Musings

4 Reasons You Shouldn’t Be Jealous of Your Partner’s Sex Toy(s)

Kate Sloan

Having written about sex toys for as long as I have, one of the most common complaints I hear from readers about toys is that they’re nervous their partner will react poorly to them. Either they already know their partner has a bad attitude about toys because of previous conversations they’ve had, or they just have a sinking feeling about it, and are therefore hesitant to incorporate their favorite pleasurable gizmo(s) into sex.

I also sometimes receive questions from the jealous partner themselves, wondering why they’re experiencing such irrational jealousy and resentment about their sweetheart’s Fleshlight or realistic dildo. After all, a lot of times, when we feel intense distress about someone else’s otherwise harmless choice, it has to do with underlying emotional issues that we may or may not be aware of – and when we’re not aware of them, it can seem like there’s nothing we can do about them.

With that in mind, here are 4 reasons you shouldn’t be jealous of your partner’s sex toy…

 

You bring so much more to the table than a dildo or stroker!

It might sound obvious, but it’s true: you are a human being, and so you are automatically capable of doing many, many, MANY things that sex toys alone cannot do! And I say this as someone who is, obviously, a huge fan of sex toys. They can’t whisper cute/hot things in my ear. They can’t remember what I like and do more of it (seriously, even the A.I.-influenced toys that claim to be able to do this are nowhere near human-level good at it). They can’t tap into the fantasies and archetypes that turn me on and play those out with me. They can’t replace the feeling of a warm, soft, touchable person in bed next to me. They can’t make me laugh, or hold me when I cry.

If you truly believe that a sex toy has the ability to replace you or upstage you, I would (lovingly) invite you to consider that you might have some self-esteem issues that are worth working on, so you can be happier in and out of the bedroom. (More on that in the last point on this list.)

 

You can use sex toys with/on your partner!

Toys are just tools. As the classic analogy goes: if you use a hammer to build a house, it wasn’t the hammer that built the house, it was you! And by the same token, if you give your partner pleasure and/or orgasms with toys, it was still you who did that. You just used a tool to do it – and using tools and technology is quite literally part of what makes us human, part of what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. You wouldn’t consider yourself a failure for needing to wear bifocals, or for cooking on a gas range instead of over an open fire, and for the same exact reason, you shouldn’t consider yourself inadequate for incorporating sex toys into sex.

Besides which, using sex toys together can be a really fun adventure, and a way to infuse some novelty and variety into your sex life.

 

Pleasure is a good thing!

You want your partner to experience pleasure, right? Because you like them (maybe even love them) and want them to be happy? And it’s very likely they want the same for you.

More pleasure is a good thing, period. Sex is (for most of us) primarily about pleasure and intimacy. Sex toys can help you in your pursuit of those goals.

If you find that maintaining a sense of yourself as sexually indispensable is more important to you than your partner’s pleasure, well… I think that’s worth examining.

 

Slapping a Band-Aid on your insecurities isn’t the same thing as addressing/healing them

I’ve learned this in so many different areas of life. Our fickle human brains like to come up with “logical” solutions to emotional problems. This is why, for example, some monogamous straight people will insist that their partner “can’t” have any friends of the “opposite sex,” because to do so is perceived as a threat to the relationship even when it’s obviously not. These people are trying to “legislate away their feelings” through rules and “boundaries,” in the same way that a person might “forbid” their partner to use sex toys in order to avoid facing the insecurities and anxieties that sex toy usage might bring up for them.

What I have learned is that you cannot outrun or “logic away” these issues. They will keep coming up, in various different forms, until and unless you face them and heal them. And when the issues in question are related to your partner’s rights and freedoms, oftentimes they will manifest in very problematic and perhaps even abusive ways.

The fact is, you don’t get to impose coercive rules on your partner just because you are insecure and anxious. Your partner may want to help you with your insecurities and anxieties, which would be very nice of them, but they are not obligated to, especially if the “help” you are requesting amounts to them making their life smaller, less joyful, and worse just to appease you.

