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5 Things Sex Toy Educators Should Never Do

Kate Sloan

I’ve been educating folks about sex toys for the better part of a decade, and as such, I’ve developed strong opinions about what people in my industry should and shouldn’t do. It’s a delicate line of work, one in which you constantly run the risk of fucking someone up (or fucking up their sex life, at the very least), so it’s important to be thoughtful about how you approach it. Here are 5 things I think sex toy educators should never, ever do…

Make assumptions

You might think you know the sexual orientation, genital configuration, or relationship style of someone who comes to you for advice, but unless they explicitly tell you, you don’t actually know any of that stuff. So don’t assume you do!

The best way to avoid making assumptions is to ask questions – though, of course, you have to “read the room” to figure out which questions are okay to ask. For example, if someone who appears to be a cis man asks me for help choosing a toy for masturbation, I might ask, “Do you mean a stroker, an anal toy, or something else?” Or if someone says they want a toy they can use with their partner, I might ask, “What kinds of toys does your partner like/want?” rather than assuming the person is straight or their partner is cis. I’ll also tend to avoid using gendered pronouns until the person I’m talking to does. You can really put someone off sex toys by making shitty assumptions, so how ’bout let’s not do that!

Recommend toys that will cause harm

We know that toys made of jelly, for example, leach phthalates and cause internal irritation for many people who use them, not to mention potentially worse side effects like endocrine disruption. It would be a bad move to suggest someone buy or use one of these toys, at least without heavily educating them on the risks they’d be taking on by doing so.

Of course, the reality of sex toy retail is that some people cannot afford or do not want to buy fancier toys that are body-safe, in which case our job as educators is to steer them in the right direction while also meeting them where they’re at. Hard plastic vibrators are usually body-safe and cheap, for example, and if someone wants a squishy toy without a silicone-level price tag, they might be content with a porous (not toxic) dildo that they use with a new condom every time to keep bacteria out. A partial solution is better than none at all.

Perpetuate oppressive beliefs

It’s bullshit that all men have higher sex drives than all women; that all women have vaginas and all men have penises; that there are only two genders; that buying a sex toy makes someone pathetic or lonely; that masturbation isn’t necessary or allowed if you’re in a relationship; that sex toys take your virginity; that penetrative sex toys stretch out your vagina; that your partner’s going to leave you for a sex toy; and that you’ll permanently lose sensation in your genitals if you use a vibrator. These are just some of the shitty myths that come up in sex toy education!

As an educator, it’s your job to be more neutral than dogmatic, and to put far more stock into science than myths. Teaching someone about sex is a powerful opportunity to untangle lots of damaging beliefs; it’s sacred and should be approached carefully!

Act inappropriately

While you might encounter lots of cute people in sex education work, it’s really not cool to hit on them, at least not in that teacher/student context. Later on, when you’re on more equal footing, an opportunity might arise to ask them out, etc. – but some educators won’t even do that! Wherever you draw your personal boundaries on this matter, I think it’s better they be too stringent than too loose.

I’ve had sex shop employees give me the flirty eyes, ask me overly personal questions, or even straight-up demand to know if I was single. Don’t be that guy!

Lay blame

A lot of people are really fucked up about sex. They might come to you knowing nothing or next-to-nothing about how sex toys work, the different types of toys, and what toys can and can’t do for their sexuality. It’s not their fault if their knowledge level is low; it’s the fault of our culture. That’s why educators’ work is so important.

In the movie High Fidelity, a record store employee, Barry (played by Jack Black), shames a customer for not owning a record Barry thinks he ought to own: “You don’t have it? That is perverse! Don’t tell anybody you don’t own fucking Blonde on Blonde!” Don’t be like Barry. Remember that everyone is just trying their best, and it’s not their fault they’re ill-informed about sex.

What other mistakes do you hate when sex toy educators make?

