Sex Toys For Weirdly Specific Demographics

Kate Sloan

Lelo is launching a sex toy for bankers. (I know. I don’t get it either.) When I received the press release, I started thinking… what if other seemingly random demographics also had their own specially-tailored sex toys?

For musicians: A vibrator where each setting creates a sound at a specific pitch. You can use it to help you tune your instrument when you don’t have access to a tuning fork or a digital tuner. You can quiz your lover who claims to have perfect pitch, while distracting them with pleasure. You can even play little songs. There could be vibration patterns that play recognizable tunes, like Old MacDonald Had a Farm and Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star.

For sex bloggers: A vibrator with a built-in voice recorder so you can narrate your experience aloud as you masturbate, to refer back to later when you’re drafting your blog post. “It feels like a tiny jackhammer… The buttons are hard to push… Man, this is taking forever to get me off!”

For people concerned with protecting themselves: A weighty dildo that can double as a weapon in dire times. (Oh, wait, the Njoy Eleven already has that on lockdown.)

For people who get frequent UTIs: A vibrator that can tell if you use it for penetration, and if you do, once you’re done, it loudly yells at you to go and pee and doesn’t stop until you’ve peed. (I don’t know how it would be able to tell, but I’m sure there’s a mechanical engineer out there who could figure this out.)

For procrastinators: A vibrator that will only turn on when you’ve successfully cleared your inbox/submitted your essay/cleaned your room/whatever.

For masochists: A vibrator with two dials: one that controls the vibration strength, and one that controls the speed or intensity of the little mechanical arms that scratch your thighs, dig into your skin or spank your ass. (I am picturing this toy and it looks like a mechanical spider to me. I’m freaked out and intrigued.)

For sadists: A Fleshlight-esque masturbator that makes humanoid noises of varying degrees of desperation and pain, depending on how hard and fast you thrust into it.

For camgirls: A dildo or vibrator fitted with two small cameras – a lighted one that can see inside you as you use the toy on yourself, and one that extends from the base for a wider shot of the action – that wirelessly connect to your computer to livestream your activities.

For balloon fetishists: A dildo that responds to kegel clenching by making progressively louder balloon-popping sounds… which turn you on even more… which leads to more clenching… It’s a delicious cycle.

What would a sex toy specifically for your demographic be like?

Are Orgasms Better When You’re High?

Kate Sloan

I’ve smoked pot maybe five times in my life, and ingested it once in an edible form. So I’m not exactly a pothead.

But I have a lot of friends who are, and recently a friend gifted me a little baggie of weed. I’d never actually possessed my own before; I’d always bummed it off friends at parties. Naturally, being a total geek, I started researching and planning what I could do with my little stash: how best to use it, as well as, of course, what I could write about the experience of using it.

When I was in high school, I dated a girl who smoked pot multiple times a day, every day (which was only one of multiple reasons why that relationship didn’t work out). I abhorred the idea of smoking with her, being relatively straight-edge at that time, but she kept telling me she thought I would like it, for two reasons: it stimulates creativity, and it makes sexual stimulation feel way better.

I wasn’t sure whether to believe her, but that seed of an idea lingered in my mind: if I ever did get high, I thought, I’d have to remember to get off, too, and compare and contrast. But the first several times I smoked up, I felt too tripped-out and lethargic to even fathom pushing my panties down, let alone getting myself to the point of orgasm.

After a bit more practice and acclimatization, though, I finally managed it. Here’s what went down.

I smoked for about ten or fifteen minutes, I think (time assessment is hard when you’re intoxicated!), making sure to hold in each breath for as long as I comfortably could before exhaling, to maximize the effects. Then I put away my pipe, got into bed and waited until that telltale haziness hit me a few minutes later.

As soon as I could tell I was high, I started masturbating, using the same circular motion with my fingers that I always use when I’m not using toys. But the circles were different this time. It was like my fingers were stirring up a whirlpool that got bigger and bigger until it surrounded me, and I became dizzy as I spun around. I could feel my body actually lurching side to side as if I were really stuck in a vortex, but I was just lying in bed. And still touching my clit.

