Today I’m going to talk about sex toys for women. I hope you’ll stick around–especially if the topic is uncomfortable for you–but if not then I’ll see you back next week when I’ll be continuing the Love Story of Jeff and Chloe. I’ll be using some truly terrible drawings to help capture the precious moment when we first laid eyes on each other.

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All the experts say that you should write about what you know, and the one thing I know a lot about is vaginas. I should since I’ve been studying them—first personally and then professionally–for close to 50 years!

Sometimes I’ve felt inhibited sharing what I know about vaginas because I know for a fact that lots of people have hang-ups, and I’ve worried about my reputation. (You always worry a little bit about your reputation after you see your name and phone number scrawled on the boys’ room wall when you’re 15.)

Trust me, I always want to be the good girl, but something in me rails against the notion that in order to be perceived as good I have to pretend to be a completely different person. As Rupert Birkin says in D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, “It’s no good trying to toe the line, when your one impulse is to smash up the line.”

Anyway, why should my reputation be on the line for talking about something as normal and healthy as the role sex toys can play in making women happier and more sexually satisfied? It’s just plain childish and unnecessarily puritanical that we even think that way.

So, if I’m going to call myself The Vagina Whisperer

that means I have to be willing to address all topics vagina.

Today, I’m tackling the topic of Sex Toys for Your Vagina.

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It is by now no surprise to my readers that last year at BlogHer (the ginormous mega-conference for women bloggers) I was stunned to learn that edenfantasys.com was handing out real, working vibrators–FOR FREE–to conference attendees.

I had no idea this was happening until I received the following text from my daughter:

Her: “Hey, I’m down in the Expo Hall and they are giving out free vibrators!”

Shocked and appalled, I replied, “Really?!? I’ll be right down.”

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So here’s the deal about sex toy, ladies

Sex toys are not immoral.

You are not a better person for never having used them. Nor are you a wanton, dirty slut if you do, or if you want to try them.

Sex toys have no morality whatsoever.

Using sex toys means absolutely nothing about you as a woman or as a Christian, nor does it cast aspersions on your husband’s technique as a lover.

Sex toys are fun.

They are normal.

Sex toys can be used as part of a terrific, fulfilling sexual relationship between a husband and wife.  And it’s perfectly normal to use them when you’re alone. (Did you know that the Bible does not forbid female masturbation?)

Your children will NOT be scarred forever if they find your sex toys. Trust me. There are many, many worse things for children than finding out that their parents have sex and love each other. Your children will get over it.

And, no, sex toys are not addicting. You will not come to prefer your sex toys over a real live man. Unless the man is a jerk, in which case you might be better off anyway.

The History of the Female Orgasm

For years I really felt that God had screwed up the way he put women together.

I thought, “Hey God? Did it ever occur to you to put the clitoris INSIDE where all the action is? Why is the little man in the boat sitting way up in the nosebleed section where all he can do is watch the REAL action happening down on the field?”

It wasn’t until I saw a birth that I understood why God put the clitoris where He did.

While it might be great that the clitoris is up so high to protect it from getting shredded by the baby barreling its way out, this does nothing for the fact that our little peeping sentinel is stuck up on the wall while the troops rally for invasion down below.

And just because I figured out at a very young age how to live in my own heart, die in my own lap, and bury myself in my own eyes, this did not translate well to having sex with actual men, who often were clueless, clumsy, or just too damn selfishly impatient to climb the wall and see the scenery from the peeping sentinel’s point of view.

And then there were my hang-ups.

As a young, inexperienced woman I couldn’t imagine touching myself while having sex with a man. Wasn’t he the one who was supposed to know how my body works? Wasn’t he supposed to hold the magical key that would unlock the doorway to my ecstasy?

And shouldn’t it be as easy as putting tab A into slot B?

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The first real dirty book I ever read was Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and in that book Lady Chatterley’s peregrine falcon of ecstasy is brought to perch by Lawrence’s handsome gamekeeper via the inland route. And for years after, Every. Single. Sexy. Novel. I read  told the Same. Exact. Story:

The heroine gets her splendor when the hero plunges his ginormous staff of life into her extremely tight passage of pleasure and WHAMMO! she’s instantly transported to the O, Sweet Mystery of Life.

But I did not find this to be the case for me. Not even once.

So, because I’m a woman, and therefore as we all know inherently sexually flawed, I decided that something was clearly wrong with me.

Damn Freud, Anyway

We can plant the blame squarely on the shoulders of old Siggy Freud for our messed up view of female sexuality in Western culture (Although my suspicions are that he was only expressing already long held cultural beliefs.)

Freud put forth the idea that only immature women needed clitoral stimulation and that sexually mature women got their sweet mystery of life from penile penetration, period.

Heavy sigh. (Which is definitely not the same thing as heavy breathing.)

We can thank Kinsey for coming along in 1953 and setting the record straight about female sexual response, but it would be decades longer before we would see romance heroines in general—and me in particular—reaping the rewards of his findings that the clitoris is THE primary female sexual organ.

And now we can also thank science for FINALLY caring enough to discover that the clitoris is actually 9 FREAKING INCHES LONG, with bifurcated legs that wrap around the vaginal walls. Ladies, our clitori are AMAZING! Check it out:

Come to think of it, the clitoris sort of reminds me of one of these:

Attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ubshreenath/3209769181/

No wonder men have felt so intimidated through the centuries by the clitoris.

Fake It Until You Make It

I will always hold a special place in my heart for the first man who realized that I was faking it. Not only was he a caring and brilliant lover, but he became a man on a mission. A mission to get me off, whatever it took.

And this is how I came to own my very first sex toy. He got it for me at a Sav-On Drug Store. (Yes, they’ve always sold discreet sex toys at your neighborhood drug store.) Back in the dark ages, they looked a lot like this:

It came in a a package with a picture of a woman using it on her temple to relieve her headache.

I’d seen these for years and was shocked to find out that these things were NOT for relieving temple tension. Shocked, and then awed.

And that is the story of how Chloe found her O.

My repertoire has expanded since those early years, but I still like sex toys.

What I don’t like is going into creepy Adult Stores to buy them.

For years, you had to brave the scary part of town in order to buy the better sex toys, but luckily those days are over.

There are so many options available today. Walmart, Amazon, and even discreet woman-friendly boutiques like this one, now cater to the discerning woman who wants to purchase sex toys without being frightened by the creepy guy in the stained overcoat skulking in a corner, or facing shelves of latex butts–supposedly modeled after porn stars–staring you in the eye.

In fact, today I’m going to give away this little vibrating bullet from www.vibrators.com that I was given at The BanShe Party held in New York City to one lucky reader:

Entering is easy. Just leave me a comment here. You can use a fake name, but to win I’ll need a real email address that no one else will ever see. The drawing closes next Wednesday, 8/15/2012,  at 7pm PST, and at 8pm I’ll announce the winner ONLY HERE. It’s that easy.

Good luck.

And if you are looking for a great marital blog check out my friend Maddie’s site: 1 Hot Marriage. She has frequent giveaways and lots of great information. And she’s a really nice, real person you can trust.