“We bought sex toys, isn’t that cool?”: Self Exploration and Education on Buying and Using Sex Toys

I originally wrote this my senior year in college, in the midst of working on finals and writing research papers, I was writing about sex toys even then.

I have always enjoyed this piece and decided to share it here. I feel like it is a great kick off to Pride month with it’s points of bisexual empowerment, and of course it fits right in with my blog content.

It’s interesting to see how far I’ve come in my sex toy journey so far from when I wrote this – the first time I ever wrote about sex toys.

It was written, submitted, and originally published in the Summer 2015 issue of Bi Women Quarterly, a publication run by and for queer women, and headed by the Bisexual Legend herself, Robyn Ochs.

I hope you enjoy!

I remember the first time I bought a sex toy, it was a few years ago…my friend and I attended a sex toy party at a mutual acquaintance’s house, one of those cheesy, stereotypical events where guests play funny games and win prizes like penis erasers and whistles, and everyone sits around in front of a young woman touting jelly rabbits, funky flavored lubes, books on how to “tickle his pickle”, and cheap, somewhat trashy lingerie that is “sure to get him going”. It was also an interesting affair due to the fact that the majority of guests were queer women, and yet the language was heteronormative and to be honest, a bit trite. All of the toys ant other various products at the party were extremely overpriced for their quality, and as young college students we didn’t have a lot of expendable cash, nor were we yet all that comfortable with the idea of purchasing a sex toy. My friend and I made an agreement to go to the mall the next day and look at Spencer’s where they had similar toys for less than half the price.

We each bought a different kind of vibrator and were enthralled, saying to our friends “isn’t this funny? We bought sex toys, isn’t that cool?” It was still taboo and I remember hiding the purchase from my roommate when I got home, tucking it away in a dark corner at the top of the closet. I only used the toy a few times that year, mostly because I lived in a dorm and shared a room, but also partly because I was embarrassed and worried about what she would think of me if she knew I had it (I’m pretty sure she never had a clue).

Over the next couple years, I started talking about sex and masturbation more openly as I got closer with my friends at college, and I was becoming more educated on sex toys though research, talking with friends, and a whole lot of self-exploration. I now own more than a few toys and have become expertly comfortable talking about sex toys with anyone who will listen or wants to know more. Though it only cost ten dollars, and in all honesty was pretty shitty, my first neon purple vibrator helped teach me a lot about myself, masturbation, pleasure, and my own sexuality and body. It opened me up to learning about sex toys, gaining more knowledge about quality toys and safety, and that there are more women using them than people tend to think, and that they aren’t just for straight women, but their queer counterparts as well.

I talk about sex toys, comfortably and openly, on a nearly daily basis…whether with friends, educators, people I’m educating, colleagues, or even my mom. Yet I still am constantly learning new things and changing/adapting my views and opinions on toys, and sex positivity in general. My friends and I talk about sex all the time, in my education of my community we constantly talk about sex, even my parents and I talk about sex. It is something that is always coming up, yet even in those situations where I am most comfortable, the subject of toys is still sometimes taboo or avoided, or at the very least fairly controversial…and I wonder why.

Within the queer community, particularly as a woman who identifies in the middle sexualities, there are a lot of stereotypes placed on my identity and my sexuality. Bisexuals are often labeled and stereotyped as promiscuous, slutty, and therefore our sexualities are often the subject of stricter scrutiny than that of others. This is an interesting issue to combat, especially as a bisexual woman – women’s sexuality being constantly under review and seen as lesser – while also remaining adamantly sex-positive. It can be extremely important to focus on sexual empowerment in the bisexual community and use sexual liberation as a form of self-care, specifically when having to deal with the common myths/stereotypes/discrimination that ae specific to the bi community. I attempt to use sex toys to promote sex positivity and empowerment within my communities, using them as a form of self-love expression, and it is difficult to navigate the line between my sex positivity and the stereotypes I face due to my identity as a queer woman. I believe that it is important for everyone, but queer women in particular, to feel empowered to embrace their sexualities and express themselves through their sexuality, chiefly to combat the fetishization of our identities, telling the public that we are here and we are whole people, and that our sexualities do not exist for the pleasure or prejudice of others.

