Vibration and education come together in the sex toy industry

The shop was brightly lit. Pop music played lightly on the speakers. A smiling salesperson approached to ask how I was doing. I smiled, told her I was doing fine, and continued to browse. In front of me: a rainbow of brightly colored items reserved for customers to test. It was an experience similar to that of a cosmetics store, except it wasn’t lipstick or eyeshadow I was looking at—it was a shelf of vibrators. I looked up to see perfectly placed, perfectly phrased cursive lettering on the wall above me, reading “Creating A Buzz Since 1977.”

I was in the Polk Street location of Good Vibrations, a sex toy company that’s been in business for over forty years. Despite the presence of items intended to go inside a person’s most private places, I felt comfortable in the store. Salespeople hovered nearby, ready to answer any questions.

The internet has made learning about and purchasing sex toys an easy and discreet experience. Before sex toys were available to purchase online, advertisements for vibrators snuck into magazines, marketed as household appliances or novelty products, dating back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Sex shops became legal on the federal level in the 1960s, though sex shops were still outlawed or strictly limited on the state, county and municipal levels in certain regions. The shops that did exist were often relegated to certain neighborhoods, often into red light districts, and most catered to men. Many shops were kink-specific—selling larger than life dildos alongside leather and chains—and intimidating to the first-time buyer. Good Vibrations was an early departure from these kinds of shops, designed to be a clean, well-lit place with an emphasis on sex positivity and sex education, where women could feel comfortable shopping for sex toys, alone or with their partners. Similar stores were opened around the same time in other urban areas—Eve’s Garden in New York City and Pleasure Chest in Los Angeles both opened in 1971—but for a majority of the country, there weren’t such options.

1918 advertisement for vibrators from Sears, Roebuck and Co.

Online shopping, which began to take off around the mid-90s, allowed people to bypass much of the perceived intimidation or embarrassment of buying sex toys. Hallie Lieberman, a gender and sexuality researcher and the author of “Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Vibrator,” believes that the internet has largely improved the culture around sex toys.

“Before the internet, people either had to go in person to sex stores (which could be a great experience if they were the more boutique stores, or it could be creepy if they were the stores with the masturbation booths in back) or buy through mail order. There were some great toys available via mail order in the 1970s and 1980s, but most people weren’t aware of the mail order options. Now that you can buy sex toys on Amazon, they’re just so much more visible in the culture… some of the stigma has gone away,” she said.

Yet it’s also possible that the internet has made it too easy to buy sex toys, particularly for people to buy products that are not right for them, or in some cases even dangerous.

Amazon, for example, has a huge sexual wellness section. Searching the term “vibrator” alone returns 10,000 results. That selection can be overwhelming. It also allows potentially dangerous sex toys to, ahem, slip in. Some adult toys sold on Amazon end up being counterfeits, and can be made with materials that are harmful to the body. The sensitivity of genitalia to toxicity makes this especially problematic.

Lieberman acknowledges this downside to the online sex toy industry. “When you buy from a non-curated sex shop, it’s hard to know whether the toy is made with body-safe materials, whether it’s new or used, whether it is safely constructed,” she said. She’s even had her own experiences with this issue: “I once bought a butt plug from Amazon and the top broke off.”

Good Vibrations, as well as other sex-positive shops, provides a benefit that the online buying experience can’t really match: in person customer service and education. Annette C., the assistant manager of the Polk Street location, is one of Good Vibrations’ SESAs, which stands for “sex educator and sales associate.” She believes that the benefit of buying sex toys from a trained person in a physical store should not be understated.

“In an online store, you have the privacy of being able to shop at your own discretion,” Annette said. “But in a brick-and-mortar store, like Good Vibrations, where we are trained sex educators, you have the resources at your fingertips. You can ask us anything that you have doubts about, questions about, how to use a product, how to even turn them off.”

All of the SESAs at Good Vibrations undergo a thorough training—covering basic retail techniques, human anatomy, product knowledge, and kink-specific topics—before they start working with customers. For the sex-toy salesperson, it’s especially important to have extensive product knowledge because people are putting the devices inside or on their bodies and can have allergic reactions to different materials.

Nola M., the assistant manager of the original Good Vibrations location on Valencia Street, said that purchasing sex toys from a physical store provides an important step in the selection process.

“It’s important for people to actually be able to feel these products in their hands before purchasing them,” she said. “Being able to actually see the size of something in person, feel the texture of it, feel how strong it vibrates, all of that is super important.”

While social mores have relaxed, not everyone is able to do the same when buying sex toys. According to Lieberman, this discomfort may come from the lack of sexual education.

“So much education goes on in the higher-end shops: from informal (employees explaining how to use a sex toy or explaining what types of lubes are safe to use on it) to formal (courses on everything from blow jobs to bondage),” Lieberman said. “Historically, sex toy stores have served this purpose of sexual health education, and I think until sex ed becomes better in the country, they will continue to do so.”

Effective education in sex stores is especially important for people of marginalized sexualities and gender identities. According to the Human Rights Campaign, only four states—California, Colorado, Iowa and Washington—and the District of Columbia mandate sex education to be LGBTQ-inclusive. Sex toy businesses, perhaps more than any other retail shops, are figuring out ways to be inclusive to LGBTQ people.

“There’s a lot of shaming that people experience on a day to day basis, especially [with] anything that is not within the bounds of largely accepted heteronormativity,” Nola said. “The gendering of genitalia in particular, which is something that’s relevant to us, is really harmful for some people, so we have to be reality sensitive to that. We have to understand that some people are going to come in here and be afraid and want nothing to do with us. We have to figure out what level of interaction we’re going to bring to that person so they know we’re there to help without them feeling cornered by us.”

In addition to the one-on-one sex education that SESAs at Good Vibrations provide to customers, these stores regularly hold workshops on different aspects of sexuality, from the vanilla (such as a lesson on sensual massage) to the more obscure (a “Moon Sex Magic Workshop” took place on the Spring equinox).

I attended one of these mini-workshops, a lesson on cunnilingus taught by Annette, at the Polk Street location. The other customer-students were a couple in their sixties, and two other middle-aged people, a man and a woman who were both there by themselves. Included in the workshop was an anatomy lesson: Annette used a non-threatening, plush—as in stuffed animal —model of the vulva as a visual aid. As she spoke, she made eye contact with each of us. When she demonstrated the vibrating power of a bright pink, tongue-shaped toy intended to flick the clitoris, or held up a purple dildo as thick as a new lint-roller, she spoke as plainly as a history teacher might speak of the Mayflower or the Industrial Revolution. She also was careful to use gender-neutral language, using the phrase “person with a vulva” instead of the word “woman,” illustrating Good Vibrations’ commitment to being inclusive of different gender identities.

For those who don’t live near sex-positive adult stores, the online option is available and much of what can be found in stores can be mail ordered. But the importance of in person customer service and the chance for hands-on testing should not be understated.

On another wall in the Polk Street Good Vibrations, the directive “Surrender to Pleasure” is written in the same cursive lettering. It’s a good message, but before surrendering, people should probably do some research on the tools, techniques and toys that can help them get there.