Her name is Dr. Carol Queen. She has a doctorate in sexology and is a noted LGBT community
author. She directs the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco and works as staff
sexologist at Good Vibrations. Her most recent book is the updated Exhibitionist for the
SHARP. So please, a big round of applause for Carol Queen.
Thank you Susan. You two have been such wonderful hosts to me while I've been here and I'm such
an impressive podium. I'm a little short. I'll actually get behind it after a little bit because
I brought a few sex toys to wave in the air. I always like to try to do that. I didn't check
any luggage through at LAX and I don't know, have any of you ever taken your sex toys through
the airport? It's always an adventure. It's an opportunity for education, an opportunity
to hone your communication skills. I recommend it actually very highly. But watch out about
keeping the batteries in because they'll start vibrating without your consent or knowledge.
I know one woman who got a lot of money and a settlement from Delta Airlines for that.
But I'm not going to talk only about sex toys. I just want to say although my sort of home
in San Francisco is at good vibrations of women oriented sex store, started by a female
sex educator back in 1977 that makes us 33 and a half years old this year.
Yeah. How have you learned even more then? Well, the rest of you remember. And I'm so
honored to be able to be there. I brought my few little things that I could fit in my
carry on. If anyone is interested, I know we had a sex toy party company in the hall
earlier on, but I think they had to leave. I don't think their wares are still there.
And so I brought some 10% off coupons that are over there on the little fence beside
the door, a few of them down here, plus a mailing list, plus a few catalogs. If anybody
is interested in those, please go ahead and grab them. I need to leave for the airport
immediately upon stopping. So if you're really interested in being on that list, you should
sneak over there and do it now because I'm going to grab it on my way out the door. But
you can always go to goodvibes.com and meet me more there. And ask me a question there.
It is, I think, called house calls. You can ask me a question there. If we don't get to
your question in the Q&A, I hope that you will do that. Because the fact is, to talk
about all of lesbian sexuality and all the things that lesbians can do together sexually
in one hour, well, that's a little unrealistic. We don't really have enough time to do that.
I think that's why we're calling it girl-in-girl sex 101. So you have to go to all the complicated
extensions of possibility that women can enjoy together. And, of course, when we say girl-in-girl,
I'm also talking about women. I'm talking about trans women. I'm talking about fan-bomb
center or female-of-center. If, in fact, there is a center, and I'm not 100 percent sure
that there is, this whole gender situation, wonderful new language, things to think about,
much more inclusivity than there was when I came out in the 70s. But on the other hand,
I don't know about this business of there being a center. At least not as far as that's
concerned. Other than the center, probably. So what I want to do, if you start out by
saying something about sexual pleasure and general female body information, bodies don't
read the anatomy books, as my partner likes to say. So your body and your mileage may
vary based on what I'm talking about here. I didn't bring you any videos to look at.
I didn't even bring a vulva puppet to point at parts. I'm just going to talk stuff through.
There are vulva puppets. You know, they're made out of velvet. They're very pretty indeed.
Many of them are not quite as anatomically correct as I'd like in the day. The woman who makes
them, Dory Lane, so it's a seashell instead of an anus. And I actually think that's a
little misleading. If you've never actually seen a real anus before close up, it doesn't
give you a seashell. It doesn't give you quite as much detail knowledge as you might want
to have when the time comes for you to actually pleasure one, your own, or someone else. But
just say it. There are other resources for that just to make sure you're interested. So
that's good. So instead of doing the vulva puppet, they make great hats at the Red Fair too.
You can put a veil on them. Awesome. So sexy. And throw pillows for your sex positive sofa
at home. And if you get more than one, you and your girlfriend can use it to talk to
each other on the off chance you're having any kind of communication issues at all.
Just put your knowledge and your will into the puppet and have the puppet have a conversation.
It might work. It might work. I'm not going to say it won't work. So I'm going to start
with that. I'm going to say a little bit about toys. I'm going to talk about orgasm a little
bit, talk about pleasure. Some things about connecting with other women. And of course,
there are lots of things that are common to women. And when we look at women in the aggregate,
there are always going to be women who don't do feel, experience, choose, partner the way
we tend to say women in the aggregate tend to do. So I want to say that first before I
say anything more that I don't think there is anything except such thing as normal female
sexuality. I don't think there is a normal woman sexually. I think we are all individuals.
I think our histories as well as our bodies and maybe our maybe our chromosomes and the
ways that we inherit traits from previous generations have something to do with who we are today.
I think that sexuality is fluid and by that I mean that your experiences and the way you
respond in your teens or 20s or whatever it is that you begin to do sexual pleasuring
either yourself or to another woman with another woman or somebody of a different gender may
change over time. I don't know any women who have the exact same sexuality once they hit
perimenopause or menopause that they had when they were 17. Although I know a lot of women
who are 50 who bitch about not responding exactly the way they did when they were 17.
And some women who are 50 who are much more orgasmic than they were when they were 17.
So I want to put that out there partly because when I was coming out in the 70s, I got a
lot of information generated from within the women's community, the lesbian community,
that implied to me that there was a particular proper way, a normal way, a way that we all
essentially were, that I didn't fit all those markers exactly all the time. I was a little
weird in certain respects. If you know my writing, I've actually explored some of that.