I have taken quite the journey from buying my first sex toy in Spencer’s with my friend, with little to no knowledge of sex toys, to getting to a point of educating friends and peers on the subject of sex toys and writing for a company that sells toys and promotes feminist, sex positive exploration of one’s own sexuality. It may not be an easy journey for everyone to take, and becoming comfortable with discussing these topics may not be a simple feat, but I whole-heartedly believe that everyone can reach their own sex toy epiphany. As bi women, we can rise above the stereotypes and labels placed on us and come to embrace and love who we are, and not be afraid of sharing that with the world.

 

Bi Women Quarterly is a really cool publication and tied to an awesome organization – Bi Women Boston. Check them out here!

If you know of an organization looking for a speaker, check out Robyn

 

Kinky, Submissive, and Still a Feminist

So I suppose if I’m writing about my entire experience or identity as a kinky individual, I should probably start at the beginning of my sexual discovery. I wasn’t oblivious of sexuality until I was a teen or a young adult and then one day, had some miraculous sexual awakening.  I wasn’t having vanilla sex for years and then one day had a partner spank me or pin my arms down and then realize what I’d been missing all along. I started discovering my kinky side when I was probably about eleven or twelve, though I didn’t have words for it yet and it was definitely surrounded by a feeling of shame and secrets, which I am still in the process of unlearning.

I had my first period the summer I was eleven, and in the time surrounding that was when I started exploring my body and learning the different things it was capable of.  I distinctly remember the first time I masturbated, not having the vocabulary to know that’s what I was doing, but grabbing something in my room that looked like it might work and going to town in front of my Orlando Bloom poster.  After that initial experience, I was addicted, finding any free time and short moment of privacy I had to recreate this new thing I had found out my body could do…typical adolescent behavior right? I eventually discovered porn – and we can get into all of the problematic themes and practices later, I didn’t know better, I was like 13 – which just upped the game. With no concept of what BDSM actually was, I ventured into that section for some reason, and the plot thickens. I had moved on from Orlando Bloom and started watching and masturbating to some of the raunchiest BDSM/bondage porn I’ve seen to date. I was always met with feelings of shame afterward, not knowing what any of this meant but feeling sure that I was wrong for enjoying it to any degree. When I started getting a little more creative and experimental, I would come up with scenes in my head of what was happening or being done to me. I would tie myself up with bathrobe belts, and regular belts (I had to be inventive) and get off while I was in these precarious and, I now realize, dangerous positions.

So these early discoveries and explorations of a sexuality I knew nothing about were somewhat forgotten for a while. I would still watch and get off to kinky porn, but it stayed fairly on the surface and definitely wasn’t something I ever shared with anyone or talked about…until college.

I am someone with a very strong, independent, dominant personality. I am a feminist and believe in women thinking, succeeding, and doing for themselves; we don’t need men to help us get through life. So how do I balance that with also being sexually submissive? What does that look like? And how does one navigate these two seemingly contradictive paths? To me it feels immensely empowering to tell someone that I am kinky (though this doesn’t usually happen except with people I trust or in a setting where I know I am not in a position of harm). It feels like an act of rebellion in a way, because being deviant from the sexual “norm” is still fairly taboo, even with the recent popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey […we can talk about my thoughts on that later…], the mainstream public still has only gotten a very tame and mild taste of any sort of “alternative sexuality”.  People who practice and perform “kink” are not necessarily a small group, but because of the stigma and taboo associated with “sexually deviant lifestyles”, there are not always many who readily talk publicly about it.

The biggest moment in my adult kink discoveries (so far) is probably when I created a FetLife profile. I had never had access to so many people involved in or interested in some part of this community, even having attended conferences with BDSM/kink focused workshops and a seminar given by a professional dominatrix, so many people were hesitant to open up much about their interests and experiences. I, of course, have encountered plenty of men who want to control me, want to bark orders via chat messages, or who are only there to demand nudes with no respect to the community or practices of a proper BDSM relationship or encounter…but I have also come across people who have been helpful and become friends or mentors able to carry on intelligent conversations and impart knowledge of how to navigate the BDSM world, particularly as a female submissive who are often taken advantage of in numerous ways.

