10 years. 10 years is a long time to stick with anything whether it be a relationship, a job or, yes, a blog. Indeed, 10 years is nearly a third of my life as a 32-year-old. That really puts things in perspective.
Another way to think about the last 10 years that I’ve spent on this blog is to break down the numbers. 10 years equals 1002 posts. 5239 comments, 1742 tags, 554,109 words (not counting the 5,000 some words in this post), and countless of posts that never made it live. Not to mention the products I’ve reviewed, companies I’ve worked with, and time spent on social media and replying to emails.
There has been tremendous change in the sex toy industry as well as the sex blogosphere over the last decade, too, and I didn’t think a post about the 10 years I’ve been blogging about sex toys would be complete without commenting on those changes.
Jump to a section:
- How Sex Toys Have Changed Over The Last Decade
- Changes In Sex Toy Retailers Over the Last 10 Years
- How Sex Blogging Has Changed Over the Last 10 Years
- How I Have Changed After a Decade of Blogging
- How Views of Sex Have Changed Over the Last Decade
- Where Do We Go From Here
How Sex Toys Have Changed Over The Last Decade
Talking about the changes in toys might be among the easiest topics to address in this post; although, it’s all too easy to forget that things haven’t always been this way. Perhaps one of the best changes was the move to body-safe materials such as silicone. When I first started using and reviewing sex toys, I used more than a few jelly monstrosities and, yes, even some Sil-A-Gel. Sometimes material was an enigma: it was impossible to tell what it was or how safe it was.
This is no longer the case, however. Now, silicone fills the dildo and vibrator market. Nonporous materials are everywhere. It seems to be more difficult to find cheap, unsafe materials than it is to buy something that won’t leach chemicals into your body or become deformed if it touches another toy. With an increase in availability comes a decrease in price. It’s not just the luxury brands producing these toys, and you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to own something that’s not hazardous. Awesome.
Another wonderful change in this arena is the availability of information. While sex toys, lube, and gear is still not overseen by a big agency and companies can and do get away with lying about their products (there’s a reason nearly every toy reviewer has tried to set a dildo on fire, folks!), some have stepped up. They’ve increased transparency and directly communicated with bloggers and shoppers. The end result is greater knowledge about how silicone dildos are made, why and when they might react with silicone-based lubes (RIP my VixSkin Spur )=), what makes a glass sex toy unsafe, how wood is treated to become nonporous and what osmolality has to do with lube safety, among other topics. This, along with an increase in research into sexuality, has made it even possible for me to write my monthly (I know, I know: I am using that loosely) Science of Sex feature. We have more information than ever before.
Even if you’re not interested in the science side of things, sex toys have come a long way. The toys of yore, including rabbits with beads that always jammed and weirdly-thrusting shafts (because sex toys had to mimic intercourse), seem almost laughable in comparison to today’s sex-tech: toys with remotes, pressure-responsive vibrators, sound-controlled toys, warming shafts, expanding toys, vibrators with cameras on them, oral sex simulators, toys that wave and rock, vibrators that rely on magnetic or induction charging, toys that bend and click into place, modular vibrators, wearable vibrators and dildos, and toys that work with your phone (some of which require firmware updates).
The list is long and, yet, I know that I am missing something.
Once upon a time, a toy with a dock and an internal battery was novel. Now, you have to hunt for battery-powered sex toys. Condoms are made with hexagonal shapes (that may actually be more prone to breakage).
Even when technology hasn’t changed, design has. Jimmyjane has recently produced a rideable sex toy that looks quite futuristic compared to the Sybian. Lelo has revamped numerous vibrators over the years, and Fun Factory is no stranger with more Boss vibrators that I can count (or hold) on one hand as well as a sophomore version of my favorite: the Laya Spot.
Where once only a handful of companies were producing toys that looked like works of art, we now have a multitude of sleek designs to choose from. Indeed, cheap toys may be designed well, or those gorgeous lines might lead us astray when they house inferior builds.
