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Review: Monster Pub Doctor Whale 2

Kate Sloan

I’ve always been pretty ambivalent about doing Kegel exercises. I know they’re good for my sexual and urinary health, but so are all the orgasms I have. I know you can do them anywhere – waiting in line, riding on a bus, etc. – but that’s also true of playing Scrabble on my phone. Like other types of exercise, Kegels are a “virtuous” activity that I mostly just find boring and annoying, even though I know I ought to do ’em more often.

Enter the Monster Pub Doctor Whale 2, a toy that actually makes Kegel exercises more fun and interesting to do. Whaaaat?!

 

What is the Doctor Whale 2?

Monster Pub sent me their original version of the Doctor Whale about four years ago. It’s a C-shaped vibrator meant to stimulate your clit and G-spot simultaneously, like the We-Vibe or the Lelo Noa, but is designed to look like a cute li’l whale. The toy is connectable to the MonsterPub app (available on iOS and Android), through which you can control its vibrations and do guided Kegel workouts.

Monster Pub seems to have made a few changes to the Doctor Whale in this latest iteration. The whale’s “tail” has been widened, so it can (theoretically) hit your clit while also stimulating your labia a bit. The Bluetooth connectivity between the toy and the app seems much-improved. I’m not sure if any other changes have been made, but those two alone make a big difference.

 

What are the Kegel workouts like?

Once the toy is inside you and connected to the app – a process that happens fairly easily and quickly by holding down the vibe’s power button for 2 seconds and pairing it through the app – you can navigate to the “Health” section of the app and begin a workout.

You will then be guided through cycles of squeezing your Kegel muscles for a few seconds and relaxing for a few seconds. The “narrator” of the workout also helps you sync up your breathing to your squeezing, so the process can become meditative and grounding, like a yoga class. There’s even a short “cooldown” at the end that reminds me of the savasana many yoga practitioners end every session with. I always feel both accomplished and chilled out when I finish a Monster Pub workout, much like I do after a great yoga sesh.

Most interestingly to me, there is a pressure sensor inside the toy that conveys live feedback to the app, showing you at any given moment how tightly you’re squeezing the toy on a scale from 0 to 199. I find this highly motivating to watch during my workouts, as I try to beat my previous record. You can view patterns in your sessions to see your muscles getting stronger over time (hey Apple, you should integrate these stats into your Health app!). The app informs me that I apparently have stronger Kegel muscles than 95% of its users, which will be a great thing to brag about if I ever go to a party again.

As I’ve noted before, there’s still a substantial language barrier problem with this app; many of the functions are hard to find because of how poorly labeled everything is, and the person doing voiceover for the guided workouts (who seems to speak English fluently) nonetheless sounds awkward speaking the badly-translated script they’ve been given. I do think the app has been slightly improved in this regard since the last time I reviewed it, but Monster Pub would benefit a lot from hiring an English-speaking translator/copywriter to make sure all the text makes sense and is comprehensible to English-speaking users.

 

But is the toy… pleasurable?

The motor of the Doctor Whale 2 is decent: not quite as strong or as rumbly as I’d prefer, but certainly moreso than the majority of vibes out there. I didn’t notice any numbness, itchiness, or irritation, the likes of which I often feel from overly-buzzy vibrations on my G-spot. The Kegel workouts are interspersed with vibration, as if to reward you with pleasure in between squeezes, and it functions well for that purpose.

That said, the clitoral arm remains an issue. Because of its width, it mostly just sits on the outside of my labia, rather than being able to make full contact with my clit. I can spread my outer labia as wide as they go and tuck the toy between them, and that’s slightly better, but I still have to physically press the arm against my clit in order to feel much of anything.

I do like the social functions of the app. You can have a partner control the vibrations of your toy from afar, or you can connect with random strangers for play via what the app calls “hit-on messages,” which can be disabled if you don’t want to get flirted with by randos. You can create your own vibration patterns, or try other people’s creations (I particularly enjoyed the inventive stylings of a user named DaddysLilSlut).

