Musings

10 Places I’d Gladly Wear Vibrating Underwear

Kate Sloan

1. The train ride from Toronto to Montreal takes about 5 hours. Sunny and fast, it’s certainly preferable to crowding onto a musty bus or (god forbid) driving there myself – but entertainment options are limited. I get carsick if I read anything while in a moving vehicle, so books and magazines are out. Normally I just load a bunch of podcast episodes and audiobooks onto my iPad and let the voices in my headphones entertain me for the duration of the trip. But it would be sooo much more amusing if I was also wearing a vibrator, even if I was the one operating the controls. Some vulva-possessing people already report that the steady vibrations of a bus or train can stimulate their bits if they angle themselves correctly in their seat, sometimes even to the point of orgasm – and it’s the same principle, really!

2. Assuming I had the consent of the artist, I think getting a tattoo would be an interesting activity to combine with panty vibrators. Big and intricate tattoos, especially, tend to be a long slog of painful pokes and periodic waves of endorphins; the addition of sexual pleasure could balance and recontextualize the pain, making the overall sensation more bearable and more enjoyable. However, now that I think about it, I’m not sure vibrations in my underwear would be the best idea for an activity where remaining perfectly still is paramount…

3. While I love the idea of going to the opera – partly because of how fancy you’re allowed to dress when you go – in reality I’ve literally fallen asleep during every opera performance I’ve ever been to. I think my brain is far too easily lulled into slumber by the cognitive effort of trying to discern what someone is communicating when they’re singing in a language I don’t speak, even if it sounds beautiful regardless. I feel bad for being an inattentive audience member; maybe a (quiet) panty vibe would help keep me alert enough to actually see an entire opera show for once!

4. I often go to my local coffee shop when I need to get some writing done (or at least, I did pre-pandemic). While a vibrator might not be the most useful accessory if I was working on something serious and research-heavy, I do find that writing erotica benefits enormously from me being actively turned on while I write it. It helps me get out of my brain (“What would these characters theoretically say and do in this situation?”) and into my body (“How would I want to get totally railed right now if I was one of these characters?!”). Provided the café was bustling enough that some buzzing noises wouldn’t be an issue, I think a panty vibe would be a great way to induce that mood, and thus improve my writing.

5. My former sugar daddy had a thing for remote-controlled vibrators; he disclosed to me his fantasy that sometime I would wear one in a café bathroom while he got me off from miles away. With that in mind, I think it would be fun to wear a panty vibe during a shopping spree, whether I was in a submissive/sugar baby type of role in relation to my libidinous chaperone, or a more dominant/findomme-esque one. Of course, most stores probably (reasonably) have an unspoken “you have an orgasm while wearing it, you buy it” policy…

6. If the pandemic situation ever resolves to a point where I feel comfortable going to a rock concert again (here’s hoping), I’d love to wear a vibe under my skirt while moshing and sloshing around with other rambunctious attendees. There is something genuinely erotic about going to see live music – the way the bass vibrates through your flesh, the close contact with strangers’ sweaty bodies, the (often alcohol-fuelled) feeling of blissful rapture during a great guitar solo or well-earned encore – and a vibrator would just up the ante on all of those sensations. I wonder how many people have had orgasms in mosh pits… More than zero, I am quite certain.

7. I’ve already worn panty vibes on the occasional cocktail bar date, but it’s a situation worth revisiting. Dates and drinks already make me feel flirty, flustered, and off-kilter – adding vibration takes that to the next level!

8. Can you imagine wearing a panty vibe as part of a game show? I’m not talking about Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, The Price is Right, et al., although I do wonder if Bluetooth-controlled vibrators have ever graced those hallowed stages… No, this fantasy of mine is closer to a “Hysterical Literature” type of thing. Perhaps a trivia game or spelling bee where all participants are being distracted by sexual sensations while trying to answer questions as quickly and accurately as they can. I like to think I’d do well, but who the hell knows!

