Up until midlife, I had a few sex toys but they didn’t play a key role in my sex life. I had reliable orgasms with my masturbation style and pretty reliable orgasms with long-term partners — adequate foreplay, enough arousal, and a routine that worked for me — all without using a clitoral vibrator. Visiting sex shops was something fun to do with friends and with long-term partners but I didn’t really have a shopping list to check off. And those visits were very dildo-focused - clitoral stimulation, not so much.
It wasn’t until later, when I began having casual experiences with new people - threesomes, orgies, public sex, casual encounters, BDSM - that I came face to face with the ol’ orgasm gap. With unfamiliar partners I was more in my head, nervous, and we didn’t know each other’s bodies. Although I can’t name specifically where or how I first heard of the Hitachi Magic Wand, I feel like I was familiar with it most of my adult life. It’s just part of culture like Chanel No. 5 and Alfred Hitchcock films - before I’d ever watched Rear Window or The Man Who Knew Too Much, I felt like I had. Have I ever really smelled Chanel No. 5? Not sure but I know it’s iconic. Ladies in my friend group raved about them, but I never experienced one until I was Dommed by men who used them in scenes as part of sensation play, “punishment”, along with holsters and restraints, and for clitoral stimulation during anal sex.
I haven’t personally experienced men being threatened by sex toys. In my marriage they have always enhanced fun and pleasure. And many men I had vanilla play dates with would request that I bring toys from home or buy me fun things like panty vibrators to wear out in public.
But I know there are men out there who have anxiety that a toy will replace them, who worry that using toys means they are inadequate lovers, who worry about their performance or size, when they could be welcoming toys as their greatest allies.
I coach clients to use them before, during, and after intercourse. I advise men who are dating to keep an array of lubes, erotic tools, and sanitized toys on hand for their dates — or shop for toys together.
He respects and encourages your sexual autonomy to pleasure yourself when and how you need, enjoy, or prefer.
He incorporates toys as erotic anticipation days before you’re in a room together — directing you to “edge yourself but don’t come” a few days before your date, or requesting you “send a video of you playing with your toy.”
He understands that not all women orgasm the same way.
He’s a loving, skilled Dom with mastery of kink dynamics and knows which toys to use for specific sensory experiences and when to use them.
He is a lazy, low-effort lover who wants to bring in a toy in lieu of being active in foreplay. He doesn’t earn a green flag for simply outsourcing foreplay to a toy.
He gets pouty when you bring in a toy.
He starts making false claims that toys desensitize you, ruin your genitals, or will make you want partnered sex less.
He gets overly sensitive when you don’t come from his fingers, mouth, or penis, and interprets it as him having done something wrong, leaving you forgo your pleasure to console him. (BUT… this could be a yellow flag If you’re copping an attitude when you reach for a toy, the red flag is on you.)
As a partner, you want to exhibit green flags as well. When the focus is on you both being clear, honest, kind communicators who help each other feel safe and cared for, toys don’t have to mean anyone is inadequate. Keep it intimate. Keep it playful. Don’t make orgasm the goal. Pleasure is the whole point.
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