So how does a feminist with a strong dominant personality navigate also being a sexual submissive? The honest answer is that I’m still figuring it out and learning what that means for me. It is an interesting balance.

As a feminist, I believe in equality. I believe in equal rights for all genders. I hate the idea of women being the “fairer sex” that needs to be taken care of and helped through life by men. I am not an object for consumption. I have seen toxic masculinity running rampant, I am immersed in a patriarchal society full of misogyny and sexism and these are things I am dedicated to fighting. Because of this, many think or ask how I can, in turn, let a man control me and tell me what to do in bed. Firstly, this is making the assumption that I have only male partners, which is not the case. Secondly, and most importantly to me is the distinction between a situation in which I am choosing to give control over to someone, rather than situations in which it is assumed that I should not have the choice to make my own decisions.

Submission is a choice, and something that is given, not taken. And I believe that in many ways, it takes more strength than dominance. That is not to discount or discredit the dedication and attention that is required to be a successful and good Dom…but the level of trust that a sub is placing in their partner takes great strength of will.

  [me, wearing white collar with silver studs and a hot pink button that says feminists are the majority]

Many women are taking back and reclaiming pleasure, whether after sexual trauma, a bad relationship, a long period without any sort of sexual stimulation, etc. Women’s sexual pleasure is most definitely a feminist act, particularly in a society where we are taught to be ashamed of sexual desires and pleasures…that men are the ones with the sex drive, and the focus is almost always on their pleasure over anyone else’s. Well, we are flipping that narrative on its head, because not only are women (and other non cis-male bodies) interested in sex, but we desire pleasure from it as well. That may not always mean orgasm, but pleasure nonetheless.

For so many that are making this reclamation of their pleasure, masturbation is where it starts, and for me, kink is an integral and important part of masturbation, and my pleasure. Therefore, by association, my kink too is a feminist act because it is through kink and BDSM that I am reclaiming the pleasure that I have been denied in numerous situations and for myriad reasons. As an overweight woman, for a long time I felt that I was undeserving of the same sexual pleasures others were afforded, or at least that they were not available to me, because of my size. There have been plenty of vanilla interactions in which pleasure was not made readily available to me because my partner’s focus was on his own pleasure, and there was no stimulation of any kind really, for me. Keep in mind that only around 25% of women (I feel that is a generous estimate) orgasm just from vaginal penetration*, and while orgasm is not always the ultimate goal of sex, and sexual pleasures, I am definitely one of the nearly 86% or so of women who require some other sort of stimulation (whether it be clitoral, anal, etc.) to reach orgasm.

So while many may look at a sexually submissive woman and think that she is backwards, subservient, and the exact opposite of a feminist…look again, and think about whose choice it was for her to be on her knees, or to be tied to a bed post. She wasn’t forced there, she chose to be there; if you removed her bonds, she likely would remain in the same vulnerable position because her submission has already been given, the cuffs and ropes and blindfolds are merely tools to carry out fantasies.

 

*Castleman, M., M.A. (2009, March 16). The Most Important Sexual Statistic. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/200903/the-most-important-sexual-statistic

 

 

Coming Into My Identity

 

Big rainbow flag is waving in the wind with sun shining throughMore of my flag images:

I suppose I’m taking the cliché route and writing my first official blog post, on my queer blog, about my “coming out” story, or my queer/bisexual journey.

But I figured it would be a good place to start, to give some insight into how I got to this point, where I stand now with my queer identity, how I came to call myself queer proudly, and just a general look at me.

In the queer or LGBTQ+ community, there is a lot of emphasis still put on the “coming out” narrative, and people are still obsessed with folks’ “coming out” stories…but for most individuals, it’s more complicated than one succinct, compact, tied-with-a-ribbon story, because “coming out” doesn’t just happen one time, and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.

