Thanks to Wellbutrin, my sex drive is higher than ever, which is somewhat ironic considering that I neither have a partner nor use toys as frequently as I have in the past. In fact, it’s been a long time since I’ve added a new sex toy to my collection. I used to get so excited over new companies, toys, and technology, enough so that I made a point to seek out and share these things with my readers and friends. I wanted to know what companies were new, discover how companies found ways to make bullet vibrators stand out, and see the most recent dildo designs. I often felt the pangs when I saw an exciting new sex toy knowing my budget would never enable me to buy them all. And my particular brand of anxiety inspires a fear of missing out on owning things simply for the sake of owning them.
But my relationship with shopping has changed. I’m not immune to retail therapy or window shopping, even if I’m more reserved about my purchases. It’s just difficult not to feel disenchanted with capitalism and all it entails. The expectations that we must constantly be productive and achieve a certain amount of wealth (and then appropriately display that wealth) can easily make a person feel not good enough. Perhaps more importantly, failure to do so can mean you can’t put a roof over your head or food on the table, so you’re struggling with practical concerns, all the while your self-esteem takes a hit.
The sex toy industry isn’t an exception to this, and I think the decades companies spent making toys from dangerous materials and the return to such sketchy practices in the Amazon era are proof of that. But lately, I’ve been pondering what seems, to me, to be a particularly pernicious example of capitalism in our nightstands. Over time, I became aware of all the ways women became advertising targets by those in the sexual sphere.
Pharmaceutical companies struggled to find the “female Viagra” for years because of the potential for profit. And after all that, we have a couple of medications for female sexual dysfunction that are no better than placebos and certainly fail to make a real difference in the way mindfulness or, you know, caring about and talking to your partner makes in a person’s sex life. But who wouldn’t want to try a quick-fix medication when they’re experiencing sexual difficulties, especially with the current state of sex education pretty much guaranteeing they haven’t learned about the alternatives?
It’s not just about pharmaceuticals, either. Lumping sex tech into femtech suggests new opportunities for women to live more authentically or succeed professionally. And it’s true that women have traditionally been sparse in the tech industry, so this signifies a change in the people designing products and solutions for previously-overlooked wants or needs because the men who were in charge failed to consider,.
IKa demographic that did not include them. Yet it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I realize how we’re being sold these things as necessities and not just luxuries that might improve life. If you do not buy lube, medications, or sex toys, you have somehow failed as a sexual woman or perhaps a feminist. The idea should be ludicrous, but somehow it’s not.
Even if I understand this intellectually, it’s not like the marketing hasn’t impacted me. Boy howdy, have those marketers succeeded! I remember balking at the premise of the book Sex, Lies, and Pharmaceuticals when I first discovered it, mostly because it seemed as though the authors were suggesting that women didn’t deserve the focus of pharmaceutical companies. Did the authors hate women or feminism?! Why didn’t they want us to enjoy our sexuality? It took me literal years to really absorb the fact that it was the way this search has been handled, which represents a terrible convergence of capitalism and misogyny, that was really under fire. It’s fine when these options are available; the problem is when we’re made to feel bad about ourselves or like every issue requires a store-bought solution.
What frustrates me the most is that, as a blogger, reviewer, and writer, I have benefited–no, profited–under this system. Really, you have to play ball if you want to pay the bills. There’s no practical way for most people to shed the shackles of this capitalistic hellscape. But the system is set up so that individuals feel guilty while unscrupulous companies with CEOs worth millions of dollars remain unscathed. It’s reminiscent of how the responsibility to recycle has been foisted upon the average person, even though we stand zero chance of turning the tide and stemming climate change when companies are wreaking havoc on the environment.
Really, it’s kind of a (evil) genius move on the part of these companies. Shifting the blame to us consumers encourages us to blame others who we don’t think are doing enough and keeps up divided and ineffective. Very little changes. Someone, somewhere, realized the power of co-opting movements and tying how we feel about ourselves to our habits as consumers. It’s not entirely different from rainbow-washing, which we are currently immersed in this Pride month, or pinkwashing every October.
How do we reconcile our ideals with the world we live in? Maybe, at the end of the day, all I can do is find little ways to enjoy being alive, whether that means engaging in retail therapy or using a luxury sex toy. Maybe I need to give myself a break because. I can only do so much and I can’t achieve anything other than making myself miserable because I cannot abstain from capitalism. Instead of beating myself up, I would do better to direct my attention and energy to the causes I believe in, like helping people have more satisfying sex, no matter what that means for them (and even if it means suggesting some products to assist). Occasionally, I may even be able to step up and help those people who suffer even more under this system.