 

This post was sponsored by the folks at SexToyEducation.com. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

Do I Want Kids? Part 3: The World & The Future

Kate Sloan

I have to admit: this instalment of my “Do I Want Kids?” series has been the hardest one to write, and the one I’ve been putting off the longest. Why? Well, it’s not exactly fun to talk about the demise of the planet.

I’ve had a number of conversations over the past few years with friends and partners about whether I think parenthood is in the cards for me, and one consideration that always comes up is: is it even ethical to create more people at a time like this in human history?

Overpopulation is rampant. There are countless kids around the globe waiting to be adopted already; why bring more into the world when that’s the case? I’ve been thinking about adoption a lot more lately since reading Elsie Larson’s blog with her husband Jeremy, TheLarsonHouse.com, about their experiences adopting two little girls with albinism from China. Obviously this is no less legitimate than biological parentage; no DNA test can disprove that they are these girls’ parents, emotionally, logistically, legally. As much as the ideas of pregnancy, giving birth, and passing on my genes and the genes of a partner all tug at my heartstrings, to me it seems apparent that adoption is the more ethical route, from a utilitarian philosophy perspective, if you have a choice between the two. (Not all of us do. Adoption is ridiculously expensive, and sometimes pregnancy strikes unexpectedly.)

But beyond that: what kind of a world is this to raise a child in? I’m terrified of climate change, the current political landscape, and what could happen over the next few decades. It’s a critical moment for humanity, one that’ll either be written up in history books or will just vanish, as we do, into the baked-in history of this crumbling planet. Having a kid at this particular moment sort of feels like renovating a house you know is about to be hit by a meteor. Why even try? All good parents want to spare their children from pain, and what worse pain could there be than trying to survive on a dying planet descending into fascist chaos?

That said, I’m admittedly not as much of a pessimist as this is making me sound. Time is tight, but awareness is growing, and it seems there’s a small chance we could save our planet and ourselves. Environmentally conscious leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth May are mocked by right-wingers, but they have the right idea, and there will be more like them in the coming years. My inner state-smashing socialist wants us to overthrow capitalism and overhaul global energy systems in one fell swoop, but my inner realist knows democratic process and slow change are the likelier routes to real shifts in how we do things. I see some glimmers of hope on the horizon in that regard; it’s just a question whether there are enough of those glimmers and if they can summon change fast enough to save us.

There’s a quote from Angels in America I think about all the time in relation to climate change and global collapse: “Before life on Earth becomes finally merely impossible,” prophesies the titular angel, “it will, for a long time before, have become completely unbearable.” Would my children blame me for birthing them into a world where they have to live under staggeringly awful conditions? Or would they merely fight for change, and do their best, and make the most of the cards they were dealt?

All I know is that I don’t know. Maybe that’s enough for now.

 

Thanks so much to TestMeDNA.com for sponsoring this series. Check them out for all your legal paternity test needs!

Do I Want Kids? Part 2: Birth & Bodies

Kate Sloan

I’ve had the nightmare dozens of times: I’m in a fluorescently-lit room at the hospital, legs in stirrups, and everyone is yelling at me. Doctors, nurses, my assumed co-parent (though, better get a paternity test, girl, ’cause let’s hope your baby isn’t faceless and amorphic like this dude is). They all want me to PUSH, but what they don’t understand is that I am trying! My muscles barely obey me, and I slump and cry and try to do what I am told. And then, inevitably, I wake up – before I even get to see my baby.

What this recurrent dream shows me is that I’m terrified of giving birth. I think it’s hard not to feel this way if you have a vagina and a uterus, and maybe even if you don’t. The process is depicted in the media as one of the most physically painful experiences you’ll ever endure: I’ve seen soon-to-be-mothers in movies and TV shows screaming at their husbands, weeping in agony, praying for relief from gods they barely believe in. The pain scares me, yes, but in almost equal measure, I’m scared of who that pain could make me become.

