The death of a relationship is the death of its dildos, a gay woman knows. Even straight men know better than to break out that old strap-on with their new paramour. I do not advocate tossing a perfectly good item prematurely, but in some situations it really is appropriate to replace your collection of sex toys. Maybe your gung-ho style left a vibrator cracked, or maybe you’ve discovered, as we did in last week’s article, that your pocket rocket may contain the endocrine-interrupting, baby-genitalia-disfiguring, sperm-count-lowering plasticizer: phthalate. Sometimes you just need a new dong.
Unfortunately, phthalates wreak as much havoc to our health by leaching into our groundwater from landfills as they do from direct skin friction. But really, what are we going to do—put our sex toys into the city recycling container? What if our downstairs neighbor kid sees last year’s anal beads in the single-stream bin? And I have to be honest here, no recycling facility knows what to do with that unmarked plastic # ….? So what are our Earth-friendly dildo-disposal options?
Believe it or not, you have some. Several specialty companies will accept your sterilized sex toys via postal mail. After a secondary sterilization, they are sorted by material and composition (like hard plastics, silicone, electronics, etc.). The mechanical guts, circuitry and batteries, if any, are removed. The plastics are ground up to be reused in consumer products. The electronics are melted down and sold off, and any hazardous waste (like batteries) is disposed of properly.
Companies providing this honorable sex-toy recycling service, like Recycle Your Sex Toy in Florida, Scarlet Girl in Oregon and Love Honey in the UK, also offer huge incentives in the way of discounts toward future purchases.
And one company I found, Sex Toy Recycling, actually manufactures new toys from your recycled ones. Yes, you can purchase a 95% post-consumer recycled sex toy that is guaranteed with a nontoxic silicon outer, so your body does not come into contact with even recycled phthalates. They are guaranteed “Made in the USA” as well, for the USAmericans among us who take the social as well as environmental responsibility of their purchases to heart.
From acquisition through use to disposal, your sex toys no longer need to be a dirty little secret.
You can find sex toys everywhere sensual pleasure exists or has existed—unless you live in Alabama, of course, where the last remaining US state law banning the sale of these items is still on books. Yes, outside of Alabama and India, we legally play with sex toys because we like pleasure and we don’t like disease. All us good little girls (and boys) are at home having safe sex with our toys—or so we thought. We carefully picked out the color, size and ergonomics of our personal sanity device, but did we consider the materials it was made from?
A Little History Sex toys have been around since the beginning of time. Not mine, specifically. But other peoples’. Like the dildo William Shakespeare mentioned in Act V, Scene 3 of The Winter’s Tale (15th century). Or the Upper Paleolithic people’s 20-centimeter stone phallus discovered in a cave in what is now Germany nearly 30,000 years ago. Or how about the doctors’ vibrating electric tools of the late 1800s—predating the invention of the motor-driven vacuum cleaner by 10 years—said to relieve “hysteria” by massaging women’s genitals until “hysterical paroxysm” was achieved. Eleven such sanity aids are on display at the Minneapolis Bakken Library and Museum of Electricity in Life.
Is it just me longing for the “good old days” of healthcare right about now? Preventative maintenance covering vibrators instead of that toxic little blue pill!
Phthalates in Phalluses In Canada, authorities have advised retailers to end the sale of baby teething rings and dog chew toys due to the presence of phthalates used in their manufacture. The European Union has enacted a ban on phthalates used in children’s toys. And Greenpeace Netherlands and UK called upon the European Union to place a ban on all vibrators and other personal pleasure devices containing phthalates on August 8th, 2006, after the TNO (the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research) discovered that seven out of eight sex toys contained phthalates in concentrations of 24-51%.
Phthalates are petroleum-derived plasticizers found in many common household items including carpeting, synthetic bedding, hair products, cosmetics, food containers and anything containing PVC, like vinyl. Phthalates are responsible for that ubersoft and squishy plastic feel we’ve come to enjoy in our flooring and sexy toys. Because phthalates have no atomic bond with the plastic they are mixed with, they are highly volatile and easily released into the air, groundwater and environment. If you smell perfumy odor from your new sex toy, you can bet phthalates are off-gassing. If you feel a slippery coating on your sex toy after it has sat for some time, it’s the unstable phthalates breaking down.
The Health Effects Phthalates, even in small quantities, appear to wreak havoc on human health. High concentrations have been linked to testes damage in rats, lowered sperm count in men, improper genital development in baby boys, premature breast development in young women and asthma in young children. In addition, there is research that points to phthalates being associated with childhood Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), cellular resistance to insulin (a type 2 diabetes precursor), endocrine disruption and metabolic interference. Yes, this does mean there is a link between obesity and phthalates exposure. Your dildo could be making you fat.
Safe Sex Toys But this is by no means anti-masturbation propaganda. I’m all for dildos—say it again! Nobody loves me like I do! I just wanna make sure even my solo sex is safe sex.
So I did some research and development—and discovered we have more options than we might think. I found a pocket rocket that advertises “phthalate-free” plastic on its box. And I couldn’t help but notice the array of lifelike, warmth-holding silicone dongs in all colors, shapes and sizes. Handblown glass dildos are works of art that also hold a nice iced temperature, if you are into the cold. And certainly you can always wear a condom with your old Phthalate-infused trustworthys without having to replace them at all.
Of course, I wouldn’t be a raw vegan renegade without including my favorite recipe: banana and coconut oil… Happy hysteria!
Girls don’t get boners, but we get rushes of blood filling out our extremes. We don’t mention it – most of the time. Like when we were talking and you said they thought we’d been having sex. Words are more decorative than reality.
