Buying sex toys feels dirty because we have been taught to think they're for the sad and lonely. Photo / Getty Images
• Warning: This article contains explicit sexual content
If you've ever bought a sex toy, the odds are you felt a little ashamed doing so. Either you ordered online (with a company that explicitly advertises its "discreet packaging") or you were hasty to get home with that brown paper bag so nobody saw you leaving a sex shop.
Buying sex toys feels dirty because we have been taught to think they're for the sad and lonely.
Television and movies have told us that vibrators are only for single women. Loving couples don't need any third-party stimulation, and men who own sex toys are, well, pretty perverted.
It's no wonder browsing the aisles of your local sex shop is something you do after dark, when it's unlikely anybody will bump into you on the high street. However, I don't just think the media and wider society are to blame for making sex toy shopping feel so gross. Some accountability needs to go to the manufacturers and retailers of said toys.
Let's start with why I dislike the sex toy industry.
The majority of toys and displays both in real life and online feature phallic-shaped items. No matter your sexuality, it's presumed by these sellers that "Penis is King" and everybody is obsessed with it. Either you own one and want it to be bigger, harder, or stronger, or you want one inside you. The way they're designed reeks of being concocted by a man, for the male gaze.
The use of porn stars to promote sex toys bothers me too. In order to find what you want, you have to wade through images of Barbie-blonde women holding whips and wearing nasty lingerie and Greek-god-like men with overdone tans and unthinkably large junk.
Even if you're only out to buy a cute little vibrator or some massage oil, lube, or condoms, you'll be visually assaulted with fake boobs and huge circumcised penises.
You read that correctly. Sex toys are big business and the branding and marketing of them is something manufacturers take very seriously. Be it Fleshlight, LELO, or the nJoy Pure Wand, these toys are patented to protect their IP but online you'll find dozens of copycat items at significantly lower prices (and lower quality).
For every fake Louis Vuitton bag out there, there's a fake JimmyJane vibrator too. Intellectual property issues aside, counterfeit sex toys can lack in waterproofing, may not have warranties, and will be made of cheaper materials that are less skin-friendly.
Even as a sex columnist, I am still jarred by phrases such as "cream pie"and "ass-gasm". There's also the frequent use of the F-word and C-word, and even the adjectives that are abound on packaging serve to make consumers feel a bit filthy. Believe or not, some people have zero interest in dirty language yet still want to buy sex toys.
Finally, there's the focus on BDSM, master/slave dynamics, whips, chains, and handcuffs that bothers me about buying sex toys.
If these things are your kinks, you have all the right in the world to go for gold (providing your partner is consensual). But for those of us that have no interest in the pain/pleasure dichotomy and can't get past the violent connotations of being tied-up or choked, we're turned off by shopping for sex toys when there are images of models being bound and gagged nearby.
There really shouldn't be any shame in buying a sex toy, because they're helpful, and even vital, for a healthy sex life. But if you, like me, feel that buying them is a bit gross, it's not because you don't have a sex-positive outlook or are afraid of what others think of you. It's because the act of shopping is made seedier by virtue of the way these products are marketed.
‘Mum had lived and died with this secret,’ says writer Mary Garden.