There’s also the horror stories you hear about birth’s effect on the body. Parts can rip and swell and puncture and pop. You can pass out, bleed out, or shit yourself on the birthing bed. Having been relatively healthy for most of my life, I haven’t seen my body stretched to its extremes – and I’m not sure I want to. Why can cis fathers confirm their biological parenthood with a simple home paternity test while I have to endure hours of body- and soul-transforming labor to be eligible for mine?

It doesn’t help that my mom has told me all my life about how painful it was to give birth to me, since her epidural didn’t kick in quite right. But then, she does also say that giving birth to my little brother was comparatively painless, so maybe medical advances will be such by the time I’m pushin’ out a baby that I won’t have to break my brain with pain.

On the plus side, I am well accustomed to processing pain. Being a submissive masochist, I’ve written articles and done interviews on cognitive strategies for dealing with pain, and I struggle with chronic pain on a regular basis – so I’m better equipped than the average person for handling an excruciating situation.

I’ve also long been curious about vaginal fisting as a potential birth training activity during pregnancy, ever since I heard it discussed on some sex podcast long ago. Equivalent to the perineal massage recommended by many obstetricians, but a whole lot more intense, fisting could be a worthwhile practice for helping vaginal muscles learn to relax, stretch, and open up. Assuming the person fisting me would also be present at the birth (which may not be a fair assumption, what with my polyamorous sluttiness, but let’s pretend), they could even use similar communication strategies on The Big Day as they used in our fist-heavy “practice sessions” to guide me through the sensations. I am a big advocate for the idea that practicing difficult tasks makes them easier, and since you can’t exactly practice giving birth before it actually happens, fisting might be the next best thing.

The birth process seems less scary when I think of it that way: as an intense series of sensations, a rigorous task I’m putting my body through, not unlike a kink scene or a sexual feat. And if it seems weird to you to compare “the miracle of life” to a sex act, I would invite you to read Your Child’s Right to Sex, watch Orgasmic Birth, and remember that babies mostly occur because of sex!

Speaking of orgasmic birth… I am definitely the type of person to bring a Magic Wand vibrator to the hospital on that fateful day, assuming I had enough presence of mind to remember it at the time. (Let’s face it, that might be a job for my dutiful co-parent, whoever they may be.) Hey, if huge things are gonna be moving through my vagina, I want some clitoral vibrations to at least soften the blow! Sex educator Susie Bright famously used her wand to lessen discomfort during the birth of her first child. “I had no thought of climaxing,” she wrote in a 2006 blog post, “but the pleasure of the rhythm on my clit was like sweet icing on top of the deep, thick contractions in my womb.”

So, do I want to give birth? Part of me remains aghast at the thought. But another, bigger part of me is curious – curious how my pain tolerance would hold up, curious about what those “deep, thick contractions” feel like, curious about the extent to which pleasure can mitigate that level of pain. Pregnancy and birth are two magical things my body can (presumably) do that I haven’t yet experienced, and I’m always curious about bodily states I have yet to achieve. Maybe one day I’ll be swearing and sweating in a delivery room, cursing the day I ever claimed to want this – but if common accounts of the post-birth experience are true, the memory of that pain will soon melt away in favor of oxytocin bliss, endorphin nirvana, and the joy of meeting the new little person I’ve just brought into the world.

 

Thanks to TestMeDNA for sponsoring this series! Browse their website for answers to big questions like “What does a paternity test cost?” and “What the hell is a buccal swab?”

Do I Want Kids? Part 1: Mental Health

Kate Sloan

Am I too crazy to have kids?

This question haunts me. I’m embarrassed at how often it flits through my head. When I get sucked down into the whirlpool of depression or anxiety, those moods pose a question which only serves to perpetuate them: Are you too fucked-up to ever get the things you want? And of course, in the throes of sadness and fear, “yes” is the only answer I can fathom.

There are times when my mental health is so bad that I can barely take care of myself – food, sleep, hygiene – so it’s scary to imagine trying to take care of someone else at those times. How can you be responsible for another human being if you’re crying too hard to get up off the floor, or if the world beyond your bed feels too scary to contemplate?