But here’s the really important point – and I say this with love: you will be happier if you address your issues head-on, rather than trying to re-route your discomfort onto someone else. Whether through therapy, journaling, cognitive-behavioral exercises, Internal Family Systems exercises (which have helped me enormously with my insecurities and abandonment anxieties), or any other method of investigative self-reflection, it’s important to figure out what you’re so afraid of, why you’re afraid of it, and whether your fears have any basis in your current reality. More often than not, these types are fears are founded on false beliefs you’ve picked up from past experiences and/or cultural influences, and you don’t need that shit floating around in your brain – it’ll only cause you pain, and cause your partner(s) pain by proxy.

You deserve to live a life of happiness and pleasure, and so does your partner. And that’ll be much easier to achieve once you truly believe, in your very bones, that you are worthy, you are enough, and you have more to offer than a phallic piece of silicone.

 

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

5 Fun Things to Do When Your Partner is in Chastity

Kate Sloan
Wearing my sweetheart’s chastity key around my neck 🔑

Chastity has joined my constellation of kinks relatively recently; I’ve been my partner’s “keyholder” since 2020. They’re not locked up all the time, or anywhere close to it – usually I’ll lock them up for anywhere from a few days to a week or more, but never for longer than a month. However, even short stints of keeping their dick under lock and key can be emotionally and sexually intense for both of us. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more powerful than I do while literally wearing the key to someone’s genitals around my neck, giving them commands which they eagerly follow.

You might think that your sexual options would be limited if one partner’s junk is inaccessible – and yeah, it definitely puts some fun parameters around the types of play you’re able to engage in. But there’s a lot you can do even while your partner’s dick is caged. Here are a few of my favorite examples.

 

1. Strap-on sex

I’m a fan of strap-on sex in general, regardless of the gender or anatomy of the person I’m with; it’s an enjoyable way to experiment with sensations that are different from those you’d be able to access just by getting fucked with fingers or a flesh-and-blood dick. It can also feel more intimate and visceral than having someone simply hold a dildo and fuck you with it by hand.

It can be amusing to “make” my partner fuck me with a strap-on while they’re locked up. I can taunt them about not being able to do it with their actual cock, and can make humiliating comments about how they wouldn’t be able to last long enough to please me anyway, etc. Plus, on a purely logistical level, I like getting off from penetrative sex but often partners indeed can’t last long enough for me to get there, so it’s nice that with a strap-on, I never have to worry about them coming too soon and thereby losing their boner. (They might still come, though… especially if they’ve been denied orgasms for a while, and are particularly enjoying the sights and sounds involved in fucking me with a strap-on. Erotic hypnosis can also be used to make it so that my partner actually feels like the dildo is their dick, which can make it easier for them to orgasm from fucking me with it. Neat!)

Naturally, it’s also possible for me to wear a strap-on and fuck my partner with it while they’re locked up. I could see this being a particularly compelling activity for people who want to learn to come from prostate stimulation alone, since you literally can’t get any dick stimulation this way if you’re wearing a chastity cage, and have to rely on the prostate stim if you want to get off at all (assuming you’re allowed to!).

 

2. Butt plugs

Speaking of prostate stimulation… Wearing a butt plug can be a nice way of getting some kind of pleasure even if your usual avenues are thwarted.

I sometimes like to have my partner wear a butt plug while they go down on me or otherwise please me, because it seems to keep them more focused on the task at hand, and increases their arousal and pleasure throughout the process.

Vibrating butt plugs can be especially fun. One of my favorites can be controlled long-distance, so I can give my partner prostate orgasms even while they’re 500 miles away from me, which is pretty cool.

 

3. Love letters

One of my favorite things about chastity play is the emotional effect it has on my partner. This could be the topic of a whole other blog post, but suffice it to say, their romantic feelings toward me get dialed way up after a few days of being denied orgasms. It’s almost like they’re back in “New Relationship Energy,” the name given by polyamorists to the euphoric and obsessive mental state that is also sometimes termed the “honeymoon phase” of a relationship.

My partner is always good at writing me love letters, but particularly so when they’re in chastity, because of these elevated emotions. They can pontificate for paragraphs about how much they love various personality traits, talents, and body parts of mine. Since I’m not always the most self-assured person, I often like to take the opportunity during chastity stints to have them write me adoring words that I can look back on for months or years to come, whenever I need a confidence boost. Doing this might earn them a reward, or sometimes it’s just a task I assign them for fun.

