Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Sex Toys: Buzz, Boundaries, and Breaking Taboos

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Why are sex toys still so taboo? In this episode of Unzipping Taboos, we take a thoughtful look at the stigma, curiosity, and misinformation that still surround sex toys—and why it’s time to change the conversation.We explore how limited sex education, media portrayals, and cultural discomfort have shaped how people think about pleasure and the toys that can enhance it. Dr. Sue shares how she integrates sex toy education into her college classrooms and her work with older adults, and we chat about some of the common fears and questions many people have but rarely say out loud.We also discuss the deeper relationship dynamics at play—like how insecurity, jealousy, or silence can complicate conversations about sex toys in partnerships, especially in heterosexual relationships. Together, we highlight the importance of communication, consent, and respecting boundaries when exploring new things with a partner.Whether you’re curious, cautious, or already confident, this episode offers insight, validation, and encouragement to think differently about what pleasure means—and who gets to talk about it and who gets to have it.If you have a story, thoughts and/or a topic or question for Dr. Sue and Charlie please share your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions

Hey everyone, welcome to today's episode of Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to dive into the topics of sex and sexuality that you might be curious about, but don't always feel comfortable talking about. No judgment, just open, honest conversation. So zip down and let's get candid. Today's episode, we're going to chat about the stigma surrounding sex toy, sex toys, use, curiosity, accessibility all those things but before we do hey dr sue hey charlie how are you i'm hanging in there that's all we can ask it's been a month it has um would you like to tell our listeners a little bit about yourself before we dive into our topic yeah i'm trying to figure

out it's funny because as soon as you say the topic i was like what part of my what part of my long history do i want to talk about so i think for this one i want to talk about um primarily my work is in academia um they teach a human sexuality class but i also helped design and run a sex and technology class for graduate students and then i kind of took that and revamped it into an undergrad class and that's where we got to talk a lot about sex toys like i would i would bring in speakers from local sex sex toy shops to come in and talk about the the breadth of options that are out there and it was always really amazing to watch students like minds be blown in live time um but i also do a lot of work outside of academia and in the

community and one of the places that sex toys comes up a lot is when i work with the older population so people interesting yeah people talk about stigma 60s 70s and 80s um and i know we didn't talk about that all in the prep session for it surprise yay but i was doing a i i was doing an intimacy conversation with a group um just a couple months ago and i think three or four of the questions that i had were about sex toys and i was pleasantly surprised though it's it's come up with the older population before so so yeah that's me but now we get to talk about you oh man oh you love it um so for those of you who are joining us for the first time or are our regular listeners um i'd like to introduce charlie who is our curious co-host who is always

ready to keep me in line no um always ready to explore the ins and outs of sex and relationships and all those taboo topics like sex toys that we so rarely talk about in public you want to tell us a little bit more uh i suppose um my name is charlie and i've been friends with dr sue for many many years and we've had many a conversation um surrounding a variety of topics and so i suppose i am someone um who enjoys challenging expectations that um that are kind of placed on me because i'm a woman in society and just enjoy challenging certain taboos and um ways of thinking um so that always with the goal that the world is becoming more equitable um and yeah more equitable really i'm more more compassionate i suppose

um that feels to help people find out yeah uh people find that there's room for many of us so anyway that's me here i am dr sue's playing with her hair i'm not sure why we had to talk about that it was the emotion was like what are you doing we're being a little punchy sorry it's like i said it's been a month so where to begin let's why we feel like we need to do this episode like why aren't sex toys? Why don't we talk about sex toys, Dr. Sue? Why don't we? Because we don't even talk about sex. How are we supposed to talk about sex toys? For those of you who have not heard my rant about the state of sex education, you need to go back about 20-ish episodes.