Of particular note are smart toys. You can control your vibrator with your phone, download new settings, and sync it. Of course, not everyone wants to do that. Epiphora has come out against using apps with her sex toys. I haven’t been quite as vehement but, you know what? I’m not a fan. Still, apps are handy for receiving feedback for kegel exercisers, a type of sex toy that has really changed leaps and bounds over the past decade. My first pair were tiny. painful beads made of plastic that hurt my PC muscles. I moved on to much larger balls, this time made of silicone and with an internal ball. I tried Lelo’s Luna Beads, which many people loved but left me lukewarm. Insert vibrating balls that were too uncomfortable and awkward for me to try twice. I eventually moved on to kGoal, which seemed the holy grail of smart kegel toys, only to find that it wasn’t built for my body. Did that stop me from trying yet another smart toy? No.
Not all of these changes are great. Some were ridiculous from the start (a tuxedo for your dick? C’mon!). A few ideas sounded promising but only succeeded to varying degrees (I liked Lelo’s Ora and thought the Ora 2 was even better, but it didn’t work for everyone. Same goes for JeJoue’s Ooh line with its modular motor). Some “new” ideas were simply rehashes of old failures, forgotten long enough that companies figured we might be willing to go through that hell again (I’m talking about We-Vibe Gala, which has already been shunned and removed from the market!). Sometimes we tried toys only to remember that less is more and, no, adding 3,000 settings to a vibrator does not guarantee orgasm.
For every Stronic that bloggers fell in love with, there was a much-hyped toy, often one created for a woman with absolutely no input from a woman or one that came after a boisterous crowdfunding campaign that advertised revolutionary tech and an amazingly-powerful motor, that barely made reviewers tingle let alone orgasm (although, as we all know, I try not to define satisfaction by the presence or number of orgasms).
Like the commas in my run-on sentence, new ideas, changes and sex tech keep coming. Some of it makes us come, too. It’s pretty rad when this happens.
And while some of these changes were pretty obviously on the horizon (smart toys that connect to your phone via Bluetooth, for example), I was astounded by the announcement or even the sheer speculation of many of them.
Overall, these changes are things about which I cannot complain. Although, I can bemoan and commiserate when my favorite toy is no longer made (and the sophomore effort falls short), when amazing companies go out of business before I can get my hands on their goodies (sometimes only to pop back up again.. and sometimes again) and when websites mysteriously disappear without a trade or an explanation.
With that, I am on to discussing the changes in sex toy stores.
Changes In Sex Toy Retailers Over the Last 10 Years
In some ways, sex toy stores have changed alongside toy makers. They both tend to be more transparent and accountable, which is something that bloggers like myself have demanded. Stores without reputations and with shady practices are no longer supported.
The notable exception I see is the number of Amazon vendors who have popped up, selling Chinese-made toys with no brand or with Amazon-only brands. You’ve probably seen them: they’re all over Amazon but no reputable seller carries them. They’re often direct knockoffs of familiar toys. Utimi is one brand that comes to mind. I more often receive contact from these makers than I do reputable sellers or manufacturers, and I almost always reject them. Some of these toys may very well work fine (and because it’s Amazon, many people have tried and like them), but it’s just so hard to know. Hell, even toys from brands that I know and have historically liked can miss the mark.
I’ve also not held my tongue about working with these people. There’s more than just a language barrier: they’re focusing on quick links and sales. In the past, vendors like these have been very pushy. They’ve wanted me to ignore FCC guidelines. It leaves a very sour taste in my mouth, and I’d rather avoid that.
I think that I was like many others when I first started. I wanted to get free toys. So I accepted a lot of shitty ones from even shittier companies. As I learned what I liked I became more selective, both in what I accepted and with whom I worked. This means I try fewer toys, preferring to focus on those that will actually work for me.