9. There are lots of places in a fancy hotel where a panty vibe might come in handy, but to name just one… Sometimes when we stay in hotels, my partner sends me out with a bucket to find the nearest ice machine, so they can mix us little cocktails from the contents of our minibar stash. I often feel pretty submissive while doing this, because I’m walking around an unfamiliar place, clutching an unfamiliar prop, on a mission assigned to me by my dominant. Trotting up and down endless staircases in search of the word “ICE” on a wall or a door would be so much more entertaining if there was a vibe involved.

10. Finally, I would be remiss not to mention a park picnic as an ideal destination for a vibrator-enhanced outing. Just imagine it: the summer sun is out, you’re sated on yummy cucumber-and-cream-cheese sandwiches (or whatever else sounds delectable and refreshing to you), and your favorite person is smiling wickedly at you as they give you pleasure with a flick of their fingers on their phone screen. I can imagine few better endeavors to be the centerpiece of a relaxed summer day.

 

What are your favorite places to wear remote-controlled vibrators?

 

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

What is “Ethical Porn,” Anyway?

Kate Sloan

People have been debating the concepts of “ethical porn,” “feminist porn,” and “authentic porn” the entire time I’ve been in this industry. It’s a constant push-and-pull within the queer, sex-positive, and feminist communities. Is porn an oppressive force, or an avenue for change and exploration? (Depends.) Is “male-gaze” porn hot, or problematic? (Depends.) Is what happens on porn sets always fully consensual? (Sadly, no.)

The concept of “ethical porn” is somewhat elastic and subjective, but it’s always interesting to see how individual people and companies choose to define this term for themselves. Sex toy brand Bellesa recently launched Bellesa Plus, their new porn subscription service which they’re calling “the Netflix of porn.” It features not only sexy videos but also interactive sex education and 600+ written erotica stories. Since ethics is a major focus of the work they’re doing, I thought it would be cool to expand on this concept a bit, and ponder the morality of smut.

 

Here are some basic benchmarks for what I would consider ethical porn:

• Performers are treated well. I mean, of course! They should be provided with snacks and water on set, able to take breaks when they need to, and valued and respected by everyone involved in the production. To me, this also includes implementing health and safety measures that help keep performers safe, like STI screening requirements (which Bellesa Plus, like most porn studios I’ve heard of, enforces), and having lots of lube available on set.

• Performers are paid well. As a feminist, I believe in pay equity, pay transparency, and fair payment for services rendered. Porn performers work incredibly hard and deserve compensation that reflects that, for each and every scene they do.

• Performers have agency. When I’ve performed in porn for indie companies, I’ve always been encouraged to choose scene partners who I genuinely like, trust, and want to have sex with on camera – which made the experience much more comfortable for me. Bellesa Plus is doing the same thing: their performers all choose who they want to work with, so the chemistry you see on-screen is based in real desire. Their performers also have veto power vis-a-vis what kinds of storylines they will or won’t perform in, and what kinds of sex they will have, and they can call an immediate end to the scene whenever they want, should something go awry.

• Everything depicted is consensual, and anything that appears non-consensual is properly contextualized. Unfortunately, some porn producers and performers are unscrupulous, and various forms of sexual assault do sometimes happen on porn sets. Truly ethical pornographers would immediately fire and blacklist anyone known to do shit like this, and would encourage (or require) a pre-scene negotiation between performers to establish ground rules for the scene. Bellesa assures me that 100% of the sex you’ll see on Bellesa Plus is consensual, and was filmed consensually. That said, many, many people have fantasies that involve some degree of non-consent – “rape” fantasies and other kinky power-exchange scenarios remain very popular in polls about such things – and those people should be able to access that type of material if they want to, although I think it should always be paired with some indication that the performers are actually consenting to what they’re doing. I’ve mostly seen that done via pre-scene and post-scene interviews with the performers about their fantasies, expectations, and limits.

• Content warnings are provided for each scene. We have them for mainstream movies in the form of MPAA rating descriptors; why not have them for porn, too? As a porn viewer who has certain triggers and squicks (which almost everyone does, to some extent), I often get frustrated when I put on what I think is going to be a hot scene, only to find that it contains some of the things I can’t handle or just don’t want to watch. A brief list of content warnings would help enormously, especially if timecodes were provided so I could skip past the stuff I didn’t want to see.

