Author: Adriana

Categories
Reviews Vibrators

Lelo Siri 2

Siri 2
N/A from

This is an archived review of a discontinued product. Lelo now makes the Siri 3.

If you were to look at Siri 2 without the original to compare, you’d think they were exactly the same design. This isn’t exactly true. Siri 2 is a little sleeker, for example. Perhaps to make it less obtrusive during use with a partner. Siri 2 is completely waterproof, though. Bonus if you like shower masturbation, but you’re definitely not going to get use out of the sound-response feature in the shower.

The silicone on Siri 2 also feels more plush and smooth to the touch. Although, this isn’t something I really noticed in use. Siri 2 is just a hair shorter from tip to tip, and the silicone tip is a bit more pointy than the original. But these are all minuscule changes that neither enhance or detract from the design of the original. I do like my Siri 2 in black, but you have to choose from pink or purple if you don’t like black.

Unlike Lelo’s other sophomore vibrators, Siri 2 is noticeably stronger than the original. However, the increase in power also comes with an increase in vibration frequency, so it feels buzzier. I can deal with a vibration that’s a little weaker but more rumbly. It’s part of the reason why I still love my Layaspot. However, the buzzy vibrations of the Siri 2 could be improved upon. I’m not sure they’re a deal breaker.

Although.. the weird music-inspired settings of this clitoral vibe aren’t really doing it for me. I’m not a fan of those extra modes at all, so I’m a bit surprised that I like even one of them. However, there’s something about a steady pulsation that seems preferable to me than these musical vibration modes, which don’t have quite the right rhythm to keep my clit interested. And let’s be honest, the description is pretty pretentious, too:  classical, reggae, rumba, folk, hip hop, soul, techno, and jazz. Uh, okay. Right.

But maybe that’s not why you’re looking at Siri 2. You want to know about how a vibrator can interact with sound because that sounds (pun intended) interesting at the very least. You want to know if it’s a feature worth adding to a toy to begin with let alone buying as a consumer?

Well. Nah. Not really.

Let’s back up. This vibrator “listens” to sounds. It can be any type of sound as far as I can tell. For example, blowing on it will cause it to respond. So will singing and moaning.. if you’re in the right position. You see, the microphone or whatever-it-may be exists at the end where the charting port it. Tapping the port is enough to get the vibrator to respond.

But the sound needs to be close enough to Siri 2; otherwise? Nada. So while I was trying to use it and sing or moan, it couldn’t pick me up.  I don’t particular masturbate to some sound. Although, I happened to have my earbuds on the nightstand next to me, so I gave it a test. I cannot begin to describe how awkward this was, but I can tell you that all my awkward effort was for nothing. Even with sound on max and my earbuds right next to Siri 2, it couldn’t pick it up.

Now, this might work if someone was using it on me and their mouth was closer to the toy, but it makes the function pretty much useless if you’re using it solo. And the argument could be made that you should pop in your favorite CD or log on to a porn site and turn up your speakers. Indeed, those background noises might even drown you out but it doesn’t even work. I have to turn my laptop on maximum and hold Siri 2 right next to my speakers to get it to respond. I don’t think my neighbors like that, folks.

It’s weird. When Siri 2 does manage to respond to sound, there’s a delay. I understand why this might be the case, but it’s altogether too distracting to find the perfect blend of volume and rhythm to get myself off when I know that simply using Siri 2 as a vibrator will work just as well. Plus, you can’t really recognize the “source” sound, anyway.

Original Siri (red) versus Siri 2
Original Siri (red) versus Siri 2

PLUS! Lelo’s 4-button configuration is really not the smartest way to go about this. It works fine for the steady vibration and music-inspired modes, but you have to simultaneously hold two buttons (either the + and – or the two arrows, I forget) for 5 seconds to turn on the stupid audio-responsive mode, anyway. It’s finicky and clumsy and not something I’m going to bother with. Sorry not sorry. That extra button that you’ll find on Ora 2 and other Insignia vibes would have been a much better option to control this additional setting, but I do understand that Lelo would have to redesign the control pad to

So while I have plenty of negatives to say about Lelo’s newest Siri, I will probably keep it charged for use. Because it is a more powerful version of a vibrator that I’ve already come to like, and the form factor works pretty well if I’ve got another vibe or dildo inserted. In fact, I really enjoyed using it in conjunction with Lelo’s Mona Wave, another new-ish vibe that I’ll be reviewing shortly.

However, that’s not what Lelo wants us to focus on. It’s not the selling point, and I’m not sure if you can be sold when there are other alternatives for less than $100 that aren’t as frustrating and gimmicky!