At some point my cat came into the room, hoisted herself up onto the bed, crawled under the covers, and nestled between my thighs, pressed up against my crumpled, half-lowered pajama pants. Normally I’m not bothered by a feline presence while I jerk off because it’s so commonplace and unavoidable, but while high, my senses were heightened and I could vividly feel the cat’s breath against my vulva. It felt creepily like a lover’s breath, like that moment when someone is about to start giving you head. I felt freaked out and uncomfortable and kept trying to push the cat away but she came back again and again. It did not occur to me to get up and forcibly remove her from the room. Eventually, after multiple attempts to push her away, she settled down a few inches from my thighs and stopped causing me distress.

As I continued trying to masturbate manually, I found that my fingers felt wooden and robotic, not sensual at all. So I leaned over the side of the bed and felt around on the floor for my Eroscillator (the cat had knocked it off the nightstand while climbing up onto the bed). I found it, turned it to the first setting and put it on my clit.

Nothing felt particularly mindblowing but I was certainly seeing things I don’t usually see when I jerk off. Every motion I made and every individual pulse of the vibrator seemed to set off or continue some strange, psychedelic visualization in my mind. I’d see a crew of men paddling a long boat, or someone doing a cannonball into a deep well, or several unidentified people climbing a mountain. My internal visualization of the vibration was at once a jackhammer, a waterfall, and the bathtub where I learned to masturbate as a child. There were bright colors, swirling patterns, streaks of light and smog.

I turned up the vibrator to its second speed because I felt a bit numb on the first one. Then I started getting closer to orgasm, and the imagery ramped up even further. A lot of it was water-based: waves, splashes, streams, fountains.

My mind began to wander to unhelpful thoughts (including “I need to remember what this feels like so I can blog about it!”) so I started trying to refocus it by envisioning sexual fantasies. One particular crush came to mind and I thought about him going down on me, fucking me, pinning me down. Then my mind wandered to sex offenders and other scary people doing the same stuff. I shook it off and thought about my crush again, and managed to stick with that thought until finally I reached orgasm.

Again, the weirdness and excellence of it was unrelated to sensation – for the feelings themselves were not really remarkable – and instead all about the visuals. At the moment of my orgasm, I saw my clit as a huge, Northern mountain; someone had scaled the peak and was now standing at the top. The aftershocks of the orgasm showed me coniferous trees, softly avalanching snowbanks, and cold crisp air, and I genuinely felt that I was on that mountain for a few moments.

After the orgasm finished, I was unable to pull up my pants, as they felt endlessly far from my hands. I turned on my side, the cat nestled up against my back, and I lay there in the darkness, feeling more awake and alert than I had thought I would.

For the next hour or so, I felt out of touch with my body. Parts of it would start to twitch uncontrollably – fingers, feet, thigh muscles, shoulders – and the twitching would rise and fall in fits and starts. At one point I started doing kegel exercises in rhythm and a whole symphony of music grew up around that rhythm, until I felt like I was kegeling in time with a song from some nearby radio.

When the twitching and other motor weirdness stopped, I wanted to eat and be entertained, so I went downstairs, gorged on some Halloween candy, and then eased the accompanying nausea with a ginger ale while watching Gossip Girl. When I felt sane enough, I came back upstairs and wrote this.

So… It wasn’t really better. It was definitely an odd experience, but not one that I’ll rush to repeat.

What about you? Are your orgasms better when you’re high?

Hormonal Birth Control Made Me Crazy

Kate Sloan

I went off birth control when my relationship ended two months ago, after being on it for over three years. In the weeks that followed, school started up again, I did some freelance work, socialized with friends and family, and basically just went about my life as usual – with one key difference: for the first time in three years, I felt 100% happy, well-adjusted, and sane.

When I started flooding my system with artificial hormones in April 2011, I was about to go through some major life changes: starting school, getting into my first sexual relationship with a cis dude, enduring the deaths and mourning of a few people I loved, and falling out of touch with some of my high school friends. So when I started to feel sad, antsy, isolated and irrational, I thought it was just the circumstances of my life transforming me into a different person. I thought, I guess this is my personality now. I wasn’t thrilled about it but I didn’t think it was fixable.

