sex toy reviewing

10 Myths People Mistakenly Believe About Sex Toy Reviewers

Kate Sloan
Pictured, from L to R: the Fucking Sculptures Double Trouble, Fucking Sculptures G-Spoon, Tantus Tsunami and VixSkin Mustang

I’ve been doing this sex toy reviewer thing for a long time – over a decade, in fact – and there are a handful of myths about my line of work that I run into again and again. Let’s bust ’em, baby.

  1. We “masturbate for a living.” Look, I completely understand why so many people react to hearing about my job in a way that boils down to “Must be nice!” My career, indeed, involves an activity I love (writing), focused on subject matter I’m passionate about (sex). I’m extremely privileged to have a job I enjoy and can physically do, despite the chronic illnesses I live with. But I promise you, I only spend about 2% of my working hours actually masturbating, if that – and it isn’t “normal” masturbation because it’s for work, not for pleasure. I have to pay attention, take notes, compare different toys to each other, etc. rather than just being able to enjoy myself, and often end up ruining my own orgasms in the process. It’s a fun job in many ways, yes, but probably not in the ways you’d think!
  2. Sex toy reviewing takes no skill. Uh, nope. Most people can hold a vibrator on their bits or insert a dildo into their body; most people cannot summarize and analyze the cultural context of that toy, compare it usefully to several others in its category, write a compelling and well-crafted review, take photos to go with it, pre-emptively answer questions that consumers will wonder about, promote reviews effectively on social media, implement SEO, keep up with industry trends, and so on and so forth. As with media workers in any specialized “beat,” sex toy reviewers tend to develop their own skillset and style. To devalue that is to misunderstand the work and what goes into it.
  3. We are sluts who are always DTF. Oh, certainly some of us are. I have been at certain times in my life. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a slut. But don’t assume someone’s personality and entire life revolve around sex just because their career does. And certainly don’t assume you’ll have an easier time getting laid if you’re on a date with a sexual media-maker than with anybody else. I often feel pressured to live up to the “manic sexy dream girl” fantasy some people seem to have about me, and it sucks.
  4. We prefer using toys over having sex with human beings. There’s nothing wrong with people who do feel this way, but it’s reductive to assume someone will feel this way because their work focuses on sex toys. And, as ever, I must remind you: sex toys and human partners are not mutually exclusive. The two can and do coexist in sexual encounters. Most of my best sex ever has involved toys.
  5. We can’t find sexual partners because they’re too intimidated by what they do. I have to laugh and call bullshit on this one. Many of my sex toy reviewer friends are in high demand in their sex/dating lives, sometimes partly because of what they do, not just in spite of it. As for reviewers for whom that’s not the case, it’s worth noting that it doesn’t even fucking matter. The number of sexual partners you attract or pursue has nothing to do with your intrinsic value as a human being, or the quality of the work that you do. And if someone would judge you for something as innocuous as reviewing sex toys, IMO they’re not worth dating or fucking anyway.
  6. We’re also sex workers. Some of us are (kudos to those folks!), and I have dabbled in sex work myself and usually enjoyed it. But it’s strange to assume that someone writing about sex toys automatically means they’ll sell you nudes or a cam show, or that you’ll be able to meet up with them for sex, paid or unpaid.
  7. We sell sex toys. It continues to surprise me how often I get emails and DMs from people who think that I run a sex toy store, or who want me to supply them with wholesale sex toys to sell at their shop. I do not do this and have never done this, but there are plenty of great stores and distributors out there that do sell toys (including wholesale adult toys) if that’s what you’re after!
  8. Sex toy reviewing can only ever be a hobby. To be clear, there are a ton of people for whom sex toy reviewing is a hobby or a side gig, and that’s absolutely valid! But in my case, it actually is the vast majority of the work that I do, and brings in the vast majority of my income – so it’s funny and sometimes a bit insulting when people say stuff like, “Oh, fun! What’s your actual job, though?”
  9. We owe you details about our personal life. I get that when someone shares intimate details about themselves, it can be surprising that they’d choose to be private and guarded in other areas of their life. But one thing sex toy reviewing has taught me is that I can be selectively open. Good boundary-setting is an important part of the job, I think.
  10. We’ll regret it. I do know people who have regretted reviewing sex toys, often because they incurred harassment online, offline, or both, from people who thought that this work was worthy of denigration or evidence of some kind of moral failing. But a lot of sex toy reviewers use pseudonyms precisely so that they can do this work without (as much) fear of it coming back to bite them in the ass. I did that myself for several years, fearing repercussions if future employers stumbled across what I’d been writing – but then I realized that this was what I was meant to do, full-time, so I came out publicly about my name and identity and have never once regretted it.