Supposedly this vibrator has a warming function, but this is the 3rd Monster Pub toy I’ve tried that has boasted that feature and I’ve never once figured out how to enable it. (You can seemingly only control the toy via the app, which is, as I’ve mentioned, pretty overloaded and at times incomprehensible.)

 

Final thoughts?

I don’t think this vibe could get me off on its own – it’s not strong enough, rumbly enough, or capable of providing enough clitoral stimulation for that – but it works a treat as a Kegel exerciser. I actually get excited about doing workouts with this toy, although often I’m turned on enough by the end of a session that I need to switch to different toys to finish the job.

At $169 for the premium version of the toy (which is the version with Kegel exercise functionality), this toy is pretty pricey for what it does. You can get the standard version for $119 but I’m not sure why you would – the Kegel capability is easily the best thing about this product. But if you want/need to do Kegels more often, and you (like me) find it difficult to motivate yourself to do so, then $169 might be worth it for you. The app can even be set up to send you daily reminders to do your exercises – thoughtfully skipping your period, should you choose to track your cycle in the MonsterPub app – so it’s like having your own Kegels-focused personal trainer, keeping you in line and cheering you on.

Get the Monster Pub Doctor Whale 2 if you need help doing your Kegels and think some pleasure and guidance would do the trick. But if that’s not your situation, there are other vibes that would be better for your purposes. They may not have a medical degree like Doctor Whale, but hey, can’t win ’em all.

 

This post was sponsored, which means I was paid to write a fair and honest review of this product. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

12 Days of Girly Juice 2021: 8 Brilliant Books

Kate Sloan

At time of writing, I’ve read 44 books this year – yay! Reading has given me so much pleasure during the pandemic, with its ability to sweep me away into worlds that aren’t wracked by quick-spreading illness and quicker-spreading fascism. (Well, sometimes I do read books where those things are happening, but not typically ones set in our world.) It’s been a much-needed respite from the grind of life.

Here are 8 of the books I loved best this year. You can check out the full list of books I read in 2021 here. Would love to hear from you in the comments if you’ve read any of these, or if you have others to recommend!

 

Torrey Peters – Detransition, Baby

She decides for the ten thousandth time that heterosexual cis people, while willfully ignoring it, have staked their whole sexuality on a bet that each other’s genders are real. If only cis heterosexuals would realize that, like trans women, the activity in which they are indulging is a big self-pleasuring lie that has little to do with their actual personhood, they’d be free to indulge in a whole new flexible suite of hot ways to lie to each other.

This book absolutely exploded this year. It became a national bestseller. The New York Times and Entertainment Weekly called it one of the best books of the year. It got longlisted for the Women’s Prize (to the chagrin of transphobic bigots). And the praise is well-deserved, if you ask me.

Trans writer Torrey Peters’ debut novel is a witty, dishy tale of three people with vastly different relationships to womanhood, who ultimately discover their similarities and find some common ground. Reese is a brassy, world-hardened trans woman who desperately yearns to be a mother; Reese’s morose ex Ames was once a trans woman, but has since detransitioned for reasons that become clear later in the book; and Katrina is a no-nonsense cis woman who Ames accidentally gets pregnant, which is the catalyst that kickstarts the events of the story.

It’s a blazingly funny novel about womanhood, motherhood, the absurdity of gender, the mutability of family, and so much more. I loved it.

 

Leigh Cowart – Hurts So Good: The Science & Culture of Pain on Purpose

I have come to think of my experiences with masochism as a kind of biohacking: a way to use the electrochemistry of my body in a deliberate way for the purpose of curating a specific experience. Something about my response to pain is different, be it inborn or learned (or both, I suspect). It’s something that allows me to craft a little pocket of joy for myself, an engineered release, be it through running a few miles uphill, getting a tattoo, or getting slapped in the face for fun until I cry.

I’ve read a fair number of books that explore sadomasochism through various sexual and romantic lenses, but Hurts So Good is a different kind of book. It investigates a much broader range of masochisms, from kinksters getting whipped in dungeons, to ultramarathon runners exhausting their bodies for the fun of it, to competitive hot pepper eaters scorching their mouths to get an endorphin rush. This is a book about “pain on purpose,” in all the various ways humans seek it out.