• Diversity of performers and filmmakers is prioritized. There is, frankly, more than enough porn made by straight cis able-bodied white guys out there already. They can and will keep doing their thing, but I’m much more interested in porn made by people from marginalized groups: people of color, queer people, trans people, disabled people, neurodivergent people, etc. etc. etc. Much of the porn on Bellesa Plus is directed by Jacky St. James, a legendary female pornographer, whose gaze and approach differ substantially from those of typical mainstream porn.

 

Bellesa Plus is doing some other things I think are awesome, too:

• They offer sliding-scale pricing, so that people who want to watch porn can access it for as little as $1/month. Paying more gets you cool perks like free sex toys, but if you just want cheap smut, they’ve got you covered. This is terrific news for people who care about supporting pornographers financially but don’t have much spare cash with which to do so.

• Director Jacky St. James has a “no fake orgasms” policy. I actually think fake orgasms can sometimes be hot, in the same way that I’m not mad when Meryl Streep cries in a movie despite not really being sad because she’s so damn good that it’s affecting regardless – but the prevalence of fake female orgasms in mainstream porn does contribute to culture-wide misinformation about sex and pleasure, so it’s cool to see some companies deviating from that norm.

• Their porn focuses on storyline and chemistry, rather than being all about closeups of tits and pussy and cock and ass. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good genitalia shot, but I also hear from readers/followers of mine pretty regularly that they wish porn had more of a story arc, relationship development, real chemistry, and so on. As a demisexual person, I totally get that for some people, it can be hotter to watch sex that’s been put in context emotionally, rather than just depicting a detached fuck in an unexplained location.

 

What about you? How would you define “ethical porn”? How do your tastes in porn relate to your values and ethics, if at all?

 

This post was graciously sponsored by the folks at Bellesa Plus. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

What Would Be in Your Dream Kink Dungeon?

Kate Sloan
Photo taken by Taylor J Mace at the Ritual Chamber

One of my favorite activities for stress relief – right alongside playing Pokémon games, listening to comedy podcasts, and (yes) masturbating – is perusing real estate listings.

I know this wouldn’t work for everyone, since housing and finances are, themselves, stressful areas of life for many of us. But if I’m able to fully divorce my realistic expectations for my own life from the properties I’m looking at, I can enjoy four-story floorplans and massive mansions to my heart’s content. Seriously, have you ever gone to Zillow, typed in the name of your city/town, sorted by “price: high to low,” and ogled the abodes therein? Sheer heaven for your eyes. (Not so much for your wallet, though.)

A treasured real estate-related fantasy of mine is to have enough rooms in my home that I could dedicate an entire room to kink. It would have blackout curtains, mood lighting, and a lot of jewel tones… but it would also have to have, of course, lots of kink equipment.

In this fantasy timeline, I would drop by the local BDSM store and basically fill my cart, and then some. I’d line the walls with elegant hooks and racks for all my various impact implements, giant dildos, and fetishwear. It would be a perverted smorgasboard.

Furniture-wise, of course I’d need a spanking bench. I like the kind that looks vaguely vintage, like it was hand-crafted out of wood and leather for disciplinary purposes. I’ve also always dreamed of having some furniture that would integrate well into my age-play fantasies, like a wide oak desk the likes of which you’d see in a principal’s office, or a row of metal lockers a bully could slam me against in a moment of lascivious aggression. A queening chair (i.e. a seat with an open hole in the middle where your partner can lay their head while you sit on their face) would also be a must-have for my dommier moments, and would likely be easier on my pain-wracked knees than normal kneeling.

There would also have to be a bed, because – as much as I’d like to be the kind of kinkster who can fuck standing up, or draped over a spanking bench, or bent over a desk, my body just aches too much most of the time for athletic shenanigans. I’d want to be able to flop onto a soft surface while recovering from subspace. Plus, one of my all-time favorite bondage toys is my set of under-the-bed restraints, and they need a bed to go under!

