I loaded up Bo Burnham’s then-brand-new special, Inside, on Netflix and pressed play. Bo is traditionally the king of snarky silliness in song form, as his previous specials can attest, and I figured this would be more of the same. But Inside is so much more than that, as I wrote when I called it a masterpiece on this very blog.

As you know if you’ve seen it, the first half of Inside is rife with classic Bo goofiness that nonetheless hints constantly at the depressed, anxious mess beneath the surface, which we get to experience more directly in the darker, more existential second half. One of the first-act bangers is “Sexting,” a song that makes me scream with laughter every time I watch the video. In his razor-sharp way, Bo lampoons staples of millennials’ textual intercourse, like communicating in emojis (“you send me a peach / I send a carrot back / you send a Ferris wheel / that’s pretty abstract”), wanting nudes from a partner while being too insecure to send any oneself (“you send the pic and say it’s now my turn / Jesus fucking Christ, I guess I never learn”), and worrying about whether the asynchronous medium is breeding misunderstandings (it usually is).

However, then, as only Bo could do, he pivots easily from texty sexytimes into the crushing loneliness that can set in when the technology fails you, or when digital sex feels too starkly different from in-person sex to generate a meaningful oxytocin high, or when you put your phone down and wipe up the cum, only to notice with shocking intensity just how alone you actually are. “Another night on my own / stuck in my home / sitting alone / one hand on my dick and one hand on my phone,” Burnham laments, and to that, all I can say is: been there, Bo. Been there.

Lizzo – “Juice” (buy it on iTunes)

No, I’m not a snack at all / Look, baby, I’m the whole damn meal

I was late to the party with regards to Lizzo, because I just don’t listen to that much mainstream/top-40 music these days, but I’m so glad I finally checked her out. It must have been the third or fourth time I heard this song, and found myself physically compelled to dance, that I finally whipped out my phone to figure out what the hell I was listening to.

It’s since become my favorite medicine for low-energy days, for bad-body-image days, for everything-is-terrible days. I’ll put it on, start moving my body, and feel the greyness start to lift. In particular, I think it’s the all-time best song for dancing to while nude in front of a mirror; every time I do this, it feels like someone just injected me with liquid confidence. Sincerely, Lizzo, thank you for the gift that is this song.

My enjoyment of sex, or indeed my very ability to be mentally present during sex, can be strongly affected by my body image du jour. Intrusive thoughts about my thighs and ass and belly frequently interrupt otherwise sexy interludes, frustrating me and worrying my partners. Listening to this song feels like saying a prayer for body-positivity, accepting (and adoring) the things I cannot change, embracing all the parts of me because they’re me and thus inherently worthy. It’s worth putting on every sex playlist I make from here on out, if just because hearing even its opening chords makes my whole body relax, like it finally knows it’s beautiful.

Violents – “After You” (buy it on iTunes)

Life after you / Life overdue / My girl, you know that I had dreamed of you

What a lot of the songs on this year’s list have in common is that they seem to send a shot of dopamine directly to my brain. This one is no different.

Violents is a project by my all-time favorite singer/songwriter, Jeremy Larson. Normally he writes songs and a smooth-voiced collaborator sings them, but the EP this song is from, June, is about being a new adoptive father and all the feelings associated with that, so it made sense for him to sing this one himself. And it’s stunning.

“After You” is an open-hearted, revelatory, no-holds-barred love song for Jeremy’s first daughter. It marks a clear delineation between life before her and life after her. I have thought a lot about parenthood this year – mostly because I am reaching the age at which people start insisting women think about this topic, as if it would be a crime if we chose to stay childless – and, while I’m not at all convinced I ever want kids, pieces of art like this song make me wonder if I’d be missing out.

Brotherkenzie – “Wasted” (buy it on Bandcamp)

It’s not enough / Keeping up / When my chin is dripping with you / One hell of a view / Hopefully, I can make these legs move if I try

I don’t know what this song is about, but I know that when I first heard Nathan of Brotherkenzie sing these particular lyrics, I blushed. If indeed this section is about cunnilingus, which I believe it is, then it’s one of the gentlest, most anti-bravado and anti-machismo references to cunnilingus I’ve ever heard in a song. In context it sounds gentle, slow, gradual, sweet. The lyrics signal genuine enjoyment of the act and genuine interest in the pleasure it can produce. It’s just… nice.