 

4. Vibrators

Did you know you can use a vibrator on a chastity cage and the person wearing it can feel the vibrations? This isn’t true under every circumstance – my understanding is that it only really works if the person is hard inside their cage, but, y’know, it’s not too terribly tricky to get my partner hard when they’ve been denied any sexual stimulation for days at a time.

I like using vibes on my partner’s cage when I want to reward them with pleasure but still want them to feel teased and tormented to some extent. They’re obviously not feeling the full force of the vibrations when they’re conducted through the metal cage, so the stimulation feels comparatively muffled in a way that can be thrillingly frustrating. And orgasms, when they happen this way, can be painful and/or ruined, due to the tightness of the cage and the diffuse nature of the stimulation, which makes them a delightful treat for sadomasochists.

For this purpose, I would recommend a vibrator that’s strong and rumbly enough to be felt through the cage. Powerful wand vibrators are my faves to use for this purpose, especially those with a softer head that won’t clang against the cage too harshly. You can experiment with placement, but I find that pressing the vibe against the frenulum area usually works best.

 

5. Cuckolding

Now, granted, this isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and won’t be within everyone’s relationship boundaries (but then, that’s true of all of these suggestions!). My partner and I are non-monogamous, though, and they enjoy the humiliation of being cucked, so it’s been fun for us to lean into that side of things occasionally.

For example, my partner has sometimes paid for my meal or transportation on nights when I’ve had dates (or, in one memorable case, a blowjob porn shoot) with other people, and then I might come home afterward and tell them about my evening over the phone while they groan in frustration. This amuses me, boosts my confidence, and helps ease the irrational guilt I sometimes feel about dating/kissing/fucking other people even though I’m explicitly allowed to do so. Plus it’s kind of a sweet (if perverted) way to reconnect after an evening apart.

 

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

Butt Plugs Are Surprisingly Versatile

Kate Sloan
Pictured: the Godemiche Plug B in raspberry cream glitter (have you ever seen such a gorgeous plug?!)

Did you know that the all-time most popular post on this entire blog (out of nearly 1,300 posts) is about activities that are more fun when you’re wearing a butt plug? People are very curious about this topic, apparently.

That being said, even 7 years after writing that post, I’m still regularly amazed by the versatility of butt plugs. Let me explain.

A lot of sex toys require you to use them actively – you hold a vibrator against yourself, thrust a dildo in and out, move a stroker up and down. Sure, some of these toys can be used in a more passive manner, especially with the help of accessories like a wand vibrator clamp or a fucking machine, but apart from that, generally you have to be doing something in order to use this type of toy.

A well-designed butt plug is different because you can “set it and forget it” – although, of course, if it feels particularly good then you may not really be able to “forget it”!

One of the ways I use butt plugs most frequently these days is wearing one while receiving oral sex (or while having cunnilingus-focused phone sex, as the case may be). I don’t always have the energy or the vaginal ambition to thrust a dildo against my G-spot or A-spot, but clitoral pleasure on its own doesn’t always feel stimulating enough for a super-satisfying experience. Enter the humble butt plug. Like a dildo, it gives me something to squeeze around when clitoral stimulation makes my pelvic muscles contract, thereby intensifying orgasms and the lead-up to them – but unlike a dildo, I don’t need to move it or even touch it once it’s inserted (provided, again, that it’s well-designed enough to stay put, which, sadly, not all plugs are).

Wearing a butt plug makes me much more aware of every little twitch and contraction of my vaginal muscles, which is why it’s so stellar when paired with oral. But for the same reason, it also makes a spanking or other sadomasochistic scene feel all the more arousing. I never noticed how much my genital muscles squeeze and pulse when I’m receiving pain until I started wearing a butt plug during these scenes sometimes – the plug pretty much forces me to notice it!

Another way I frequently use butt plugs is as motivation for completing certain tasks. My partner, who is very clever, will sometimes tell me to insert a plug if I need to clean my room or do various other chores. Much like wearing a collar around my neck, the plug serves as a constant reminder of what I’m meant to be doing, because I can’t really “tune out” the sensation of wearing one – it’s always there, drawing attention to itself, so that if I get sidetracked or demotivated, it’s never too long before I go, “Oh wait, yeah, I’m supposed to be tidying. Let’s get back to that.” Other adult toys can certainly be motivating too – promising me a wand-vibe orgasm when I finish writing an article is a good way to make sure it gets done, for instance – but I find none so easy to seamlessly incorporate into the task itself as a butt plug.

