In Praise of the Humble Wand Vibe (+ Win a Lelo Smart Wand!)

Kate Sloan

Wand vibrators, though iconic, are not exactly glamorous. They’re more utilitarian than sensual; more like an open fire hydrant than a bucolic meadow mist. As queen of the sex toy reviewers Epiphora put it, “I don’t feel very sexy using a wand… I’m getting the job done. I have the ideal tool for the job, and orgasm is GOING TO HAPPEN. I see it more as an instigator of orgasm than a sensual sort of experience.”

This is partly because the best-known wand vibes are made for muscle massage, or at least purport to be. I’m sure that this sterile, clinical aesthetic is important to lots of these wands’ users, rather than a detraction: I know I love wands when I’m depressed, for example, when the thought of touching my genitals or actually being “sexy” in any way can feel gross, overly intimate. I’m also drawn to them for medical-play scenes; a doctor wielding a vibrating purple dong just doesn’t stoke the imagination like that same doctor calmly pressing a smooth blue-and-white wand against my bits.

Then there’s the contingent of people who find wands too distractingly huge – or, worse, too intimidatingly pleasurable – to incorporate into sex. While no one is obliged to participate in any sex act they’re not into, denying your partner their truest pleasure because it mildly inconveniences you is kind of a dick move.

All of these problems, however, are alleviated when you choose a wand vibe that’s sleeker, more ergonomic, and more compact than the best-known contenders. That’s the niche Lelo was trying to fill when they created the Smart Wand Large. (There’s also a medium-sized version, but it’s not as powerful/rumbly, and, well, you know me: if it’s not a jackhammer then what’s the point?) With its smooth silicone, curved handle, and elegant aesthetic, this wand is a worthy option for people who kinda turn up their nose at the sight of a clunky Hitachi, but still want their vibrations deep and powerful.

Now that your interest is piqued, I’ll fire up your imagination even more: here are some of my all-time favorite things to do with wand vibes…

  • Vibrations with a side of fingerbanging. Being fingerfucked is one of my favorite things in the world, but I only get off from it if I’m getting adequate clit stimulation at the same time. Usually I provide this myself, with fingers or a toy, but lately my partner and I have developed enough trust that I let him hold a vibe against me with one hand while the fingers of his other hand are stroking my insides. We find that wands are the best tool for this job, because – unlike something smaller and more finicky – they can be held pretty much anywhere on my vulva and feel pretty damn good.
  • Forced orgasm. Take the previous point to the next level by adding a dash of bondage, a spoonful of D/s, and perhaps a sprinkle of sensory deprivation. Some wands are so powerful, they can make you feel like you’re hurtling uncontrolled toward orgasm, making them perfect for this type of kink scene.
  • Casual vibin’. I love letting a wand vibe meander aimlessly all over my vulva while I watch porn, read erotica, fantasize, or just listen to my partner spin sexy stories for me over the phone. I can keep my wand on a low setting for a while, revving me up physically while some other stimulus revs me up mentally. As someone who takes a while to get turned on and get off, I appreciate the broad, diffused feeling a wand can provide, for its usefulness in the early stages of arousal.

And now, an exciting treat: Lelo is offering a Smart Wand Large (perhaps the prettiest wand vibe I’ve ever seen?) to one lucky reader. This giveaway is only open to entrants in the United States. It will run for 2 weeks.

Even if you don’t win, you can use the code GIRLY15 to get 15% off your order at Lelo.com until February 10th. Yay!

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Heads up: this post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own. In light of Lelo’s history, I’ve donated 40% of the fee I received for this post to the Interval House, a Toronto-based shelter for survivors of domestic violence.

Monthly Faves: Squishy Silicone & Lipsticked Loves

Kate Sloan

Whoa, I haven’t done one of these in a while! Happy new year, babes. Here’s what was thrillin’ me, sexually and otherwise, in January…

Sex toys

• SheVibe sent me the Uberrime Jellyfish (full review forthcoming) and I’m really enjoying the squishiness of the silicone, the thrillingly exaggerated head, and the lovely texture along the shaft. Between this dildo, the Uberrime Night King, and the VixSkin Bandit, I’m suddenly more into silicone toys than I’ve been in years…

• For our anniversary, my boyfriend gave me possibly the most beautiful impact toy I’ve ever owned: a bespoke mallet from Weal & Breech. It is stunning, and is also so remarkably thuddy that getting hit with it feels like getting a deep tissue massage on my ass. Ideal. (Full disclosure: I’m doing some copywriting for Weal & Breech at the moment. That doesn’t affect my fondness for their company, which long predates this current project, but I thought you should know, nonetheless!)

