The memory’s a bit of a blur now, but almost 7 years ago, I was standing in the bathroom at my parents’ house, mentally preparing myself to tell them I had a sex blog. I knew everything would be okay in the end, and it was — but I could’ve never anticipated just how genuinely my parents, and my mom in particular, would come to encourage and champion this unorthodox career. Coming out as a sex blogger was my second coming out. My first took place at age 14, when I wrote a letter to my parents confessing that I liked girls. Eons later, two years after revealing my sex blog, I came out as non-monogamous. Today, my mom is my . . . read more

[From Crash Pad, one of the best sites on the internet for feminist porn, censored to protect Tumblr’s delicate sensibilities.] As I write this, sipping a chestnut praline latte at my local Starbucks, I know I’m living on borrowed time. Last week, Starbucks caved to pressure from an anti-porn organization and announced that starting in 2019, they will be blocking “pornography and illegal content” on their wifi networks. This, of course, means the salacious and utterly disgraceful sex toy review blog you are currently reading will likely become inaccessible. Then yesterday, Tumblr hammered the final nail in the coffin of their increasingly-aggressive crusade against adult content, stating that such content will no longer be allowed on the platform. Yeah, on Tumblr, . . . read more

Or: why G-spot stimulation is not the pinnacle of pleasure. Hi, my name’s Epiphora, and I almost always need clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm. I thought this was common knowledge, clueless as that may sound. I mean, I write about my genitals on the internet every day of my life — obviously people must know this about me? But something happened the other day that made me realize that may not be true. That perhaps I haven’t been explicit enough about the types of stimulation I like and how, logistically, that plays out in my sex toy testing. Recently, I struck up a friendship with a new sex blogger. She messaged me one day seeking advice. “I think I’m . . . read more

Cupcake butt plug and Shilo. The cliché is true — it feels like just yesterday and like forever ago. This week marks 10 years since I first published a review of a sex toy on the internet. It was fall 2007, my junior year of college. That summer, I’d moved out of the dorms and into my first apartment. I was 20 years old, almost 21. If you’d asked me what my career was going to be, I would’ve hesitated and posited, “…writer? I hope?” A cautious optimism underneath which lied a practical fear. A fear that I could never make a living with writing, that I’d end up in an office job, probably, and that the only skill I’d spent my . . . 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

This is the stuff dreams are made of — my dreams at least. This, friends, is my majestic sex toy closet. The culmination of years of collecting, organizing, and fantasizing. It is here where I store my gigantic sex toy collection, which is rapidly nearing 600. How did I get here? Well, shockingly, one does not amass enough sex toys to fill a walk-in closet overnight. In fact, nine years ago, my sex toy collection lived in a single cardboard box under my desk. As I began reviewing more, the toys graduated to a purple zippered storage case, and later to a herd of similar cases. This was an adequate but ineffective long-term system, so when I needed more space, I . . . read more

I never know my name anymore. A few months ago, I was at sex educator friend’s party getting high out of a homemade bong and listening to Dark Side of the Moon. It was the most high school moment of my life — particularly so because, aside from meeting boys off the internet in mall parking garages, I never did anything terribly forbidden in high school. Amidst dramatic readings of Sextrology and attempts at acting out #buttstuff in charades, a woman I’d never met arrived at the party and asked my name. As I often do these days, I hesitated. The same thing happened at the airport coming home from Woodhull, when the restaurant hostess asked for a name to reserve a table. It happened when I . . . read more

[Top: Ryder, Pure Wand, Magic Wand Rechargeable, Mona 2. Bottom: Luna Beads, Joque, Mustang, Seduction. Photo by my boyfriend!] In the past, there was no option for me to enshrine my favorite objects — sex toys — on my fingernails. For one, I bit my nails ravenously until about 4 years ago (obsessively painting them helped me stop). Also, I feel like most traditional nail salons would not take kindly to a request for such “lewd” designs, and my life is just so lewd. But now there exists a place called Finger Bang. Aside from having a name that is irresistibly fun to say in front of your in-laws (after which you shrug nonchalantly and go “what? That’s what it’s called”), Finger Bang is open . . . read more

The simplehuman Sensor Pump squirting lube onto the njoy Pure Wand. Many a time, I stared at it longingly in the aisles of Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Among the as-seen-on-TV contraptions and glistening stainless steel bathroom accessories it beckoned, goading me to use it for nefarious purposes. I’d never spend $40 on an automatic soap dispenser, but in my household, the simplehuman Sensor Pump has a much more life-sustaining function: dispensing lube. Bzzzt. That’s the sound it makes. An adorable mechanical blip, and my god — it’s a glorious thing. The first time I used it, I couldn’t stop myself. Lube was flowing like water, like wine. It was one-handed. It was instantaneous. My left hand was still firmly grasping . . . read more