But seriously, where are people going to learn about it? They're not going to learn about it in school. Maybe they are. And again, if you're that one educator who's doing a fantastic job is covering this k through 12 maybe not k through middle school um but i mean where where are people going to learn it if if it's brought up on a tv show in a movie it's usually a joke a punchline right and there but and there's no education around it um and so a lot of times we're hearing about it i know my students hear about in my class um my sex and tech class that i used to teach and now my human sexuality class uh i know that anyone who comes to a live event i do usually sex toys come up as a as a conversation but if you don't have me um you may be learning about

it from friends um from partners past partners current partners uh who have brought it up or mentioned it or use them themselves so i think part of the reason we don't talk about it is that we a don't talk about sex in general in this country and b like who are you learning it from because i think we're planning i may as well put the spoiler out we're already planning on doing a second part to this which is like okay you've decided you want a sex toy as a consumer what do you need to know but that's a daunting thing like if i'm like i don't even know what a sex toy like i don't know the difference in a dildo and a vibrator and benoit balls and like i don't even know where to start so it could be overwhelming and who are you going to ask for help yeah i think

before you even get to that part of dildo versus vibrator um curiosity you're you may be contending with the fact that you're curious at all right and trying to unpack that um and so i i would say the curiosity is natural it is okay and there are resources out there us being one of them you can always send us some questions or comments um but i think it is there's there's such a stigma around sex to begin with and then you add the layer of like of the extra things that you can do with sex play um and then so then you just kind of compound the layers of stigma right and like with the adventure of sex play that you may choose like if if if i'm interested in doing this does that mean like i don't like my partner or does

that mean there's something wrong with me that like i feel like i need to add something to to my routine with my partner or like if i don't have a partner are people gonna like make an assumption about me if i get a sex toy although i don't know who's gonna know you're getting a sex toy but we can talk about that in the consumer piece um but i think there's a lot of assumptions we make about why about how sex works like we know how sex works but like there's this assumption that people don't need instruction or people are going to naturally know what to do and so i shouldn't need or want extra stimulation because if it's quote-unquote good sex i shouldn't need more when that's complete and total bullshit um you can always want more even if it is mind-blowing

sex there's there's nothing wrong with wanting to add to that yeah and i think maybe part of it too is in in some of our pre-show um chats we've we've talked about the accessibility piece of sex and who gets to have access to sex young beautiful attractive able-bodied all of those things and so again it's that compounding stigma I think of um of well I maybe I shouldn't explore this because it's not really meant for someone like me mm-hmm well really i would say it's a i mean for any adult just because i don't really want to get into the teen thing and the lawsuit thing um but really anyone who's interested and and maybe it's funny because i've also talked to people who are like well i shouldn't have my first time

be with my vibrator i'm like okay well that's that's a whole walk into virginity which we know is not a concept i adore um but why shouldn't you get to know your body before someone else comes play like i feel like that would make you a better sex partner as if you took the time to kind of figure out what you wanted and i often encourage people um especially women who were taught not to touch themselves oh there's a whole piece of the stigma there um especially women who were taught not to touch themselves that you know if you if you get yourself a sex toy you can actually start to figure out what you do and don't like and that if you can communicate that with a partner that will actually probably make the sex better for everybody yeah yeah and i think

also maybe this is part of it you had mentioned doing um outreach across the age the across the life cycle and so another part of it could be that the that piece of who gets to have access to to the things that we advertise as sexy and pleasurable about sex um there could be you could hit a certain age where none of the toys that you find you can use for any extended period of time or hold or or what have you yeah i just want to clap because i knew what you meant by that but i want to clarify if people like why can't older people use it it's more the accessibility piece um if you have something that vibrates and you have real sensitivity in your fingers that vibration that might not be comfortable um the question that brought it up at the at the last

thing i did for older folks we wound up talking about cock rings and for the life of me i don't remember how we got to that conversation and there's different kind of cock rings but one of them is where like you you get to see it but no one else can because we don't release the video yes but essentially you you have an open circle and then you close it and lock it into place that's really hard to do if you have arthritis like we're really hard to do i mean some of the the sex toys i've seen have a chance to play with from different people that sounds weird from like different companies that's what i'm trying to say like some of those even i'm like i can't figure out how you would do this with one hand if hands are an option or one's not functioning or you've

or you're missing one um you know sometimes where an on-off switch makes it very inaccessible for people who are not flexible like there's a lot of accessibility issues from a physical standpoint i'm sure we're going to get to this in the consumer one but there's also a lot of issues about accessibility from a money standpoint most sex toys most good sex toys and when i say good i mean quality of product are are expensive um and for older folks there's an added accessibility issue a lot of them are not as well versed in the internet as my generation and the generations who are younger um they may not feel comfortable buying a sex toy online um they may not be able to get themselves out and about to a shop where they can buy it and for folks who are living in