This isn’t at all a conventional pick for a “sexy song,” and yet there’s something about it that feels to me like slow, familiar sex with someone who knows your body. The dependable rhythm of it. The prodding, plodding sweetness. The way your favorite face fills with rapture as it peers up at you from between your legs. One hell of a view.

Ben Hopkins – “IDK” (buy it on iTunes)

I don’t know how to pay for therapy / I imagine if I did, I’d have some clarity / I don’t know how to weather ignorance / Makes me wanna drink wine and eat some cigarettes

I don’t know how to even convey how much Ben Hopkins’s music meant to me this year. But this is a song about not knowing how to do things, so maybe that’s okay.

There’s a certain freneticism to my interactions with other millennials in recent years, a constant low hum of existential anxiety and manic dread. You can’t ask a clued-in millennial a question about their future, or the future of humanity, without them going into a bit of a tailspin.

This is gonna sound douchey but the current state of the world makes me really grateful I got to take some classes on existential philosophy in university, because I don’t know how I would make sense of our current world without existentialist thought to fall back on. One of the biggest revelations I picked up from those classes was this: When the existentialists realized there was probably no God, no “true path” for any of them, no “meaning of life,” initially they were distraught – but then, after a “dark night of the soul,” often there would come a point when the lack of any inherent meaning began to feel less like a burden and more like freedom. The freedom to create your own meaning, your own path, your own purpose.

So much of Ben Hopkins’s music, but especially this song, makes me feel that way. It’s music that commiserates with the listener about the pointlessness and absurdity of [gestures broadly] all this, but at the same time, finds some raucous joy and connection in all that madness. Ben and their collaborator Tsebiyah shout back and forth at one another in this song about all the things they don’t know how to do, and then come together in the chorus to chant, “I don’t know what I’m doing / I don’t know if it’s right / I don’t know what I’m doing / I don’t know if it’s right,” like a tragic, silly, sad, excited, terrified, brave millennial mantra.

John Legend – “Love Me Now” (buy it on iTunes)

Something inside us / Knows there’s nothing guaranteed / Girl, I don’t need you / To tell me that you’ll never leave / When we’ve done all that we could / To turn darkness into light, turn evil to good / Even when we try so hard / For that perfect kind of love / It could all fall apart

I’ve loved watching John Legend’s evolution as an artist over the past several years. A lot of his early music made him sound like a bit of a cad, even if those songs were fictional (I’m not sure if they were or not); he seemed to churn out endless songs about cheating on a partner, wanting to cheat on a partner, thinking about cheating on a partner, avoiding (or giving in to) the temptation to cheat on a partner, etc. But those albums all came out when he was in his 20s; modern-day John Legend is a mature man with a big heart and a beautiful way with words, and his songs land just as sexy for me now as they always have, but much more romantic.

“Love Me Now” is a type of love song I’ve never heard before, a love song arising from non-toxic masculinity and compassionate realism. It acknowledges the fact that even relationships we think will last forever might not, and that life goes on after those relationships end. Most notably, it states: “I don’t know who’s gonna kiss you when I’m gone, so I’m gonna love you now, like it’s all I have.”

You could interpret this to mean that John doesn’t want anyone else to kiss his lady-love when and if he’s out of her life, but I have a different read on it. To me, it sounds like he wants her to always have someone to kiss, because he wants her to be happy. But he knows he can’t guarantee that, so he’s going to do his best to make up for that future uncertainty in the present. This reminds me of every partner of mine who’s taken non-monogamy as an invitation to love me harder, not a challenge to love me “better than” my other partner(s). We all deserve someone in our life who wants nothing but happiness for us. We all deserve a partner who wonders, with hope and in earnest, who’s gonna kiss us when they’re gone.