• Not technically a toy so much as a sex product, but: I acquired a bottle of Slippery Stuff’s silicone lube and I’m surprised by how much I love it. Normally silicone lubes aren’t my fave, but this one is thick and gel-like, making it a great choice for a wide variety of applications. Yay!

Fantasy fodder

• I’ve thought for a while that I might have a premature ejaculation kink. All those late-night porn searches for “surprise orgasm” and “he comes too quick” were hard to ignore after a while… Something really turns me on about the idea of a dude struggling not to come because the person he’s fucking is just too hot and whatever thing they’re doing to him just feels too good. My partner is remarkably good at pinging this kink, often telling me during phone sex that he’s close to coming but will hold back for me, and variations thereof. What a prince. (P.S. Did you know there’s a “premature cumshots” subreddit? You’re welcome.)

• Recently my Sir and I were showing each other old selfies from high school (would recommend; seeing your partner in an earlier, dorkier chapter of their life can be incredibly endearing) and he mentioned he would’ve wanted to date me if we knew each other back then. I don’t know if that really would have worked out – I was pretty gay in high school, and he claims to have been pretty obnoxious – but it’s fun to fantasize about and do roleplays of!

Sexcetera

• A New Year’s sex tale: I have a long-standing tradition of wearing red underwear on New Year’s Day, because I read somewhere, long ago, that this practice is supposed to bring you good luck in love and sex for the coming year. (I don’t know if I strictly believe this, but I’m a bit superstitious and “woo” and also I like tradition. Fight me.) I was in New York over New Year’s and forgot to pack red underwear, however, so my boyfriend – a gem, a saint – accompanied me to H&M to pick some out. Once we had what we were after, he asked me, “What do you wanna do now?” and I sheepishly replied, “I know I ‘should’ want to do touristy things or whatever, but I really just wanna go back to our hotel and make out with you in our bed. Sorry if that’s boring.” He said, “That’s what I want too, but I didn’t want you to think I was boring either.” Man, I love dating fellow earth signs…

• Wax play is a new fave activity for me and my partner. We both weren’t really expecting to like it that much but we really do. We’ve done two wax scenes now; both times, he strapped me down with my under-the-bed restraints, put on relaxing music, and slowly and methodically dripped hot red wax all over my body. It puts me into a different type of masochistic subspace than I’ve experienced before with anything else; probably the closest thing I can compare it to is E-stim. Gosh, I love trying new pervy shit with people I trust.

• Sextistics: this month my partner and I had in-person sex 11 times and phone sex 25 times. So… 36 sexual encounters in 31 days. Absurd, as per usual.

Femme stuff

• So I’m not really sure where to put this and this section seems as good a place as any: my partner and I did a feminization scene this month! He sat patiently while I did his makeup, and I chose an outfit for him from my wardrobe (I found it inordinately hilarious to put my daddy dom in my super-femme “daddy” tank top). Then we went out to our fave local cocktail bar and had a few drinks. It was fascinating to observe how his body language, mannerisms, and even voice changed when attired femininely! Then we went back home and I gave him a dommy handjob and we fell asleep both still wearing our eyeliner. Aww.

• Sir got me a pink Hippo Campus hoodie and it’s sooo cozy and cute. I own more Hippo Campus merch than… anyone I’ve ever heard of. Girl, stahhhhp.

Media

• My BF and I watched the entirety of Netflix’s new show You this month and we loved it. Penn Badgley is brilliant as a creepy-yet-deceptively-charming stalker, the storytelling is well-paced and compelling, and uhhh can we talk about how Peach Salinger is obviously a femme daddy? (Spoilers at that link.) I’ve started reading the book it was adapted from, and it’s great, too!

• This month I devoured the new short story collection from Kristen Roupenian (of “Cat Person” fame), You Know You Want This. As its title would indicate, one of its major themes is consent; Roupenian seems especially interested in areas where consent is ambiguous or questionable, an important topic to delve into in this #MeToo era. I’m still haunted by a lot of these stories; the weird situations and quirky characters therein keep bouncing around in my brain.

Little things

Awesome clients who know what they want. Returning to the scene of our second date. My mom somehow getting our theatre seats upgraded from row S to row E just by being charming and persistent. Carly‘s suicide intervention workshop (life-changing, honestly). Introvert-friendly spaces. Getting dolled up as a form of self-care. Making new friends at Comedy Bar. Weird conversations about consent ethics in the sex club swimming pool. Trekking through snow and ice with my beloved. Eccentric Uber drivers (“Just so you guys know, this car is only 3 months old!”). Nerding out with sex toy makers. Rooftop restaurants and raspberry brambles. The best pancakes in Toronto.

