Since 1987 I have spent at least some part of every day of my life thinking about sex toys. That was the year I got my first job at a sex store, and since then I've done just about every job there is to do in the sex toy industry. I love sex toys and even tie certain product names and packaging to different emotional and developmental times of my life. In the same way that hearing The Doors makes me think of the homophobic hell of summer camp and the uncomfortable erotic thrill I got reading my first true crime book, seeing an old school bottle of Emotion Lotion takes me back to the first time a customer tried to pick me up, or the hours I spent with a price gun and blow up dolls in a warehouse.
How we talk about sex toys, and the cultural meaning of them has changed a lot since 1987. Several major social and cultural phenomenon have impacted how sex toys have been talked about and sold, and we can trace these back at least as far as the late 1960s (including, but not limited to the so-called sexual revolution, the success of sex shops for women, HIV/AIDS, the Internet). Each of these had a role in pushing sex toys further into the public view, and expanding the possible ways sex toys could be talked about.
Today there's a different change afoot (is it avibe?) Sex toys are being re-branded as sexual health devices. Whether this is going to result in positive or negative implications for those of us who care about sexual pleasure (for fun or profit), the fact that both big business and the medical profession are getting on board suggests that we'd better start thinking now about what it means, before all we can do is repeat product tag lines and whistle vibrator jingles while we work.
Read more - Sex Toy or Sexual Health Device: The Re-Branding of Sex Toys
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