Cruisr – “Wild Babe” (buy it on iTunes)

You make me pace / Make me chase / Make my heart race / I dig you when you ditch me cold / ‘Cause I’m a sheep / I’m a creep / And I’m losing sleep / No, I don’t know what’s right for you, baby / Wild babe / I just wanna be your prey

Cruisr has showed up on this list previously for their up-tempo kinky bop “Kidnap Me,” and I still listen to that one on a regular basis. But “Wild Babe” may have eclipsed it as my fave Cruisr tune, simply because it makes me want to be the wild babe it eponymizes. And when I dance to it, I feel like I’m becoming her.

To me, this is a song about that sunny feeling when a new crush bursts into your life and is instantly all you can think about. That feeling was in short supply for many of us during the pandemic; this song feels like it’d be the right thing to listen to on the walk to your first post-COVID date with your first post-COVID crush, heart pounding in rhythm with the drums.

Alina Baraz – “Change My Mind” (buy it on iTunes)

At the end of the day / Would you do what it takes? / If I fall, am I safe? / Validation hit different when you don’t gotta ask for it / Would you push your pride to the side? / Prove me wrong by doing it right

I’ve included an Alina Baraz song on this list literally every year since I started doing this, because almost every year she puts out stunningly sexy new songs. She’s an absolute queen of the slowjam genre.

This song sticks out to me most on her latest EP because it’s about stating your boundaries, holding your ground, lifting your head high and maintaining your standards. Some of Alina’s past songs have been about melting under a man’s touch, getting lost in the reverie of a new flirtation, bending her life and her self to accommodate a powerful infatuation. But this one is different. “Say you wanna keep up,” she dares him; “If you stay the night, you could change my mind.” It’s the ultimate fuck-you to a fuckboy – and a dare for him to do better, to be better, so he can be with her.

I’ll channel Alina Baraz in this song if ever I need to tell someone, in the future, that they’re not currently meeting my standards but that they’re always welcome to change my mind.

Silk Sonic – “Leave the Door Open” (buy it on iTunes)

You’re so sweet, so tight / I won’t bite, unless you like / If you smoke, I got the haze / And if you’re hungry, girl, I got filets

My brother Max tipped me off to this one. When he gives me a music recommendation, I listen, because 99% of the time, if he thinks I’ll like a song, I end up loving it.

You know that feeling when you get a “booty call” text from the person you’ve been secretly hoping would send you that exact text for hours, if not days or weeks? That feeling of jubilation, excitement, and promise? That feeling that makes you want to spring out of bed, shed your pajamas in favor of a flashier ensemble, slick on some lip gloss and head out to face the thrills of the night to come? This song is that feeling, distilled into a 4-minute-long radio-ready slowjam. It’s perfection.

The lines I quoted above are my favorites, because to me there’s something genuinely healing about a man expressing desire for a woman in a way that acknowledges that she eats – that her hunger is potentially not just sexual but literal, too. Sounds silly, maybe, but we’ve all heard (or experienced firsthand) those tropes about how women only order salad on dates. I’ve always appreciated beaux who showed zero evidence of fat-shaming or food-shaming, and in fact actively encouraged me to stay nourished enough to have good sex – by making me a protein-packed pre-sex steak for energy, handing me a bottle of Gatorade to refuel my electrolytes mid-session, or (in one case) bringing me a selection of refrigerated chocolate bars on a midsummer night to help pump me up for a round 2.

I have no doubts, after listening to this song as many times as I have, that Bruno Mars is a great person to receive a booty call from. He’s passionate. He’s polite. He’s gonna leave the door open for you. Dreamy.

 

What songs did you love most this year?

Do Dildos Feel Better Than Dicks?

Kate Sloan

There are many annoying questions I face on a regular basis as a result of being a sex toy reviewer. One of them is, “So you just get paid to masturbate all day?” (Hahahaha, no.) Another is, “And your spouse is okay with that?!” (Um, yes; it’s part of why they married me!) But that second question is usually just a precursor to a third, even more irritating question: “So what’s better – a dildo or a human dick?”