Confession: STI Testing Makes Me Anxious

Kate Sloan

It’s practically sex educators’ catchphrase: get tested!

I have indeed gotten tested, many times. I have requested panels from my GP, and sought out specialized clinics. I have kept on top of my sexual health all the years I’ve been sexually active (with the exception of the first few, when I didn’t know better). I’ve gotten tested between partners, and any time I think I may have put myself at risk.

But I would be lying if I said it was easy. Getting tested has felt hard every single time.

The thing about having an anxiety disorder is that sometimes you can’t tell the difference between real problems and imagined ones. Sometimes encountering a real problem once makes you fear that same problem coming up every time you run into that situation thereafter. Sometimes you manage to convince yourself the problem isn’t worth fearing, and then it comes up again, “proving” you were right to be scared.

That’s exactly what’s happened to me with STI testing: it’s become a locus of worry, because while testing me, doctors have erased my bisexuality, called me overzealous for getting tested more than once a year, and shamed me for being polyamorous and promiscuous (two separate identities that don’t necessarily overlap!). These things have only happened to me a few times but they’ve nonetheless made me dread getting tested.

I know I’m not alone in my medical anxieties. When I reported on an at-home HPV testing kit for Glamour in 2017, I spoke to people who’ve been unwilling or unable to get tested due to concerns around doctors’ and clinics’ slut-shaming, fat-shaming, and ableism, just to name a few. I have it easier than most, being a usually-able-bodied, white, cisgender, middle-class person living in a country that has publicly funded healthcare – and it’s still hard for me to go. That makes me worry for all the people less privileged than me who avoid getting tested for fear of how they might be treated – to say nothing of other barriers, like location and cost.

I thought about this a lot when STDCheck.com reached out to me wanting to sponsor a post and a giveaway. Crucially, you can order tests on their website and then just take a provided requisition form to the testing center of theirs that is closest to you. This presumably eliminates most or all of the “So why did you come in today?” conversation that is (for me, at least) the most intimidating part of the process. Their services are confidential, fast, and available in over 4,500 testing centers across the United States.

The internet is a huge blessing for me as an anxious person, letting me do things like scope out the layout of an unfamiliar café before I go there for the first time, or make restaurant reservations through a form so I don’t have to call and talk to a human. It might seem like these accommodations are impossible or unlikely in the medical field, but that doesn’t have to be the case, and I’m glad!

 

Here’s some exciting news: STDCheck.com is offering one reader of my site a $50 gift card you can use toward their services! You can enter below. The giveaway is only open to entrants who live in the United States, and it will run for one week. Best of luck, babes!

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Note: this post was sponsored. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Review: Steel Dragon Claw

Kate Sloan

I’ve been a sex toy reviewer for nearly seven years, and toys can still surprise me sometimes.

I asked Honour to send me their steel dragon claw, solely because… I didn’t have anything like it. It’s not that I particularly thought I would love it, or use it a lot – I just wanted to try something new. And I’m glad I did, because this toy is deceptively delightful.

My partner and I have taken to calling this toy “the weird scratchy thing,” and that about sums it up. It’s a five-fingered metal claw designed for sensation play. The talons aren’t sharp enough to break skin, but depending on how much pressure you apply, they can leave pale scratches or thin red welts. After my partner attacked my arms and thighs with the dragon claw in one particularly voracious scene, I even noticed what appeared to be bruises in the shape of scratches: long bluish-purple lines crisscrossing my skin for a day or two afterward. I am the type of kinkster who relishes finding new ways to be marked, so this thrilled me to my core.

Of course, being metal, this toy lends itself well to temperature play, if you’re into that. Being scratched by cold talons is a cool sensation, and the shaft and handle of the toy could also feel delicious on the skin if pre-cooled in cold (not too cold!) water. You could also heat the toy up for even more sensory possibilities.

This toy isn’t just good for scratching, though. The thick, rounded handle makes a pretty hefty little impact toy (so long as you can hang onto the other end comfortably enough), as does the back of the dragon’s “hand.” I can’t speak to the body-safety of this metal for internal use, but I would imagine the handle could feel good inserted vaginally or anally, if you’re into that. (I’d rather just use a dildo, though.)