Although it would be hot and exciting to have a kink-specific space in my home, I think really one of the key reasons to have one is the way in which it could help me relax into a kink session. I could literally leave my stressors at the door (at least in theory), knowing as I entered that I was about to leave the “real world” and step into a space dedicated to pleasure and play. For a person who gets stressed out easily, that would be a massive improvement over trying to do kink in a space containing stress triggers like dirty laundry, unpaid bills, and a visibly inundated email inbox on a computer screen.

That said, while I might never have a home dungeon of my very own, I can at least try to bring some dungeon-esque vibes into my own room for the time being. I can turn off my computer, hide away my clutter, dim the lights, display some sexy toys, and put on some chillaxing music. It may not be Christian Grey-level glamorous, but it shows commitment to myself, my partner(s), and our shared pleasure – and that’s a commitment worth making, if you ask me.

 

How about you? What would you put in the dungeon (or other kink-focused space) of your dreams?

 

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

7 Reasons to Never Buy Sex Toys on Amazon

Kate Sloan

Sex toys are often an impulsive purchase. You’re horny and you order the dildo you wish you could use right now, or you fantasize about flogging your partner and have to immediately purchase the equipment needed to follow through on this fantasy, or you read a saucy sex toy review online that riles you up and you order the product on the spot. Promotional slogans like “FREE shipping on orders over $35” and “sex toys, next day delivery” can easily catch your eye in a Google search. You get out your credit card, gleeful, eager.

But if Amazon is your go-to place to buy sex toys, I think you should think twice about that. Here are 7 reasons it’s generally a terrible idea to order sex toys from Amazon.

1. Toys on Amazon are often mislabeled, whether accidentally or intentionally. This means you can get a porous toy that claimed to be nonporous, or a toxic toy that claimed to be body-safe. You really can’t know for sure what’s in a toy unless you have it tested in a laboratory, so it’s far better to order from sellers you trust – and Amazon, as a whole, just isn’t trustworthy.

2. Toys on Amazon are often counterfeit copies of the toys they actually claim to be. If a deal seems too good to be true, it usually is. Placing an order on Amazon for a Magic Wand or an Njoy dildo, for example, is super risky because of how often these toys are poorly copied by shitty companies trying to make a buck.

3. Toys on Amazon might be USED. Yes, it’s true: morally unsavory third-party sellers on Amazon have been known to resell previously used and returned toys. I’m sure it’s rare, but it’s not a risk I’m willing to take; how about you?

4. You’ll get a better idea of a toy in-person. It’s far too easy to accidentally order a toy on Amazon that’s way too big or way too small for your needs, particularly since so many of them are mislabeled or poorly described. It’s also impossible to tell how buzzy or rumbly a vibrator is without feeling it in person, or to figure out whether an insertable toy is squishy or unforgivingly hard without actually squeezing it. Sex toy reviews can help, but these things are subjective to some extent, so it’s best to touch and test out a toy for yourself in a sex shop if you’re considering buying it.

5. Independent sex shops need your money more, and offer much more value in terms of being community hubs and sex education sources. You might pay more at a local shop than you’d pay on Amazon, sure, but you’ll be supporting people who actually know stuff about sex toys and are committed to promoting sex-positivity and pleasure. These stores are also more accessible than buying online for many people, such as teens and older folks; keeping local shops in business helps ensure that those people have continued access to sex products.

6. Does Jeff Bezos really need more money? I mean, come on. He’s the world’s first-ever “centi-billionnaire.” He owns hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of real estate. He’s going to fucking space. If you decide to spend your dollars elsewhere, trust me, he’ll live. 🙄

7. Amazon workers are terribly mistreated. There’s an entire “criticism of Amazon” article on Wikipedia, a massive subsection of which is titled “treatment of workers,” which should give you an idea of just how bad this problem really is. They are frequently required to work long hours without breaks, their attempts at unionizing have been heavily suppressed, and they were forced to continue working in close quarters during the COVID-19 pandemic despite the obvious riskiness of this. People of color – especially Black people – are also vastly overrepresented in the delivery and customer support sectors of Amazon, and vastly underrepresented in its leadership and corporate sectors. It’s fucked up. And Bezos doesn’t seem to care at all.