Trust me when I say that this is like asking if a cold bottled Coke is more delicious than a hand-mixed cocktail, or like asking if I’d rather watch a movie cozied up at home with loved ones or tilted back in my chair at an IMAX theatre, or like asking if I’d prefer to see Shakespeare in the park featuring local actors or Shakespeare performed in a high-budget movie starring Anthony Hopkins. Which is to say… there is (for me at least) no clear, definitive answer, because comparing the two in the first place is an erroneous thing to do. They are simply not comparable. Each exists to address a particular mood, or need, or whim. I wouldn’t say it’s a choice between “apples and oranges,” exactly; it’s more like the choice between a fresh juicy apple pulled straight off the tree or a simmered and spiced apple crumble prepared by a skilled chef. It really just depends on what you’re craving.

Dildos can hit some spots dicks can hit, and some spots they cannot. Dicks are warm by default, unless you’re dating a vampire; sex toys are not, though you can pre-warm them if you want to. Humans can cuddle you, talk dirty to you, make you feel loved and appreciated; dildos simply can’t. You wouldn’t ask a human being to punch a nail into a plank with their bare fist; you’d use a hammer. Likewise, you wouldn’t use a hammer to play the piano (I fucking hope); you’d ask a human, one with graceful fingers and a musical mind, to play instead. Hammers and humans do not have the same skillset, and neither do dildos and dicks. It’s a fool’s errand to expect one to be able to do all the things the other is capable of.

I’ll say, too, that this question – “Are dildos better than dicks?” – is posed almost exclusively by people who apparently haven’t realized you can combine sex toys with human penises. Sex toys are still too often framed in mainstream sexual discourse as something a person (typically a cisgender, heterosexual woman) uses alone, often as a direct result of finding human sexual partners unsatisfactory or unattainable.

But this just has not been my experience of sexuality at any point in my life, whether I’ve been fucking men, women, nonbinary people, or some combination thereof. I’m deeply turned off by people who find sex toys threatening or distasteful, so the people I end up sexually entangled with are usually quite enthusiastic about incorporating toys into our play, particularly since I have so many of them. I would say sex toys are a part of literally about 98-99% of the sex I have these days – and rather than ever being a replacement for a partner, they tend to supplement and complement a partner’s skills, making touch more pleasurable and orgasm more attainable.

In every case, my partner is still present and engaged in what we’re doing together, so it would be inaccurate to say that the toy gave me an orgasm when in fact it was the toy in my partner’s hand that did so – or the toy in my own hand while my partner provided the psychological context that enabled me to get off. In many cases it doesn’t even matter if the toy is automated, as with vibrators with pulsing patterns, pressure-wave toys that suck my clit in rhythmic waves, or thrusting dildos like these ones; it was still my partner’s presence that made the sensations hot in a different way than they are when I’m alone, and so it was inherently a partnered experience even if my partner played a role closer to narrator or observer than direct participant.

My inboxes and DMs will probably always abound with messages from people who envy their partner’s toy(s), and people who resent their partner’s toy envy. While it’s tempting for me to tell the latter type of person to “dump the motherfucker already” because toxic views of sex toys are a red flag in my mind, I know that not everyone feels that way, and some people are willing to put in the work to help a partner become comfortable with toy usage. For those people, my advice would be:

  1. Emphasize what your partner brings to the table. Make it clear to them that they are providing value that goes above and beyond (or is simply different than) what a toy can offer.
  2. Emphasize, too, your own pleasure and how much you desire it. Presumably one of the things your partner finds hot about fucking you is seeing/hearing/feeling you experience pleasure, and toys can amp that up. (If they’re not that interested in your pleasure, well, maybe they’re not a good person for you to be sleeping with.)
  3. Maybe don’t skip straight to huge, hyper-realistic dildos if your partner is sensitive about their dick size or prowess. Small toys might be easier for those folks to handle initially. (But also, your preferences matter here too, so if you’re all about huge dildos, don’t let a partner shame you out of that perfectly valid desire.)