certain kinds of facilities they don't do their own shopping they make a shopping list and they may not feel comfortable putting something i mean not that you're going to get a sex toy you're running the middle supermarket but maybe from a bigger a bigger store you might be able to i don't want to name them because i think we're still protesting them for dei stuff and so there are like condoms that come with vibrating rings on them that you can possibly pick up at a local supermarket but again most people in their 60s 70s 80s and beyond are not don't feel comfortable putting that on a shopping list for someone yes i i would like celery i would like potatoes and please get me that vibrating cock ring yeah with the warming

loop right if they even know about warming loop right we talked to them about that so so there's accessibility from a whole lot of issues one is that most sex toys are designed to be used by able-bodied folks who have full use of all of their limbs and they have that dexterity there's also the accessibility issue of not being able to purchase them because of just someone else yeah price point and then if someone else is getting is doing your shopping for you and you don't feel comfortable doing it online so there's a whole lot of accessibility but i hear that a lot i hear that a lot from folks like i would i would love to buy something and then i look at the price tag and i'm like yeah i totally understand and agree with that

um i'd like to think that we're starting to address that as a field but we're not really i mean some some places do try to put out um cheaper versions of things but the the timing of that phrasing was comical to me some people do put out no sorry i was wondering why you're making that face um so i think another thing that's important to talk about as we're trying or working to break down this stigma around sex toy use and curiosity and all of those things is there could be a lot of assumption that sex toys certain sex toys are only for certain genders tell us a little bit about that I mean not me nodding isn't doing it for you

mm-hmm so some sex toys are designed to be used by certain gender based off body parts so let's do sex let's do sex assigned to birth like the body parts that you have um some are designed to be used for specific body parts like there are g-spot simulators for women that are designed to hit the g-spot there are g-spot simulators for men that are designed to hit their g-spot so there are some that are specific fleshlights are specific for people who have penises cock rings are specific for people who have penises but other than that I mean I'm thinking about some of the wearables that are out there I guess those are more designed for people with vaginas but I think in general there are there are toys that are made for specific body parts but in terms of who should

be able to use them for me it should be anyone who's curious like even vibrators like some men actually enjoy vibrators being used with their partner where it's close enough that it's it's stimulating their balls at the same time that they're inserting their penis inside so like everyone's getting a little something something out of it even though we traditionally think of vibrators as going in vaginas they can go in anuses and they can just be rubbed against outside body parts nipple clamps can be used by whoever's got nipples um and i don't mean that as a catch like there are some people who don't have them because of surgeries um but nipple clamps can be used by anyone who's got a nipple um yeah there's there's a lot of things i think that sometimes we we kind

of just say well those those sex toys are only used for and what's interesting is i never know who they're used for like I never get a clear like let me let me put that sentence in English just for funsies it's not like the women are like oh sex toys belong to women and men are like no sex toys belong to men I've heard it both ways like women are like oh sex toys isn't that like a guy thing like a like to help them masturbate and then I've got men who are like well only women use sex toys so I don't I know I've never gotten clear consensus that we believe that only one gender should use it when specific though I have gotten that message from people of like it's it's for them not me so I got a little lost in my them's there sorry and that's okay um that's

that's a little bit fascinating um I think what also comes to mind with maybe some of the fear and the stigma is if you're partnered and maybe you're curious but maybe maybe you know that your partner is going to have an adverse reaction or some kind of reaction maybe rooted in um insecurity and jealousy or you're just you don't want to hurt their feelings because it's not really about anything that they're lacking it's just maybe you read a spicy novel and that suggested something and it excited you and you you became curious so um yeah partner partners having feelings as you called it partners having feelings and surrounding sex toys this is usually i hear this a lot from women who are having sex with men um i don't think i've ever heard it in another gender

combination though if if we have this conversation it was you and it looked different i apologize um it's usually women who are like i kind of want to bring a sex toy into bed with my male partner um either because i think it would be really fun to play or like you said like i was reading some novel or some porn watching some porn i was like hey that looks like a really cool idea or maybe you have a favorite sex toy that you've had since before your partner and you don't feel like it should be banished to a drawer just because you have a partner usually the three things i hear are concerns about what you said before jealousy something else i can't remember insecurity insecurity thank you

