clitoral shaft

Review: Lora DiCarlo Baci

Kate Sloan

My relationship to receiving cunnilingus has undergone a lot of changes over the years. There was a time, in my late teens and early twenties, when getting head was literally the majority of my sex life, because my partners then were people who preferred licking pussy over pretty much every other activity – and had therefore gotten quite good at it.

Later, as I started hooking up with randoms from Tinder and OkCupid, I gradually stopped asking for oral because it… stopped being good. But now that I’m back to being partnered with a self-professed pussy-eating fanatic, it’s back to being one of my favorite sexual activities, and something that I often fantasize about when I’m alone.

Accordingly, I’m as intrigued as I’ve ever been by the plethora of sex toys that claim to imitate cunnilingus. One in particular has gotten a lot of great reviews: the Lora DiCarlo Baci. (Apparently pronounced like “botchy.”) Let’s talk about it.

 

What is the Lora DiCarlo Baci?

Lora DiCarlo – both the company itself and the woman of the same name who founded it – is somewhat controversial and mysterious. While their products are beautifully designed and get good reviews, they’ve made a lot of sweeping claims that were called into question by an infamous Wired.com article, like that their founder is a med school dropout and that they use “micro-robotics” in their toys. However, in the sex toy industry, it’s hard to fault a company for talking itself up a little; they all do it. At least this one seems to be making genuinely original toys rather than basing their entire business model on plagiarism like some other sex toy companies do.

While Lora DiCarlo makes toys aimed at various different erogenous zones, the Baci is one that focuses specifically on clitoral pleasure. It does this in an interesting and unique way: although it uses similar “pressure-wave” technology to what’s found in Satisfyers and Womanizers, it also has what the company calls a “thrum pad” which is meant to sit between the inner labia during use, vibrating against the underside of the clitoral shaft and other, more deeply-buried portions of the internal clit. The company calls this “full-coverage clitoral stimulation,” a phrase certain to get my attention.

What I like about this toy:

  • Let’s not bury the lede: this thing feels good. Really good. A lot of pressure-wave toys are so focused on the glans of my clit that they feel almost inconsequential, like someone teasingly licking the tip of your dick when you really want a deepthroat blowjob. The Baci stimulates my glans with its “mouth,” rubs against my clitoral hood and inner labia with its “lips,” and rumbles against broad swathes of my internal clit with its sizeable “thrum pad.” The result is full-clit stimulation that normally I can only get from a huge, rumbly wand vibrator or my partner using their entire mouth on me. (I should say, water-based lube is a must with the Baci, particularly if you want it to feel like oral at all.)
  • As you’d expect from that description, the orgasms from this toy are more satisfying than those from many other toys in this category. This just makes sense: in general, the more of your sex organ that’s being stimulated before and during your orgasm, the more intense and long-lasting that orgasm is likely to feel. I reach climax easily, consistently and hard with this toy.
  • The Baci has 10 intensity settings (and no patterns, which I don’t care about anyway). I’ve never gone past 4 out of 10. I’ve never needed to. This toy is that good. If you’ve been curious about pressure-wave toys but are worried they’d be too subtle for you (which is a reasonable fear if, for example, you tend to masturbate with a powerful wand vibrator), I think the Baci could actually work for you. It’s not just that its motor is stronger than many of its competitors’; it’s that it uses its strength in a different way, stimulating more of the clitoral structure.
  • The controls are easy to understand: there’s a power button on the top that you press and hold to turn the toy on or off, and then there are “+” and “–” buttons on the back for changing the speed. All of these buttons are located and constructed such that I never bump them by accident.
  • It’s waterproof. Love.
  • The construction feels pretty sturdy, like it could get knocked around inside my suitcase or purse and be fine.
  • It comes with a travel cover, so you can keep it free from lint, dirt, etc. when it’s riding around in your bag or even when it’s just been tossed into your nightstand drawer.