You can find out how much ways I was weird because I've written essays about practically
all of them. And I actually really had to kind of grapple with whether or not I belonged
in the women's community, whether or not I would have a girlfriend. Was it too weird
to have a girlfriend? You know what? Nobody is pretty much too weird to have a girlfriend.
Although some of us have to look sometimes for a while to find a compatible person.
Not everyone is compatible with each other. Even if you're really turned on to each other,
a hard lesson to learn. I actually spent several years in the early 80s learning in the
normal part of my upbringing. I try to have a very little job now, but boy I had a lot
of it then. And I try to have it so some of you won't have to have as much. How about
that? Hopefully you haven't had as much as I have. Two girlfriends, you know. If you
haven't done it yourself, you've heard of someone who has. You've had one of your friends
come over crying. Speaking of which, I don't think that you have to be in a relationship
with someone or even be having sex with another human being at all to have pleasure, orgasm
and to have a sexuality that in the moment is optimal for you. Because there are a few
of us who don't actually want to partner with another person. And I want to acknowledge
that as well. And there are some of us, probably some of us here in this room who would very
much to partner with another person or at least to date a little bit. And can I just get a
little hands to see if there are women in the room who actually are interested in meeting
other women and dating or stuff and this or that. Just look around to each other. And
I'm not talking about my girlfriends gone for the weekend, so therefore I'm going to
put my hand up. Because I would feel bad about participating in a non-consensual situation
that was just my idea to instigate. So please don't mess with my own personal sense of integrity
or at the very least disclose as soon as you have talked to the cute woman that you've
glanced at. And just let her know. If it's an open relationship kind of situation, fantastic.
Just make sure everybody actually all agrees that that's what it is. So I've seen it go
the way it's really, I have. So I want to start by saying that the one thing that I always
really agree with when people say, well it's not all done in genitals. The brain is really
the biggest sex organ. I completely believe that. Actually that's not really technically
true. The biggest sex organ is the skin. And it is a sensual organ. There are nerve endings
all over it that respond to touch and other kinds of sensation. Did you know, we'll get
to this later, but did you know that there's a particular nerve ending that has developed
in the human body to feel vibration? I'm not completely clear besides the benefits and
attentions of a merciful goddess why that is there. I'm actually kind of one of those
people who believes in evolution. Possibly some of you are not, but I'm just saying that's
awesome that it's there. However it got there, that there is a specific nerve ending that
would like you to vibrate it more than it would like you to stroke it or poke it or do
any of the other things that you might do to encourage it to kind of turn on. Because
the nerves send signals wherever they are in your body. Whether they're the nerves in
your eyes that actually allow you to see and when you looked around you went, ooh, that
was a kind of sexual response. If you eroticized it, certainly touch is a sexual response for
many, many women. And for many women, you don't want to go trying to figure out whether
her clitoris is in between your labia, which generally you will find it to be. Until you
have patted her some, possibly spanked her a little bit if that's what she likes better,
or something that involves touch on some other part of the body than the genitals. And while
I'm talking about the genitals, let's just say that only some of us are ever going to
use them to generate another life, have a baby, get pregnant, any of that kind of stuff which
is why we get the word genitals from it in the first place. So maybe I'll just say pleasure
parts interspersed with that. Although remember that the whole body can be a pleasure part
so I don't want to get too confusing. So the nerve endings send the signals whether you're
touching the clitoris, the vulva, the anus, the buttocks, the feet. The feet are connected
up through a complicated thing that I don't have enough time to explain and I really probably
should have a picture for it with the clitoris through, well like I said it's complicated,
you do find that you like getting pedicures way better than the average woman. That might
be one. And some of the butchers in the room might be going, should I be getting pedicures?
That never crossed my mind. I didn't think that was right for me, but maybe it is. And
I would just want to say I was on the Olivia cruise a couple of times last winter. It was
a great honor to be able to build a cruise around with my 2,000 best lesbian friends
and the like four or five bisexuals that snuck on. And it was a great honor and I saw some
butchers with pedicures and I was like, seriously? Awesome, because you might be from San Francisco
and we never pretty much take our shoes off there until we actually get in bed with someone
because it's usually cold, not like here. So if you like pedicures that much, it's conceivable
that you want to not embarrass your pedicurist though, because unless you have a special
arrangement with her. Like if you and your girlfriend are giving each other pedicures,
you have total free reign to go for that. And there are actually foot fetishes to who do.
