Monday, March 3, 2008

Sex Toy Shops

Some of you may have noticed that I have an affinity for woman-run sex toy shops, but many people may not know why or what the difference is between your average sex shop and a woman-run feminist sex toy shop. These are important things to know especially when you may get suckered in by websites that are advertised on sex-positive TV shows like Talk Sex with Sue. I understand that getting sponsors is important, but if it were me on that show I would make sure that my sponsors were in line with my ideologies. The website I speak of is TabuToys.com. I'm singling out tabutoys, but there are many many sex toy shops on the web that fall into this category.

These types of shops often advertise themselves as being some of the largest on the web. They boast about their huge selections. That may sound good at first, but stop and think about what they're really saying. They are boasting about the quantity of the sex toys they are selling, they are not boasting about the quality. I personally prefer a sex toy shop that will guarantee me quality sex toys; toys that do what they say they're going to, made from quality materials that are safe.

Sure you can buy quality merchandise on these websites. It does exist, but you can't always tell between quality toys and crappy toys because these sites are indiscriminate. They don't care if the toys are crappy, they only care that they're making money. This is a big problem for people who don't know what to look for in a sex toy and are going to be convinced by whatever toy has the best description.

Woman-run feminist sex toy shops need to make money too, but they are also very concerned about the quality of their sex toys. They test toys before they decide to sell them in their stores and will only sell toys that meet their standards. If down the road they find that a certain sex toy keeps prematurely breaking they will stop selling it. They sell toys that are made of superior materials that are safe and pleasurable.

Now unfortunately there are actually woman-run toy stores that don't follow these standards so you can't always go by the website's "about us" section. So what is the best way to tell if a store is really interested in only selling you quality goods? Go to their lube section and look for a desensitizing anal lubricant. If they are selling one or more then they do not care about your safety. You should NEVER numb your anus in order to have anal sex. If something hurts there is a very good reason for it. You could do a lot of damage if you don't stop anal play that hurts.

Here is a list of sex toy shops that I approve of:
Babeland
Early to Bed
Good Vibrations
Holistic Wisdom
Tulip
Smitten Kitten
Womyn's Ware
Venus Envy

If there are any others that you know of feel free to leave a comment.

There are also many other reasons I don't like sites like tabutoys.com, but we won't get into that ... at least not during this rant.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanks for posting these links!

Anonymous said...

That was a little harsh. As far as I know, TabuToys is a female-run company. I've called them MANY times and they always steer me towards non-latex, non-pthalate toys (though they do sell everything and the kitchen sink.) Have you ever actually dealt with them?

Garnet Joyce said...

Harsh, maybe. I have never dealt with them, no. My point still stands that they sell a lot of low quality toys and an anal desensitizer, which in my opinion means they don't really care about the health of their customers. My guess is that a good portion of their web customers will not receive this guidance that you are talking about.

And while I singled out tabutoys.com because that was the site I had most recently been looking at, there are tons of sites on the web that feature these products, some of which are woman operated.

The goal of this piece was to steer people towards websites that will supply them with quality goods because that is all those websites sell. I may be able to tell the difference between crappy stuff and good stuff, but the average sex toy consumer probably does not.

Anonymous said...

great links. many thanks