What I don’t like about this toy:

  • The form factor of this toy is awkward, to say the least. It’s what my friend Epiphora would call a “vulva hog,” meaning it takes up so much space on my vulva during use that I can’t easily add a dildo, fingers, or a partner’s penis into the mix if I want some internal stimulation. If you’re looking to use a pressure-wave toy during penetrative sex, I’d recommend the We-Vibe Melt or Womanizer Premium instead. A stationary vag toy like the Hole Punch Fluke can work with the Baci, though. And frankly, when my clit’s being stimulated as fully and as well as the Baci can do it, I don’t always need extra stimulation to get me off. (P.S. There is something very funny to me about referring to penetration as “extra stimulation,” given how often that phrase is used about clit contact, which is, for me and most other people with vulvas, mandatory for reaching orgasm…)
  • As often happens with pressure-wave toys, sometimes the Baci makes me come faster than I wanted to, in that way that’s like “Oh shit, am I about to…? Oh no, yes, I am.” Seems weird to complain about this, I know, but sometimes I want to stretch out a session a little longer!
  • It’s a little loud. But like, so am I when I’m using it.
  • I don’t love the aesthetic of it. It’s almost my exact skin tone and kind of reminds me of a medical device, like something a doctor might use to take my cunt’s temperature. (Then again, a clinical aesthetic can be well-suited for medical play scenes, so your mileage may vary…)
  • The battery life isn’t amazing; I have to charge the Baci every 4-5 sessions or so, which is more often than I’d typically expect for a toy of this kind.
  • It’s expensive: about $205-220 in Canada (depending on where you get it from). HOWEVER, CurrentBody has it on sale for $145 USD at the time that I’m writing this, and that’s reduced even further to $116 USD (about $151 CAD) when you use my coupon code “GIRLY20” on your order. That’s a pretty sweet deal.
  • The plastic travel cover that it comes with is weirdly hard to open. You have to squeeze it and then rotate it, like the childproof cap on a bottle of pills. As someone with chronic pain and strength issues in my hands, I found this frustrating; it took me 5-10 minutes of struggling and pain in order to get it open the first time, so I haven’t attempted to close it again.

 

Final thoughts

The Lora DiCarlo Baci has impressed me so thoroughly that I’d put it in my top 3 favorite pressure-wave toys now. (The others, if you’re wondering, are the Lelo Sila and Satisfyer Curvy 2.) This type of toy is always so hit-or-miss for me, with some of them giving me weak, half-ruined orgasms and some of them making me come so hard and fast that I practically black out; the Baci is definitely in the latter category.

I can’t confirm for certain whether all the claims made by Lora DiCarlo about their toys and technologies are accurate. But what I can tell you is that the Baci is a top-of-the-line clitoral stimulator that I hope will usher in a new trend of companies pushing the boundaries of what a clit toy can be.

 

Thanks to CurrentBody for sending me this product to review! You can use the code “GIRLY20” to get 20% off your order at CurrentBody – yay!

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

What Does Clitoral Suction Say About Gender?

Kate Sloan

Trends in the sex toy market are fun to watch, not only because they portend new pleasure possibilities but also because they tend to signal something about how our cultural beliefs on sex and gender are evolving. So when toys like the Satisfyer and Womanizer kept popping up left and right, it made me wonder: what do clitoral suction toys say about gender?

Granted, it’s technically incorrect to refer to these toys’ mechanisms as suction. They use a new mechanical method – variously referred to as “non-contact pressure wave technology,” “gentle sonic waves,” and “Pleasure Air Technology” – to gently and touchlessly stimulate the clitoris. But the effect can feel remarkably suction-like in practice, to the point that a minority of users complain these toys cause a pressure-y pain the likes of which you might notice when you crank up a clit pump too high. Most reviewers compare these toys’ sensations to oral sex – because, like a warm and willing mouth, they surround the clitoris and apply gentle, rhythmic pressure that can escalate to something like suction.