So there you go, there's a freebie just in case you've never tried that before. So the
clitoris, of course, is what Masters and Johnson told us, if you care what they said after
they wrote a book about heterosexuality, it's possible you tuned out on Masters and
Johnson, but they told us that the clitoris was the focus of female sexual sensitivity
that Freud said, it was the other way around, actually Freud actually said, no the clitoris
is the seed of female sexual sensitivity, but really it ought to be the vagina. So all
you women for whom that is the focus, you're immature, to which I say that keep you young,
being a little immature, maybe keep us young. I've always felt that way, although I also
don't want to ignore any nerve endings that might be my friend. So I tried, some of you
can see, I'm going to hold it up and wave it in the air in a minute, but some of you
can see that there's a little purple vibrator standing up down there that has a shaft and
a bunny on the side of it, and that is so that if you have nerve endings on and around
the clitoris, which you do, and if you have nerve endings inside the vagina, which often
you do, whether or not you've gone exploring for them is another question, and you could
decide to do that or not as you prefer. But the nerve endings inside the vagina tend to
be associated with two main things, and some women really like sensitivity and stimulation
around these others not so much. They are the so-called G-spot, I'm going to say more
about that after I tell you the other one, the other one is the cervix, and some women
love having cervical touch, pressure, whatever. It's easiest to get there with fingers, and
it's harder to get there with your own fingers because you have to get into a yoga pose that
some of you may not be able to get out of. Although looking around the room, I can see
that L.A. style being what it is. Many of you go to yoga and I bet you could get in and
out of that pose, just fine. In which case, if you're going to do that, just watch the
manicure, not too sharp, not too scratchy, right? Because if you do have really long
fingernails, there are totally ways for you to work those, but that's in the 201 lecture,
not the 101 lecture. And if you're shy to tell your manicurist, never mind what you talk
to a manicurist about, but if you're shy to tell your manicurist that you actually want
to put your fingers in your own or some other woman's vagina, you can say to her or him
or whoever you got, I want to play the piano. That's what a Sammy manicurist told me once.
She was like, it's not always appropriate to talk too much to us about your sex life,
but if you say, I want to play the piano without my fingernails clicking on the keys, you'll
get the manicure that will work for whatever it is you're going to do later.
It's possible that some of you play the piano already, in which case you are ready for
anything, and you'll probably have good taste in the soundtrack to play in the background
as well. Maybe we should have you raise your hands, never mind. So the G-spot, I'm going
to say a little bit about the G-spot. The G-spot is short for the Grafenberg spot.
Grafenberg is short for Dr. Ernst Grafenberg, and Dr. Grafenberg was a European physician
in the middle 20th century who did what all the doctors want to do, which is put his own
name on a body part. If you're a physician, it turns out that what you want to do, they
have probably, I think they have a special class in medical school for this, they say,
okay, if you're really good, especially if you're a research physician, you will have
a chance to name a disease or a body part after yourself, and you will live on forever.
And if you're not that good, you're going to have to buy one of those star systems that
they're selling on the internet now, and not as many people you will be famous to, all
of you astronomers will know your name, but that might not get you anywhere at the bar
of the medical conference. Whereas if you can go up to some cute person of whatever gender
you're interested in and say, hey, they named the G-spot after me, just imagine. That would
be great, wouldn't it? Are there any doctors here who are like working up to that or have
succeeded in that? Because there are not as many body parts left in name as they're used
to be, I have to say. I mean, Graphenberg got one of the last really important ones in
my view, and so really the name of it is not the Graphenberg spot or the G-spot, it's real
name, it's the prostatefemine, or the female prostate, and it is homologous to the male
or other people's prostates, and when I say homologous and I put these 20th century little
quote marks around it, what that means is if any of you are not science geeks like I am,
that means comparable to growth out of the same tissue in Europe. So our parts are all
very similar to one another, and yet there is a substantial amount of diversity in them.
We know about the diversity between genders, but there's also diversity within each gender
category, and not everybody knows that some female-identified people's clitorises are
larger than some male-identified people's penises, so the fact that they're homologous doesn't
even, you don't even have to think about it being penis and clitoris, you could just say
that part that has all the nerve endings that like vibration and other kinds of touch.
Now I like to tell people, I don't usually have to tell lesbians this, but just in case
there's anybody here who's never had sex before, I like to tell mixed audiences, the clitoris
is not a doorbell, it's not a doorbell. I have to tell guys this sometimes because they
know that old playboy stuff from Way Back, and they hear about it as a button somehow,
they're comparing it to a button, and then I heard that you're supposed to call it the
little man in the boat, but I didn't want to feel that I had a little man in my boat,
so I'm just going to encourage you to call it whatever you like. I've been saying clip
for many years now, and that works fine most times, but the whatever is in your particular
boat, and that boat would be the vulva by the way. If you got your legs kind of closed,
your lady attends to kind of come up and look sort of like maybe a little bit like, I don't
know who found that metaphor. It doesn't really look like a boat. It's like, well, yours
will look like yours, and your girlfriend will look like your girlfriend, and everybody's
has their own particular shape. There's the inner labia, which used to be called in the
books, the labia minora, not men-ora. I know that some of you are Jewish here, and I've
been on these nights, but that's not the case. Although I had a Jewish card making
friends, she made human greeting cards, and she said she made a Monica card with a labia
minora on it, which I hope some of you go on the mail at some point because it was really
cute. Anyway, I mean, minora, like smaller, minor, but really some of us have labia, inner
labia that are bigger, and flower out, or leaf out, if you're not a flower metaphor
kind of woman, leaf out and reach out to the person this year, and it's not really
comfortable for people with first year, then average, inner labia to say, these are my
labia minora, because that might make them feel as though those were too big, and let
me just tell you, women, if you have nerve endings on it, it's not too big. It's not
too big, because you have, it's possible that you have more nerve endings than the
next gal. I don't know that for a fact, but it's possible, and if you ever, ever, ever
looked in a mirror, and if you haven't, you should, just so you know what's going on.