If I were to stop this car right now, glide these drums to still, lean out the window and call your name, would you walk over?
Would you dance or would you fly? However you move, you’d waste not a life moment and head straight over.
If I were to stare with seeing eyes right into yours and open my mouth, would you lean in the window? Become present. Would you leave reminders of your rarity.
With my hands, pull guide hold you in the window. I imagine I feel you smile – I forget everything and am clearheaded. Defragged I definitely can feel you smile without seeing anything but your lips extreme close up.
Look, I’ll mention it. I got a rush of blood just now even thinking about it.
I feel fine, but my box springs are lonely. They get separation anxiety and get clingy – its all I can do to tear the sheets off every morn.
I’ve got sass, but my passenger seat is insecure. Its making demands for new upholstery as if that will fill the hole. Some chrome would be nice too.
I’m fulfilled, but my skin aches. Starts asking to stay home from school. My skin stays in bed all day.
Don’t you worry about me. I’m fanfuckingtastic. I am thankful to be breathing, working, creating, so healthy. It’s my bed you should pay a visit to if you want to take care. Its my ride you should be seen in should you wish to reassure. Its my body that is crying, “Please take care of me.”
But myself, I’m all good with everything.
You. You. Only you. I want you. I only want you. I want to be you. I want to devour you. I want to hold you in my stomach. I want to keep you. I want to hide you. I want to make you a secret. I want to fall in love with you. I want you to fall in love with me. The way I understand love to be.
Focus. Focus. Look hard through the lens. I’m a woman with needs. Living in LA. And lately everyone looks like a target to me.
Bullseye. I saw emotion water your eyes. I felt your heart want to leap out and capture me. I saw you try to capture me. But all you’ve gots is a photo and I’m still free, free, free. Nothing like a butterfly, everything like an asteroid – before I ever make it to earth, burning up in space. I’m a woman with needs. Living in LA.
I know I am posing. I never learned shame. Especially the unspeakable is casual game. I strike any position with full awareness in frame. I like new ideas and am open to direction. I need a direction.
For all this energy, a direction, a course. A dangerous woman has dangerous thoughts, of course. And how can a woman, more assertive than most, receive that attention, celebrate the feminine against a backdrop of intentions. And dreams of shooting stars. That burn up before we ever hit the ground.
Open the shutter – do you see me now?
I found some (in)appropriate photography online that I thought might accompany my next article on sex toy recycling. Couldn’t resist posting them here in my private journal:
I’d have to disagree with Freud, the creative genius inventor of psychoanalysis, that repression – specifically sexual repression – is the defining motivation to our personalities.
Now, I might be psychoanalyzing myself here, but I think it’s Death. It’s not some opposable digit, biped motion, or language capability that separates us from our hairier four-legged counterparts. It’s that somewhere in human evolution we were there watching another of our species die and instead of simply feeling despair or triumph over their plight, we had the lightening flash that: I, too, will die.
A random, accidental event births “ego”, solves the missing link and instigates all sorts of historical repercussions including insanity, violence and the need to obsessively use right angles in architectural design (you can’t walk down the street without it, people).
Me? I just choose to think about Death every day. I won’t expand too much except that I’ve come to the realization that to every yin there is a yang, every coin has two contingent sides, and the complimentary opposite to Death is not Love, as some might expect and neither is it birth. It’s sex. Sex and Death are exactly the same only completely polar.
Sexual repression and mortaility repression: maybe Freud was closer than we thought.
Everything was perfect.
I want only to live one moment for the rest of my life. The one in my memory that keeps repeating now.
So alive. A force of nature. You might be the most potent soul I have ever made love to. Those gentle giant’s hands – both reaching wide towards to take handfulls of me.
I want to take pictures with my eyes so I can look any time I want. To see your chest flex above me. To hear your own moan of abandon.
To slow down this dance toward death too soon and feel only your aliveness shake and tremble sustained forever.
Touching your body is a tonic. Being touched by you is almost too much for one heart to bear.
And being without you is desperate poetry in a lonely room with stained sheet sleep rerunning reminders of how very near you are not.
He acts like he’s never had a dirty thought in his life. That’s why I so love to seduce him. And he surrenders so automatically, so wholeheartedly, so naturally. He naturally surrenders to me. He is my willing prey. I am the natural predator.
Nocturnal sleep walk off the bridge without looking down. The massive solid handsome Golden Gate bridge into the always deadly chill bay Pacific ocean. I am the initiator, and he follows through. I would create the jumping scene, I would know the most impressionable execusion, and he would bring down the axe, chop the gallow loose. He would knock the chair from underneath my feet, leaving me dangle there in the air twitching kinda morbid with the most spiritual look I’ll ever achieve – quick, mom, take a picture. I swear I’ll do it. I’ll jump, I swear.
He would not try to stop me.
Oh how I must be filled with this man who does not stop me. He must be as close to me as possible. He can come inside me. This is no ordinary love.
So pure. So present. So perfect. Like every human. Oh, how I long to be a human like him. Oh, how I know what it’s like to be him – to be perfectly human – only when I deliver him. Oh, how all the love songs I used to think were mushy … are still mushy and I’ve found someone to bang heads with instead, dark beat and heavy wave, until the madness falls upon me and I decide I want to see his waist and he takes off his shirt without me asking. I decide I want to see his insides and he takes off his skin like my poppet. How he assures my best when he submits with such eagerness. So naturally the servant becomes the served.
Ah, to give and be received.