I’ve been more and more interested in reading about pain since it became an everyday part of my life due to fibromyalgia, and there’s a fair bit of nerdy pain science in here that scratched that itch for me. But it’s also so much deeper than just brain imaging and neurotransmitters: Cowart examines the psychological, social, and even spiritual reasons that humans have pursued pain through the ages. It’s a fascinating read, whether sadomasochism is a part of your sex life or just a topic you find intriguing.

 

Hanne Blank – Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality

Historically, what heterosexuality “is” has been a synonym for “sexually normal.” Early in the history of the term, it was even used interchangeably with the term “normal-sexual.” And there, as they say, is the rub. “Normal” is not a mode of eternal truth; it’s a way to describe commonness and conformity with expectations. But what is most common and expected, in terms of our sexual lives or any other aspect of the human condition, does not always remain the same. Sexual expectations and behaviors, like all other social expectations and behaviors, change over time.

It’s always good to re-examine the things you think you know, to figure out whether they are actually true. More often than not, you’ll realize you’ve gotten it at least partially wrong all along.

Astute scholar Hanne Blank examines heterosexuality that way in her excellent book Straight. Our current society takes for granted that straightness has always existed, because it is the natural order of the species and a procreative imperative, blah blah blah – but has straightness always existed? Blank argues, quite convincingly, that it is a relatively new construct we created for ourselves, and that sexuality is now and has always been much more fluid and vague than the strict category of “heterosexual” would lead us to believe.

If you’re scoffing as you read this (“How could that possibly be true?! Straightness is real! Science says so!”) then I think you are the type of person who mosts needs to read this book. It is my view that some of our most significant growth as humans happens when we’re able to soften our rigidities, blur the boundaries we’ve drawn, and apply a lens of nuance to the world – and this book is a challenge to do exactly that.

 

Kai Cheng Thom – Fierce Femmes & Notorious Liars

I wanted to protect you, but I’m starting to think that the best thing you can do for people is teach them how to protect themselves. Every girl needs to be at least a little dangerous.

Kai Cheng Thom is a transcendently brilliant writer, whose work I first read in her advice column for Xtra. This book is a bit of a departure from her typical style: it’s a surrealist novel and a “biomythography” of Thom’s life, meaning that it draws elements from her own life story but is vastly more magical and absurd.

It’s the tale of a young trans girl coming out, moving across the country, finding community, and fighting back against the transphobic powers that be. It has a lot to say about how we grow and change as people, the transformative power of good friendships, and the beauty of stepping into your true self.

 

Allison Moon – Getting It: A Guide to Hot, Healthy Hookups & Shame-Free Sex

What makes casual sex casual? What makes sex sex? It’s a fraught subject, raising issues of morality, pleasure, risk, trauma, and choice. My job is not to convince you one way or another, but rather to give you good information to use to make up your own mind. I promise I won’t shame you for your choices, and I hope you don’t shame other people for theirs.

Gift this book to any young person you know who is interested in, or is pursuing, casual sex for the first time. Gift it to your recently divorced friend who hasn’t dated since the pre-Tinder era. Gift it to anyone whose relationship to casual sex seems tricky, confused, or painful. I really think it’ll help.

Everything that sex educator Allison Moon writes is delightful, but this book is really indispensable. It’s a guide to just about everything you need to know to have satisfying and healthy casual sex, from figuring out what you want, to finding dates, to setting boundaries, to navigating consent, to dealing with tricky feelings that come up. It’s a blueprint for the best sex of your life, whether casual or not.

I deeply wish I’d had this book when I was 22; I could have spared myself a lot of bad sex and broken hearts. But at least it’s out in the world now, and can help a whole new generation of sex-positive cuties.

