My boyfriend and I have been dating for four months and we’re crazy about each other. He’s been slowly introducing me to butt play. Last night, he asked if I’d be OK using a strap-on with him, to which I replied, “Of course!” Then he said that he had a harness and dildo in the closet. I balked. 1) What is good sex-toy etiquette? Can you use sex toys in one relationship and then in the next one? When I’ve been with women, it was NOT OK to reuse sex toys. They died with the relationship. Is it different with heteros? 2) Can you recycle sex toys with your recycling like other plastic products?
He said he’d be happy to buy new sex toys if it bothers me so much. But we’re both eco-friendly and don’t want to cause a lot of waste.
Willing To Bend Over Boyfriend
“Lesbian sex-toy etiquette is pretty clear,” says Claire Cavanah. “Dildos and harnesses don’t survive the breakup.”
Cavanah is the cofounder of Babeland (www.babeland.com), a woman-owned, continent-spanning sex-toy colossus, and a lesbian herself, and I typically defer to her on matters of lesbian sex-toy etiquette. But when asked why sex toys have to be discarded after a lesbian breakup, Claire could only offer this dyke-ass mumbo-jumbo: “A lesbian couple’s dildos become suffused with the energy of the sex in the relationship and end up symbolizing the sexual connection the poor doomed couple had. They belong to the relationship.”
“In the straight world,” Claire continues, “there’s less attachment to specific toys, so reusing a dildo and harness is probably more common and acceptable,” says Claire. “You love this guy, and you want to give him every inch of YOUR love,” not the love someone else banged his ass with, “so go get a new rig.”
How best to dispose of the old rig? “Treehugger.com says that silicone and latex are recyclable,” says Claire, “but that doesn’t mean you can toss your old dildos into your plastics bin … you’d have to summon all your courage and take them to a special facility.” If you can’t bring yourself to hand over those old dildos at a special silicone-and-latex recycling facility and the thought of your boyfriend’s used sex toys clogging your local landfill upsets you, perhaps you should mail them to Kandiss Crone at WLBT 3 News in Jackson, Miss.
Crone is a teeveenewz reporter in a state where it’s agin’ the law to sell sex toys. Twice last year the Jackson Police Department busted a local sex shop, Adult Video and Books, for the crime of selling “three-dimensional devices.” But those busts didn’t put a stop to Jackson’s three-dimensional-device crime wave, it seems.
To protect the citizens of Jackson from the imminent threat of three-dimensional devices, Crone went undercover for a very special investigative report. Crone slipped into Adult Video and Books – in disguise, lest she be recognized – and purchased a purple vibrator. Then Crone went back in with a camera crew and confronted the store’s owner. And since no teeveenewz report about crime is complete without a statement from the authorities, Crone asked the Jackson Police Department for a comment. “The adult store is not a priority for our vice and narcotics officers,” the police department said in a statement. “Citizens would rather see us using our resources to get drugs and prostitutes off our streets and work to decrease violent crime.”
Police negligence! The books are full of deeply silly, sex-phobic laws that are rarely enforced, of course, because cops have better things to do than bust people for the “crime” of selling vibrators. But when an enterprising teeveenewz reporter goes to all the trouble of conducting an undercover operation to get a dangerous purple vibrator off the streets, the least the police can do is arrest the culprits! And provide that enterprising teeveenewz reporter with some B-roll footage of the cops hauling the store’s owner away in handcuffs!
Now cynical readers might assume that Ms. Crone was using sex to attract viewers and then exonerating herself and her viewers for their salaciousness by persecuting the owner of the sex-toy shop. They might argue that Ms. Crone is only pretending to be scandalized because she’s a sophisticated, professional, modern woman, and likely to have owned and operated a sex toy or two. And if Ms. Crone hasn’t, then certainly other folks at WLBT – management, anchors, editors, cameramen, sound techs – have used three-dimensional devices. They’re all grown-ups, right? Some will want to believe all that because that would prove that Ms. Crone and everyone else at WLBT are hypocrites for going on the teevee and playing to the prejudices of small-minded, sex-negative assholes while also making folks who do use sex toys – or sell them, or work in places that do – feel ashamed of themselves.
But I don’t like to think ill of people. I’m certain Ms. Crone and the whole gang at WLBT sincerely believe that sex toys are a threat to the health, safety and morals of the general public. As that’s the case, I’m certain Ms. Crone would only be too delighted to receive your boyfriend’s old sex toys in the mail, WTBOB, and used sex toys belonging to other Savage Love readers. No doubt she’d take great satisfaction in personally disposing of all the dangerous three-dimensional devices she could get her hands on. So ship those old sex toys to: Kandiss Crone, c/o WLBT 3 News, 715 South Jefferson St., Jackson, MS, 39201. Don’t have a sex toy to dispose of? E-mail Kandiss at [email protected] and let her know what a great job she’s doing for the community.
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