There are some sex toy companies who legitimately sell their wares on Amazon, often because they know it can help them increase their sales by reaching customers they wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach. But for the most part, I would not recommend buying sex toys from Amazon. Doing so is a medical and ethical mess, and it’s just not worth the hassle when you could place an online order from an indie shop instead, or just stroll into your local store to pick up that new vibe or butt plug you’ve had your eye on.

 

This post was sponsored (not by Amazon, lol). As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

How Do Creativity & Curiosity Affect the Libido?

Kate Sloan

When you think about things you could do to boost your libido, you probably don’t immediately think of creative activities, like playing the guitar or painting a landscape. But I’m increasingly convinced that these types of pursuits are a factor in how high or low my sex drive is at any given time.

My friend Bex often describes curiosity as a contributor to his sexuality, in that when his life lacks things to be curious about, he feels less excited about life in general – including sex. It was difficult to organically stumble upon things to be curious about during the pandemic, since so many of us were confined to our homes or at least our routines. He’s finding that his libido is reawakening now that he’s able to be back out in the world, doing stuff, meeting people, having adventures, learning new things.

This makes total sense to me, and also reminds me of how I feel about creativity. In my youth, when I was a prolific songwriter, I often felt most inspired by the situations that made me feel the most sexually frustrated or excited – and, likewise, the feeling of being creatively inspired and “juiced up” often seemed to make it easier for me to get turned on, develop sexual attractions, and act on them.

I think part of the reason for this is that being creative makes me feel like I’m an attractive, interesting person, which gives me more confidence for flirting, sexting, etc. But also, I think creative pursuits remind me of how much fun it can be to work on a project from start to finish, to see it developing from nothing into something, to cobble together a meaningful piece of art with your own two hands. A good sexual encounter – or masturbation session – can feel like that too.

Emily and Amelia Nagoski explain in their terrific book Burnout that one of the ways to “complete the stress cycle” – i.e. temporarily rid your body of stress-induced neurochemicals so you can chill the fuck out – is to do something creative. I can think of several potential reasons this might be, but I think the main one is that doing creative activities often induces what’s called “flow state,” a positive psychological state associated with deep focus, a loss of self-consciousness, a feeling of agency and mastery, and the “merging of action and awareness.”

Several studies have found that experiencing flow state makes a person happier, not just in the moment but in their lives more generally. I can easily see how the relaxation and happiness you feel after a session of creative flow could also inspire arousal and desire, or could at least create conditions under which those things could more readily bloom. Flow state has also, incidentally, been widely compared to the “subspace” or “topspace” experienced by many kinky people during scenes. If you’ve ever felt on top of the world while spanking someone or being tied up or engaging in needle play or whatever it is that you do in kink, it’s quite possible you could access similar feelings through creative activities. (I mean, arguably kink itself is a creative activity, but you know what I mean!)

During the pandemic, I’ve been diving back into some artistic endeavors I’d let fall by the wayside, like playing piano and writing poetry – and it’s astonishing how much these activities affect my self-esteem, and thus my ability to feel desirable. I have such respect for the creative fields that it’s euphorically empowering to remind myself that I, too, have talents in those areas. Doing these things regularly also helps keep my stress level low (or as low as can reasonably be expected), because of the positive, calming impact of flow state. I can drift off into the pleasant fog of my focus for a while, just like I do in kink scenes, trusting that when I come back to earth, I’ll feel refreshed and relaxed.

The human brain is a mysterious lump of cells that eludes our attempts to document and categorize the infinite phenomena it can conjure. But I’m glad to have discovered that making time regularly for my creative endeavors is good for my stress levels, happiness levels, and – yes – libido.

 

Have you noticed a link between creativity and sexual desire in your own life?