 

Casey McQuiston – One Last Stop

The first time August met Jane, she fell in love with her for a few minutes, and then stepped off the train. That’s the way it happens on the subway—you lock eyes with someone, you imagine a life from one stop to the next, and you go back to your day as if the person you loved in between doesn’t exist anywhere but on that train. As if they never could be anywhere else.

Wanna read a quirky butch/femme romance novel that takes place primarily on a subway train, weaves in true queer history, features time travel as a prominent plot point, depicts rich and realistic queer friendships, and contains countless LOL-worthy jokes? This is the one.

I got somewhat obsessed with Casey McQuiston’s writing this year, devouring this novel and their other one, and starting to read an advance copy of their next one (being a member of the press has its perks sometimes!). Their work is sharp, full of heart, and shot through with a deep reverence for queerness and queer communities. I laughed and cried my way through this novel and almost wish I could erase it from my memory just so I could experience it for the first time again. It’s a beautiful love story for the ages.

 

Aubrey Gordon – What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat

I describe mine as work for fat justice. Body positivity has shown me that our work for liberation must explicitly name fatness as its battleground—because when we don’t, each of us are likely to fall back on our deep-seated, faulty cultural beliefs about fatness and fat people, claiming to stand for “all bodies” while we implicitly and explicitly exclude the fattest among us. I yearn for more than neutrality, acceptance, and tolerance—all of which strike me as meek pleas to simply stop harming us, rather than asking for help in healing that harm or requesting that each of us unearth and examine our existing biases against fat people.

As a massive fan of Aubrey Gordon’s podcast with Michael Hobbes, Maintenance Phase, I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to reading her book, but I’m very glad I finally did. It’s a thorough skewering of our society’s rampant anti-fat bias and all the various ways it manifests. It’s compelling and impeccably well-researched, and it should be a required text for anyone studying to become a doctor, therapist, social worker, or policymaker.

Fatphobia and diet culture are horrendously potent forces in our world right now, affecting how fat people are treated on both macro and micro levels every day. What this book points out, using evidence collected from a staggering amount of different reputable sources, is that anti-fat bias is largely predicated on the false notion that significant, sustained weight loss is possible for the majority of people. In reality, being fat isn’t all that different from being tall, in terms of how genetics create that condition and what can be done about it – but the discrimination and harassment fat people face is obviously far worse. If you’ve ever fat-shamed anyone for any reason, you should read this. If you’ve ever stayed silent while someone else was being fat-shamed in your presence, you should read this. If you’re feeling resistant to reading this because you disagree with its argument, you should read this.

It’s 2021. There’s no excuse whatsoever for being a bigot anymore, and that includes being a fatphobic bigot.

 

Jeremy O. Harris – Slave Play

For almost a decade I’ve given myself over to someone who doesn’t dignify me who acts like he’s the prize and I’m the lucky recipient. No motherfucker I’m the prize. Always have been, always will be. Somehow I forgot that. Or I never knew that. How could I? Got so wrapped in you so wrapped up in your presentation. That I forgot myself because when someone presents themselves as a prize you receive them as one.

I was lucky enough to see this play twice on Broadway, and also decided to read the script so I could absorb the words more deeply. It is a truly unique piece of theatre.

At the centre of this story is “race play,” an edgy and controversial kink in which racial differences and/or tropes are eroticized. I first learned about this style of play from Mollena Williams-Haas, a submissive Black woman who identifies as a slave in her D/s dynamic with her partner. (She has a new podcast, by the way – it’s amazing.)

Accomplished playwright Jeremy O. Harris (who also produced the terrific virtual theatre put on by Fake Friends during the pandemic) has weaved a story wherein race play becomes an element of a radical new therapy, aimed at helping the Black partners in interracial relationships experience more comfort, pleasure, and safety with their non-Black partners. It’s a raw exploration of race, class, kink, consent, privilege, power, and so much more. In my mind, the primary message of this play is that self-awareness, and awareness of one’s ancestral history, is crucial if we are to move through the world in ethical and progressive ways. This is a deliberately challenging play – the stage directions on the opening pages counsel the director and performers to avoid any attempt to make the audience feel more comfortable with what they are seeing – and it feels very needed at this time in history. I very much look forward to seeing whatever Jeremy O. Harris does next.