Categories
Everything Else views

No Pretenses

The other day I read a post by the wonderful, articulate and talented Rachel Kramer Bussel on Thought Catalog. I’ve read her tweets, her stories and plenty of collections she’s edited. In fact, I will soon be published in one of those very collections! Her recent piece “Sorry, But I’m Not A Sexpert” was as well-written as any. But it was was than that.

To me, the words my eyes were absorbing were like something I could have written. I wouldn’t dare to compare myself to Rachel, who has years of experience and has done more to make a career from her love of writing and sex than I ever might. But the thoughts in those paragraphs spoke to me nonetheless.

There are certainly some people who would call Ms. Bussel an expert in her own way, but she dispels the idea that her longevity and interest alone are enough to make her a sexpert. She goes on to explain how she feels more like a student than a teacher, and while people might learn something from her, she’s focusing on sharing her ideas, opinions and experiences with the world as a person who loves sex.

She will “play” with words to tell of her life and fantasies and to lend advice when appropriate, but it’s all based on her own experiences and nothing about it makes her an expert. And that’s okay.

I was particularly struck by this line:

There are plenty of amazing, smart, talented and dedicated sex educators out there who rightly deserve the title of sexpert.

What I hope to offer readers is something else: amateur honesty.

Rachel Kramer Bussel calls herself an amateur. Albeit an honest one, but an amateur nonetheless! And that’s still okay. If Rachel doesn’t need to be an expert, then I sure the hell don’t.

I think I really needed to read this post as my brokenhearted love life and nonexistent sex life — I’ve masturbated twice in approximately two months — had me wondering why I still have this blog. What could I offer to the world? What words can I type on the screen that haven’t already been said? And if I can’t say it better, should I even bother?

But here I am, overlooking the one difference that no one — not even I — can deny: I am me. There are no other mes in this world. So while I may not be able to write about Peachy escorts in London — at least, not yet — or sex rooms in Amsterdam, I can unapologetically stand up for a sex toy that I love. Or speak out against transphobia. Or offer a little advice based on my own experience as a human being who loves and fucks.

I toyed with calling this post “Rachel Kramer Bussel is who I want to be when I grow up.” And it’s not entirely untrue. But it also misses one of the points of her recent post: her value as an “amateur” extends directly from her individuality as a human being. To quote her again:

No, not everyone wants to share their sex lives, but for those who do, their stories are fascinating not because they know everything there is to know about a given sexual topic, but because they are individuals.

So I shouldn’t aim to be another person when I grow up. Rather, I should try to be me. Just, perhaps, a me who understands that it’s okay not to have all the answers. Like Rachel Kramer Bussel, I might help people find them, but I don’t have to pretend to have them all, even answers about my own life.

Categories
Dating

Things That Ensure I’ll Ignore Your Online Dating Profile

Maybe I’m too picky. Maybe I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Maybe I should understand how hard it is to write a dating profile. After all, I’ve redone mine multiples times. It might help for me to give people a chance even if there’s no immediate spark. It is the Internet, after all. I might find some diamonds in the rough. Or something.

But I don’t. Maybe I can’t. I go running when people post photos full of fish. And I certainly don’t respond to messages that do any of the following:

  • Consist only of a compliment of how I am a “beautiful woman.”
  • Use pet names.
  • Imply that I need someone to take care of me in any way
  • Enforce gender roles in an ignorant way (see above) or conflict with my feminist ideals
  • Aren’t accompanied by at least one photo
  • Come from someone who spends more time working out than sleeping every day
  • Are copied and pasted
  • Contain a single word, especially if it’s spelled incorrectly
  • Use too many emoticons

I feel like I’m getting dangerously close to Seinfeld territory here, but I’m also not obsessed with the idea of finding or being with someone, either. I’m pretty awesome riding solo, and someone would have to be pretty fantastic to make me reconsider.

And the thing is? someone who I have amazing chemistry with will make me forget all these silly rules.

Categories
Books Reviews

The Big Book of Submission: 69 Kinky Tales

The Big Book of Submission
$12.85 from Amazon

There’s something to be said for a good book that you can’t put down after a story/chapter or two. That’s the case with the Big Book of Submission.  I would intend to read a dozen pages, and I would finally put it down some 60 or 70 pages later. I was thoroughly enthralled and aroused, but this typically meant it took time away from sleeping or working or what-else-have-you that I should have been doing.

This meant that it took only a few sittings to get through this book, which boasts an impressive 69 stories. But because I knew I couldn’t put it down, I stretched them out for when I had time to read that much.