I’ve heard many a horror story from people whose parents raised them in a maelstrom of mental illness. Children of the severely depressed can be neglected; children of the deeply anxious can absorb compulsive fears; children of people with personality disorders can grow up hurt and confused, unable to truly trust anyone. Of course, these stories aren’t universal, and I probably know just as many people whose parents struggled with mental illness and who nonetheless turned out fine, but it’s hard to tune out these narratives when you’re scared they could come true for you.

I’d like to think my co-parent would be a relatively sane, grounded person, to help balance me out. (As much as I admire folks who raise kids solo, that doesn’t seem emotionally or financially tenable for me.) But then you risk creating an off-kilter family dynamic where one person is over-relied upon to prop up everyone else, psychologically and logistically, and that’s not fair at all. Maybe this is an area where polyamory could be an advantage: a solid support network of de facto other parents could take some pressure off. They do say it takes a village to raise a child, after all. The results of a legal paternity test can tell you a lot, but they’re not the whole picture, and a parent or guardian obviously doesn’t have to be genetically or legally related to a kid to assist in raising that kid.

Even supposing that I could overcome my own craziness enough to take care of a child – and/or rely on the help of other, steadier humans – I would still worry about transmitting that craziness to my kid. Some varieties of DNA test can predict whether a person might develop certain mental illnesses, but even if I went the adoption route, I’d still be concerned my negative thought patterns and tendency to overreact to emotional stimuli would get passed on to my little one through sheer osmosis. I would have to be careful and deliberate in the ways I chose to behave around them, and the values and habits I let them pick up – though I suppose that’s true for any parent. You probably want to clean up your act around someone you’re raising, to some extent, whether by quitting smoking or cutting back on profane language or, yes, consciously dialling back your “crazy” behaviors if you can. Hell, doing this might even help me feel less crazy, too.

That said, I don’t think it’s all bad for a mentally ill person to raise a child. Hell, both my parents struggle with depression and anxiety, and if anything, it just made them more empathetic when I started to notice my own psychological symptoms. I’ve also learned about cognitive-behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy while getting treated for my mental illnesses, and these are useful frameworks for anyone seeking to moderate and process their feelings. I could teach these systems to my kid(s), and maybe then they would have an easier time with childhood’s classically outsized emotions, like sadness, rage, and restlessness. Increased emotional literacy is one of the major silver linings I’ve found in my struggles with depression and anxiety, so I may as well try to impart it on my spawn.

It’s also worth noting that depression and anxiety don’t necessarily preclude you from being loving and supportive; you may just show your love and support in different ways than a neurotypical person, depending on how your symptoms manifest. I can still be there for loved ones when I’m having a rough time. It definitely looks different than my emotional support does when I’m feeling better – there’s fewer words of wisdom and more sitting in silence and solidarity – but it’s still a form of love. As the brilliant Carly Boyce pointed out in a suicide intervention workshop of hers that I attended, sometimes a person in distress doesn’t need you to pull them out of that distress – they just need you to keep them company until the feeling passes. As someone well-versed in distress, I could certainly do that for my kid.

So, am I too crazy to have kids? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s off the table entirely. I think, in order to feel comfortable taking that step, I would first have to feel stable in my medication regimen, brush up on my CBT and DBT skills, and have a relatively settled, dependable social support structure. But once those things were in place, I might just become a hyper-empathetic – if chronically frazzled – mom.

 

This 3-part series on parenthood was generously sponsored by the folks at TestMeDNA.com. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.

It’s a Wand Vibe Throwdown!