jealousy and insecurity this idea of like why does there need to be something else am i not good enough and that goes back to this idea that we have voiced it on men that like you are just supposed to magically be able to fill every need of your partner and that's not that's not a realistic i mean you might be able to in a lot of ways but you only have limited hands and like one mouth and like you can't be everywhere at all times you can only do so much at the same time right your one being is there's only so many places you could be at once and and i think because we don't talk about variations of sex and we just have this assumption that a male and i hear this from you guys a lot that's like i don't know what i'm supposed to do but apparently

everyone assumes i know what i'm supposed to do um so then a partner saying hey i'd like to bring him this other thing or i'd like to try playing around for a sex toy if he's already feeling insecure about himself and his ability to pleasure his partner that insecurity is going to go through the roof for most guys and i could see why like yeah i could see where that would feel like if you were taught that your job is to please your partner and now your partner's saying i would like to add instead of hearing i would like to add something that may be better experience for both of us you're just hearing i'm lacking and my partner needs to add to the experience to feel fulfilled and i have heard of people getting jealous of their sex toy um of their partner

sex toy and i think that's a lot about how it's introduced and the why it's introduced and having on conversation i mean it always comes back to communication in my book if it's introduced at all if it's introduced at all yeah because it could be something where maybe you enjoyed your sex toy and now you're partnered and and you're not sure how to bring up the conversation or or what have you and so you're using it when you're on your own and your partner may not know where they find and then they find it and they're like what the hell yeah yeah so i think that's a very real I understand where men are coming from that because again we teach men that they're supposed to know all of this stuff somehow I don't know how they're supposed to learn it all

and I think for women that fear of how their partners are going to react is a pretty valid fear so I think it's I think this comes back to communication how you if you bring it up how you bring it up when you bring it up why you bring it up you know maybe not like right after sex be like yeah um maybe next time so next time yeah i'd like to introduce this thing next time because all he's going to be thinking is wow how badly did that suck for her um i find that with a lot of the the women who are having sex with women when i talk to them that it's much more a part of their routine and they don't feel threatened by it though sometimes they're like my partner wants to use this toy and that toy scares me because of what it looks like or how

it acts or but i don't find as much fear or insecurity also with men who have sex with men like i don't i don't hear that as much from them either that it's a little bit more part of what they're doing to kind of include different things um i think it's really for a lot watch the straight men get really angry at this i think it's a lot of the straight men who feel really threatened by well which makes sense right because we're in a society that is heteronormative driven conditioned that's the air quote normal that's the standard that you're supposed to exist in society and and so so women may feel threatened if they find their partner has a flush light because maybe they just had a baby or something and they feel some type of way my partner doesn't think i'm tight

enough air quote again um so i i mean that i think that's where a lot of the stigma is driven from because when you have other sex play constructs those already kind of exist outside of the standard air quote um air quotes everywhere everywhere um so that so there is less of that emotional barrier to the curiosity and the willingness to explore so do we want to talk about how to overcome that or were you taking me somewhere different because i know you have a i know you have a map in your brain of what i i don't um i've already we've already completed the map um go go go where you would like with that i think this so i think it's about if this is something that you're interested in doing and we're gonna we are i

think i'm gonna do a whole other episode on consumer like what you should look for the type of product it is what is the difference between a dildo and a vibrator um i think we're gonna do a separate yeah we're still gonna do a separate episode on that so once you've got that piece out of the way. I think if it's something that you are interested in using for yourself and you're feeling guilty about wanting to get one for yourself, I think you need to kind of sit with yourself for a bit and kind of figure out where that guilt comes from. It may be religious, it may be cultural, it may be this idea that women aren't supposed to enjoy sex. That is all in quotes. But we are still a culture that really believes that a lot of pleasure is supposed to

belong to the man and not much to the woman so if you're a woman and you're like i'm i'm not sure that i deserve this i'm going to ask you to question that thought um i absolutely believe everybody has the right to sexual pleasure so if you're a guy and you're interested in exploring a sex toy that's not that doesn't mimic penetration of a vagina so things like fleshlights and sleeves and things like that like if you were more like i kind of want to stick something up my butt and see how it feels because you've listened to some of our other episodes on this um again i i if you're feeling uncomfortable emotionally i would check where that's coming from um it's it's not putting something up your butt and we'll have to talk about how to do that safely although i