The Big Book of Submission is wonderful in terms of variety. There are (ignoring D/s), m/m, m/f and f/f roles. There’s a few trans stories to be found and all sorts of ambiguity around gender and gender roles. In short, it’s not heteronormative. But I think this big tome really goes one step further than that. I was really impressed at how The Big Book of Submission deal with the roles of top/dom and bottom/sub in regards to traditonal gender (roles). Not every man is the dom, nor is every butch. And through the words of the characters — almost, if not all of the stories are written in first person — we understand the implications and the intimacy of turning those roles in their heads.

Aside from variety in roles, there’s a variety in content and even in how most of the characters experience submission. For example, at least two stories dealt with a masochistic dominant and how their sub obeyed by providing sensation. The editor, Rachel Kramer Bussel, contributed one of those particular tales, entitled “Reverse Psychology.”

With 69 stories, you might think that some of them would be a little redundant, but I didn’t find this to be the case at all, even though there’s obviously similarly to the feelings that submissive feel when serving, obeying or worshiping their dominants. Each of them experiences their submission, scene and relationship in a unique way. There’s brand-new experiences, established relationships, breaking of limits and twists and turns that were crafted masterfully.

The writing in this BDSM anthology was pretty top-notch. All the authors were great at capturing the feelings evoked during a scene or in a BDSM relationship, along with the imagery that goes with it. Themes of trust and sometimes fear, hesitation and excitement, growth and pushing the boundaries are touched on time and again in this anthology. Although I am more able to identify some submissiveness in myself, this book might have the most hardened dom consider submitting a time or two!

Was there anything that I didn’t like? Sure, some stories are more forgettable. One in particular involved feet fetish, and that’s reaaalllly not my thing, so once it got to that part, I skipped to the next story. But I enjoyed more than I didn’t.

I especially enjoyed “The Problem Is, I’m a Bitch”, in which Corrine Arundo writes as a stubborn submissive who mocks a “cartoonishly” dress domme.  “Teddy Bare,” is a sexy yet sweet story about two men who wait until their first night of marriage to have sex and how they incorporate power play into their relationship. Another particularly touching story revolves around a submissive whose once-beautiful body had succumbed to illness and surgery and how her dominant helps remind her of her beauty through a public scene. Teresa Roberts penned “Beautiful,” which is one of the stories that truly stands out for me.

The one stand out story was one that managed to be both surprising, sentimental and sexy.  It’s another story by Corrin Arundo, whose work I obviously need to become more familiar with, entitled “Unanchored.” It was thoroughly titillating, like many of the other stories, but it struck an emotional chord with its solemn and sad ending that left me, quite literally, sobbing and perhaps even decimated. There is no snippet that can do the beauty of this story justice.

Just like there is no single story in this erotica collection that sums up the experience that is The Big Book of Submission. You need to dive in and read it all. Perhaps not in order, but there’s no single way to describe the experience.

A sincerely “Thank you!” to Cleis Press, the company that pretty much made my year, for the opportunity to review this book!

 

Categories
Articles

Dear Carla Alcorn

Last night, I read about how your trans daughter killed herself. Then, I read any number of incorrect articles about how your “son,” your words and the media’s, accidentally died while taking a walk. Make no mistake, it was no accident. More correctly, it was suicide, but I am many who think that you and your husband had a direct influence on your daughter’s death.

I am sure this is a difficult time for you, whether or not you subscribe to the truth. But consider this.

Your daughter’s entire life was difficult for her.

She admits to spending a decade — 10 long years — uncomfortable in her own body. In her blog, she talks about feeling awash with relief upon discovering out what it means to be trans. She rushed to you, wanting to share in an intimate and vulnerable moment, and you shut her down. You told her that she was confused and going through a phase. You told her to consider your feelings and your social standing while never considering her own feelings, feelings that were surely tumultuous and more difficult than anything you, as a white, Christian, cisgendered woman have ever experience.

You tried to force her to abandon her true self. But I knew better. She knew better. Humans just can’t do that. You tried to force her to keep her wings still, and when she tried to fly, you clipped them. You cut her off from her freedom, her friends and any sort of social connection.

Why? Because you don’t understand? Or because you were afraid of how it would make your family look?

Carla, let me tell you how you look now.

You look hateful and spiteful. You look shallow. You look like a bad parent. You look, to some, like a fucking murderer. You look like a monster.

You look like someone whose denial is so strong that she’s painfully close to insanity.

You look like part of the problem, a problem that your daughter wrote and cried about in depth. A problem that ultimately took her life.

It is easy enough for me to forget that trans and homophobia exist with so many happy and smiling trans faces, but it’s dangerous to do so when those opinions still exist and they’re still killing people like Leelah.

