Public Sex Toys At Last

How many times have sex toys been the subject of schoolboy sniggers? How often have women giggled at the prospect of touching yet alone using a vibrator?

Now things are changing. I’m not saying that sex toys are the normal topic of conversation for everyone or that any occasion is appropriate to bring up the subject of self-pleasure but it’s surprising how often sex toys come up in my life.

I’m not talking here about the online, adult, sex toy testing side of my life – the other bit. The bit where I work in an office, deal with clients in non-adult businesses and communicate in a pretty “normal” way with those around me. It happens from time to time that the subject of sex and sex toys arises. The majority of occasions it’s in the context of a joke, not “Oh I got this great vibrator the other day …” and that’s exactly what made me write this post.

However unlike other occasions the circumstances of the incident highlighted just how far we’ve come.

I was passing through the reception area of one of my client’s buildings when I noticed the receptionist was in fits of giggles. Her wireless mouse had stopped working and she had rung to the main office to see if they had any AA batteries. Their reaction had been to suggest she wanted to use them for her vibrator and that she had run them down amusing herself because it had been a quiet morning.

If the conversation on the phone had been between two “Sex And The City” types 20s to 40s maybe, and they had kept it to themselves it wouldn’t have been so notable. But the receptionist is easily old enough to be my mother and she chose to tell me about it. Twice!

Don’t get me wrong I find it refreshing that a mature woman can talk openly about sex toys to a guy many years her junior. OK, I know she didn’t tell me how she preferred to use them but it did open my eyes.

Suze and I are often reminding ourselves that we are now part of the adult industry and that we have to be careful when making assumptions about what is and isn’t acceptable in normal society. It’s so easy to assume that because you can discuss sex toys or porn when at an adult event or business meeting that the wider world has the same open and accepting attitude. Porn is lagging behind sex toys, there’s something about the graphic depiction of sex, often adventurous sex that is less palatable to the non-adult-involved public.

And yet sex toys are perhaps more intimate. Sex in a movie is at its most basic simply a documenting of the human activity of copulation – sex toys are implicitly linked with self-pleasure, an activity that is taboo in many societies and religions.

Yes, you could argue that the purpose of pornography is to aid masturbation although many couples watch pornography together.

The world is changing people – keep up!