It also means that I work with very few companies. I still work with Good Vibes, Lovehoney, and SheVibe, and have made an effort to forge new alliances since I started this post. I’ve seen many, many PR people come and go. I’ve seen companies switched from in-house to external PR, purchase other brands (GoodVibes now owns Babeland), and change how they interact with bloggers. This is mostly due to how Google handles search engine optimization. Years ago, you could get a ton of people to use a link such as “sex toys” to your store and fly right to the top. And everyone did it. My old posts are full of those links words as well as others (vibrators, dildos, bondage gear, etc). In hindsight, it’s really awkward and lacks context. Sometimes the sheer number of links in posts was inundating.
This behavior is no longer lucrative, but neither is sending out product haphazardly. Many review programs have simply disappeared. Others have discontinued specific programs that didn’t work. I really enjoyed working with PinkCherry, sigh. But they discontinued their affiliate program for American bloggers (and perhaps others).
Looking back, it’s also no surprise that search engines would crack down on this sort of search engine manipulation (I also think this is why so many vendors have headed to Amazon where they’ve got better visibility). Thus, no companies demand links like this anymore, and most seem to work only with affiliates and not just bloggers. As an affiliate of a few companies, I don’t personally mind. Affiliate links are a chance for me to make a commission as well as for the store to make a sale. However, I’ve had varying success with those links because I do not promote them as well as some. That sort of promotion is crucial to your success as a blogger/reviewer in 2018, not just in making money from your blog but in attracting and maintaining relationships with sites.
Because of this, I tend to work with companies that I’ve known quite a while. There aren’t as many new companies popping up and very few that I support. Unbound Babes is one that’s been on my radar and that I’ll give props to. Not only have I worked with them and joined their affiliate program, but they have awesome newsletters and are a company that I just feel good supporting.
This isn’t to say that I won’t sometimes reach out or accept an invite from a newer company. Last year, I tried a number of Satisfyer models, and Svakom, whom I worked with a while back, is still lesser-known. I’m just less likely to do so. But those invites seem fewer and further between, too, as reputable companies work with fewer bloggers and discontinue their review programs.
I am not alone when I say that I am no longer happy supporting shitty companies. Yes, I’m talking about EdenFantasys, which I haven’t visited in years. But I’m also talking about how Lilly will call out Lelo or Pipedream when necessary. It’s why Epiphora speaks out about her experiences with Don Wands and Liberator. I have been fortunate to not deal with a lot of bullshit directly, but ours it a community that supports its members and that sometimes takes shape of revoking support of companies that refuse to do right by bloggers and consumers at large.
Occasionally this results in calling out the wrongdoings of companies we do support. Sometimes they’re just faux pas. It’s often the case of not knowing better, and companies have shown that they want to do better. Betty’s Toy Box, for example, ditched their gendered toy categories to make their site more inclusive. SheVibe actually made a few tweaks to their affiliate program after I wrote about using it years ago. Vibrant canceled a sale that some people thought was misguided. That’s the sort of thing that keeps me recommending a store. The expectations have changed, standards have increased.
Unsurprisingly, some stores have worked with manufacturers to created their own branded toys, some of which are identical to the originals. This is something that I’ve seen for quite a while, but it does seem to be more common. Trusted stores are putting their name on toys they want you to trust, too.
I’ve alluded to how blogging has changed, and that’s where I’ll give in next. But before I do, I just wanted to mention how manufacturers play a role in this. I’ve seen a number of boutique toy makers come and go (and sometimes come again): Fucking Sculptures and Phallix are just a few now-defunct companies that I can name off the top of my head. As I go cull broken links, I inevitably wind up lamenting that a wonderful toy or company no longer exists, perhaps to recommend a less alternative.
For every Split Peaches or Funkit, I worry how long they’ll manage to be around or who they may be replacing. Jollies has come, gone, come back, gone, and returned again. Phew! It’s hard to make it in this business, and this is my segue to talk about blogging.