What myths have you heard about sex toy reviewers?

 

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

7 Great Reasons to Read Sex Toy Reviews

Kate Sloan

The statistics are in: sex toys have gotten many of us through the pandemic. Sex toy sales are up as much as 600% (depending on whose stats you trust), and anecdotally, it seems that those of us whose toy collections were already large have not only spent time revisiting and enjoying what we already owned, but have, in many cases, expanded our collections even further. (Guilty as charged!) Whether you prefer wholesale sex toys mega-sites like SexToyUnion or just window-shopping at your favorite local erotic boutique, there’s something deliciously uplifting about buying a new sex toy, if it’s your first-ever or even your 1,000th.

I always tell people who are curious about a toy to read the reviews of it. Not just the toy company’s on-site reviews, which are sometimes fabricated and/or very selectively curated – I’m talking about sex toy bloggers’ reviews. I swear I’m not just saying that because I am one of those bloggers – I, too, read multiple reviews (if available) before buying any new toy. While not all bloggers are scrupulous or ethics-focused (and they don’t necessarily have to be – it’s their blog and their life!), many are, and you can oftentimes find more truthful details in a single sex toy review blog post than in a whole slew of bland, insincere 5-star on-site reviews.

Here are 7 reasons you might want to read sex toy reviews more often…

 

1. To help you make a purchasing decision for yourself. There are just too many sex toys out there for you to automatically know what’s good and what isn’t. Trust me – I’ve been in this biz nearly a decade, and while I have a pretty good radar for when a toy will satisfy me or disappoint me, there’s just no way to know for sure, but reading reviews often leads me in the right direction.

Pro tip: look for bloggers whose tastes mirror your own. Many disclose this on their About page or in their reviews. If you know you like intensely pinpointed clitoral stimulation and very slim penetration, for example, you’re probably not gonna get much value from the reviews of a person whose pleasure comes primarily from huge dildos and broad massage wands – although you may still find them plenty entertaining!

 

2. To help you make a purchasing decision for a partner or friend. I have done this many times, in part for the reason discussed above: my tastes are different from other people’s, so if I have a loved one who wants a new sex toy but has vastly different preferences (or anatomy) than my own, reading reviews is the best way for me to figure out if it’ll work for them.

When a close pal asks me for a toy recommendation, generally I’ll do a diagnostic process of sorts, asking them about toys they’ve tried in the past (if any), why they liked or disliked those, and what they’re hoping to get out of a new toy. That gives me a useful filter through which to devour sex toy reviews searching for something that’ll make them happy.

 

3. As foreplay for using the toy. Anyone else do this?! Sometimes when I’m gearing up for a masturbation session with a toy I love, I’ll read other people’s reviews of it, to remind me of what’s so great about it. It’s sort of like reading movie reviews as “foreplay” for seeing the movie – which is to say, some people will hate it because it’ll spoil their experience or influence their perceptions, but some people will love it because it’ll increase their enjoyment of what follows.

 

4. To learn about new features or uses of a toy you already own. Sex toys have gotten so high-tech that many have functions you may not know about, even if you’ve used yours several times. Do you know how to turn off the Smart Silence mode on your We-Vibe Wand? Enable the travel lock on your Fun Factory Big Boss? Loop vibration patterns on your Lovense Lush? Sex toy reviews can often help you learn stuff like this. (Not mine, though, tbh – I have long been burned out on writing up technical details of a toy, and am much more focused on language and narrative since I’m a pretentious artsy fucker – but there are lots of reviewers who write about toys with fantastic amounts of detail, like Felicity from Phallophile Reviews and Cy from Super Smash Cache.)

 

5. To learn about your body. Especially if you have little experience with sex toys and/or masturbating, you may not have a 100% clear sense of why you like or dislike particular toys. I know that it took me years of exploration and research to learn, for instance, that overly aggressive G-spot stimulation without proper warmup feels awful to me, or that buzzy vibrations make my clit want to die.