I’d have bad anxiety days, when I’d show up at school and have the unsinkable sensation that everyone around me was staring at me and whispering about me. I’d have bouts of depression so bad that I had to call my city’s distress centre and sob at them over the phone, or lie in bed all day staring at the wall. I’d get irrationally upset at things my boyfriend said or did. I’d look at my body in the mirror and absolutely hate what I saw. My creative output all but stopped and I knew I needed to write and make music but it just didn’t happen, no matter how much I tried.

In short, I had turned into a nutcase. I could see that it had happened, but, again, I thought it was just the new state of my life and that I couldn’t do anything to change it.

Since going off birth control, I’ve felt sunny, excitable, flirty, creative, juiced up, carefree, and ambitious. I’m taking six very challenging courses with heavy workloads at school but I’m breezing through them with excellent grades and not giving a fuck what my classmates think of me. I wake up every day excited to put on a cute outfit, skip to the streetcar stop and go on a new day’s adventure. And my creative output is up up up.

As happy as I feel… I also feel kind of angry. Angry that I had no idea how much birth control was messing me up. Angry that the side effects of birth control are so often misrepresented or downplayed when they can actually literally transform your life. Angry that my doctor told me I should continue with hormones when I asked her to give me a copper IUD instead. Angry that I lost three years of my life to lunacy and turmoil.

Sure, there are some downsides of going off BC – my skin is a tad spottier, my periods will be unpredictable when they start back up, my sex drive is once again high to the point of almost being unmanageable, and my weight loss has slowed right down – but I think mental health is way more important than any of those things. I’ll happily be a zitty, chubby, horndog version of myself if it means I get to be outgoing, cheerful, productive and creative. That trade-off is a no-brainer.

I’ve spoken to a few friends who have corroborated my experiences, and now I’m wondering: did this happen to you? Do you know people who’ve gone through this too? Do you consider your mental health when you make contraceptive decisions? Are you as pissed off as I am that you didn’t know about this sooner?

A Jian Ghomeshi Reading List

Kate Sloan

Trigger warning: this post and the links therein contain descriptions of physical and sexual abuse, as well as consensual BDSM in some cases. If any of that stuff bothers you, you should take care of yourself as best you can and feel free to skip this post.

If you live in Canada and/or follow the news, you’re probably aware that a HUGE scandal broke here this week. Media personality Jian Ghomeshi has been accused of physically abusing multiple women behind closed doors.

Normally this isn’t the sort of thing I’d write about here, but I am, for two reasons: a) the story has become unfairly entangled with consensual BDSM and I’d like to help reverse that however I can, and b) if I’m honest, this story has affected me profoundly on an emotional level, even more than these violence-against-women stories usually do. Maybe it’s because it happened in my own city, or because I’d seen so much of Jian and he always seemed like such a normal guy. Maybe it’s because the good, upstanding in folks in my sex-positive, kinky communities are getting conflated with abusers in the wake of this mess. Or maybe it’s just because violence is always a horrible, difficult thing to encounter, no matter how indirectly.

In any case, for those of you who haven’t been following the story, or who have but are interested in knowing more, I’ve compiled this reading list. It contains links and articles I think are important to understanding the full scope of what’s gone on. Feel free to pick through it, read what interests you and skip the rest. And if you start to find any of it difficult to read, don’t feel you have to slog through it. You do what you have to do to take care of you, okay?

• First off: if you need some context for who Jian is and what he does (professionally, not criminally), you can take a look at his Wikipedia page or his website. Basically, he’s a widely-known, widely-broadcasted radio and TV personality who hosted/co-founded a show called Q, which focused on arts, especially music.

• One of the things Ghomeshi is most known for is this interview with Billy Bob Thornton. It was applauded at the time because Thornton acted totally unreasonably and Ghomeshi kept calm and dealt with it well. We even watched this clip in one of my journalism classes last year as an example of good interviewing skills.