I personally prefer not to look at it as “coming out”, but more as a “coming in”. We are finally stepping into and occupying these identities that we hold. The idea of the closet holds so many negative connotations, and many queer individuals feel a lot of pressure to come out because being “in the closet” is still so stigmatized within the LGBT community.

The reality is that coming out is an extremely personal decision, and for reasons of privacy, safety, job security, etc. it should be left to that individual to decide if, when, how, and to what extent to “come out”. I have been coming out since I was sixteen, and am still not truly 100% “out” (we’ll revisit this topic in a later post), but I chose when and who to tell, and did so because it was what I was comfortable with and what worked for me.

I stepped into my “non-straight” identity for the first time when I was sixteen years old by telling my best friend at the time. I had been confused and questioning my sexuality for about a year because I believed I had a crush on another friend of mine that was a girl. I knew I wasn’t a lesbian because I was still very much attracted to guys, but I went back and forth on thinking maybe this was just a fluke and I was still straight, it was just this one girl. Finally I was honest with myself that this wasn’t a fluke, and I told the one person that I told everything to that I knew I was attracted to girls…but I still didn’t use the term bisexual.

The time I was in high school was, I feel, the peak of when people would say that anyone who said they were “bisexual” was just looking for attention or making something up to be different. I never felt that way about anyone, but because that idea was so pervasive at the time, I shied away from associating myself with it.

So I told my best friend I knew I was attracted to girls and guys, and he was the only person that knew for two years. Over that time I struggled to figure out even what to identify as to myself, because if “bisexual” meant slutty and looking for attention, then that wasn’t me, and I began to internalize that idea. For a good part of those two years I ignored it all and got wrapped up in a crush that I was convinced was love, on the aforementioned best friend, and I focused on him.

Fast forward through those times, the biggest heartbreak of my life (so far), and the ending of our friendship (which I’m sure we will come back to in a later post), to the first time I called myself bisexual, and it changed everything.

In the Fall of 2011, I was in my first year of university. It was around early October and I had just discovered my school’s student-led LGBT organization. I still wasn’t “out” to any of my roommates, friends at school, or friends back home, and I wanted to explore and discover this on my own, so I went to my first meeting by myself and it was amazing. I had been involved in my high school’s GSA (gay-straight alliance) and was always accepting of anything LGBT, but I had never seen so many out, loud and proud people in one room before. I made a friend that night and he became my introductory mentor to the group. After the meeting, we were talking and he casually asked me how I identified, and without thinking about it much or skipping a beat, I told him I was bi, he accepted it as my truth as easily as if I had told him my hair was brown, and in that moment my life changed.

I started telling my new friends at college, I started going to every meeting each week and quickly making new friends, and like the old cliché, over Thanksgiving break, I came out to my best friends I’ve kept since middle school.

It continued on like that, my queer community and chosen family forming around me, and I completely immersed myself in all of it. The word that I once had shied away from and been ashamed to associate with was now an identity I had thrust myself into full force, and with pride.

Why bisexual? At the time I began learning about and realizing my sexuality, I had a limited lexicon of terms to choose from, and it was the only one I had to describe what I was feeling. As my bonds strengthened with my university organization, and my LGBT family, I began to learn more about the spectrum of gender and sexuality, and the different identities that people occupy.

The first time I heard someone identify as Queer was in a panel held by my newfound organization. The individual who held this identity explained her personal definition of the term and something clicked inside me. It just described everything I felt I was, even things that bisexual never quite reached, and I knew it was a term I liked and identified with.

I still use both; for myself because both still resonate with me, for different situations because in some settings one may feel more right or fitting than the other, and for others because as much as many folks don’t like the idea of labels, I find them liberating. It is an identity that I can step into and feel validated, I can share my truth and have a common ground on which to connect with others who share at least part of that identity.

The process of “coming out” is never truly done, and it isn’t a one-size-fits-all. But this is how I discovered myself and came in to being bisexual.