Like movie critics and music critics, seasoned sex toy critics are armed with contextual knowledge that enables them to describe why a particular toy is good or bad, or at least why some people might love or hate it. Comparing their observations to your own firsthand experiences can teach you a lot of useful lessons about your wants and needs when it comes to sex toys.

 

6. To keep up with trends in the industry. If the sex toy world interests you, but you’re not on the inside of it (i.e. receiving press releases from random vibrator companies on the regular and avidly reading the trades with your friends), it can be hard to keep up with what’s going on in that sphere. It’s like how music critics always seem to know what album is gonna change the world when it drops in a few months, while the rest of us are still listening to our favorite playlists from high school. (No? Just me?)

Learning about the latest and greatest in the sex toy industry is not only interesting – it also helps you make wiser purchasing decisions. For example, you’d be forgiven for thinking high-quality body-safe toys are automatically expensive, because for many years, they were – but reading sex toy reviews regularly can show you that the industry has shifted and now you can get safe toys at a reasonable price.

 

7. For entertainment value. Many sex toy reviewers, like my friend Epiphora or the wonderful Girl on the Net, are very funny! Many are also able to tell compelling stories in the form of a sex toy review (I’m thinking especially of Girl on the Net’s review of the We-Vibe Nova 2, written immediately after her long-term relationship ended, which was far more about the breakup than the toy). I actually think a lot about how to make my reviews interesting not only as reviews but as pieces of writing unto themselves. It’s tricky, but it can be done, and a lot of my favorite pieces of sex writing exist in this space between criticism and entertainment.

 

Why do you like to read sex toy reviews?

 

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

Freelance Friday: Ruination & Regret

Kate Sloan

Q. Has there ever been a time/incident where your work “ruined” masturbation or other specific sex things for you (temporarily)?

A. This is, unfortunately, a frequent occurrence for sex toy reviewers. There’s increasing discourse about how monetizing hobbies can make them feel less fun, and I’ve found this to be true about both masturbation and writing at different times in my life.

There were, for example, two years in a row where I issued myself a daily masturbation challenge in May (#DidYouJerkOffToday) and found that by the end of the month, I could barely dredge up any enthusiasm for getting myself off. Yes, even orgasms had lost their lustre. How sad!

I’ve dealt with this by drastically cutting down the number of toys I accept for review, and by generally only accepting toys I think will be good or at least amusingly weird. My most frustrating experiences of sex toy reviewing usually centered around toys that were not good, not bad, but mediocre: decent enough to get me off, but not fun or flashy or earth-shattering or world-shifting. When using a toy is just as boring as trying to string together sentences about that toy, you know your vocation has truly drained the fun from your sex life. So I try to say no to that type of toy these days.

Sometimes people (mostly Tinder matches) express concern that because I write about sex and dating, my actual experiences of sex and dating aren’t authentic because I must be constantly filtering them through the question of “Can I write about this?” I’ve actually taken great care not to do this. I deemphasize actual dates and sex sessions in my writing, usually choosing to write about sexual and romantic concepts more generally, so that I only write about specific incidents when they’re interesting enough that I feel moved to do so. This keeps me from ruining my own romantic life by being too goal-oriented about my writing.

My partners have sometimes gotten frustrated when we needed to test a terrible toy multiple times – Lelo Ida, anyone? – and, as Epiphora has documented, this can put a surprising strain on relationships. It’s for this reason – as well as the whole “I’m in a long-distance relationship” thing – that I almost never accept couples’ toys for review. My job is ridiculous and nonsensical in many ways, and while my current partner is as GGG as I could ever hope for, I’m not prepared to risk my relationships’ stability just for a review!

Q. Have you ever published something you later regretted (e.g. because it was too personal)?

A. The week after an OkCupid boy cruelly ghosted me, I lamented to my therapist that I was already embarrassed by the post I’d written and published about it. The piece had spilled out of me in a tearstained whirlwind, and it had seemed so important that I get it out into the world. But in retrospect, it’s messy, and melodramatic, and god help me if that boy ever stumbled across it. I wish I had waited even a week before pulling the trigger.

This has become a less frequent problem since I’ve gotten serious about my blog as a full-time job over the past few years, because these days I always pre-schedule content, sometimes weeks in advance. I can’t count the number of times I’ve written something vulnerable, queued it up, and then thought, “Actually, no,” and filed it back into my drafts. There’s a piece in there right now called “10 Thoughts Upon Learning My First Daddy Dom Is Someone Else’s Daddy Now” that will probably never see the light of day, because I wrote it in 2017 after a grotesque breakup and that level of grief is akin to a state of intoxication: not a good space for decision-making.