I Designed an Accessible A-Spot Dildo, & It’s Available Now!

Kate Sloan
Photo via the Pleasure Tailor

I’ve been reviewing sex toys for nearly a decade, but with the exception of a surprise dildo-making party at an Oregon glassblowing shop, I’ve never made my own sex toy.

So you can understand why I practically jumped out of my chair with glee when the folks at the Pleasure Tailor emailed me to ask if I’d like to collaborate with them on a sex toy design. And I’m glad to say that the final product, the Easy A, is available for purchase now. But let me back up and tell you the story of how it came to be!

 

The person who emailed me, West, explained that his company was trying to “amplify underrepresented voices by enabling experts from various communities to design their own sex toys.” I knew immediately that I wanted to design a toy that would serve my needs as a person who lives with chronic pain and muscle strength issues due to fibromyalgia. I also knew I wanted it to be a dildo that targets the A-spot. (That’s the erogenous zone deep inside the vagina on the front wall, and the one that has been my #1 favorite internal erogenous zone for many years, for those who don’t know.)

Accessible toys and A-spot toys have some commonalities: there’s not very many of either, for one thing, but on the plus side, more are starting to pop up here and there. For example, the company Bump’n recently launched the Joystick, a product designed by and for disabled folks that allows hands-free usage of toys like vibrators, dildos, and strokers. On the A-spot side of things, companies like Uberrime and Tantus have multiple toys in their lineup now that can reach that spot with relative ease.

What I haven’t seen, however, is a toy that is both A-spot-targeted and accessible for people who have limitations like mine. So when West emailed me to ask what I’d like to design, I started making some sketches. I’m not much of a visual artist, but they gave us a good starting point.

Initially, I wanted to make a toy that had angled finger holes in the base, like the NobEssence Fling, while also boasting an A-spot-friendly curve at the tip, like the Tantus Tsunami. I had found finger holes to be a useful innovation during pain flare-ups when my hands could barely stroke my clit without pain, let alone pound a dildo in and out of me at the intensity I prefer. They allowed me to maintain control over the toy without having to grip/squeeze it in my hand. But I’d only ever seen them in toys aimed at the G-spot, so I hadn’t been able to harness their helpfulness in pursuit of A-spot stimulation.

West and I went back and forth via email for a while; he showed me designs, I made suggestions, he made adjustments, I tried a prototype, I sent more feedback, he made more adjustments.

Eventually, he said he wasn’t sure finger holes were the right choice after all, since they were difficult to make out of silicone in a cost-effective way, and would also limit the user in terms of what position their wrist could be in. If, for example, you like to lift one leg and loop your arm around it to grab your dildo, the finger holes would be at the wrong angle to do that.

But the Pleasure Tailor team had come up with a solution. They created a two-tiered base meant to be held between your fingers. This way, you can push and pull the dildo in and out with a fairly light touch and it’ll still move as responsively as it would if you were gripping it more firmly. This design still had the intended effect of increased accessibility, but was easier to manufacture and also easier to use from a variety of different angles. Have I mentioned that the folks at the Pleasure Tailor are geniuses?!?

Image via the Pleasure Tailor

Let’s talk about how this thing targets the A-spot, though… because, hoooo boy, it sure does. The Easy A is made of triple-density silicone, meaning that it has a firm silicone core that gives it its shape, covered by two layers of progressively squishier silicone. This is important because the A-spot is nestled in front of the hyper-sensitive cervix, so you don’t want to ram it with something super hard right off the bat – but once the toy is actually pressed against your A-spot, you may want (or at least, I certainly want) firm pressure. The Easy A is squishy enough to feel comfortable, but firm enough to actually do what it sets out to do: stroke the fuck out of your A-spot.

I have found this toy very effective for that purpose. Like all toys used for deep penetration, this one requires some amount of warm-up – but once I’m relaxed, turned on, and have inserted the toy all the way, it finds my spot with practically zero effort on my part. And when I locate it, I can hit it over and over again with a simple flick of my wrist or bend of my fingers.