If you've ever, like, snuck a glance at porn and gone, I don't see any ladies like
mine over there. There are plastic surgeons in your town wanting to make you nervous
about your labia, and just tell them when they leave a flyer under your windshield
wiper when you go to the club, my labia have nerve endings, they help me feel
pleasure, go pay for your midfakes some other way, just say that. I'm sure there
are other things that you might want to consider doing, talking, whatever, that's
not my business, but don't nick that, because those are sexually sensitive nerve
endings, and you might want all the ones that you have in order to build up to a
big crescendo. You just might want to keep them all. That's what I'm saying. So just
one more thing about the inner part of the vagina and the G-spot, and I'm going to
say some more about different things. The G-spot, Graphenberg spot, Femina,
Prostata Femina, Femina, Femalprostate, whatever it is, area about maybe it's
far or maybe it's far, just a little farther than I can reach myself, because
I've never taken yoga with any success, but possibly some of you, actually either
you already discovered it and you're happy with it, you like how it feels, and you
didn't just discover it a couple of days ago, in which case you would stay home,
probably, so you would be here in the audience. Those 50 women who didn't show up
to pre-register, and I'm not going to try to spread any rumors about them at all,
it's possible that all 50 of those women just figured out where their G-spot was
two days ago, and they just decided, not only is it too hot, I'm going to stay
right here. Some of my friends will tell me all about how the conference went,
I'll go next year, but right now, I'm staying home. It's possible. So the thing
that I want to say about the G-spot, the inner sensitive parts of the vagina,
that they are actually served by a different major nerve pathway to the spinal
cord and up to the brain, that big sex organ I referenced initially, than the
clitoris, which means that it doesn't have to be either our situation, Freud was
like, Freud was Freud, please, I'm going to stop talking about Freud. Freud said
what do women want, and that's a fine question, but he has it in the wrong
tone of voice. He didn't say what does each individual woman want, which is a
far better question than what do women in the aggregate want. So if you like
around or right on the clitoral stimulation versus internal vaginal G-spot
or anything that's not external and clitoral, it's possible that you are
actually favoring one nerve ending over the other, major nerve pathway over the
other, vice versa, the same, if you're like, gosh, I just can't bring myself to
choose just one, which is how come I always try to date people who have at
least two hands and some sex toys already. Although because of the way that
this toy was designed, the number of hands you have is actually less relevant
than it might seem to begin with, because there you have a toy that can be used
with one hand, so lower with a partner, and will give both clitoral and G-spot
or vaginal stimulation at the same time. And of course there are also toys that
give anal stimulation, there are toys that do nipple stimulation, there are
toys that do all kinds of different things. They're starting teachers to talk
back to you. If you care that someone with you is saying your name, they're
actually working on that now. But if you care about it that much, I'm guessing
that you have kept your eye out for an actual girlfriend. And I do not in
any way want to suggest that sex with a toy is superior to sex with another
human being. I think those two things go together great as well, and not
everyone is toy oriented. So I want to say that the thing that I hear most
from women who don't have a lot of experience with sex with other women,
although I don't think that's this girl, but I'm just going to tell you what I
hear, is that many, many women are simply assuming that the way of having sex
with another woman is due to oral sex, to go down on her, or to get the other
one to go down on her, which may be why they're thinking about it so much in
the first place. And there certainly are people for whom going down on somebody
else is by no means the last thing they think of when they think of what's
sexually erotic. In fact, they live to do that, and we would like you all to
raise your hands before you leave as well. And there are women for whom they're
like, you know what, all of them in my whole life, I have not had enough
pleasurable reception of oral sex on my own self, that's my focus. My
experience is that so many women like to do both, and it's also been my
experience that there are plenty of lesbian-identified women who find other
things that they like just as well or better. So even when you get to those
things that the culture tries to sort of say, well that's lesbian right there,
sure it is when it is, and the rest of the time you get to do what feels best to
you and that you most prefer a desire. Because the brain is the biggest
sex organ it means that anything could be going on up here when you're solo or
with a partner that adds to and focuses and generates sexual energy for
yourself. Some people like to read erotica, some people like to watch visual
erotica, some people like to talk to one another, some people like to get all
their friends to come over and act out little sexual scenarios in front of
them. That doesn't happen in every town I don't think, but I know some people
think it's awesome, so it does happen. It used to be called tableau vivant,
just in case you're into that old French lesbian stuff, tableau vivant,
the living tableau. You can imagine that before they had erotic movies,
what would you do if you wanted to see something like that? You would have to
make friends with exhibitionistic people. You would have to, or pay someone I
suppose. The idea that each of us needs to figure out what she most likes or
wants to know whether she likes. Because it's possible to have fantasies
that you have never had the opportunity to engage and you're pretty sure that
they're hot, you would like to do them, but you haven't actually experienced
them in your physical body, so there's still that open question. And some
people just believe their fantasies as fantasies for their entire lives. They
do not want to run the risk of burning out a good fantasy by trying it in a
human-human-touch situation. What those internet geeks call meat space, but I
don't think Jewel would like that. There's got to be a better word for it.