• One of the first pieces of evidence to surface about Ghomeshi’s abusive habits was this article by xoJane contributor Carla Ciccone. It doesn’t allege any violence, just creepy non-consensual touching and stalker-ish behaviors. Ciccone never outright identified who she was writing about, but many details led people to believe it was Jian, including the references to his book and band, the brand colors of his show, and – yes – his quiet reputation as a creep. Plus there’s this tweet, in which he says exactly what he says to Carla in the article.

• On Friday, it was announced that Ghomeshi would take time off to deal with “personal issues”. He had recently lost his father, so some people in my community speculated that perhaps he was depressed from that grief, though we were surprised it could be so bad that he’d need time off.

• Then on Sunday, the CBC changed their tune and said that Ghomeshi wasn’t actually taking time off for personal issues but actually had been fired, due to “information” they had learned about him. (Toronto Star investigative reporter Kevin Donovan has hinted that the Star will report on what exactly transpired over that weekend to cause this change.) Ghomeshi – or perhaps more accurately, his PR team – composed this Facebook missive claiming that he was fired because he partakes in consensual BDSM in his private life, and that the claims of non-consent all arose falsely from one “jilted ex-girlfriend.”

• Incensed by the usage of the word “jilted” as gendered code, Mandy Stadtmiller at xoJane wrote about other such coded terms and how they’ve been used to invalidate and insult women over and over again.

• For those interested in the literary references Ghomeshi makes in his statement, here’s some information about the Lynn Coady story he references alongside Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s from Coady’s Giller Prize-winning book Hellgoing. Incidentally, Ghomeshi was set to host this year’s Giller Prize ceremony, but was replaced by Rick Mercer after the allegations of violence were made.

• On Monday, the Star published a story alleging that three women had been physically attacked by Ghomeshi. The Star had been quietly researching the story for over a year. These women were all on dates with Ghomeshi at the times of their respective attacks but had not consented to what he did to them (punching, slapping, biting, choking). A fourth woman, one of Ghomeshi’s co-workers at the CBC, also alleged that he had touched her without consent and told her at work that he wanted to “hate-fuck” her.

• Ghomeshi then filed a $55-million lawsuit against CBC for defamation, breach of trust, and damages – though many experts are saying that the lawsuit is hopeless.

• Law professor Brenda Cossman wrote an article explaining that Canadian law does not recognize consensual BDSM and causing bodily harm to another is always considered illegal, even if the “victim” consented. (It should be noted that this is probably irrelevant to Ghomeshi’s case, since he seems to have assaulted many women without consent – but this legal information may still be of interest to actual kinksters.)

• Indie musician Owen Pallett, who is (was?) a friend of Ghomeshi’s, spoke out in defense of the alleged victims and said they ought to be believed, not dismissed.

• A post called “Do you know about Jian?” talks about how Ghomeshi being “weird with women” has been quietly known about by many people for a long time. Scary to think that so many folks felt silenced.

• Prominent sex writers Andrea Zanin and Dan Savage both wrote excellent posts essentially warning readers not to conflate kink with abuse. Dan’s tweet sums it up nicely: “I oppose the demonization of consensual kinksters. I despise abusers who cover for their crimes by claiming to be consensual kinksters.”

• Wednesday night, the Star dropped another bombshell: eight women have now come forward about having been abused by Ghomeshi, including TV actress Lucy DeCoutere from Trailer Park Boys. This latest Star piece contains many unsavory details, so definitely skip it if you think it might trigger you – but it is an incredibly fine piece of journalism that seems hard to refute or explain away. If you’re wary of media outlets that use anonymous sources, maybe it would help to remember that it was the Star’s investigative team who also broke the Rob Ford crack scandal last year – using then-anonymous sources.

• One of the weirdest details in the Star story was about Jian’s teddy bear, Big Ears Teddy; two of the women the Star interviewed have said that Ghomeshi turned the bear around to face the other way before assaulting the women, saying, “Big Ears Teddy shouldn’t see this.” Jian has spoken before about the bear’s significance in his life and in easing his anxiety. Some folks in the #JianGhomeshi hashtag speculated that there could be something more sinister going on with that bear, like a hidden camera, but there’s no proof of that and it seems unlikely.