My hope is that toys will someday be so utterly un-taboo that they will easily become part of the sex lives of anyone who wants to use them. We’re not quite there yet, not only for the reasons outlined in this post but also for cost reasons, health and safety reasons, geographic access reasons, and more – but I’m holding out hope for shame-free, pleasurable, technologically-enhanced sexuality for all who desire it.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

5 Sexual Fantasies I Have About Sex Work

Kate Sloan

1. As a special gift – perhaps for a birthday or an anniversary – my partner hires an escort who is trained in the fine art of cunnilingus. While I lay there blindfolded, my partner gives explicit verbal instructions to our guest for the evening, first on how to tease and arouse me, and later on how to lick and suck my clit until I’m an incoherent wet mess.

Later that night, after our new friend has left, we lie in bed together eating ice cream and debriefing. I feel safe, supported, and loved.

 

2. I’m at an upscale lingerie store, staring longingly at a deep red lacy bra and its matching panties and garter belt. The price tags, when I glance at them, set off a spike of adrenaline in my body due to their sheer lunacy: $440 for the bra, $250 for the panties. I don’t even want to look at the price of the garter belt.

“Excuse me, miss,” says a random man I hadn’t noticed skulking in the stockings section. He’s tall and handsome in a nondescript way, like a detective in a film noir. “If you don’t mind me saying so, those would look wonderful on you, and it would be my honor to pay for them.” He holds out a credit card, golden and heavy, nodding toward the cash register, where the bored-looking sales clerk seems to already know this man’s M.O.

I smile coolly, take the card and the garments to the front, and tell the clerk, “These are on him.” My smirk makes him visibly tremble as he signs the sales receipt.

 

3. I submit an application to join a house of elite London escorts and subsequently find myself invited in for an interview. As it turns out, the “interview” is really a rigorous test of sexual technique, aimed at ascertaining my skill level so as to figure out how to price my services, or indeed, whether to hire me at all.

The house has invited some beloved regulars to be our test subjects for the day. Surrounded by other brothel hopefuls, I suck cock after cock, showing off my blowjob skills, possibly my greatest asset in this hiring process. After a particularly satisfying orgasm, one of the men says to the madam of the house, “You should hire this one – her tongue is magic,” and I glow with pleasure at the vaguely dehumanizing praise.

 

4. A client flies me out to his city for a long weekend date. As I climb out of the Uber he sent to the airport and begin dragging my suitcase up the steps to the fancy hotel where we’ll be staying, I get a text from him. Sorry, darling – something came up at work. Can we raincheck until next month? Make yourself comfortable and get whatever you’d like from room service, on me.

I smile serenely in the elevator, let myself into the clean white room with a shiny keycard, and collapse happily on the enormous bed. Later, I take a sex toy or two into the massive bathtub that overlooks the city, and get myself off decadently like no client ever could.

 

5. I catch the attention of an influential congressperson so as to pitch them on the importance of rights and protections for sex workers, they subsequently make an impassioned speech on the house floor, and every politician in attendance wipes tears from their eyes as they vote to repeal SESTA/FOSTA and decriminalize sex work permanently at the federal level.

Okay, that one isn’t so much a sexual fantasy… but it’s definitely something I ponder ardently from time to time.

Write to your local politicians and make it clear to them that you care about sex workers’ rights. Sign petitions, donate to SWOP Behind Bars and Red Light Legal, and advocate for people to respect and decriminalize sex work. People in that industry may be hot as hell, but they’re also human, and they’ve suffered more than their fare share of discrimination and stigmatization. It has to stop.

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

You Don’t Have to Do What Your Sex-Positive Friends Do

Kate Sloan

I’ve had a nearly lifelong love affair with the sex-positive movement. It has made life better and brighter for me, given me a solid community to connect with, and helped me recontextualize my sexual desires outside of a patriarchal, slut-shaming lens. I’m very thankful it exists.