Skin to skin. Skin to skin. Skin to skin interaction. That if you find that the
thing that really makes you most erotically happy to think about doesn't
feel as good in real life, then maybe it's not going to be as fun to fantasize
about anymore. So there are people who definitely make a decision to keep
their fantasy as a fantasy. That can sometimes be true if you've got a crush
on somebody. Some people choose not to tell the other person that they have a
crush on, just because that way they can just go, you know what? Oh, my secret
lover in my head. That's all, that's all. But if you're actually looking for a
girlfriend, that might mean that you wait around thinking, I've been fantasizing
about you for years. When are you going to actually tell me that you've been
fantasizing about me too? So maybe communicating would be good. At the
very least, a card. Something, my recollection when I came out and I was
engaging in di-dramas, and I had to buy cards a lot because everybody was always
pissed off at each other. And because we had not all broken up yet, we needed
to smooth the path again for us to actually get together on a weekend and have
sex again. So we did that actually with cards. I think you all have the
Facebook now. But remember that if you're using the Facebook that way or any
other frisky ways, remember that if you haven't set your privacy settings really
special, that your adult children can see you're communicating with the woman
into a cushion, or your mom can, or whatever. Just remember, it's not private
unless you make it private. And having said that, I just want to also say that
the fact that so much of our communication has gone online also has meant
that it's a little unusual sometimes for us to start out and exchange maybe voice
to voice. So that might be an exciting old-fashioned thing to bring back into
frisky new 21st century reality. I'm just saying, I'm going to let you all do
what you think is most comfortable for you, but the actual communication with
another person directly in front of them when you run into them, it's got a lot
to be said for it. You can see the look in their eyes when you say what you want
to say for one thing. And you know, you really can't online. Not even if you
use Skype, because there's that little second, there's that little minute
when you don't see what's going on in your lifetime. Okay, I want to say a few
things. I'm going to step away, Sue, from the employees so that I can hold up
some sex toys, just say a little bit about those things. I also want to make
sure that I say something about orgasm, but talking about sex toys will lead
to that relatively naturally. And I want to leave a little time to see if you all
have questions for me, things that I was like really super unclear about when I
talked about it in the first place. Everybody thought that was clever, but
what the hell was it that you said? Please feel free to get me to be clear
about things that you play. I didn't, as I said, bring a ton of sex toys. There
are lots of sex toys out in the world. Some of you know that there are, I'm
actually going to be back in the LA area one month from tomorrow at, what do we
call that place that we're going to be? Altadena? No, not Altadena. That's
where Amy Sprinkland, that students are getting married for the six and a half
time. But highways, the next day at highways, Sunday, October 24th, I'm going to
be at highways during Amy Sprinkland, that students who are getting married again.
Erotic sex symposium, and I'm going to talk about green sex toys, but I'm going
to talk about a couple things about them. As you can see, most of these are purple.
For some reason, I think it's like purple sex toys. So we just got rid of
vibrations. It's not totally clear to me why that is, although purple was our
special gay color back in the day, and I think it kind of still is. But for
some reason, the fact that these are shades of blue and purple seems to be,
it's not coincidence. There's a red one there, though, just in case you're a
purple, and a black one just in case you're intense, or a goth, or whatever,
a basic black person. I mean black person, I'm always wearing that kind of
style. My experience is not that these purple sex toys actually know any race
and identity and ethnic affiliation. Not at all. I didn't mean to imply that
that was a mispleasing. So what I want to say is, a few years ago, and some of you
maybe tuned into this, if you're getting in on the blogosphere, chit-chat and
everything, there became a concern that some sex toys were made out of material
that was toxic. So this actually follows very well in a totally different way
than what Jewel was saying. And I just want to say, follow up on what she's
saying, that it is perfectly possible to have effects of eating the wrong
kinds of food, particularly food sensitivities and allergies, as well as
other illnesses and misbalances in your life, and also including parabenopause
and menopause, which is a misbalance. It's just a rather radical hormonal change
for many of us, which can be made more radical and more intense in. I'll just
say it worse by having the wrong kind of foods in your body and not having
good nutrition. You can have sexual dysfunction issues behind any of those
things. If, by chance, you were frisky sexually, you cannot think of any other
reason why you might not be frisky sexually now, but you're just, you're
just not. Then one thing to think about is to get some good quality, holistic
health care from someone who is sex positive and knows something about the
sexual effects of various kinds of illnesses, because it's conceivable that
you could be showing one of the early effects of a variety of different kinds
of physical problems. I'm not suggesting that it's going on with you, it just
can be one of the things that slows people down in terms of their libido
and their ability to reach orgasm and things like that. So it's, I just
thought based on the really important information that Joel was putting up
that I should say that in some words. So there was a concern about the material
that sex toys were made of, because although we are not putting it in our
mouth all the time necessarily, other places might, that have mucus
membranes, might be going into contact with materials. It used to be called
things like jelly rubber, if you remember, if you're a sex toy buyer from
way back. That particular material is a material that's practically off the
market now. It's not all the way off, but it's harder to find these toys
because the word has gotten out in the sex toy business that it's possible
that it might be problematic. No one does these tests. I don't know
based on what Joel said, if I would trust the FDA to do my sex toy tests
and there are no trained professionals over there to my knowledge who know how
to do those kinds of tests in the first place. But there isn't any entity that
makes sure they can track of these things. We do know that certain things are
more porous than other kinds of material and what we do know is certain things
are made out of more natural materials than other things. So I'm just going to
say a little bit about what that might look like if you're choosing sex toys and
you want to be green, sustainable, or especially body healthy for yourself.