I was not initially sold on these toys; their brand of stimulation felt so soft as to be basically imperceptible at times, and they too often led me into orgasms half-ruined by the aimless, air-based tapping they administer. But after a while, my body got used to their more delicate and nuanced sensations, and I noticed that these toys, more than any others, allowed me to fantasize unimpeded about one of my favorite sex acts: cunnilingus.

You can think about getting your clit licked if you’re using a vibrator, your hand, or anything else, of course – but toys that feel vaguely like suction lend themselves especially well to this imaginative task. No human being has ever sucked on my clit as tenderly or rhythmically as these toys do, and yet their soft, rubbery nozzles hearken back to smooth lips wrapped around my bits, and their relentless “pressure waves” feel remarkably akin to a tongue rap-tap-tapping against my clit. So you can see how, when cunnilingual cravings hit, I began to reliably reach for an air-pulse toy.

The runaway success of this toy category is hard to miss if you spend any time monitoring industry trends. While Womanizer was the O.G., multiple copycat companies have leapt onboard the bandwagon and started cranking out their own versions. These toys have been profiled in Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and many more heavyweight sex-focused publications. There’s a fervor around them that I haven’t seen since the rabbit vibe or Magic Wand. My theory? These products strike a nerve because clitoral suction subverts gender norms.

I think about this a lot vis-à-vis cunnilingus, because I am somebody who gets off on being sucked off. My clitoris is average-sized, but, like most, it has a long enough shaft that it can be taken into someone’s mouth and sucked on, like a tiny cock. But despite how easy it is to do this – and the common-sense assumption that many people would enjoy having their most sensitive sexual organ surrounded and stroked by wet lips – this oral technique has been surprisingly rare in my sex life. Most of my past partners (the ones who bothered to go down on me, anyway) stuck to wet tongue flicks on the top or sides of my clit. Depending on intensity and stamina, this could sometimes get me off – but nonetheless, whenever someone momentarily slipped my clit into their mouth, I moaned much louder and clawed at them in frenzied desperation. You would think they would notice this and keep doing the thing that was obviously working, but many of them did not. Why?

I think there are two basic gender-based reasons for this phenomenon. One: Most straight dudes (and unfortunately, my past sexual partners are predominantly straight dudes) – whether consciously or not – associate phalluses with dicks, and assume that any kind of “fellation” would make them gay, or at least effeminate. And two: They assume, on some level, that I, being a cis woman, don’t want my clit to be “treated like a dick” because it’ll make me feel “like a man.” Wrong on both counts, gents.

Some important nuances in this discussion: Some people who have clits are not women, such as pre-op/non-op trans men and assigned-female-at-birth non-binary folks, and some of those people like to have their clits sucked on for gender affirmation reasons (in addition to physical pleasure reasons). On the flipside, not all women have clits (e.g. trans women and victims of clitoridectomy) and not all clit-havers even like having their clits stimulated. Nonetheless, I think clitoral suction as a whole is a powerful metaphor for how our culture thinks about sex and gender – because it’s the satisfaction of an organ often considered “female” in a way that’s usually reserved for phalluses often considered “male.”

The reason I know this is partly a sexual orientation issue is that my queer partners (of any gender) have never seemed to have a problem with sucking my clit. They tend to do it wholeheartedly and wholemouthedly upon request, even if that request is non-verbal (e.g. by gently pushing my clit forward toward their lips). It’s only the straight men who pointedly avoid it, so I have to assume their aversion has something to do with thoughts of dicks and gayness and fellatio.

I don’t entirely blame them – homophobic and transphobic cultural myths are highly prevalent and hard to ignore – but I do think that we, as a society, need to move past these myths. Sometimes we do that in big ways, like by naming and calling out toxic masculinity through media campaigns and the #MeToo movement, and other times we do it in small ways, like by confronting our feelings about sucking on a partner’s genitals during sex. Both types of societal inquiry and self-examination are important and necessary, I think.