we covered that in the anal sex one um but i think that a lot of people make this assumption like well if i'm a straight man and suddenly i'm interested in trying this that means i'm gay It doesn't. And if you're not interested in a guy doing it, then you're not gay. But I think that from for all people, there could be this hang up of, oh, what does this say about me? And I can't answer that for you. Neither can Charlie. She's brilliant, but she doesn't know everybody. But I would encourage you to really sit with yourself and be like, okay, like, what, what am I worried about? Like, what is what is stopping me from doing this? yes you kill all of that i think those that those are all important things um but so the thing that i would add is okay you've kind of done that internal processing but sometimes doing internal processing of those kinds of emotions and deconstructing all of that is daunting and you don't know where to go with it necessarily. So, um, again, there are resources. You can reach

out to us for questions on our show. Um, you can reach out to Dr. Sue as well, or if you have just a friend or someone, you know, who holds no judgment with all the things that you talk about or have questions about, try and reach out to them. Or if you have a partner, um, maybe you have have had a past partner i just think about the people in your life that wouldn't bat an eye if you were trying to process this and think about this out loud so that you could continue to unpack it and then find your pleasure journey with toys with partners with toys plus partners um it can be a really enlightening and and beautiful sometimes hard but beautiful journey to do, to do that work. If you ever really want to feel validated about the fact that you deserve

to feel pleasure, go to your local sex shop and ask them questions about the different types of toys. They are all like, yeah, we support you. What do you need? Like what's, what's good for you? And it's so nonjudgmental. So it is. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. No. Um, I, we're probably going to tell it um some things uh i had a friend who i encouraged to do that and they just the amount of knowledge that the um the shop employees have and again it's that no judgment it's that is this your first time have you done have you played with sex toys before you haven't okay here's what to consider here's maybe where to start here's kind of what i recommend for lube for that type of sex play it is a really kind of beautiful experience to go into a sex toy store and have for the first

time and just be in break your curiosity embraced and even your they know you're intimidated they know that you're a little bit scared and they're so empathic and knowledgeable and welcoming and they're they're great they're great guides yeah i was gonna say something similar so for one of papers that my students do for my class, they have to go out and try something new. There's a whole lot of rules about it. But a lot of them decide to go to a sex toy store. And they talk about like their fear going into the experience. And they're always like, I'm going to be judged and like, I'm going to walk in and there's going to be a spotlight on me and they're somehow going to know it's my first time. And for those people who've never engaged in sex, they're like, I'm

going to walk in and they're going to know that I've never had sex. There's no detector for that, by the way you don't get a special tag just because you did or did not have sex and I feel like there was one bad experience in all the years that students have been writing those papers but 99% of them are overwhelmed at the support and whether that support is I have questions will you please answer them or I don't even know what I'm looking at will you help me to I just want to be left alone and they are and they're just left alone you know maybe the person will come in and check in every once in a while but it's there's a there's a respect for boundaries that they're not used to seeing around sex and then like you said like they're very knowledgeable

most of them are very knowledgeable about their products and when they try to push it all it's more like I would encourage you to buy this cleaner because we know it works well with or we know this lube is a good lube to use with this or if this is your first toy maybe not that one um so I think when the pushing comes it's more like educational and good for the for the person buying but yeah this I agree yeah yeah um but it is a truly if you ever truly feel like I don't deserve a sex toy or I don't deserve pleasure or I don't know where to start and you want to be validated in the you do deserve it I always say find your nearest sex toy store and just go in with an open mind and then tell us about no maybe not tell us about yeah no tell us

about it we want to hear it in the comments if you'd like if you'd like yeah but um as for the pulling in a partner which is i think where we kind of started doing some of this um if your partner has if you've never talked about sex toys maybe just a general conversation about sex toys because if you come in with a i want to talk about bringing a sex toy they're going to be like where is this coming from yeah maybe having a conversation about have you ever used them do you have thoughts on them and seeing where the partner is keep in mind that even though we're sitting here saying they're great they can be wonderful some people just don't like the idea of them and that's and that's okay okay yeah that's okay consent means that respecting someone's no

even if it's to something that you are very passionate about you may want to revisit it another time and say hey i'd like to talk about my feelings about this um but i have heard about people are like i'm empowered i use a vibrator you should be into it and the partner's like i'm good with you using that on your own but i don't really love the idea and she was all like and again this is what i'm getting from papers she's all like but i'm a you know i believe in my pleasure and it was just they missed that there was a consent piece there um so it may be that your partner who may not know anything about sex toys is like i don't know if i'm ready for it and you have to respect that um and it may be that they have a lot of questions about it like why