All those things sort of add up to be eco-oriented, as we would call it in good
vibes, but you might have a specific focus on your own body health and
another of you might care more about carbon footprint and global warming.
So eco-rodic is anything that's sourced with organic ingredients, mostly you
think of looms when you think about stuff like this. Although there is a vegan
condom now, if any of you are putting condoms on your sex toys, you can be vegan
doing it too. Who conoms weren't vegan before? There was a milk protein.
That made them not vegan apparently. It's hard to keep up on them things.
I'll tell you, so much college. The things that are the most long lasting,
so they will have to go to the landfill less soon, and generally that means
materials like metal, wood, glass, only annealed or pyrexed glass, please,
never just glass glass. Don't look at your fancy vintage orange juice glass
that you took your orange juice into because it has a pretty picture on it and
think, I feel Randy today. Don't do it. Don't do it. You can figure out why you
shouldn't do it. You know. And by the way, if you're worried about staying out of
the emergency room with this sort of injury, you also want to make sure that
anything that you get curious amily about, or downright Randy amily about,
has a base on it. It's not great for a sharp or rough. Again, if you were just
sitting here thinking with me, thinking through the logical and helpful things
to think about about sex toy provision and running around the house to try to figure
out what you can use as a sex toy today, because you didn't lay in the supply of
anything that was made for the purpose, because there are many things from the
grocery cart on house that you can, if you need to, bring there just in case you
feel that way. Wash those little hairs off the zucchini first.
Do these on the head of those little hairs. Some people are sensitive to that.
If you're going to do that, make sure that you don't have something that is a
not sensible, not helpful item. Like something that could break, be sharp or
scratchy, that kind of thing. And the time to think that through about the things
in your house is when you're not feeling insanely frisky. Because when you're
feeling insanely frisky, you're just running around going all the way. Does that
make a good lube? The answer is, actually for many women, it makes a fine lube.
It's possible that almond oil is good for you too. It's good for almonds.
It's possible that coconut oil is better for you. But they make actual lube out of,
I don't know, they tap the lube tree. Whatever's made out of plastic molecules
of water, most of them are made out of. So you want to use something that,
if you want to have a sustainable toy, you don't want something with a battery
that you have to throw the batteries away right away. You want something rechargeable
or you want something that plugs into the wall. Like our old friend at Hitachi
Magic Wand, I will hold it up like Lady Liberty's torture, just a second,
show to you. You want something made out of silicone, not one of the other
rubbers, because silicone stays the way it is pretty much forever unless you let
the dog use it as a chew toy. As those of you with dogs and silicone dollars have found,
that will break it right in half and you won't be able to fix it with duct tape
or anything else. Now, it's not even silicone-tubed cloth, which some of the
coaches in my life have tried to put the toy together with, though you need to go
get it to the silicone toy if you let the dog steal it so don't put it on the
coffee table because you know how those dogs are. Look, it's a chew toy and then
it's 60 or 70 bucks that I want to drain. More if you like bigger sizes.
So, those are things to think about. If you want to use something that's not
silicone and you want to use it for penetration, it's possible that you might
actually want to go and get a condom, something that you thought you would never
have to buy a stash of again if you're not an executive man, but there you are.
It makes it much safer and cleaner, easier to clean up. And maybe you're not
using anything internally, but maybe you care about the mucosa question.
You need to decide how cautious you want to be and there is more information on
why about these issues. But I just wanted to share those thoughts with you partly
because I know that lesbian audiences tend to be the most conscious about these
kind of health questions of any other audiences that I ever run into.
In fact, when I first started working at Good Vibrations in 1990, the first question
like this I got was, are there EMFs, Electromagnetic Frequency, Bad Waves,
putting out a big dodgy magic wand? And I was all, well, I certainly hope not
because I'm going to have to break up with my wand.
Yes, mine is named Wanda too. So is yours now.
If yours isn't named Wanda, you're a rebel. Or maybe it doesn't have a name at all.
Just say, hey, you, I love your purr. By the way, the Hitachi, I'll just do it now.
I wish promising to do it. I like doing it. Liberty, freedom, whatever.
This is a vibrator that looks like something that you're not supposed to put in yourself.
I can always tell when someone has never looked at sex toys before.
They say, I want to look at that Hitachi magic wand I heard so much about.
And I show them this and they kind of go, whoa, really? And I go, no, no, no, no, no.
That's not, that's clitoral, external clitoral.
Your back, if you carry heavy things, like if you're helping your friend move,
you want one of this as well as if you want to use it for other purposes.
