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Notes -
For any of you who's familiar with New York Times's Wirecutter, which publishes products reviews and lists hot deals:
As of right now, among deals on toys, subwoofers, and mattresses, there are also two vibrators, both around $100.
As far as I can tell, there are no deals on sex toys for men (I'm ignoring vibrators' cross sex appeal here, or how men may use toys to pleasure their female partners).
I don't expect this observation by itself to generate much new insight, as it seems fairly obvious that culturally, men tend to be viewed as perverted or losers for pleasuring themselves with tools, while for women it's fun and almost virtuous (well, certainly less slutty than finding a casual partner). I can see a Wirecutter staff member publishing a review of her personal experience testing various toys, but cannot fathom a male staff member talking about how this particular lifelike doll had very full lips but that one has perkier breasts, and this third company makes ethnic dolls for your fantasies. If you Google Wirecutter and sex toys, all the articles that come up are exclusively focused on women or gay men (i.e. anal stuff).
So my question is more about a prediction for how culture may evolve along this front. By what year do you think Wirecutter will publish reviews and deals on sex toys targeted at straight men looking for thrusting fun?
The year that I'll pull out of my ass is...2032
My guess is when men's sex toys start selling a the rate women's sex toys sell. How many men on here own sex toys they bought strictly for themselves? I know I don't and I'm unaware of any of my IRL friends who own them. Meanwhile, almost every woman I know owns a vibrator and isn't afraid to let you know about it if the topic comes up in conversation. A bar I used to frequent hosted a sex toy party once and all the men who were regulars were asking when it was going to end so they wouldn't show up while it was going on. The bartender said that there was no need to wait because the lady hosting the thing had a few items for men they might be interested in, and everyone took this as a joke. The truth is, the reason men's sex toys don't sell has nothing to do with status, or feminism, or any other culture war topic, it's because men generally don't need help getting off. Most guys learn to rub one out in 15 minutes at the age of 12 and though it may take longer in later years, the basic technique remains the same. Women, on the other hand, don't reach orgasm as easily and it can take quite a bit of self-exploration to figure out what they like.
That's an interesting perspective. I would add as an addendum that I don't necessarily think men's anatomy makes more sense for how they make themselves cum (though it's possible that's the case). But I think the biggest factor is that at a certain age, men start to experience crippling, debiltating urges to cum. So they undergo the self exploration of how to make themselves orgasm by necessity, whereas for most women it's an optional thing.
I can't believe this is the comment thread I'm hopping into, but oh well.
I think for boys around puberty, the thing that makes them go "ooh" is fairly obvious. When an erection happens, you may not know what or why it is happening, but you sure notice that it's happening. Everything is on the outside and is visible.
For girls, it's more complicated because everything is inside and you're not really supposed to be touching yourself 'down there' (caveat: it's been a looooong time since I was a teenager, things probably have changed a lot since my day). But even if you have some idea of "This is my vagina", you don't really have much idea of what to do to make things go "ooh".
Boys, to be blunt, can figure out that grabbing their dick when it's standing up like that and rubbing it makes them go "oooh". Girls may not even know where their clitoris is, or if they do, how to touch it to make things go "oooh". As for vaginal penetration - yeah, that's a minefield. From a female perspective, it's a lot easier to stroke a dick than to try sticking things like the handle of a hairbrush up inside you and see if you can move it around till it feels good.
And that's before we even get into the whole "putting things up inside your vagina is how you lose your virginity, and ideally you should be waiting till you have a boyfriend to put his cock in there, not you putting phallus-shaped objects, in order to do so".
Getting over all that and moving on to being adult men and women - I think sex toys in general have suffered from the seedy connotations of "adult stores" and all that aura of raincoated flashers and hardcore porn magazines and movies of low quality. Trying to get a better image has, I think, been easier when it comes to women's sex toys; they could escape the image of the down-market sex shop by moving first to things like lingerie shops which bridged the divide between socially acceptable 'sexy' garments (as Victoria's Secret did when it exploited that market) and more daring sex-related material, and then into discreetly marketed toys for women alongside the sexy, lacy clothing. See the history of the first British sex shop that marketed its goods to women, the Ann Summers chain which evolved from a traditional sex shop to a more up-market version (and see the fascinating obituary of its founder who was definitely a rogue).
They're a little old-fashioned now, in the same way as Playboy, having been supplanted by much raunchier and more explicitly direct competitors online, but can you imagine an equivalent shop for men that mixes sexy clothing, colognes, and toys? Very much more difficult to do, leaving men's sex shops stuck in the seedy image era (I can't speak for modern shops since I don't know any and have never been in one, so maybe they're a lot more upmarket these days).
And speaking from personal opinion only, I think it is easier to get into more technically advanced and 'artistic' kinds of toys for women. Magic Wands were personal massagers first, and I believe are still marketed as same, even though everybody recommends them as vibrators. When it's not acceptable to be open about what you are using such an item for, it's a lot easier to pass off a device as "this massages my neck muscles when they knot up" use than something for men which is clearly "I shove my cock into this". Sorry, gentlemen.
You do still get the downmarket, cheap porn movie types of dildos (warning for NSFW link - I have no idea why anybody would want anything like this, but as they say YKINMK ) but you can also get 'could leave it out on your bedside table without too much embarrassment if somebody else saw it' types of devices as well.
Like this or this or this.
Women's sex toys are not confined to "insert inside you" so it's easier to move on to more abstract forms. What would be the male equivalent of this, for instance?
This which, while a lot more discreet, are still relatable to its function as "insert penis here". Or this, which looks more like an implement of torture.
There does seem to be much more development on insertables like prostate massagers, which can more easily go the upmarket design route like women's toys, but I think we've seen enough comments above about "that's gay" for the problem to persist.
You can write enthusiastic reviews about this sort of product, but this one looks more like "recommendations for serial killer lust-murderers". Try putting that up on the NYT recommendations page!
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