For me, butt plugs also work well for generating arousal passively, even if I’m not doing anything sexual at all. Sometimes my partner will tell me to wear a plug while we watch a TV show or a movie together, and usually by the time we’re done watching, I’m turned on, even if there was nothing sexual in the media we consumed. This is super useful, especially since a combination of chronic pain, depression, and having responsive desire can make it hard for me to “get in the mood” even when I want to. Butt plugs are kind of a life hack in this way.

Plenty of people use butt plugs as a warm-up for anal sex or larger anal penetration, and I’ve used them that way from time to time too. But since I prefer anal penetration on the smaller end of the spectrum for the most part, usually a plug itself is enough for me. I’m always glad to have packed one in my suitcase when I travel to see my partner, because we always end up using it in myriad ways. Gotta love a product that’s equally enjoyable during a cunnilingus session, a heavy flogging, or a trip to the grocery store!

 

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

Pay For Your Porn, Please!

Kate Sloan
Me on a shoot day in 2016

One of the many ways I’ve seen porn performers get insulted and degraded online is by dudes (yes, it is almost always dudes) yelling, “Why would I pay for your OnlyFans (or whatever) when I can get any porn I want for free?!”

Besides being super mean-spirited and unnecessary (not to mention reeking of whorephobia), this argument – if one can even call it that – is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the porn industry works, and how art in general gets made. And yes, I would consider porn to be an art form!

See, as the world is learning in real-time right now from the Writers Guild of America strike, the art you love doesn’t just magically appear out of thin air – actual people make it (I’m not talking about AI art here, because it kinda sucks, both morally and artistically), and those people deserve to be paid fairly for their time, work, and expertise. This is true whether the art in question is something we generally understand to be expensive, like an oil painting, or something we generally understand to be cheap or free, like online porn.

As with any kind of art, if we want porn to keep being made, we need to ensure that its creators are able to sustain themselves financially so they can continue making it. I’m no porn-industry expert, but it seems to me that the emphasis has shifted massively from big porn studios to smaller creators and collectives over the last decade or so, and I imagine a lot of that has to do with how often people torrent porn, stream it on sites that have pirated it, and so on. Big studio productions are expensive to make, and can’t be continually cranked out if no one is paying for them. I love indie porn stars as much as the next hyper-online gal, but I can’t deny that I also sometimes appreciate the spectacle of a huge-scale porn production like Pirates (2005), which supposedly had a $1 million budget (!!), or Alice in Wonderland (1976), which had a budget of $500,000 (about $2.5 million in today’s money if we account for inflation!).

That’s not to say it’s impossible to watch free porn in an ethical way. Creators on YouTube and PornHub alike, for instance, can make ad revenue from people who watch their videos, at no additional cost to viewers. Many independent creators offer some free content as part of their overall marketing strategy, though of course the hope is that a substantial portion of their free viewers will become paid viewers over time.

It’s also definitely possible to pay for your porn even if you’re on a budget. Sites like Clips4Sale and ManyVids are chock full of videos priced at $5 or less, which you can then watch and re-watch to your heart’s content. Many performers offer sales to mark certain holidays or just when they need to drum up some extra cash, so follow your faves on social media if you want to be informed when/if that happens. You can even click here for a Naughty America discount. There is a TON of cheap porn out there, and every time you buy someone’s porn, or subscribe to their OnlyFans feed or similar, you’re helping them out and letting them know with your dollars that you want them to keep making wank material for you to enjoy.

I’m happy to pay for romance novels, because they make me giggle and blush; thriller movies, because they make me gasp and scream; and action video games, because they make my heart speed up and engage my brain. The other reason I’m happy to pay for these things (when I have the cash to do so) is that I want them to keep being made. By that token, it makes complete sense that I’d also want to pay for my porn – because it entertains me, inspires me, teaches me new things about my sexuality, and (of course) turns me on and gets me off. I hope you’ll pay for your porn too, at least some of the time, because a future without porn (or with porn created by soulless AIs) sounds pretty fuckin’ bleak, if you ask me.

