Why are sex games so bad? This is an eternal question I ask myself regularly. I have a whole label in my Gmail for sex games, and it’s filled to the hilt with shitty, offensive products I’d never want to play in a million years, often including pleas for me to review them. (People love to say stuff like, “it’s not a sex toy, but it’s KIND OF A SEX TOY!”) Ha. Ha. Hahahaha. Usually I just send the links to my girlfriend so we can ridicule the games in private, but I just got one that perfectly demonstrates everything that’s wrong with terrible sex games. It’s called Foreplay, and while it’s not the worst sex game ever, it manages . . . read more

“Holy shit, you masturbate for a living?!” This is how people often respond when I tell them what I do, and honestly, I can’t blame them. On the surface, “sex toy tester” sounds like a dream job. “You’re so lucky!” they exclaim. “You get paid to orgasm!” But this is an oversimplification — and it starts to get annoying after a while. Aside from dismissing all the behind-the-scenes work that goes into running a blog, it glosses over the aspects of this job that are less than idyllic. While being a sex toy reviewer is definitely more fun than most jobs and has its fair share of perks,1 there are a number of drawbacks too. The following is a list of 22 unfortunate . . . read more

So I was interviewed for a piece about female ejaculation/squirting for Fusion recently. The article finally went live, and lo and behold, I’m not mentioned at all because some new bullshit study came out that had to trump everything. Also, they needed to make room for all those animated GIFs. I’m no scientist and I’m not in the business of picking apart studies, but I will say that its findings contradict several other studies which have previously shown that ejaculate contains zero or low levels of urea and creatinine. Its findings also go against several thousand million1 vagina-owners, including myself, who have reported that the stuff they ejaculate does not look, smell, or taste like pee. Also, WHO FUCKING CARES what the chemical make-up of the ejaculate . . . read more

[What happens when the media misrepresents squirting? Similar rage.] Less than a month ago we were attacked by headlines screaming that the G-spot doesn’t exist, and here we are again, with yet another news source “reporting” (I use that word quite loosely) on yet another “study” “proving” that the G-spot is a “myth” and EVERYONE CALM DOWN AND TOUCH YOUR CLITORIS. It’s not the first, and it will never be the last, but it’s the one that broke me. My soul has been cracking, little by little, each time this happens. Like that time a sex educator drew a question mark on an anatomy chart in place of a G-spot. That time a guy dared to write a book called What Do Women . . . read more

I hate pink. Always have. Based on pure shudder-factor, my aversion to pink ranks somewhere below my trypophobia but above my distaste for whiskey and the word “panties.” When I mention the color, I do little to conceal my disgust. I sigh about its inevitability and express mock-excitement over it. My hate is documented, understood. This color snobbery helps me curate my sex toy collection. By always mercilessly begging firmly asking for the color I want, I’ve managed to avoid a lot of pink stuff. But the pink toys I do own — I look at them and feel regret. There are two big reasons why I hate pink: it’s aesthetically ugly, and I abhor its connotations. Perhaps I find it ugly because of its connotations, but nonetheless, I don’t enjoy looking at it. Hot . . . read more

Look, I get it. You think this is a picture of a FUN FUN SUPER FUN night. I know — you’d kill to own that many sex toys. But I would gently ask that you acquire a sense of scale and absorb what you are seeing here — five dildos, two of them enormous, two vibes, and a bottle of lube, consuming my desk. So many toys that I ran out of paper towel, so I resorted to setting them on my notebook as I used them. These toys were for one masturbation session, and I had a reason for using every single one. I did not choose this line-up based on what I actually wanted to put on/in my genitals . . . read more

Now that Hysteria’s come out, everyone has an opinion about vibrators. Many of which I ignore. But I had not really heard this particular argument from a woman before, and I was intrigued by its logic. Brandi Megan Granett is troubled, just troubled, that there’s an entire movie!!! devoted to the history of the vibrator, and that her Twitter timeline is full of links to sex toy-related news stories. This is all very upsetting! Because in her mind, fingers are better, and vibrator users are just brainwashed. I know I should let her have her little opinion in her corner of the internet, but… I have to say something. This shit bugs me because, while the article isn’t extreme or super . . . read more

Yesterday I woke up to a very sad press release in my inbox. It announced that Tristan Taormino, sex educator and feminist pornographer extraordinaire, has been uninvited from giving a keynote at Oregon State University’s Modern Sex Conference in February. Why? Oh, only the same reason people get booked to do keynotes: “the content of her resume and website.” Probable translation: “what, she makes porn?!” Even worse, OSU will not be reimbursing Tristan for her travel expenses. Classy. Tristan’s keynote was called “Claiming Your Sexual Power,” and its description was as follows: What does it mean to be sexually empowered? How is our sexuality affected by the mixed messages we get from the media and other cultural institutions? How can we . . . read more

Want more guidance? Check out my beginner’s guide to sex toy reviewing. I also teach an entire online course for budding sex bloggers! There is no rulebook for writing sex toy reviews, but any longtime reviewer will tell you that there are definite amateur mistakes, mistakes that make our eyes glaze over with terror. When a person begins reviewing sex toys, their first impulse may be to write a cutesy, coy, infomercial-like review. This is no surprise, since sex toys are seen as taboo and “naughty,” and new reviewers (perhaps unknowingly) feel the need to perpetuate those stereotypes. My first reviews were, admittedly, pretty atrocious. I’m guilty of breaking some of these rules myself — under “cons” for a glass . . . read more