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Adventures with the “Plastic Man”: Sex Toys, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and the Politics of Women’s Sexual Pleasure

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Abstract

While previous studies have addressed symbolic implications of lesbian dildo usage and quantitative findings about women’s vibrator use, little research has assessed women’s subjective feelings about using sex toys. This study draws upon qualitative interviews with twenty women from diverse ages and backgrounds to illuminate six themes in women’s narratives about sex toys: (1) emphasis on non-penetrative use of phallic sex toys; (2) embarrassment about disclosing use to partner(s); (3) personifying vibrators and dildos as male; (4) coercion and lack of power when using sex toys; (5) embracing sex toys as campy, fun, and subversive; and (6) resistance to sex toys as impersonal or artificial. Emerging patterns revealed that queer women more often constructed sex toys as subversive, fun, and free of shame while heterosexual women more often believed most women self-penetrate with sex toys, that sex toys threatened male partners, and they described more coercion involving sex toys. This article explores implications for sexual identity and sex toys, along with women’s negotiation of the “masculine” presence of sex toys in their narratives about using sex toys.

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Notes

  1. While vibrators and dildos sometimes overlap (e.g., vibrating dildos), some sex toys involve vibrations without the phallic shape, while some phallic-shaped dildos do not vibrate. In this study, though we recognize far more categories within the term “sex toys,” we use “sex toys” to mean all three previously mentioned categories of objects.

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  1. Arizona State University, Glendale, AZ, USA

    Breanne Fahs

  2. Morehead State University, Morehead, KY, USA

    Eric Swank

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  1. Breanne Fahs
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Correspondence to Breanne Fahs.

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Fahs, B., Swank, E. Adventures with the “Plastic Man”: Sex Toys, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and the Politics of Women’s Sexual Pleasure. Sexuality & Culture 17, 666–685 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-013-9167-4

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