And it has quite a loud sound associated with it that I don't have a plug right here
so I can't show you. But if you live in a context with kids, with a mom, you know,
a dorm, if you really don't want anybody to know,
your girlfriend goes to sleep and you want to continue to buzz, I don't know.
Sometimes that's just how you get to sleep, isn't it?
Well, and if she went to sleep already, what's the harm?
But if you don't want to wake her up again, maybe you record your vibrator than this,
or put together layers of blankets over it but not on a day like today.
So that wasn't designed to be a vaginal or another kind of penetrated vice.
For that, we turn to the things that were designed that way.
This is the rabbit toy that I talked about earlier.
You can see there's a little bunny on the side.
It's possible that some of you are sneaking across class lines and watching sex in the city.
That totally fell flat. Only three of you got that killed.
That ain't just what I was stupid. Okay, I'll go move on.
But if you do, if you have for a long time, you've heard about the rabbit vibrator in sex in the city,
and some of the pointy-shoe women might have been watching it just put on clothes
just because they thought, you know, some of those women were sexy, you never know, you never know.
Anyway, this is the rabbit and the rabbit doesn't sting on your clitoris
and then the shaft goes into the vagina and I have to say that
you can really tell sometimes if someone has been a member of PETA since the very beginning
when they look at it and they go, I could never keep up with a rabbit.
I'm not asking you to do it with a rabbit.
That's actually not a good idea.
I mean, the PETA will come and get you a rabbit. No, this is a toy. Well, the rabbit or rabbit, perhaps you need to get something else.
These are two silicone dildos. As you see, they come in relatively different sizes and shapes.
I haven't brought any realistic looking or penis-y resembling detachable penis type of dildos,
mainly because those are so much fun to go through.
But I wanted to show you a slender one that would, for many people, be a logical size
and is a safe shape to use for anal play and one that has more of a bulbous head on it,
although it is not representational to anatomy parts except for those people on penis
that we keep waiting to come down and find the saucer.
With their protuberances because they are all lesbians, you think I'm joking.
The very first lesbian, erotic anthology published in the late 1970s had not one but about four stories like that.
That was before it was okay to have your own dildo.
But you could wait for the aliens to come and with their protuberances,
and I think some of them made their own loo, just as a plus.
If you were going to use a little guy or anything anal, you would want to use loo.
It's up to you whether you want to use loo vaginally, although that tends to increase comfort in any way we really love it.
There are thicker loo's, thinner loo's, different kinds of loo's, but anal is pretty much always a plus.
If what you want is not penetration or you have another hand and you want to feel something different,
there is also this small thing which was originally designed, you can take it in the bathroom,
it's waterproof, it was originally designed for pressure point massage,
and just in case you're a practitioner, you can still use it for that,
but it turns out that it's one speed, is a happy speed for many clitorisans and many people love that.
And then there's the kind that you can put on your fingertip so that you don't drop it in the throes of whatever it is that you're experiencing.
Did you know by the way that vibrators were brought into our lives by the medical profession back in the late 1800s
to cure hysteria, a disease that no longer exists, it was voted out in the medical books in 1952
after for about 20, 30 years you could get, if you could get it, porn from the late teens through the 40s.
If you could get porn at all, you could see vibrators being used for clitoral stimulation, it was plain as day.
Finally, the doctors were like, shit, they're onto us. And then Dr. Grappler came along and stole the G-spot name,
and then, you know, it's been down hill for that profession ever since.
Or you could get something that is palm-sized, my experience, when I'm talking to women who want to choose a vibrator,
I ask them if they really like a finger, not a doorbell, pushing finger, mind you, I still don't think the clitor is a doorbell,
but a finger of pressure on the clitoris, or very near the clitoris, or if that is too intense for them,
and they would prefer to have a palm cupping their vulva with pressure and then building up.
If you start with something less focused, you can sometimes, in fact, maybe even often, move to more focus,
but if you start with more focus, sometimes it will be irritating to women and she just won't get turned on enough
for that to sort of morph into more pleasure.
So something like this that fits in your palm actually fits that notion of stimulating more nerve endings at the same time to begin with,
and sometimes people will choose that as their preferred mode, either to start or just to hold on in time.
In general, if she tells you what kind of pressure, speed, etc. she likes, don't think she's testing you, just try to do it.
Because if she is bothered to tell you, she clearly trusts you and wants you to give her a good time,
and hopefully she will listen to you when you return to favor, although I have known some people who really only wanted to tell me what they wanted to learn.
That's not always a good son and a girlfriend. You might have a different deal with each other.
Maybe one of you takes out all the garbage and does the bills and the other one, you know.
Sometimes this does happen. This is still packaged, but it's the field of...
I wanted to show you this because there's also another notion out in the world that lesbians use double-billed noses.
And I can just tell you that although some of lesbians I've known have been the most dexterous human beings on the planet,
but I have ever known, especially when it comes to getting near women's parts, not all lesbians use double-billed noses,
and it takes a real trained professional to use the normal double-billed noses, which is a long, long, long, long thing.
Some of you have seen it in the burial of storage. You take them and you try to get them in one, and try to get them in the other,
and then you try to... What do you try to move? The other one tries to roll the field, and then it falls out, and it rolls on the floor,
and a cracker hits on them. A dog here, some of you.
