Body parts are not gender specific. So why sex toys?

attend sex Shopping, in person or online, can be a dizzying experience. There are hundreds of different toys out there – different brands, different shapes, different materials, different moving parts – and it can be difficult to figure out how each one is designed to boost your business. The sex tech industry almost universally organizes toys by gender, with very clearly defined sections for males and females.

These distinctions are detrimental to inquisitive customers and the industry itself. If I buy a toy, why am I even doing it? matter what is my gender Sex toy manufacturers don’t know what’s in my pants. They don’t know what’s in your pants either. But when they separate toys by gender, they make some strong and invasive guesses as to what must be inside. The sex toy industry should know better than anyone that genitals are not the same sex.

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Pleasure has no gender

Making gender distinctions might have made sense a hundred years ago, but the year is 2022. We all know that there are men with vulvas and women with phalluses, and that there are people who don’t identify with the binary gender everything. she everything (Surprise, Surprise) Having genitals and also likes to scale it down to sexual style. There are many people on every part of the gender spectrum who enjoy toys they don’t even know exist because of gender barriers that keep them from doing so.

Look, I’m a queer trans woman. Even before I started testing sex toys professionally, I had an extreme, shall we say, changeable sexual history. (Basically, I was a seasoned slut long before I was a professional.) In my experience, there is no such thing as a toy that just works a Gender. While vibrators and sucking toys are generally marketed to women, they can also be used by people with phalluses, anuses, and more. The same goes for toys traditionally marketed as intended for men. Assholes don’t have gender, folks! And stroking works on clitoris too!

A sex toy doesn’t just bring you down. They can be tools to explore your body and find what feels good to you. They can help you see yourself in a different light or regain your personal agency. Testing new sex technologies has helped me appreciate my body instead of hating the things about it that I can’t change. It saddens me to think that other people are deprived of these experiences because companies are invested in upholding outdated gender norms.

skip steps

That’s the other problem, and it’s a much bigger one. Sex tech has become more prominent in mainstream publications, including this one. Increased exposure has helped break down taboos around sex and sexual health, and that’s good for everyone (especially the companies themselves, but I digress).

But making and promoting highly gendered toys in the mainstream is skipping a crucial step. In order to break down societal taboos surrounding sex, you also need to deconstruct what gender means in a sexual and social context. By using gendered language and labels on sex toys, these companies not only cling to anatomically inaccurate and trans-exclusive ideas like “all men have penises” and “all women have vaginas.” You actively reinforce them.

This is especially damaging to transgender, non-binary, gender-nonconforming, and gender-nonconforming people, who are already navigating a world that reminds us every day that we don’t matter, we are abnormal, and we are an inconvenience. It’s heartbreaking that the vast majority of sex toy manufacturers are completely unconcerned about excluding us – and are actively reinforcing arbitrary barriers that are so often deployed to Damage us.

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