 

This post contains a sponsored link. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Sex Work is Work

Kate Sloan
Part of a display at the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago

What with increasingly puritanical laws like SESTA/FOSTA jeopardizing the livelihoods of sex workers on a daily basis, there’s a lot of discourse these past few years about the validity of sex work as a profession. I think people on both sides are arguing with (what they think are) good intentions, but one side is just flat-out wrong.

See, one of the primary arguments against sex work is that it’s inherently exploitative and bad for society because “selling your body” is somehow more evil, less virtuous, and less valid than other types of work. Critics often make the case that someone can’t freely enter into sex work and agree to “defile” their body in that way because there are inherently a lot of financial (and sometimes social) pressures that push them into that work.

The thing is, a lot of these anti-sex work bigots (or SWERFs – sex worker-exclusionary radical feminists) are either operating from a deeply religious and archaic ideological framework, or don’t even realize how much Christian values have seeped into their thinking. I know this because they hold sex to a different standard than any other activity one might be paid to do, and there’s no reason it needs to be viewed that away aside from the fundamentally Christian belief that sex is somehow simultaneously sacred and special, and taboo and dirty.

If making money using one’s body is what you have an issue with, you’d need to be equally angry with athletes, actors, dancers, personal trainers, lifeguards, models, etc. etc. in order for that position to be ideologically consistent. If you consider “taking something into your body” to be an act so sacred that no one can willingly do it for a living, you should be yelling at food critics and circus fire-eaters too. If you think “inserting part of yourself into someone else’s body” isn’t valid work, why aren’t you harassing surgeons? If touching someone for the purposes of pleasure and relaxation crosses a line for you, why aren’t you mad at masseuses, acupressure specialists, and manicurists?

Some of these examples are a bit ridiculous, sure – but that’s because the arguments they’re refuting are ridiculous too. For me, the wildest thing about anti-sex work criticism is that it points out some of capitalism’s fatal flaws, but rarely goes so far as to actually criticize capitalism – largely because many such critics are well-off, conservative-leaning people who benefit from, and advocate for, capitalism’s deepest inequalities. These people will say that no one can truly consent to a job they take due to financial pressures, that sex work is inherently bad because it’s exploitative and can be dangerous, that it’s gross that someone can pay to access someone else’s body – but all of these are problems with capitalism itself, and not with sex work in particular. If you truly believe financial pressures should be eliminated so everyone can make free choices about what they do with their time, advocate for socialism and a universal basic income. If you think no one should be subject to exploitation and danger at their job, advocate for better worker protections and higher pay. If you think having a lot of money shouldn’t give someone control over other people’s bodies, maybe take that up with Jeff Bezos, for starters.

Humans are prone to trying to come up with “logical” explanations for feelings we hold deep in our gut – and far too often it’s immoral, insulting, dishonest, and ineffective. It’s the reason bigots argue that queer and trans people are the downfall of society, when they actually just think queer and trans people are icky. It’s the reason some racists will argue that they have valid reasons for their prejudices, when actually they’re just propagating the racist values they were raised with and chose not to challenge. And it’s the reason lobbyists and lawmakers would rather make sex workers’ lives harder and more dangerous by, say, banning online sex work platforms, like the Craigslist personals section, Backpage, and escortsliaison.com on the basis of “protecting vulnerable people,” rather than admit that those people either need a different kind of help or don’t need “help” at all.

I’ve only dabbled in some forms of sex work, but even I have encountered these shaming narratives, so I know that people more entrenched in the field are struggling and suffering needlessly under the oppressive weight of discrimination. Sex work is work, and as with all other kinds of work, it can only be done safely if there are proper protections in place for workers, which in this case includes having access to websites that allow them to find and screen clients. And as with all other kinds of work, sometimes it’s freely chosen and sometimes it’s chosen out of financial necessity, and neither is more valid than the other, since we live in a capitalistic system and financial pressures are built into our daily lives by design. If your issue is the danger, take it up with the conservative lawmakers making sex work more dangerous. If your issue is financial hardship, take it up with the conservative lawmakers creating those conditions. And if your issue is just that you think sex work is icky, take it up with your therapist, and leave sex workers the hell out of it.

 

If you want to help sex workers, consider donating to sex workers’ rights organizations like SWOP Behind Bars and Red Light Legal, advocating for sex workers’ rights to your local politicians/lawmakers, and even just donating directly to individual sex workers. This post contains a sponsored link; as always, all writing and opinions are my own.