One of my favorite features of the Easy A is a small raised marking on the base which aligns with the upward curve of the toy. This makes it so that the toy will never rotate around inside you without you knowing or noticing – you can always look down to check whether the marking is centered, and recenter it if necessary so that the toy will keep hitting your spot as intended.

Image via the Pleasure Tailor

Some other random features of this toy that I think are cool:

  • Presumably, if you were to rotate it 180°, you could use it to stroke the posterior fornix instead of the anterior fornix. I’m not a posterior fornix aficionado so I can’t 100% confirm whether it works well for that purpose, but I’d be interested to hear from someone who is, if they try this toy!
  • It doesn’t look like it would be harness-compatible, because the two-tiered base looks like it would make the dildo flop around too much in a harness, but actually, the core of the dildo is so firm that it works surprisingly well in a strap-on. So you can use it for easier masturbation or you can have a partner strap it on if they want to hit your deep spot too.
  • It’s fucking bright blue!! Just looking at it makes me happy!

You can buy the Easy A right now for $125.00. But fascinatingly, the Pleasure Tailor also offers the ability to customize this toy to your own specifications. If, for example, you like the basic idea of it but would prefer it in a different color, size, firmness, or finish, you can let them know and they’ll make it just the way you want it. How cool is that?!

If you try the toy I designed, I hope you love it! I’m certainly going to treasure mine forever 🥰

The Best Sex Gifts to Buy This Black Friday

Kate Sloan

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably scrambling to find holiday gifts for your loved ones right about now. “How is it the end of November already?!” you’re screeching. “I’m not ready!!”

Well, good news: I’ve assembled some of my favorite gift-worthy sex products into one post, so you can make informed decisions and support rad sex shops while also getting great gifts for people you adore. It’s a win-win-win!

 

For cunnilingus aficionados

I’m talking here about people who love receiving cunnilingus… People who love giving cunnilingus might want a sex doll instead! (I’m only half-joking…)

“Pressure-wave” toys use rhythmic bursts of air to create “touchless” stimulation of the clitoris that can feel quite a bit like oral sex for some people. For Cyber Week, my pals at Peepshow Toys are offering two of the most popular pressure-wave toys at uncommonly low prices. The Satisfyer Curvy 3+ is an elegant and discreet toy that normally goes for $60 but is on sale currently for just $29 (no code needed); it’s remotely controllable via Satisfyer’s smartphone app, and also optionally combines vibration with its pressure waves.

If you want something similar but without all the bells and whistles, the Satisfyer Pro 2 is a classic. It’s waterproof, too, making it an ideal bathtime companion. You can grab it for just $30 this week (no code needed).

 

For adventurous fans of penile pleasure

Vibrators for penises were super uncommon just a few years ago, but the industry is finally starting to provide supply for that particular demand. The Hot Octopuss Pulse Solo is consistently one of the best-reviewed dick vibes on the market. This week, you can grab it at Peepshow for just $120 (no code needed), and they’ll even throw in a bottle of lube.

My other favorite penis vibe, the Fun Factory Manta, is on sale this week too. It’s a flexible silicone vibrator that combines well with handjobs and blowjobs or can be used on its own for focused frenulum pleasure. Normally $140, you can use the coupon code “BEACH” to get 20% off your order, bringing the price down to just $112.

 

For strap-on enthusiasts

My all-time favorite harness for strap-on play, the Aslan Leather Jaguar, is delightfully discounted right now! I love its classically kinky aesthetic, and the amount of control you get with it when the straps are properly tightened and adjusted. Use the code “BEACH” to get 10% off this handmade stunner, bringing its price down to just $86 (a pretty unheard-of price for this particular harness).

The Vixen Creations Mustang is a comfortably squishy realistic dildo that I’d heartily recommend to any strap-on beginner, so long as its size works for their partner(s). It’s usually $106, but right now you can use the code “BEACH” to grab it for only $90. Score!