And I'm just going to say, wash that thing off before you try. Don't keep the hair on it.
This is a redesign that gives people, if they like this notion at all,
it gives you a fighting chance of having a good time that night, which is that one of you can put this sort of more bulbous area
into your vagina and then practice your Kegel exercises, or Kegel oxygene exercises,
which are the way that you strengthen the muscles that you feel that pulse from, you know, an organ.
And that's a good thing to do, no matter what. In fact, I encourage all of you to do it right now.
If you know where your Kegel muscles are, please feel free to do a few pulses just while I'm talking about the other end,
which is the shaft, which goes wherever you and she decide they ought to go. Remember the lead, and like that.
This comes in, this is the field, though, there's also a slightly smaller size to this,
and there's a vibrator that you can put in a little end of it just in case you want to roll it.
I've talked about orgasm. Some women find that vibration is a very easy way for them to orgasm.
If anyone has had an orgasmic pattern in your life and you find that it's hard to get off with another person,
think very carefully about how you get off when you get off by yourself, or with a teddy bear, or with a poster, or whatever,
because it's possible that you're not getting enough of the same kind of sensation that you have grown used to
in your own wiggling around in your bed, your exploration around the house, or whatever,
and try to think about how you can convey that to your partner.
Maybe you don't want to say, you know, the teddy bear on the shelf, I've been a faithful dealer.
It's okay, long before I met you, honey, long before I met you, it's going on my whole, like, there's it's our 13th.
Some girlfriends think that's so sweet and some don't.
I have a picture of my first girlfriend, Ellen's tiger that she used to rub off on when she was five years old,
because I liked that story so much that I was like, oh my God, I'm going to have a picture, I'm going to have a copy of that picture,
so I still have it, and it's been like 30 years since I've been with Ellen, but I still treasure that.
Because if you get someone's secret desire knowledge, if someone trusts you enough for a few minutes at a sex club,
or for a lifelong time to be together, someone trusts you enough to let you in on what she likes and what she wants.
It's a wonderful privilege.
And if you are not getting that kind of information, please try to elicit it.
If you yourself are not getting that kind of information, please try to go, mmm, I'm a little shy about it,
but because we don't read each other's minds, even if it says in the Leslie Love novels that we do,
many of us are perfectly, perfectly appropriate for each other,
but still need to talk about sexuality and our own preference, and how long it takes to get turned on,
and what we really like when we're just almost up there, which Ellen used to call T minus one and counting.
I would like very much.
At that point, generally, little tip, some women may be different, but at that point, generally, keep doing what you're doing.
Generally, don't switch when she's there.
And if you're not sure when she's there, say, hey, when you're almost up there,
why don't you grab onto my ears or my hair or something like that and just kind of, just give me a hand signal.
This is not a ridiculous notion.
It is a kind of communication.
And if you're mouth is full, maybe it's not, but if it is,
and if she is gasping for breath or breathing very deeply because she's taking yoga,
she and you will communicate better with touch than you will verbally.
Maybe it's a walk around the park verbally.
Maybe it's over dinner, and then you get to bed, maybe not as verbal anymore,
but don't stop communicating when you get there.
It only gets better if you communicate.
That's what all the sex therapists say, but I swear to you, it's true.
I'm just going to double check and see what time it is.
It's their time.
I've got time for just a couple of questions, and then I have to be insane and run to LAX.
I know it's really stupid and I really hate to have to do it,
but I already had a gig in San Francisco when I decided that I really did want to come and talk to you.
So if anybody does, I see your hand away in the way back.
You want to yell it out to me?
Yeah, they used to say dildos needed to have a square shaft if you used to win the hardest.
I don't see that anymore.
That is true.
I would say that what is more important than a dildo having a square is shaft.
A dildo having a ring on the harness that's about right for its shape,
that you can't pull out the thing through a too large ring,
meaning that take a look at the harness that you choose.
If you're not buying, haven't bought a harness yet,
and look and see whether the ring is interchangeable,
because either of these two kinds of toys here that I showed you,
the two silk dildos will work great in harnesses,
but the smaller one you would want a smaller ring to hold it more stable.
Also, you can't wear a harness baggy.
I know some people have an awesome trendy baggy look with their clothing,
and it's much more comfortable that way.
That's not your harness.
You've got to cinch that little lady up before you go on a ride,
or else you won't...
Some day they're going to invent a dildo that has a little sensor in the tip,
and we're going to put it in like an earbud,
or we're going to plug it in somewhere, or we're going to something,
but they have not invented that yet,
so you need a tight harness to be able to do your thing and not have your girlfriend go.
Baby, I love how hard you work and to please me,
but it fell out three minutes ago.
Anyway, I think we're out of time.
I'm really encouraged anybody who has questions for me to go to that House Calls button
and good vibes, and I'll get to your question as soon as I can.
They make you do other stuff there than answer sex questions,
which is too bad, because it's so much fun,
but I would really value your question if you have one.
Talk to each other about sex and give each other the valuable wisdom
that you all have accumulated over your explorations and your pleasure seeking.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