I find it oddly charming that the dragon claw comes in its own elegant black case, with a foam cutout to place it in and a little clasp to close the box. I don’t know how practical this storage option is – it takes up a lot of extra room in, say, a suitcase or play bag, and this isn’t an especially delicate toy the likes of which might actually need its own case – but it’s a nice touch nonetheless. Toys that come with their own storage like this are especially good for gifting, so if a kinkster in your life is into sensation play and appreciates the unusual, the steel dragon claw could make a nice present for them. Throw in a blindfold and some under-the-bed restraints and you can give them an entire scene, ready to go.

At £23.99 (about $31 USD or $41 CAD), this claw is a not-super-expensive kinky treat that I think a lot of people would enjoy. I certainly like it more than I expected to. Whether you use it to dish out some light scratches or some serious pain, it feels lovely and looks great. I’m glad I kept an open mind and gave this one a shot.

 

Thanks to Honour for sending me this product to try! They have a ton of other kinky products and apparel you should check out.

Any Toy Can Be a “Couples’ Toy”

Kate Sloan

Psst. Come closer. Let me let you in on a secret.

There is no such thing as a “couples’ toy.”

Or rather… there is no such thing as a toy that is only for couples. On the flipside of that, there’s really no toy you can’t use in a coupled situation – even if your partner’s only involvement is coolly watching you from a chair across the room.

I think a lot of this “solo vs. couples’ toys” debate is borne from stigma. I’m largely insulated from this in my own life, since I mostly date and fuck people who already know I’m an Internet Sex Person and thus assume – reasonably and accurately so – that sex with me will involve toys. But for many people, bringing sex toys to the figurative table isn’t just unexpected – it’s actively shamed and frowned upon. I frequently hear from women who want to use a vibrator during sex but are worried about how their boyfriend will feel, men who keep their Fleshlight a secret lest their girlfriend freak out at the sight of it, and so on. It’s quite a sad state of affairs!

What I wish I could tell these people – and usually do – is this: a sex toy is just a tool. It’s not a stand-in for a human, and even if it were, it wouldn’t be a very good one! Just as you might make your partner come with your hands or your mouth or your genitals, you can also potentially make them come with a sex toy. That doesn’t make those orgasms less real, or your role in them any less legitimate. It just makes you an open-minded, considerate lover who cares about your partner’s pleasure.

And it can be so much fun! I’ve had many a partner pound me with the Njoy Pure Wand until I screamed, squirted, or both. It’s a perfect example of a fun toy to use with a partner, because it feels significantly different from anything factory-installed on human bodies (I mean, unless your dick is made of stainless steel, in which case, kudos) and it works best when used to target the G-spot with consistent precision – something I’m not always capable of, myself, when I’m in the throes, but that a focused partner can do without much trouble.

Likewise, though the Magic Wand is often considered a solo toy because it’s supposedly too intimidatingly bulky to use with a partner, it’s actually one of my favorite toys to use during sex. Its broad head is easy for a partner to press against my bits even if they don’t know the exact right spot on my clit to aim for, and because I’ve used it so often during masturbation, my body is used to responding to its specific frequencies, making it easier for me to get off with partners. I’ve done too many fabulous forced-orgasm scenes to ever believe again that wand vibes are only for solo use!

One of the most contentious toys for couples to use together is a realistic dildo – any dildo, really, but particularly ones that look like dicks. I’ve known men who were threatened by them, and women who found them upsetting, for example. While it’s obviously fine to exclude a toy from your play if you dislike it, I think a lot of people don’t realize just how much pleasure you can get from fucking your partner (or being fucked) with a silicone dick. As I said, it’s just a tool for giving penetrative pleasure, so it doesn’t make any kind of statement about your cock (or lack thereof). A cis male partner of mine used to fuck me with a strap-on dildo that was smaller than his own cock, just to mix things up from time to time. I found it amazing – and still do, frankly – that a boy in his early twenties could already be so sexually enlightened!

There are people – myself sometimes included – who actually can’t get off during partnered sex without the help of toys. This doesn’t mean they’re broken or weird; it might just be how their brain or anatomy is wired. Frankly I think it’s sad that some people would rather cling to their precarious pride than help a partner experience pleasure. While it might be an adjustment if your new sweetheart needs a vibe, butt plug, specific lube, etc. to get their rocks off, it’s really not that unusual, and I promise you will have better sex if you can learn to be supportive rather than scared!

Which toys are your favorites to use with partners?

 

This post was sponsored by the lovely folks at Betty’s Toy Box! As always, all writing and opinions are my own.