That said, the movement has attracted its fair share of criticisms. In my view, most of its critics focus on ways that individual practitioners fail to uphold the actual values of sex-positivity. The movement itself is based on the idea that sex is inherently natural and that any sexual activity performed in a risk-aware and fully consensual way is A-OK; of course, the implication is that the inverse is also true, that sex acts achieved through force or coercion are not acceptable. However, some people within the movement use sex-positivity as a guise under which to propagate harmful and coercive values, such as “more sex = better” (nope!), “everyone wants sex” (definitely nope!), and “having as much sex as possible is what makes you cool” (nope, nope, nope!).

 

Here are 5 activities I used to think were, in some sense, an important part of being sex-positive, which I’ve since realized are no such thing:

1. Having tons of group sex all the time. Lots of my sex-pos pals are way into threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes, and I’m happy for them! I’ve just learned over time that I’m too introverted, anxious, and hypersensitive to really enjoy group sex most of the time. I’m open to the possibility of small group encounters with trusted and beloved folks, but I no longer attend orgies hoping irrationally that I’ll somehow like this one even though I haven’t liked any others. Good for me!

2. Anal sex feels pleasurable and freeing for many people, but I’ve tried it a couple times and it has mostly just made me feel ill! I still like some forms of anal play – wearing a butt plug while I do other sex stuff, being rimmed, fucking other people with a strap-on – but actually getting fucked in the ass is probably just not for me. Remember: even when using what people think is the best anal vibrator in the world, or when hooking up with someone who claims to be an anal-sex pro, it’s entirely possible that you just won’t like anal – and that’s fine!

3. All my life I’ve heard that it’s important to avoid “starfishing” during sex – i.e. to be active and participatory at all times rather than “just lying there.” However, in exploring kink, I’ve learned again and again that some people like a partner who “just lies there”! I will clarify here that I don’t think it’s generally fun to have sex with someone who has no reactions to what’s going on, unless that’s your specific kink – but as a submissive, bottomy person who lives with daily chronic pain, sometimes I just want to lie back and receive during sex, and often my partners are delighted by that, because I tend to date/hook up with people on the toppier and dommier side of the spectrum. You do you!

4. A lot of porn shows people getting into acrobatic sex positions because doing so makes for a better visual. I’ve also seen many people doing this at sex events, orgies, etc., presumably because either those positions feel good for them, or they enjoy the exhibitionism of showing off that way, or both. That’s great for them, but I can only physically sustain a few different positions, and generally I’d rather feel good than look good.

5. There are also many sex-positive-identified people who will counsel you that not wanting an orgasm every time is doing a disservice to yourself, or is in some way less “empowered” or less “feminist” a choice than the alternative. While this is certainly true for many individual people (particularly straight women who have been conditioned over time to accept a status quo of zero orgasms, while their male partners are getting off left and right), I think it’s pretty useless as a society-wide mandate. Sometimes I just don’t feel like coming, or being touched sexually at all, but am perfectly happy to get my partner off – and that is my choice and my right!

What sex acts have you felt pressured to do because those acts were described as “cool” or “empowered” or “sex-positive”?

 

This post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

The Most Important (and Most Overlooked) Quality of Any Vibrator

Kate Sloan

I get emails literally every day from sex toy companies who want me to try their latest vibrator. They’ll wax poetic about its shape, its aesthetic, its strange and innovative features; they’ll claim it’s revolutionary, a revelation; they’ll plead wide-eyed with me to name it one of my all-time favorites.

But 9 times out of 10, it won’t stand a chance – because 9 times out of 10, its motor is terrible.

It’s really wild that we’re still having this conversation in 2021, nearly 150 years after the first electric vibrator was invented, but: a vibrator’s motor is its most important feature. If your toys have a buzzy, weak motor, you can spend hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars on research and development for the toy’s other aspects and it won’t matter. Hell, some of my favorite vibrators ever are ugly as sin, but I don’t care because their motor is capable of giving me orgasms, unlike many, many, many others out there.

 

A brief primer on the notable traits of a vibrator motor, for those unacquainted:

Broadly speaking, vibrations can be ranked on a spectrum between buzzy and rumbly. Some vibrators are both simultaneously, and some feel rumbly on their lower settings and buzzier as you turn the toy up (or, less often, the other way around), but for the most part, any vibrating toy will land noticeably somewhere on that spectrum.