do you want to bring this in why now is there something wrong with our sex lives and you have to be prepared for those conversations because it's well I would love everyone to be like yeah I'm on board let's cool let's go look at a catalog together they're also bringing their stigma and their fear into that conversation and you have to make space for them the way they are making space for you yeah I would say definitely um coming from a place of curiosity kind of compassionate curiosity it's not so much try not so much to be like this is well this is what we're gonna do just let me know when you're ready right if someone's like I don't know yeah okay let's that's totally fine do you feel like maybe sharing a little bit with me why well I always was taught

it was wrong you know just kind of that open-ended questioning and being curious about your partner and i mean that in itself is a bit of an aphrodisiac anyway if your partner feels like you were generally genuinely looking for the common ground and understanding where they're coming from um you can get to a lot of places in your relationship where uh approaching it that way rather than i would really like to do this yes or no i do need to get on board with it yeah yeah yeah yeah and i i do feel like that's a good way of turning your partner off to the idea at all and also respecting that if they do say yes and you start using it and they're like oh not cool i didn't i don't like how this feels i don't like how much attention i feel is being

taken away from me i don't i just um you have to respect that as it's happening as well because i feel like sometimes people are like i'm so empowered and i'm using this and you should be on board do doesn't leave room for the other person to take those steps they need for themselves to get there if they want to yeah if they're interested in getting there yeah well i think sometimes it's the why i think that's the big thing like why why are you bringing this up are you bringing this up because you're not happy are you bringing this up because there could be way of making it better for both of us because it can um is you know is there something that you were feeling is lacking that maybe we could try a different way um but i do feel like sometimes

once a partner gets to that yes sex toy it's like we judge the person who doesn't follow along quickly and we are non-judgmental space so yeah well and if anything there should be as little judgment as possible when you're exploring sex play with your partner you would hope yeah I know that that's not the case but that's the goal I think the other thing that and again this is what I've heard from couples that I've worked with and also from students um there's this idea of well you you used to do that with someone else so like are you just trying to recreate that experience and that I mean legitimately can feel threatening um and can make someone feel insecure because if you have tried the sexual experience and it doesn't i mean

i know we're talking about sex toys but it could also be about role play or different positions like if you're trying to bring something back that you had done in previous places that person may be like am i being compared like what and you're just sitting there thinking no it's great sex and i'd love to have great sex with you you just have to be cognizant of kind of what's going on the other person's brain and allow and allowing them not to understand what's going on in their brain because again we so rarely talk about sex and sex toys and using it for masturbation and using with a partner because we make this assumption that once you have a partner you don't need a sex toy they may not be able to label it and so this may be one of those two-part

conversations like hey i'd like to talk to you about sex toys and then like all this stuff comes out and you're like all right maybe we finish this conversation another time because to be continue yeah because not everyone's right not everyone's ready to kind of do that self-reflection it may just seem very threatening so i think how you bring up the conversation when you bring up the yeah like you said not like right after yeah um i think those are really important for introducing them sorry a little tech glitch there on our end um so i think those are both really important and not just springing it on someone not just like hey let's get in bed oh look here's my sex toy you open a drawer and you're like take a bank yeah oh no no no no oh okay um so yeah i

think i think that's i think that's really important um i'm not sure if we were going to do this for the consumer piece but i i know that there are sex toys that i'll just talk about it and we have to repeat it in the next episode repetition is fine yeah so there are sex toys that can be controlled by your partner from a distance and i've worked with folks that have been separated physically separated not like marriage yeah not like because otherwise they're not doing that like physically separated by distance for whatever job deployment school whatever it may be and these couples were trying to find a way to connect physically and that's really hard i mean having you know talking somebody to orgasm through like phone

or video as one thing um but there are sex toys where your partner can control them from their phones and it creates this level of intimacy that you didn't think could be achieved and and a lot of times like when i've brought this up with people like hey there are these things if you're open to it and it was couples that had never used sex toys often and so they were a little hesitant to do it and they tried it and sometimes they loved it sometimes they didn't um and then for some of them there was this challenge when they were physically back in the same space like do we keep using it do we not keep using it like it's been here you haven't been um and sometimes it takes a little negotiation to figure out how best to move forward use it with them like