How Sex Blogging Has Changed Over the Last 10 Years
When I started, I only figured this was a hobby, as did most other bloggers/reviewers. We created and maintained our blogs, tried toys, posted reviews and took pictures. Over the last ten years, it became more common for people to pay for professional/custom themes or even to have someone else maintain their blog while they focused solely on the writing. There are bloggers who don’t know a lick of HTML, a far cry from the Internet I cut my teeth on.
While there were people on both Blogger and WordPress in the beginning, most people use WordPress, and they’re almost entirely self-hosted. This is due to how Blogger has treated adult sites and users, I’m sure. I was always a bigger fan of WordPress myself. I’ve seen commenters move through Intense Debate, Livefyre, and Disqus for comments. I’ve never enjoyed any third-party commenting apps, but they’re here to stay. Regardless, the number of comments seems to have dropped, even for the most infamous of bloggers.
And there are only so many of those original bloggers around. I’ve already mentioned Lilly and Epiphora. Myself, of course. But so many names have disappeared and faded. The same, too, goes for communities and roundups. Pleasurists, Sugasm. You name it. That’s not even counting hashtag trends. I’m surprised when I still see someone use #FollowFriday and confused when #SOSS turns up.
It’s interesting how some platforms haven’t changed. Twitter still reigns supreme; although, it will be interesting to see how long this remains true with their recent shadowbans of sex workers and educators. Facebook, in some ways, has become another venue to leave comments, perhaps some of the reasons why blog comment counts are so low.
Another change is that photography has become increasingly more important, much to my chagrin. Not only do I personally prefer text to photos when I read reviews (especially if the reviews are all visual and do nothing to explain how well a product works), but I am not an excellent photographer. I have been trying more, however. Sometimes it’s apparent. But as someone who posts many of their reviews in the middle of the night (and may only be awake during those hours), natural light is a limited resource. Many of my reviews lack an original image let alone multiple, and I suspect this hurts my site.
While I struggled, I watched others succeed — and did they! Blogs became news sources. Bloggers became voices to be heard, and they were educating and revealing issues in the world. They earned respect. Bloggers went on to write for serious publications. Journalists began sex blogging as another venue to educate and discuss important issues at hand. From sex bloggers, were learned about shady companies, unsafe products, dubious practices. Companies were forced to take notice and do better. Bloggers were forced to up their game to remain relevant.
But I never really expected that having this blog would become a competition. I had no idea that people would make a job of it, that this was even possible, that people would no longer be doing it all themselves (although, in terms of sex blogging, many of us still are) and would hire different people to fill every possible role on their blog. I’ve made money through affiliate links and ads, but it was always spending money. Chump change. There came a point when I realized that if I wanted to keep up, make money and stay relevant, I would need to make this my full-time job. But that’s never what I wanted. It’s grueling and tedious. But the more I treated this as a hobby, the more I seemed to fade into the background. I think this leads to my final point.
How I Have Changed After a Decade of Blogging
I had so much time for this blog when I first started. At one point, I maintained five or so. I wrote reviews frequently, hung out in reviewer chatrooms, and posted on multiple forums. If you recall, I was married when I first started this blog — and living overseas. Returning home meant I was able to receive more packages in a more timely manner. It also meant that my marriage would soon be over.
During that time, I started working again. I moved home. I spent more time with people in real life. I shared with them my knowledge of sex and toys. The liberal and feminist ideals that I was exposed to as a sex blogger bled into my real life in big ways, but it was a one-way flow. I fell out of touch with my friends on Twitter, the blogosphere. I became more of who I am in person but shrunk away in the sex blogosphere. I felt alienated when I did return. I didn’t know where or how to dig my way back in or what I wanted out of it anymore. In my absence, people popped up. Bloggers who I still think of unproven newbies have been around for four or five years. How did that happen?