• Also on the topic of the bear: Twitter account @bigearsteddy has tweets dating back to April of this year that allege Ghomeshi is violent toward women. The tweets are written by someone who claims to have been one of Ghomeshi’s victims and might be a Carleton University media grad but they are unsubstantiated so it’s hard to know for sure. (I wonder if one of the women from the Star article is also behind this Twitter account.)

• Steffani Cameron wrote about Canadian sexual context and safety in BDSM.

• Dan Savage found and interviewed a woman who dated Ghomeshi and says she engaged in completely consensual BDSM activities with him. But, as Savage points out in his post, it seems that Ghomeshi’s MO was to get violent/aggressive with all his romantic/sexual prospects as a way of “asking” for consent to do more, so in the case of the woman Savage interviewed, it seems Ghomeshi just lucked out and happened to find a woman whose kinks matched his and who didn’t object to his “reckless, abusive and dangerous” approach. One consensual case doesn’t outweigh or invalidate the many non-consensual cases.

• Ghomeshi announced today that he “intend[s] to meet these allegations directly,” whatever the hell that means, and that he won’t be speaking to media about it anymore (although it seems he hasn’t spoken to media about it at all anyway).

I think those are the most important pieces of the story so far. If you’re interested in following how this plays out, the Star is probably your best source; their investigative team is out-of-this-world amazing and their coverage has so far been fair, balanced, and (I believe) accurate.

If you take anything from these events, I hope it’s this: we need to work together to create a world where abusers like Ghomeshi are publicly shamed and identified as he has been, and a world where victims don’t feel ashamed and silenced as his did for so long, and as some no doubt continue to.

Blowjob-Friendly Lipsticks For Every Budget

Kate Sloan

You might not know how much I love makeup, because you never get to see my face on this blog. But I really, really do. I take great pleasure in femmifying my face each morning. It makes me feel awake, alert, foxy as fuck, and ready to face the day.

But makeup can be a problem in certain sexual contexts, particularly if, like me, you don’t tend to date people who also wear makeup. Femmes tend to understand and accept each other’s painted-face proclivities; dudes and butches, not as much. In fact, some of them get pissed if you dare to leave a lipstick mark on their face, collar, or dick.

Additionally, it ain’t cute to come up from a blowjob with red/pink/purple smeared all over your cheeks and chin. That’s a time when you should be basking in your sexual mastery, not frantically checking yourself out in the mirror when your partner starts laughing hysterically at your Picasso-lookin’ mug. (Not that this has happened to me, or anything…)

Incase you’re wondering, here’s the procedure I used to rigorously test these lipsticks for your oral sex usage: I applied each product normally (no fancy tricks to extend their wear-time), waited a couple minutes for the product to dry/set, snapped a “before” picture, spent about 5 minutes enthusiastically fellating my Tantus Mark O2 (it’s a fairly average size and shape for a dick; I had no real ones at my disposal!), and then took an “after” photo. In between lipsticks, I wiped the previous product off my mouth (and the dildo) with a makeup removal wipe before applying the next one.

All of these products claim to be long-wearing. Let’s see how they actually perform, shall we?

NYX Soft Matte Lip Cream in “San Paulo” ($6 at drugstores), the cheapest product of the bunch, is a matte liquid lipstick that claims to be “surprisingly durable.” It’s usually pretty comfortable on the lips, but I do find it can get a bit drying after many hours of wear.

On the face: Happily, this didn’t smear outside of my lip area, but it did fade a little in the middle. Still definitely impressive, though.

On the dick: I found a leeeetle bit of pink on the underside of the dildo where it came into rough repeated contact with the inner part of my lower lip. It was hardly enough to be noticeable, however.

Overall: 8 out of 10. This product performs very commendably for its price point.

Maybelline SuperStay 14HR lipstick in “Enduring Ruby” ($9 at drugstores) is a traditional (i.e. non-liquid) lipstick formula that claims to last for 14 hours. It smells like cherries (mmm), applies smoothly, and wears very comfortably.

On the face: This stuff pretty much stayed put on my lips. The color was maybe a little faded, but it faded uniformly, not just in the middle – and there was no smearing or flaking.

On the dick: There was quiiiite a bit of red on the cock when I got done with it, especially around the head area.

