Mashable.com have published an article asking if attitudes to male sex toys are changing in the UK and the USA, and becoming more like Japan, where male masturbation is not seen as the activity of losers and perverts. It details the efforts of legendary Japanese sex toy brand Tenga to lead the way in changing those attitudes. It’s an interesting and optimistic piece, but a few elements of it got me incensed enough to want to publish a brief mini critique of it.
The article does do a good job in highlighting the double standards in attitudes Western society has towards the use of sex toys by men and women respectively, and contrasts this with the situation in Japan, which if anything, is almost the reverse. It’s the explanation given by the ‘experts’ that I take issue with, particularly the claim by one of them that ‘toxic masculinity’ is the cause.
But first, I’ll pick up on a claim early in the article from a sexologist working for Lovehoney, the leading online sex toy retailer, that her company does not sell as many male sex toys, despite their being a demand for such toys, because of the ‘orgasm gap’.
Elisabeth Neumann, a sexologist and user research manager at Lovehoney says the reason Lovehoney don’t have as many sex toys for men as women is partly because they centred their offering around problems in the bedroom, like the orgasm gap. This is fair enough, since that gap is a wide one.
This ‘orgasm gap’ is the obvious fact that men reach orgasm during sex more often than women do. So women need sex toys to enjoy an orgasm, more than men do. Fair enough, I can hardly argue with that. Both men and women have a right to experience the thrill of an orgasm, and it’s true that women are less likely to achieve that through sex.
But let’s consider another obvious fact. This is that there are considerably more men not having sex than there are women not having sex. This is a growing trend, and it’s particularly acute among younger people. Young men are increasingly not having sex. Or better stated, they are unable to have sex. Because, you know, 99% of young men do want to have sex. At the risk of getting further blacklisted by Google, let’s just call it what it is – the incel problem.
If the so-called ‘orgasm gap’ justifies the sex toy industry catering primarily for women, then why not cater for the ‘sex gap’ that affects primarily young males? If women need the help of sex toys to experience the basic right to an orgasm, why shouldn’t men have the help of realistic and advanced sex toys, to at least approximate as close as can be, the experience of the sex they are missing out on?
Well, of course, any talk of a ‘right to sex’ for young men, will instantly get you accused by feminists of at best having a sense of ‘sexual entitlement’, or at worst of downright being a rape advocate. But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m just asking, why shouldn’t men, who can’t have sex, be allowed to experience it in their minds, with the help of a sex toy? In the same way that women can speak of having the right to an orgasm through the use of sex toys?
Now, this is where you might begin to see why I found the article infuriating. Because not only is the right of sexless males to achieve a ‘sexual substitute’ through sex toys not an issue, it’s actually condemned indirectly, through the judgemental highlighting of the supposed fact that male sex toys are often designed to be realistic, and that this is degrading and objectifying to women.
After rather awkwardly pointing out (for the second time) that females often shame their boyfriends for using sex toys, and gently reminding us that ‘a good person’ (ie. a female) shouldn’t do this, the writer claims that women are after all justified because male masturbators often resemble female body parts.
However, the way male sex toys are typically designed can give every right to complain.
Matsumoto (a Tenga rep) says male sex toys, including in Japan, typically look like a “vagina in a can.”
“It’s an uncomfortable thing,” he adds. The look and function of these gadgets, which reduced women to body parts, are just for the one percent,” he explains. “I wanted to create something that would appeal to the other 99.”
Hmmm.. so let’s take a quick look at the Lovehoney dildos section. Yep, nearly every dildo on the first page is a disembodied cock, with a very clear overrepresentation of castrated Afro-American black cocks there. If you take a look on Amazon, you can find any number of animal cock dildos, including a realistic 16.2″ horse dildo that has over 600 near perfect reviews, and which has been purchased over 100 times in the last month alone.
Not only are lonely incels not allowed to have degrading and sexist sex toys as substitutes for sex, but they are the whole reason why male masturbators have the stigma that they do. The article correctly points out that the reason for the stigma is that a man using a sex toy is seen as a loser, or even a pervert. And whilst incredibly putting this down to ‘toxic masculinity’ – despite twice in the article highlighting the fact that women shame men for using sex toys – they choose to challenge it not by defending a single man’s right to use a sex toy, but rather to claim that the majority of males using toys are, in fact, in happy relationships.
Topher Taylor, a sex toy developer, sex educator and brand manager at Clonezone, says that an aversion to solo sex toy use (or talking about it) has a lot to do with gender roles — the cultural scripts we’re assigned to follow in society based on our assigned genders. An aversion to using male sex toys or even talking about them is wrapped up in toxic masculinity, he says, because men are not encouraged to embrace sensuality, tenderness, or even just pleasure.
The Lovehoney rep who, as noted above, justified her company’s focus on female sex toys because of the ‘orgasm gap’, thinks the idea that lonely men use sex toys is ‘ridiculous’.
She notes, like Zane, that this notion is also ridiculous. “We know [from internal research] that less than one in five people buying a male sex toy are single, so male sex toy use has nothing to do with loneliness.”
Perhaps my rant has been a little unfair. The article does has a fair number of positive points, particularly when it highlights the double standards. But it is also typical of just about every male sex tech article that you will ever read outside of this site – even if written by a man, for men, it’s to be viewed entirely through the prism of female sexuality orientated ‘sexual wellness’.
Related posts:
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Smart Sex Toy Arcwave Ion Allows Men to Experience ‘Female Orgasms’
Women Are Falling In Love With ChatGPT’s Male Voice ‘Dan’
Tenga Zero Flip Hole Reviews – The Best Male Vibrator?