physically in front of them like there's there's lots of ways of doing that but It was interesting when I would introduce that to couples who were separated who hadn't known about that technology. And there was still like, even though they were controlling it, they still felt somehow that they weren't part of the process. And most of them did overcome it. Most of them really into at least what they told me. I don't want people thinking I'm like watching this happening most of the time the couples really wrap their brains around that idea it was really when they got back together in person that they had to relearn how to navigate whether or not they were going to continue to use the sex toy interesting yeah nice so what so breaking down the stigma I think we've talked about some really important things you know if you're with a partner and you want to introduce sex toys or explore sex toys i think that compassionate curiosity is a really good piece to have those

conversations where they're open and um and receiving information without coming from a place of well this is because i'm lacking trying not to at least or recognizing when you are and saying i i'm starting to to feel a certain type of way about this can we pause this conversation or something along those lines um and that curiosity about playing with sex toys is completely normal and not wanting to use sex toys is completely normal um and and if you want to if you need a guide on you building your own little journey to finding your pleasure a sex toy shop is a great place to start because those the people that work in shops are just incredible humans almost all of the time almost all the time the other thing is

like i just want to keep in mind also that it's not like you're not making a commitment because there is a financial commitment sometimes to buying some although some of them like the vibrating cock rings that come with condoms those are you know like five ten bucks um but if you get it and you don't love it a there's nothing wrong with you it may just be the toy or there may just be too much going on in your head um i know one of the things that will probably bring up during the consumer piece is um when you're considering it is whether how loud it is and whether or not you have roommates because there's a privacy issue with that it may just be like you were super scared to use it because you thought your roommates were going to hear if you have roommates

um but just because you buy it doesn't mean you have to use it all the time and you can outgrow your feeling about whether or not you like to use it um so i don't want people thinking like well i made this commitment to do it and now i have to use it it's not the right one for you or it's not the right one anymore that there's it's fine with that um the only thing i wanted to talk about was the fear that i get from people because we talked about this fear that there's something wrong with them we talked about this fear that like partners are going to feel like they're being replaced um one of the fears that i i have and this is mostly from women is it gonna numb me and this is ah yes yeah this is specifically for ones that vibrate i never very rarely actually get that

question from men about sex toys the question i usually get from men about numbing is more about if I masturbate all the time is it gonna like get so numb I can't feel it and it's a whole nother there we go now we have something for a whole nother episode there's there's I have thoughts the answer is no um but you may find that it takes a different kind of stimulation with a partner but the question I often get from women because a lot of those toys are designed to be vibrating and we'll break down the difference in vibrating and dildos and things like that is this idea of like will it damage my sensitivity um what is it you had said like will i get like will my clit callous my clit yeah will callous my clit um no to both of those i mean if you have it

on a really high setting it may be like once you stop using it you may feel a buzz for a little longer but it's not going to do any kind of nerve damage it's not going to cause any long-term damage it's it's not going to do anything like that so I know that fear often comes up of like I'm never going to want to have sex with my partner because I just love this so much we we get different things from physical interaction with partners even if the sex play is great with a vibrator a dildo or another sex toy and we'll talk about those in another episode even if you've got like the most fantastic sex toy of your life there's always something different when you're actually playing with another human so if for some reason you do find

a sex toy and you love the feeling of it and you are pulling away from your partner that could be an issue though i'm guessing it's not something to pay attention to yeah i'm guessing it's not the sex toy it's more something in the relationship but you're not going to numb yourself to the point where you can't feel anything you're not going to cause nerve damage you're not going to get calluses on your clit it's hysterical now like looking at your face thinking of those words so I think that's I think that's one of the other stigmas and the fear is that there's somehow I mean yeah let's just leave it at that that there's some kind of fear that you're going to cause like numbing or you're never going to get turned on by your partner again and that's that's more

relationship issue long term than it is a sex toy issue yes all right well uh i want to thank everyone for joining us on this episode of unzipping taboos candid conversations about sex we hope today's episode sparks some new thoughts and will maybe open up some conversations worth having remember that your curiosity is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. And if you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear this. If you have thoughts on anything we talked about in this episode or any other episode, feel free to leave a comment on that episode. And if you've got a question or a topic you want us to dive into, reach out to us

via the link in the episode description. We want to give a very special shout out to Allie O'Brien for our incredible theme music. Thank you, Allie. And until next time, keep the conversation going. Keep unzipping those taboos. And everyone, take care.