Two Months In

It's been two months since I started working a few days a week in an adult shop, and I truly am loving it. There has been a lot of changes, especially the massive leap in sex tech since I last worked in one at the start of 2020. So much so I've contemplated the excitement of becoming a chronic masturbator (which doesn't go well with work) and never leaving my house (maybe I could stream this?).

There have been a few things that certainly haven't changed, or simply I'm seeing certain viewpoints that I hold being reinforced.

Men in cishet relationships typically still feel intimidated when going into an adult shop with their partner. They walk around either in silence and glaring at everything, or making jokes about every single item. I attempt to engage with these couples, but I also know they won't make a purchase. Or a non-masculine-threatening purchase, like fluffy handcuffs. Their masculinity is so fragile they see everything in a shop as a threat, instead of a fun addition. Especially the size of dildos, despite the vast majority of those larger ones are never used in vaginas.

Because of course to men, they think their partner goes into an adult shop to find a toy to use inside of her (obviously sometimes the case). One (cishet) couple spent some time mulling over rabbit vibrators, the man mostly taking the lead in suggestions and controlling the speeds and vibrations on the demo toys. When he pulled down a small purple rabbit style vibrator and turned it on, he immediately put his hand on the shaft to feel those vibrations, while she (of course) immediately felt for the clit stimulation area. This was the toy they ended up buying, with possibly the smallest insertable length of any rabbit toy in store.

These patriarchal views and systems find their way into everything (by design, duh). There were a bunch of training videos I have had to watch, about various sexual wellness issues customers may have, and how ti support them in finding a solution that works for them (these study videos/slides were assembled by a US wholesaler). One of these was about vaginal health, and using dilators for conditions like vaginismus. I don't know if I was overthinking it, but the wording came across like 'use dilators to ready your vagina for real sex'. So maybe it was wording, or maybe it was simply missing saying something like 'should penetrative sex be the goal' or something. As opposed to the default. Patriarchy invades society as a whole, but particularly sexual wellness and health matters, like who the hell went and funded this research into the effect of endometriosis on male partners?!

I will huff if I have to pay over $4 for a regular coffee, even though I know that for any milk based coffee drink, this price would be bare minimum (I drink long blacks, don't get me started on the price of a large long black take away) because in my head, that's what coffee costs to buy. This is called 'internal reference price', and is something we place on a bunch of items, and as I'm finding, this of course includes adult toys. People will come in looking for like a bullet vibrator, and will say they are looking at spending between $20-$50. There's a crappy little battery operated bullet that fits into that price range, but really the cheapest you'll find in rechargeable bullets is about 70. Now, online things are obviously cheaper, but you also don't get to feel each of those bullets and realise how much more worth the extra cost of the rechargeable one is.

And finally, and honestly predictably, there's the continued racism of sex toys. 'Flesh' coloured toys are still caucasian, despite this demographic making up only about a tenth of the world's population. I don't see this really ever being remedied, as p*rn categories will continue to use racist terms and beliefs in how they market certain videos, and our society as a whole seems to keep going backwards.

Ugh, too much doom scrolling for me.