I’m not saying the way I prefer to receive oral sex will change the world. There’s too much going on for gentle gender subversion behind closed doors to have much of an effect. But it is heartening to observe the success of clitoral “suction” toys in the sex toy market right now, because it means something is shifting. Our sexual culture is learning to prioritize clitoral pleasure at long last, after the persistence of the orgasm gap throughout basically all of human history. We’re becoming more comfortable, too, with the homologous nature of the clitoris and the penis – which I think leads us closer to a much bigger and more important realization: that everyone, regardless of gender, is human, and should be treated as such. Women are not delicate caregivers or winnable objects; men are not relentless warriors or heartless cads. Our socialization and social locations change how we behave and are treated in the world, but they do not make us fundamentally, inherently different from each other, and it’s dangerous to approach gender relations as if they do.

I always look forward to seeing what happens next in the sex toy industry, just as I always look forward to seeing what strides we’ll make in the fight for gender equality. Sometimes these two progressions intersect in the most delicious ways.

 

This post was sponsored by the good folks at The Hot Spot. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

My Clit is a Diva and I’m Sorry-Not-Sorry

Kate Sloan

“Higher.”

He moves his fingers a centimeter higher on my clit, and keeps rubbing.

“No, higher,” I say again.

He looks at me quizzically. I grab his hand and move it where I want it. Ah, yes. That’s better.

A couple minutes later, his hand slides down to my opening and he pushes two thick fingers inside me, finding my G-spot and then my A-spot with ease. And that’s nice. Fuck, he’s good at that.

When he comes back up to my clit, though, he forgets everything he’s learned. Goes straight for the exposed bud in the middle of my folds. I wince.

“Higher.”

Without even looking at his face, I can feel his confusion in the slow way he drags his fingers upward an inch or two. Maybe this is the time when he’ll remember, when he’ll get it. I love that moment.

Later, after drinks and dinner and sly sex chats in a noisy pub, we walk back to his place together. Boots crunching in the snow, arms bumping against each other casually as we walk. “I think I’m starting to figure you out,” he says. “It seems like you like the shaft of your clit to be stimulated, not the clit itself.”

I brighten. “Yeah! Exactly.” And I want to hold his hand, but both of our hands are stuffed in our coat pockets to hide from the cold.

“In my experience, you’re definitely an outlier,” he tells me, “but it’s nothing I can’t work with.”

Later that night, he gets it just right, and I don’t even have to move his hand.

This is a process I’m used to. Because my clit, like me, is a finicky princess. It likes to be stimulated downward through the clitoral hood, or sideways through the inner lips. When I use vibrators, I usually hold them over my clit hood, or on one of my outer labia. My pussy can handle a lot, but one thing it cannot handle – one thing it actually hates – is direct clitoral stimulation.

I was inspired to write about this after reading JoEllen’s post about the Womanizer, a clitoral stimulator I tried and admittedly liked. In her review, she writes about her hatred for direct clitoral stimulation, and her distaste for the common sexual discourse which says, “Touch a woman’s clit and she’ll definitely come!” It got me thinking about how sexual outliers are often shamed, even within the sex-positive communities which claim to unjudgmentally accept all preferences and tastes.

As a sex toy reviewer and a routine user of vibrators, I’m often accused of having “desensitized” myself. When I explain to laypeople or even “sexperts” that I have trouble coming from the touch of a partner’s tongue, fingers, or dick, sometimes I’m told I should lay off the vibes for a bit and see if my sensitivity returns.

Granted, I am more sensitive when I take a vibrator sabbatical. And I make a habit of avoiding vibration and orgasms for 2-3 days before a scheduled encounter, so I’ll feel everything my partner does to me and reach orgasm more easily. But it’s not vibrators that made me this way. I think my body’s just naturally a tougher nut to crack.