When I showed that piece to Bex, he asked me, “Does it say useful, important things, or is it navel-gazing? Will it teach people something, or was writing it just a good way to process your feelings?” This is still my metric for the usefulness of personal essays. The great Glennon Doyle, a memoirist and blogger, says, “I never put my writing out there until I’ve figured out how this thing that happened to me is really about all of us,” and she’s so right: the specifics of your personal experience, while they might be cathartic for you to get out on the page, probably aren’t artful or interesting until you shape them into something more universal and broad. That’s not to say there’s no place in the world for telling our own unique stories – heaven knows I do it all the time – but I have noticed that the pieces I most regret publishing are the ones filled with unprocessed emotions, word-vomited up without care or consideration.

My friend Kate Sinclaire often says that if you want to do porn, you should first imagine the worst possible person to discover your porn doing exactly that, and if you can live with the reality that they probably will, then you can go ahead and do it. I think the same is true for sex writing. It might seem like a terribly good idea to publish an emotional screed about that Tinder hookup from last week, but what if the person you fucked finds it and reads it? What if your boss does? What if your grandmother does? Self-censorship can poison your creativity, but you need a certain amount of it, or you’ll drown in regret pretty quickly. Imagine the most embarrassing possible person reading your piece, and if that feels alright, then you can hit “Publish.” But please don’t do it before then, you impulsive little imp.

 

Got questions for this series? Drop ’em in the comments or in my contact form.

Doing It Yourself: On Couples’ Toys and Self-Love

Kate Sloan

“So you’re a sex toy reviewer? That must be fun!”

I’ve heard this countless times, in countless ways. Everyone wants to believe my job is a fun romp, a 24/7 deluge of tactile pleasure and giggly orgasms. And sometimes it is. But sometimes it decidedly isn’t.

Like when, for example, I’m frustratingly single and get yet another offer in my inbox to review the latest couples’ toy.

In early 2017, I went to a training session hosted at my workplace by a We-Vibe rep, and won a brand-new Sync vibrator by answering some trivia questions correctly. “You should review it on your blog!” a coworker chirped at me as I left at the end of the night, and at first I felt buoyed and buzzy at the thought. But as I strolled home with the Sync burning a proverbial hole in my pocket, the knowledge settled with a thud that I had no one with whom to test the toy in a partnered-sex setting.

“Just go to a sex club or ask a Tinder dude,” that same coworker suggested when we talked about it again later. But it wasn’t and isn’t that simple. Contrary to what the creeps who DM me asking to “help [me] test toys” seem to believe, that process isn’t actually a very sexy one. There are missteps and mistakes. There is silicone digging into flesh and metal pinching skin. There’s my endless barrage of questions during and after: “Does this feel good for you?” “Is it easy to control?” “What are your criticisms of it?” I’ll happily get nerdy and overanalytical with a like-minded steady partner, when I have one – but I don’t always have one. And casual partners aren’t always a safe bet for this exercise in vulnerability.

That episode with the Sync wasn’t the only time the concept of a “couples’ toy” sunk me into self-doubt and self-pity. There was the time I requested a sex swing, imagining optimistically that I’d meet someone awesome in time to review it, but ended up pawning it off on a friend and her partner when it became clear that wasn’t going to happen. There was the time I scored my then-boyfriend We-Vibe’s new cock ring and he broke up with me before we got to give it a fair shake. There was the Fleshlight I used to use with a boyfriend, until we split up and it lay unused in a drawer in my bedroom, developing mould. What a potent metaphor for love gone sour.

When you get into a feedback loop where your line of work makes you sad because it reminds you of everything you’re missing in your personal life, you know it’s time to make a change. Long periods of singlehood taught me to embrace taking myself on dates, enjoying my own company, and showing myself the love I deserved – so why not fuck myself like a partner would, too? Including, sometimes, with toys designed for “couples”?

This meant getting more creative than my typical routine of holding a wand vibe against my clit in silence until I came. I took my Liberator Wedge out from under my bed, dusted it off, and began using it to tilt my hips for deeper penetration during masturbation. I slipped my Sync inside me and controlled it from my phone, revelling in the high-tech glee of it. I wore my favorite butt plug on café expeditions or long walks, not because a dom had told me to, but just to give myself pleasure.