Kate Sloan

Recently SuporAdultProduct.com reached out asking me to review some toys for them, and I noticed that they had a super robust wand vibrators section. I haven’t seen this many wands in one place since the last Harry Potter movie! Here are some mini-reviews of the 3 rechargeable wands they sent me…

“The Original Rechargeable Magic Wand Vibrator“ (a.k.a. “the pink one”)

Pros:

  • Most importantly: the vibrations are pretty good. Strong, relatively rumbly, everything I want.
  • It has 6 steady speeds – more than most wands of this size. Well, it actually has 3 different steady-speed modes, each of which has both a high and a low setting. (Sound complicated? Yeah, I’ll get to that when I list the cons…)
  • It’s a truly electric, Pepto Bismol shade of pink. Delightful.
  • It has a bendy neck, which I’m told some people care about.
  • At $28.99, it’s much cheaper than I would generally expect for a vibe this big and strong.

Cons:

  • As you can probably infer, it’s an obvious knockoff of the official, Japanese-made Magic Wands we know and love.
  • As such, it feels light and insubstantial – not at all the hefty luxury item that a real Magic Wand Rechargeable feels like to me. The ABS plastic casing feels like it could fall apart at any moment.
  • While the website claims the toy’s head is made of silicone, to me it looks, feels, and smells more like whatever cheap foamy substance made up the heads of original Magic Wands (read: probably porous).
  • The controls aren’t exactly intuitive. There’s a power button, a speed-change button, and a button for cycling through several patterns. Some of the patterns’ speeds can be changed, some can’t.
  • This wand is as loud as the original Magic Wand, which is to say, loud.

“Bodywand Plug In Multi Function Massager Black“ (a.k.a. “the black one”)

Pros:

  • The vibrations of this one, too, are strong and rumbly – though they do get slightly buzzier as you increase the speed.
  • It has a stellar eight speeds, and several patterns.
  • I like how its ABS plastic body feels in my hand: substantial and smooth, sort of like the original Doxy.
  • Also like the Doxy, it has a subtly curved/tapered body which makes it comfortable to hold, and feels sexy to the touch.

Cons:

  • Once again, I’ve gotta say, this appears to be a knockoff. I doubt Bodywand made this.
  • The head – which may or may not be made of silicone – picks up lint, dirt, and hair constantly, so I need to carefully rinse it off a lot.
  • The seam on said head is slim and thus tough to clean.
  • The shape of the head is too broad and round to suit my tastes; I prefer something with an angular edge I can use to focus the vibrations onto my clit in a more pinpoint way.
  • Most annoyingly: this wand, for no apparent reason, starts at its highest speed when you first turn it on. You have to press the speed button seven times to get down to the lowest setting if that’s where you want to start, and then it starts building back up again.

“Pipedream USB-Rechargeable Silicone Mini Body Massager“ (a.k.a. “the purple one”)

Pros:

  • Most amazingly, you can use EITHER END of this toy. It has one button which controls the motor in the head, and one which controls the motor in the shaft/handle. (You can’t have both on at once, but you wouldn’t really ever need to.)
  • Both motors are impressively strong and rumbly (though the head’s motor is rumblier).
  • Each end has 3 steady speeds and a bunch of patterns.
  • The toy appears to be covered in a body-safe silicone casing.
  • I love the petite size of this wand.
  • It’s got a fair amount of flexibility and squishiness to it, especially in the shaft/handle, setting it apart from most traditional wands.

Cons:

  • I’m sensing a theme: this is definitely a knockoff. Pipedream did not make this.
  • The controls aren’t intuitive. Several times, when I thought I was turning the vibrator off, its buttons just lit up in inscrutable rainbow colors and didn’t shut off until I pressed more buttons.
  • The toy feels somewhat poorly constructed: I can feel mechanical pieces sliding around a little underneath the silicone outer casing, and some of the buttons on the casing don’t quite line up with the places you actually need to press to get the toy to do anything.
  • The vibe occasionally overheats during use, to a worrying degree.
  • The floral texture all over the toy would be a bitch to clean.

Overall: the purple one is my fave. It’s somehow the rumbliest of the bunch, despite being the smallest, and I love the dual motors. I was surprised by how much I liked these vibes, given that they’re all under $40 and somewhat sketchy!

 

Thanks to SuporAdultProduct.com for sending me these toys and sponsoring this post. As always, all writing and opinions are my own.