You know how I know that? It’s because my orgasm difficulties aren’t related to a lack of sensitivity, they’re often caused by an excess of sensitivity. When a partner’s tongue grazes my exposed clit, it hurts and I get wrenched out of the moment. When a vibrator slides too low on my clit hood and makes direct contact with that bundle of nerves, I feel overloaded and have to crank down the power. When someone’s fingering me and goes straight for my clit, instead of spending time turning me on by touching the rest of my vulva first, I get overstimulated and that makes me feel numb. It’s like my clit panics and hides under a blanket, if by “hides under a blanket” I mean “gets desensitized by the onslaught of sensation.”

It’s been nearly two years since I’ve had an orgasm from oral sex. This is big news, considering how obsessed with cunnilingus I used to be. But, yes: the last person to get me off orally was my ex, with whom I ended things in late 2014. I’ve slept with several more people since then but none of them have made me come with their mouth.

I think that’s partly owing to how my body has changed: I tend to need more intense stimulation now than I used to, for a longer period of time, to reach orgasm – and tongues get tired sometimes. I also rarely come without some form of penetration these days, which – let’s be real – is a difficult thing to incorporate into cunnilingus and often isn’t done very well when people try, at least in my experience.

But the other reason, and maybe the main reason, I haven’t come from oral in ages is that I haven’t had a partner stick around long enough to learn how I like it. Most of my sexual flings in the past two years have been short-term or one-offs, always with people who had other partners at the time and therefore couldn’t be expected to keep my Very Specific preferences programmed into their muscle memory. My ex had time to learn my rhythms, signals, noises, and most importantly, how to lick my clit without causing me actual pain.

My clit needs to be romanced, seduced, won over. It needs you to play hard-to-get, while knowing the whole time that you’ll eventually give it what it wants. I want you to ignore my clit for a long, long time, while you kiss my mouth and neck, suck and lick my nipples, smack my ass and thighs, bite my mons and fleshy hips. I want you to shower my labia and vaginal opening with attention, because most people don’t. I want to be at the point of begging you and punching the bed and moaning in despair for at least five whole minutes before you even hint at going near my clit.

The reason for this rigamarole, you see, is that it amps up my sensitivity while also increasing what I can handle. If I’m halfway to coming by the time you make clit contact, I will almost certainly come at some point. What guarantees me not coming is if you jump straight to my clit and short-circuit the whole system. Be careful. Approach with caution. Don’t cannonball into the pool; just trail a few fingers in the shallow end and see what happens.

My ex understood this. He also understood how to use his lips and tongue around the periphery of my clit instead of stroking it directly. He knew when to wander away from my clit for a while, to lick my opening or nibble my labia, so the main attraction could take a breather and gain back that original fervor to be touched. And when the time came to buckle down and do identical tongue-circles for a couple minutes to actually get me off, he knew how to do that too.

Once, he asked me, “Is there ever a situation in which you want me to lick your clit directly?” My first instinct was to shout “NO! NEVER!” but when I thought about it some more, I reconsidered. “You can try it, as long as you’re very gentle,” I told him. After that, he would occasionally – as sparse punctuation in a widely varied cunnilingus session – pull my clit hood back and press the lightest, softest, slowest of licks to my exposed clit. It felt almost like an act of kink: I was giving him the power to do something potentially painful, and he was doing it without hurting me. I trusted him, handed over a particular power I rarely trust partners with, and he used that power for good. It was kind of magical.

Going down on someone with a picky clit is a complicated business, man. It requires showmanship paired with tenacity. Decorum married to determination. A sense of flair, and some elbow grease. But yeesh, those orgasms were worth it.

In fact, since my ex, I haven’t had any orgasms with partners that didn’t involve me assisting in some way: holding a vibe to my clit, or rubbing it with my fingers. Because, as I said, none of them were in my life long enough to learn what I like, remember it, and get good at it.

But I live in hope that I will have another partner who’ll put in the time, effort, and brainpower to figure me out. Who’ll get to know my clit’s weird ways, the same way he gets to know mine. Who’ll learn me like a video game, patiently, and never get annoyed that there’s no cheat codes.

Because, dammit, my clit’s an outlier, but it still deserves pleasure.