I have no hope that you would ever see this, Carla. You’re probably hiding out because many people have attacked you after you continued to spew ignorance and hate after your daughter’s suicide. I know I should be a better person, but I cannot help but think this is karmic retribution for the way you attacked your daughter during her life and the way you’re somehow still managing to attack her in her death.

I couldn’t begin to understand how your daughter felt, Carla, but I can imagine how I would respond in your position in a parent. Hint: you failed your daughter.

I am privileged in many ways, with my skin color and sexual orientation and able body. In fact, we are privileged in the same ways as far as I know. Yet you drove your daughter to suicide and I will stand up for her rights, even in her death.

So, Mrs Alcorn, I apologize for your loss. It will hurt no matter how you look at it. But your pain is nothing like the pain you caused your daughter, and all of this could have been avoided if you were a better person. I have no doubt you will come to this realization. Perhaps on your death bed. Perhaps some night as you lie awake, tossing and turning, in your own comfortable bed.

And when you do, Carla Alcorn, I hope you pick up the torch your daughter has lit, cease your involvement as part of the problem and help to make the world a place where people like Leelah will want to live. After all, you owe Leelah her life.

Categories
Articles Reviews

2014: The Best Of

Another year. Another couple dozen reviews of sex toys. There were fewer this year than the last. This might be due to me having more sex. Or perhaps there were fewer toys that I really loved.

In fact, while populating this list, I worried I wouldn’t have enough best-ofs. I suppose that’s bound to happen, and I might accept the blame of trying out some toys that wouldn’t work well for me if I had looked past the shiny and read the small print. Oops.

But, there’s definitely some toys I would recommend, so here they are!

Vibrator

Svakom is an up-and-coming company. I had a hit-or-miss relationship with the toys they send to review, but Leslie is a self-heating vibrator with respectable power output.

Minna’s Limon took me quite by surprise, quickly becoming one of the most intuitve vibrators I’ve ever used.

I also quite like Ora 2, but it’s the stuff it does besides vibrating that does it for me.

ceramix 5 and 6
Ceramix 5 (right) left a surprising impression

Dildo

2014 was light on dildos. I only tried a couple, and both of those were from Pipedream’s Ceramix line. Ultimately, I preferred #5!

Erotica

Move over 50 Shades of Grey. Wrapped Around Your Finger is actually a book worth reading, and there are more in the series!

Sexual Non-Fiction

I’m technically a year behind and I didn’t even write a review for Best Sex Writing 2012 (I did write a review for the next year’s). But I think it might be the best in the series and you’re missing out if you don’t check it out.

BDSM

The Bettie Page Spanking Paddle is manufacturer by Lovehoney and full of the details you’d want while offering a sexy spanking.

Lingerie

Designed Intimates sent me quite a lot of lingerie to review. I especially enjoyed the Charming chemise and thong.

Bath and Body Product

SheVibe let me try the Flirty Little Secret Pink Caviar Scrub With Pheromones. It’s slippery but smells great and works well. It’s been a nice addition to my shower routine!

Storage

Lovehoney is rocking 2014’s list. They also made the Deluxe Sex Toy Case, which is probably my all-time favorite option for sex toy storage!

As always, I recommend the best toys from years past. Check out my list of 5-star sex toys!

Don’t forget to let us know about what you loved in the comments.

Have a good new year. I plan to!

Categories
Giveaways

$100 Designer Intimates Giveaway

Designer Intimates was kind enough to send me more than a few items to review, and they’ve also offered to sponsor a giveaway for $100 credit to the store. That’s right, one of you Of Sex and Love readers will have enough to get a few bras, panties, chemises or whatever else your little heart desires. They’ve recently begun to carry leggings and tank tops, so you can comfortably lounge around the house, too.

This is a great Christmas gift for you, or you could buy your partner some awesome things and save them for a birthday or Valentine’s Day, which isn’t even that far away now!

Adore Bra and Vanessa Thong
Adore Bra and Vanessa Thong

Designer Intimates has an awesome sale going on right now, where you can save up to 60% on some items. I’ll try to keep my readers updated about other sales, too!

The store sells items from designer brands, including Felina and Jezebel, among others. There’s a ton of matching items, but you can certainly mix and match. If you read my review of Designer Intimates, then you know some of my favorite items:

But shopping will be plenty of fun for you and perhaps your partner, so I don’t want to take that fun away from you! Designer Intimates recently relaunched their site, so it’s easier to shop than ever.

Use the Gleam form below to enter:

$100 Designer Intimates Credit

Good luck!

Come back daily for more entries!

Ends January 20th.

I was compensated for this review and giveaway in the form of product. All opinions are mine. I will earn a small commission if you make purchases after clicking the links in this post. Thanks for supporting me!