I had no time for the Internet, and as much as I wanted to still be apart of it, it was so difficult. On top of that, it all felt so fake. I had better things to do, and I was doing them. Still, I couldn’t help but grieve my losses, and I think my tweets and posts fell under a shadow because of this. It’s not like I didn’t decide I would return to blogging with a renewed vigor or didn’t try to come up with new features. I just couldn’t make it stick. It was hard to break back in, and time-management has never been my strong suit. Although I’ve stuck with the Science of Sex for over a year now, I rarely post on the second Saturday of every month the way I want to.
It’s no help that I have rarely had a consistent sexual partner since my divorce, and romance? Ha! I occasionally have some dating foibles to write about or thoughts on the whole process, but I felt as though being single somehow made me less qualified to write this blog. And it certainly makes it harder to explore some interests, bondage being one, that might make for interesting reading.
I really struggled to add personal thoughts to this blog because of that. Something that was once so relevant to this blog, to my identity, no longer existed in my life. This isn’t to say that it won’t ever again, but it makes things so much more difficult. And it was certainly an adjustment personally. My life went off the tracks in a major way, and I had to reconcile where I thought it was going with where it actually went.
Even if that weren’t the case, writing about toys gets old after a while. It takes so much more to blow my mind. So many reviews landed square in the realm of “This works. Now, why am I doing it again?” You can tell. And the process of writing a review became so dull, that I fell far behind. I couldn’t force myself to keep up with my obligations.
Aside from this, I became disenchanted with even reading blogs. Epiphora’s is the only blog that I read at any sort of frequent interval. I could scarcely keep up with new bloggers who seemed to disappear just as soon as they popped up.
It was such a chore when I could be spending time with people and immersing myself in my newfound/re-invigorated nerdy interests and friends. Boy, do I wish I knew which words in that sentence were worthy of parenthesis! LOL! I no longer needed to connect with people, ideas or communities online when I had those things offline. In my real life. I didn’t need to vent here when I could do so to people face-to-face. But it is my so-called real life that has brought me round again.
In 2016, I reconnected with my love of science, and the Science of Sex feature only made sense a few months later. I gleefully read the papers and learned the facts so that I could provide it with my readers. I remembered how awesome it felt to actively seek more knowledge. More than one month passed where I only posted once, and it was for this feature. It became my goal to post once a month for a year, which I had. During that time, I found bloggers, authors, podcasters, and other educators to teach and inspire me. I proactively make time to listen and read, and I follow some of these sources on both of my social networks, sharing with both of them as well.
In some ways, I’ve changed so much from the person who I was when I first began this blog. In other ways, I struggle with how I’ve remained stagnant over the last few years. It would certainly be nice if I had more things happening in my personal life that were also relevant to this blog, namely: love and sex.
I’ve often tried — and failed — to express these thoughts. Where I wanted to be vulnerable, I fear I simply came across as negative, whiny, and defensive, pushing away the people with whom I wanted to connect. I wanted to express my feelings of confusion, loneliness, and disconnection. I wanted to talk to my readers and fellow bloggers about how lost I felt. But it was so difficultc, perhaps because I started this with a pseudonym and tried not to let the streams of my two personas cross. I shared only so much information with my readers. I compartmentalized anything that wasn’t directly related to love, sex, masturbation or kink.
I think what will eventually make the most sense is for me to stop blogging under a pseudonym, to combine my professional writer persona with this identity and put everything under one umbrella. I am not yet ready to do this, but I can imagine how it will be when I do. Then, I will be able to share with all of you all of me. I won’t have to compartmentalize. I’ll be able to talk about sex with everyone from my real life and mention all those nerdy things to my readers here. It sounds like a pretty good deal.
In the meantime, I think I’m in a better place now, and I’m finding balance in my life, including with this site once more. It may not stick. Everything is a cycle, is it not? But I can live with this for now, and perhaps I can make a habit that enables me to stay active and in touch with this part of the blogosphere and, in turn, this part of myself.
Oh, and I also use Oxford commas more often than not, now. Gross.