 

For A-spot explorers

Fans of deep penetration ought to appreciate the lengthy (not to mention beautiful) Uberrime Night King. It’s one of my favorite dildos for hitting one of my favorite spots, and right now it’s going for just $102 with the code “BEACH.”

I’d also be remiss not to mention the formidable Njoy Eleven, which hits my A-spot so well and so hard that orgasms with it frequently make me cry. If you’ve been holding out for a good deal on one, this might be the time: it normally costs a cool $400 but right now you can use the code “BEACH” to get it for $300 instead.

 

For people who love having their balls played with

As you might recall, I’m a big fan of the Balldo, an innovative product that basically turns your balls into a dildo, with which you can fuck your partner. (Read my review here.) If you choose to buy this for someone, it’s nearly guaranteed they won’t have heard of it, and you might just blow their mind – especially if they end up having a “ballgasm”! Give it to someone who adores ball stimulation and/or someone who always likes to try whatever weird new thing everyone is talking about!

For someone who’s curious about the potential pleasures of vibration on their balls – or the surrounding area, including the perineum – I’d recommend the Dame Pom. It has a powerful motor and a comfortable shape for nestling into the palm of your hand and cupping against those sensitive bits during masturbation, a blowjob, a handjob, or even PIV (if your arms are flexible enough!).

 

For kinky fuckers

One of the easiest ways to start incorporating bondage into your sex life is to get yourself a Sportsheets Under-the-Bed Restraints set. All you have to do is slide its straps under your mattress, attach the included wrist and ankle cuffs, and you’re good to go! This version of the set also comes with a blindfold for added excitement. You can get the whole shebang for just $68 with the code “BEACH.”

Sadomasochists may want to pick up a Kinklab Neon Wand electrosex kit this holiday season. Electrostimulation is a truly unique type of pain, and this kit comes with several different attachments so you can try out a variety of sensations. Normally $146, you can get the whole set for $117 with the code “BEACH.”

If someone in your life is kink-curious but not sure where to start, you could give them a copy of my book, 101 Kinky Things Even You Can Do! It’s a fantastic jumping-off point for people whose sexual tastes veer onto the road less traveled.

Review: Lelo Enigma

Kate Sloan

I never know what to expect when a new Lelo toy launches.

Will it be a cissexist and elitist nightmare, like the Pino, their “cock ring for bankers”? Will it be a baffling controversy, like their decision to hire a known domestic abuser as the spokesman for their infamously structurally unsound condoms? Will it injure people’s clits, like their Sona? Or will it be good?

Lelo toys really are a crapshoot these days. For every new one that I like, there tends to be at least one new release that I’m… substantially less fond of. So you can see why I was intrigued by, but simultaneously wary of, their new dual-stimulation toy, the Enigma. My friends at Mindful were kind enough to send me one, and I put it to the test.

 

The Enigma is one of Lelo’s most visually appealing toys in years. It doesn’t look like a Super Mario character or something from Christian Grey’s nightstand; it comes in black or a deep shade of rose, and both colorways have a panel of iridescent pink/purple plating that lends the toy a nifty space-age aesthetic.

The Enigma is Lelo’s attempt at a category of toy that seems popular these days: pressure-wave stimulation focused on the clit, paired with an internal arm that vibrates against the G-spot. This combination is purported to help create blended orgasms through stimulation of the entire clitoris, internal and external. I’m a big fan of holistic clit stim (as opposed to stimulation that focuses only on the tip or visible portion of the clit), so I was curious how well this toy would work for me.

As with many dual-stimulation toys, you can’t easily use the Enigma’s two parts separately. If, for example, you wanted to warm yourself up with clitoral stimulation before inserting the G-spot portion of the toy, you could tuck the vibrating part between your legs to get it out of the way while the toy’s “mouth” attended to your clit, but in that position the vibrating arm starts to stray into butt territory, which you may or may not want. I found I was able to flip the toy around the other way, so that the vibrating arm presses into my external G-spot, which feels nice while I’m getting myself turned on – but if you’re looking for a toy that can be either a clit stimulator or a G-spot vibrator, you’ll have to look elsewhere, because this one is unavoidably both at once.

