4 Tips on Buying Sex Toys
With the holiday season in full swing and gift shopping at its highest in the year, it is very tempting to buy the best looking or the most functional sex toy you see. However, it is important to know what is safe to buy in case of specific allergies or in terms of materials, or how to take care of the gifted toys. I find gifting sex toys absolutely freeing in that it opens the conversation and creates a safe space in which you and the person you gifted the toy to can dwell in and discuss everything sex-related. In fact, I find this so liberating that my moms birthday present from me was a vibrator - a tiny cute blue pebble by Je Joue that provided some laughs and slightly awkward mother-daughter conversations :) So - please give sex toys for presents, but also make an informed decision on what is body-safe, how to clean toys, and what common allergies are out there. Here are some tips from Kitty May, Education & Community Outreach Director at Other Nature.
1. When buying sex products, what are the most common allergies in terms of materials?
Latex allergy can be a problem because most condoms are made of latex. Not all condoms are made of latex, and we stock a few of the brands that make condoms from different materials. So if you have issues with latex there are couple other materials you can try. Also, most condoms come pre-lubricated, and the manufacturers are not required to print on the packaging what ingredients are in the lube. If you are buying lube you can look at the ingredients to check out if there is something that is not going to agree with you, but lube is already on your condoms and you don't have access to this information. So we also sell condoms that are called “sensitive dry” from Fair Squared, and they are condoms that come totally without lube. So if you are more sensitive and you finally found the lube that’s right for you, then you can just combine those unlubricated condoms with it! That way you can minimize the unknown variables of what's coming to contact with your body.
2. Toy sharing and hygiene. Use condoms on toys, or just wash/boil them after use?
The main variable is what your toy is made of. Sex toys are not all made equal! At Other Nature we only sell sex toys that are made of non-porous materials. That means that they do not absorb any bacteria into the toy, or leach anything into the body. There are other materials like jelly, or something called “softskin”, that's used for some very squishy, realistic dildos. And they are extremely porous, so they can absorb a lot of bacteria. If you are using a toy that's porous, covering it with a condom is your best protection. But be aware that those toys really do absorb from the atmosphere and they can also leach materials into the body. So you might want to use a condom with this toy, regardless if you are sharing or not, simply to protect yourself from your toy.
If your toy is not porous, if its made of 100% silicone, glass, steel, or another porous-free material, and if its a toy without any plastic parts or a motor (i.e. a nonvibrating toy), then you can boil it to sterilize it and it is like new. So if you boil it between uses with different people or to just to clean it, then you know that's totally hygienic. If your toy has a vibrator you obviously don't want to boil it! With those toys, you want to just use hot water and a ph-neutral soap or body-safe toycleaner. Obviously, some people still prefer to use condoms with their non-porous toys even when they’re playing alone, and that's totally fine.
It is possible to pass some STIs between people by sharing toys if they haven't been cleaned thoroughly between people and are used in relatively close succession. A condom is a fast and efficient way to make sharing toys safer: apply a new condom for each person/body part who is using the toy. Another hygiene issue is passing toys from anal to vaginal use. You always want to make sure there is a really thorough cleaning between, and/or stick new condom on the toy when you change orifices. There is bacteria that is totally harmless in the bum that can mess with the vagina.
3. Sex toys, body-safety, and regulations in the sex toy market
There is no regulation around sex toys - presumably because no government is motivated to regulate them! So for example with children's toys, there are very strict regulations of what children' toys are allowed to be made of because everybody knows kids put things in their mouth. And, in the EU for example, it's very regulated so that those things can't be toxic. But there's no equivalent for sex toys – which are made to be used on, and often inserted into, a body. No regulation whatsoever. So as a customer, you can really inform yourself the best you can, but the companies making the toys are not obligated to abide by any particular standards. So that's why we take pride and care to make sure that all the sex toys in our shop are body friendly, body-safe, and not porous, so the basics are covered for you and you can just come to the shop and browse. You can focus on thinking about what kind of toy you (or the person you’re shopping for!) might enjoy, and not have to worry if it’s safe.
4. Is 100% silicone the safest the material?
I mentioned certain materials that are not porous and body friendly and I mentioned 100% silicone. 100% silicone is very popular because it’s a flexible material that can be used to produce toys that are quite firm or very soft (especially those made from dual-density silicone, such as the dildos by VixSkin). There are other non-porous materials that are equally body-friendly, such as glass, stainless steel and some hard plastics.
It is important to know that because of this total lack of regulation I mentioned, companies can put “100% silicone” on the packaging of that toy, even if only a percentage of the material being used is 100% silicone. It is massively sneaky and as more customers are getting informed there is more demand for 100% silicone toys, but then obviously people find ways around that. Because it is cheaper for companies to mix silicone with phlatates, for example, which are not body-friendly.
How we work is we do rigorous research and have very good relationships with the manufacturers whose products we stock. Those relationships are built over time and we work with people who we really really trust. So you can browse our website and see which companies we work with, for example, and those are all companies that if they say it's 100% silicone we are fully confident that that is really what it is. Also, there are a lot of sex bloggers, who do sex toy reviews. There are some writers doing amazing educative work in this field, and if you go to their blogs and have a look at their policies, you can see that many people will only review toys that are body-safe. So that's one other way to get informed as a consumer: when someone has done a lot of the research for you and, again, you can just browse with peace of mind.
Other Nature is a feminist, queer, sex-positive, eco-friendly, and vegan sex shop. If you happen to be in Berlin, go check it out at Mehringdamm 79, 10965 Berlin.