How Views of Sex Have Changed Over the Last Decade
Although I won’t dive into this as deeply as some other subjects, I did want to take a look at how the world has changed regarding sex. In general, it seems to be more sex-positive and accepting of different sexual and gender identities, not just tolerant. We’re more openly discussing sex, and for that I am grateful.
But there’s still so much work to do. For members of the LGBTQIA+ community, for sex workers, for women, for youth who are just exploring their sexuality and need factual sex education. The progress exists, but we need more.
Where Do We Go From Here
I think the last 4000 words or so have firmly established that I am not creative enough to imagine what the future might look like. I lack the capacity for big-picture thinking in a way that allows change to take me by surprise. But there are some things I’d like to see:
- Businesses, organizations and bloggers will continue to take responsibility for their mistakes, however accidental they may be. Apologizing and striving to do better is important. None of us are perfect, but denial and willful ignorance help no one. Companies will be transparent about what they’re doing, how they make toys, avenues tapped for arts, etc.
- USB standards will be adopted by toy makers, and rechargeable toys would not use proprietary ports.
- Sex toy makers will work more closely with bloggers to create toys and get feedback. Toy reviewers should be involved in the process before a toy gets to the market.
- Advertisers will pay equitable prices for spaces on our blogs and social media. If it’s important enough for you to ask, it’s important enough for you to pay. In this vein, it’s important for bloggers to get credit and respect where it’s due. The disrespect and condescension must stop.
- Similarly, purchasers should pay fair prices for the words we write for them. If you think our work is quality enough to use, then it deserves quality pay.
- I want to see a stark decrease in the number of fly-by-night companies and Chinse manufacturers/retailers, even if they’re not showing up on my radar. I am not sure what might help this save for more regulation of sex toys.
- Unsafe materials such as jelly will become defunct and forgotten.. Toy companies will use standard terminology to reduce confusion over what a toy is made from and strive to create body-safe toys without the need to lie or mislead about the toy.
- Inclusive designs and marketing materials are a must. We’re moving away from “his” and “hers” toys, but that must continue. I want to see models of various skin colors and body shapes in ads, and I do not want to hear about the cost. If you cannot afford to do it right, you cannot afford to be in the business.
- I’d love to see more conversations happening about sexuality in general, not sex-specific forums. I am seeing more of this and am contributing to it. Eventually, I will want to unify my online presences and write under my real name, and I can envision this being a possibility one day. Just not yet.
- Ideally, some of the persistent cliques within this corner of the Internet would dissolve so that it would feel more inclusive.
- I want, no, need, to see more people who are feminists, sex-positive, inclusive, and diverse in every venue, speaking and being held up and being heard.
- Sex ed will move away from fear-based programs to factual programs that focus on more than just the risks of sex but also the benefits and the skills to have a healthy and happy sex life.
- Sex work should be legalized and protected.
- Birth control should be covered by insurance. All of it.
- I want safe abortions that are covered by insurance and provided by professionals who do not demonize the people seeking out their medical services.
- Members of the queer community should not have to fear for their safety when they walk down the street. Nor should they be denied the same respect and services as the rest of the world. They should not worry that they’ll be turned down for buying a simple cake or, perhaps more importantly, denied when they apply to adopt a child and start a family together.
There are so many things that I wish to see and that I believe can be a reality if we continue to work toward them.
My personal goals are the same as they always have been. I want to be more consistent in posting and more engaged with the sex blogosphere. I want to continue learning (perhaps by attending a sex/science event) and growing, to experiment sexually (especially with kink) and get out of my comfort zone. I hope that I will be able to do more creative writing, which is something that has fallen by the wayside this year. Time management is definitely crucial to all of my goals. Ironically, if I were having copious amounts of sex or in a relationship, I think I would have even less time and motivation to write about it.
To that end, I am focusing my 10-year anniversary giveaway on methods that will allow me to connect with my readers and other bloggers, to engage, perhaps to make a few friendships. I hope you will join me — and not just because you can win some awesome sex toys in my upcoming giveaway post!