Part of the annoyance in trying to use the toy’s functions separately is that they can’t be controlled separately. When the toy is on, both of its functions are on; when you turn up the intensity on one, you’re turning it up on the other simultaneously. I’m not a fan of dual-stim toys that work this way, because I often find myself wanting (for example) gentle clit stimulation coupled with more intense G-spot vibration, or I may at times prefer patterns on my G-spot and steady sensation on my clit.

It’s annoying that a toy retailing for $189 doesn’t have the fairly common feature of allowing each of its functions to be controlled independently. Part of me wonders if this choice was actually made in order to keep the cost down – Lelo’s other dual-stimulation toys retail for as much as $249 – but, frankly, other sex toy companies have been able to implement this feature at lower price points, so I don’t think that’s much of an excuse. (The We-Vibe Nova 2 costs $149. I’ve seen vibes as cheap as $40 that had this feature.)

 

But aside from that main gripe, I don’t have many bad things to say about the Enigma. Using it for the first time, I immediately noticed that it seemed better-designed than many other Lelo toys in terms of how it fits human anatomy (mine, anyway). The flexible neck allows for a greater variability of distance between a user’s clit and vaginal opening, and the G-spot arm is curved such that it finds my spot with hardly any finagling.

The “mouth” on the clitoral portion isn’t as generously-sized as that of my favorite Lelo pressure-wave toy, the Sila, but it’s still large enough that I didn’t feel like it was over-focusing on the sensitive tip of my clit like these types of toys often do. I wish its “lips” were more rounded-off or flat, though, rather than having an abrupt edge that sometimes feels slightly uncomfortable against my delicate clit.

For me, the Enigma delivered the blended orgasms it promised. It’s powerful and rumbly enough that I never wondered if I’d be able to achieve orgasm with it; I knew from the start that I would, which is rare for me when testing new toys. Once it’s anchored in place against my clit and G-spot, the Enigma stays put pretty well even when used hands-free; I can get off with it easily with some well-timed pelvic clenches and some potent sexual fantasies or porn to excite my mind.

The toy has various patterns, and you can control the intensity of each pattern. I’m normally not much of a patterns fan but these ones are acceptable – there’s not much space in between the pulses and waves, so they actually build my arousal rather than stopping it cold. Patterned vibrations on my G-spot also create the sensation of movement, making the Enigma’s relatively small G-spot arm feel ever-so-slightly more like a cock is fucking me.

My orgasms with this toy are similar to the ones I experience with most pressure-wave toys – sometimes almost painfully intense, but sometimes more in the neighborhood of “wait, was that an orgasm?” However, the addition of G-spot vibration makes the latter type less frequent for me. Orgasms with this toy are satisfying, but the sensation is quite odd if you’re not used to it (and even sometimes if you are). This is why I tend to recommend people try a cheaper a pressure-wave toy, like the Satisfyer Pro 2, before deciding if they want a fancier one.

 

The Lelo Enigma is waterproof and well-constructed. Its control panel is easy to understand, except that it sometimes takes more than one press of a button to get it to actually do anything (a common problem with Lelo toys). It’s a gorgeous, high-quality toy that mostly lives up to its high price point – except for not being able to control the components separately from one another.

If you’re looking for a dual-stim toy that combines pressure waves with G-spot vibration, I think it’s hard to go past the Enigma. I’ve tried several toys in this category over the past year or two and this is definitely the nicest, rumbliest, and most pleasurable one I’ve tried. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work for you, because pressure-wave toys are odd and dual-stimulation toys are notoriously anatomy-dependent – but I think it’s relatively unparalleled in its category.

I don’t know what mystery the Enigma’s name refers to, but it’s solved at least one: the mystery of why Lelo is still such a popular sex toy brand, despite all their various missteps. Quite simply, they make good toys… occasionally.

 

Thanks to my friends at Mindful for sending me this product to try! This post was sponsored, meaning that I was paid to write a fair and honest review of this product. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.