Overall: 6 out of 10. I look fierce in this lipstick and it doesn’t move around once it’s on, but I’m not sure any future partners of mine would be cool with getting their dick so thoroughly rouged.

Stila Stay All Day liquid lipstick in “Beso” ($29 at Sephora) paradoxically claims to “stay all day” but also says it’s only meant to last up to 6 hours. (I dunno about you, but my days are typically longer than 6 hours!) It smells like vanilla cake batter, and is mostly comfortable but can feel drying after a couple of hours. When you first apply it, it’s a liquid, but then it dries to a matte finish (I find the drying process works best if I keep my mouth open while it dries, so my lips don’t touch).

On the face: The color didn’t fade or move, but the friction against my lips caused the product to look a bit dry and flaky by the time I was done. That might not matter to you if you’re just going to curl up next to your sweetie after the BJ, but if you’re going out right after, I’d recommend fixing it because the dryness is not a cute look and it feels weird on the lips.

On the dick: There was a small amount of red on both the head and the shaft of the cock.

Overall: 6.5 out of 10. This product performs okay, but for $29, I expect greatness. I also docked it half a point for being incredibly difficult to remove with a makeup wipe; I prefer to keep my lip irritation to a minimum, thanks!

Sephora Collection cream lip stain in “01 Always Red” ($16 at Sephora) is described as an “intense color that stays put.” It’s often considered a dupe for the Stila lipstick above, but I actually like the formula better than the Stila one; it applies more smoothly, dries more quickly, and feels like nothing on my lips.

On the face: It stayed exactly as I applied it: perfectly crisp and saturated. No smearing or fading whatsoever.

On the dick: There were a few flakes of red on the dildo, particularly around the sides of the shaft where the corners of my mouth rubbed. It was pretty clean for the most part though.

Overall: 9 out of 10! I’ve worn this lipstick on many a late-night adventure, often involving lots of drinks and/or greasy food, and it’s always performed great; I’m glad to see its magnificence transfers to blowjobs as well. And at only $16, it’s a steal compared to its high-end equivalents.

Make Up For Ever Aqua Rouge waterproof liquid lip color in “16 Fuchsia” ($29 at Sephora) is a liquid lipstick that claims to give “a waterproof, smudge-proof result that will not transfer or fade.” It’s double-ended: first you apply the lip color, then you apply the clear gloss on top to lock it in. (You can also just apply the lip color and skip the gloss, but I find it feels very drying this way.)

On the face: My lips were perhaps slightly less glossy after the BJ than they were when I started, but the difference was negligible. The lip color stayed perfectly in place.

On the dick: I could find no evidence whatsoever of pink on the dick. A small amount of the clear gloss may have transferred, but not to the point of making the dildo feel greasy. Plus the gloss doesn’t have any scent or taste so it won’t irritate whoever owns the dick you’re blowing.

Overall: 9.5 out of 10! I deducted half a point because the lip color takes what seems like forever to dry completely (about 3 minutes) and I have to leave my mouth hanging open that whole time for it to dry properly – and also because I don’t like the added annoyance of the two-step color/gloss process, even though it’s proven to aid longevity. But all things considered, Aqua Rouge is the best option of any of these products if you want your lipstick to really stay put during a blowjob.

And one bonus product pick: Lipcote is a lipstick sealer. It’s a clear, thin product you apply over any (blotted/non-glossy) lipstick to make it last longer. I wasn’t able to find it here in North America and ordered it from the UK for about $7.25. For the purposes of this post, I applied it over a lipstick that’s not meant to be long-wearing: Rimmel Kate Moss lipstick in shade “107.”

On the face: Everything basically stayed intact. There was a small amount of fading on the very inner edges of my lips.

On the dick: A fair bit of lipstick flaked off onto the sides and underside of the dildo.

Overall: 7 out of 10. Lipcote performs well but I hate how long it takes to dry, how sticky/tacky it makes my lips feel, and the fact that it gives my lips a stinging/burning sensation when I apply it. Not worth the trouble, if you ask me!

What’s your favorite long-wearing lipstick? Have you ever given oral sex while wearing it?