I started deliberately prepping for solo sex like I would for hot dates. I’d drape myself in lacy lingerie, spritz on some intoxicating perfume, play sultry music to underscore my moans. I’d touch myself all over before zeroing in on my genitals, wanting the drawn-out tease I usually only got from partners. I’d soak in the tub beforehand, or bring out my most far-fetched fantasies, or watch whatever weird porn I felt like watching – anything to maximize my pleasure in the face of societal messaging that tells us the heights of sexual joy are only for the coupled.

When I did start dating seriously again, I found that my habit of decadent solo sex had taught me to enjoy partnered sexuality even more deeply. I moaned more loudly, felt things more fully. I asked for what I wanted, because I knew what that was. When I pulled out “couples’ toys” to try with a new beau, I already knew how they worked, and didn’t have to rely on my partner to puzzle out the instructions and introduce me to my own pleasure.

Sex toys help me connect with other people, but even more crucially, they help me connect with myself. I don’t know if I agree with the common wisdom that you’ve got to love yourself before anyone else can love you, but I do know it’s a whole lot easier for a partner to make you come if you’ve proven to yourself you deserve to feel that good.

 

Thanks so much to SheVibe for sponsoring this post! Check out their great selection of sex toys.

Links & Hijinks: Soaking, Rimming, & Writing

Kate Sloan

• Here’s why people have more sex in summer.

• Interesting: sex researchers have less sex than everyone else.

• Paying for porn is the feminist way to get off. Hear hear!

• “There are two things I love eating: steak, and ass.” This piece on rimjobs is a delight.

• This as-told-to on the Mormon sex act of “soaking” (“No thrusting, no grinding, no climax. Just pop it in, and hold the fuck still”) is hilarious and fascinating. “There was always squirming on both of our parts but never any real thrusts. I guess squirming is technically moving, but it’s not like her preacher was reffing the event.”

• Useful tips for freelancers who work at home. (I am feeling this struggle harrrd lately!)

• On that note: freelancing can take a toll on your mental health.

• I’m a little tired of reading about sex robots, because I just don’t think they’re going to be the futuristic epidemic everyone claims they will be. But here’s an interesting piece about RealDolls.

• You know, I rarely link to erotica in these round-ups, but this brief tale about orgasm denial made me all tingly, so there you go.

• Maria Yagoda wonders: is period sex okay for a first-time hook-up? “As punishment for not menstruating, people who don’t should occasionally have to deal with some of the inconveniences of blood, blood everywhere. For this reason, period sex can seem like a feminist act, as it defies the societal expectation of women to hide, or be ashamed of, this awful fucking thing.”

• Sugarcunt has some great advice on writing sex toy reviews.

• Here’s a beginner’s guide to keeping a journal.

• “Unusual” sexual desires are more common than we previously thought. Hmm!

• Emmeline reviewed an inflatable swan phallus we tried at Woodhull and it’s the funniest sex toy review I’ve read in ages.

• Dating while depressed is difficult but doable.

• Mired in writer’s block? Alex Franzen has some topic suggestions for you.

• Brandon Taylor is such a beautiful writer. “There is a way in which people talk about domestic writing or personal writing that does not set itself on fire—they call it quiet. They call it still. They call it muted. As if there were anything quiet about relationships that go awry.”

• Date ideas for stoners. The OkCupid blog has gotten weird and I’m into it.

• “Porny sex” is still valid sex. You’re not a “bad feminist” if you enjoy things like pussy-slapping, “degrading” D/s, and messy blowjobs.

• Gosh, I adore the way Girl on the Net writes about sex. Her Ambit dildo review is wonderful: “I don’t want him to fuck me with this in a playful way or a quick way. I want to catch him when he’s in this focused mode: when he’ll not just use it to warm me up for a fuck, but really settle into the act of fucking me with it. Laying it out on the bed like he’s a surgeon aligning his equipment, then ordering me to strip off my knickers and lie still.”

• We need to stop supporting and protecting abusive men.

• Taryn busted some myths about asexuality.

• We don’t talk about dental dams enough, and it’s emblematic of a bigger problem.

• [Content warning for ableism.] Some people have a fetish for becoming disabled and go to great lengths to fulfill that fantasy. Apparently it may even have a legitimate neurological cause. Uh, wow…