Buzzy vibration feels surface-level; its stimulation goes only skin-deep. It tends to both feel and sound higher-pitched than rumbly vibration. A buzzy vibrator is likelier to create the temporary desensitization/numbness many people dislike about vibrators, such that (for me at least) orgasms from buzzy vibes sometimes feel barely pleasurable, if they’re achievable at all, because the area has been so thoroughly numbed by that point. Buzziness shows up most often in cheap toys, but even some high-end vibrators are surprisingly buzzy, because – as I’ve mentioned – many companies are more concerned with aesthetics and “innovation” than with getting this most basic aspect of their toy right.

Rumbly vibration, on the other hand, feels more like fast, rhythmic thumping than buzzing, almost as if someone was tapping your skin very very very quickly. This type of vibration goes deeper into the body, stimulating buried tissues like those of the internal clit, G-spot, or prostate. It tends to cause less numbness than buzzy vibration and to preserve genital sensation for longer, often leading to deeper, stronger orgasms. It also tends to be quieter than buzzy vibration and tends to be found in more expensive toys, although there are companies (such as We-Vibe and Dame) that make rumbly toys at a more reasonable price point.

In the land of sex toy reviews, sometimes you’ll see folks proclaiming that rumbly vibes are good and buzzy vibes are bad, period, end of story. I agree that most people seem to feel this way, but I’d like to note that there are people who prefer buzzy vibrations, for various reasons (I’m not one of them so I couldn’t tell you what those reasons are). I also think that there’s sometimes a place for buzziness; I don’t usually mind if a vibe gets a bit buzzy on its highest settings, for example, because when I’m close to orgasm, sometimes it’s a little burst of buzziness that pushes me over the edge, stimulating me in a different way than rumbly vibrations can.

But in general, yes, I would say that rumbly vibrations are the superior type. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you’ve only tried one or two vibrators in the past and haven’t liked them, there’s a very good chance that they were too buzzy and that you’d appreciate something rumblier. (But also, some people just don’t enjoy vibration and that’s fine too.)

 

It shocks and disappoints me every time I turn on a new vibrator that looks luxurious and well-thought-out, and discover that it’s as buzzy as a $20 watch-battery bullet. It angers me that companies feel it’s appropriate to charge high prices for products missing the most basic component of a halfway decent vibrator: a good motor. It annoys me that companies get aggravated when I call their toys buzzy in my reviews, as if they couldn’t have put the effort in to develop a better motor in the first place. It saddens me that so many people around the world probably dismiss the category of vibrators altogether because of some bad experiences they’ve had with buzzy ones, thereby cutting themselves off from untold pleasures.

“Rumbly” has become a buzzword in the industry now, too, such that many companies brag ostentatiously about the “rumbliness” of toys that are no such thing. In my view, there are only two ways to know if a vibrator is actually buzzy or rumbly before you buy it: read multiple reviews of it by sex toy bloggers/journalists/experts who are demonstrably committed to honesty in their assessments, or go to a sex shop and feel the toy’s vibrations for yourself. Don’t trust companies’ own marketing copy, because even otherwise-good companies sometimes lie. (I can’t even begin to tell you the number of times that a vibrator billed as “whisper-quiet” has actually been loud enough to startle my roommate’s cats such that they leap off my bed and sprint into another room.)

Here is my plea to any sex toy company employees or consultants who may be reading this. Prioritize good motors above everything else in a toy’s design (other than body-safe non-porous materials and overall safety, but that’s a given). If finances dictate that you have to make a toy less flashy and impressive in order to make it actually feel good, then that’s worth doing. I don’t give a single shit how many patterns, settings, and functions your toy has if I can’t even feel my genitals while I’m using it. Start with the motor and go from there; the motor should never be an afterthought or anything other than your #1 priority.

There. Now I can step off my soapbox and go jerk off with a vibrator I can actually feel.