Bagongflu Have Blog

Although there are countless exceptions and variations when it comes to reproduction, there is one fundamental characteristic that typically distinguishes between sexual and asexual organisms - the structure of their genes.

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Most asexually reproducing plants and animals carry a single complete set of genes in their cells. In biological terms their genes are haploid, which is just a Latin word for simple.

Sexually reproducing organisms, on the other hand, are generally die-ploid, meaning they carry two complete sets of genes. Every one of your cells effectively has twice the genetic information it would take to make a single person. Your mother and father each contributed genes that encode the color of your hair and eyes, the size of your nose, the proportions of your limbs, and so on. Your mother’s genes determine some of your traits, your father’s genes determine others, and some of your traits are determined by both your mother’s and father’s genes.

Asexual reproduction has some distinct benefits. For one thing, it’s fast. If a typical bacterium takes twenty minutes to split in two, it will have eight descendants in an hour, and sixty-four in two hours.

If there’s sufficient food around to support a population explosion, a single germ dividing at this rate could boast more than a million offspring in seven hours, and over a billion in ten hours. It’s what physicists call exponential growth.

Sexual creatures can grow their numbers exponentially as well, although not as fast as asexuals. If two populations of organisms, identical in every way except for their mode of reproduction, were to squeeze into the same ecological niche, the asexual population wins, at least in the short term.

Rabbits are the iconic example of animals that breed like, well, rabbits. Imagine a fertile valley that’s settled by two colonies of ten rabbits each. One colony consists of five male and five female rabbits that reproduce once a year in the usual way. The other is a colony of ten asexual females that also reproduce once a year, but have no need of males (fortunately this is a purely hypothetical type of rabbit).

If every female rabbit can bear a litter of ten babies each season, then in one year the sexual rabbits increase their numbers by five litters - one litter from each female - resulting in fifty babies plus the ten original colony members, for a total of sixty sexual rabbits. The asexual colony has ten litters, one hundred babies, plus the original ten for a total of a hundred and ten rabbits.

Presumably, the amazons give birth only to females, while the sexual rabbits produce half male and half female babies. After a single breeding season, the females in the colony of asexual rabbits outnumber the sexual females by nearly four to one.

The all-female asexuals will swamp the sexual rabbits in a few generations. Even if there are limitations of food and water in the valley that keep the total number of rabbits in check, the asexuals efficient breeding scheme allows them to overrun the sexual rabbits in short order.

As you can see, males are the true liability in breeding populations - they eat food that could go to the girls, produce waste, and take up precious space in the colony. But they are of little help in increasing population numbers other than donating sperm, which asexuals can live without.

Why don’t we see asexually reproducing rabbits, squirrels, rats, elephants, or humans in the real world? The answer lies in adaptation to stress. And we can thank males for that.

Asexual populations consist essentially of clones, with each child carrying exactly the same genetic material as its parent. If a new disease, parasite, or predator were to come along with a particular talent for attacking our asexual rabbits, the whole population could be rapidly decimated.

Sexual rabbits have a better chance of surviving in the face of stress thanks to the presence of the boys. In mating, the male and female of a species each contribute a portion of the offspring’s genetic material, which means babies are always at least slightly different from their parents. Sex stirs the genetic pot, leading to combinations that may occasionally handle stresses better.

When a fox finds a valley full of bunnies, you might imagine that it eats the slowest ones first. All the asexual rabbits are equally swift because they’re identical. If the fox can catch one it can catch them all.

Some of the sexual bunnies however, will be faster than others as a result of the variability that comes from male-female breeding. Pretty soon, the pressure of having a fox hanging around might lead to natural selection of fleet-footed bunnies. Of course, rabbits could deal with foxes in other ways - developing better camouflage, enhancing their wariness, or growing wickedly sharp claws. But in any case it’s the sexual ones that have the potential of finding solutions, while the asexuals are doomed.

Once sexual rabbits have developed an adaptation to deal with a specific stress, you might wonder what is to prevent them from spontaneously changing reproductive tactics to become a new asexual super rabbit that can fend off a given type of threat.

Based on some physicists’ models, the primary reason is that foxes, germs and parasites evolve as well. A rabbit that adapts to the stress of a certain fox causes stress for the fox by denying him food, which in turn leads to the evolution of better hunters, forcing rabbits to evolve further, and so forth. Populations of rabbits and foxes ebb and flow as each adapt to changes in the other, leading to long-term stability of predators and prey that is maintained by sexual mixing of each species’ genetics.

As organisms evolve, they face lots of shifting stresses, which firmly establishes sexual reproduction as the procreation method among just about everything larger than an amoeba.

Even if there were no threat of predators, parasites or diseases, all life faces the risk of random genetic mutations. Mutations are changes that arise from errors that occur when DNA replicates, or from exposure to things like radiation and chemicals. Asexual organisms that have a single precious copy of their DNA are in deep trouble as errors accumulate. Sexual organisms gain protection through their genetic redundancy - if an error develops in a gene contributed from one of your parents, repair mechanisms in your DNA can use the genes from your other parent as a map for repairing the problem. Or the problem may be moot if a healthy gene is dominant over the flawed copy.

In short, sex provides multiple levels of genetic protection. It offers a route to adaptation through gene shuffling, ensures backup copies of genes are available, and keeps genes in good shape with DNA repair mechanisms

In the competitive game of natural selection, the winning organism is the one whose DNA is most prevalent and longest lasting.

When a bacterium divides, the offspring carry the same DNA as the parent, as do the offspring in the third and fourth generations, and every generation after.

Sexually reproducing organisms lack this sort of genetic continuity. Your children will each carry genes that come in part from you and in part from their other parent. When your children breed, the portion of their DNA that you contributed will be further diluted. In the course of a few generations, there’s not likely to be much of you left in your descendents. On the bright side, genetically speaking, at least your descendents and your species as a whole, can survive in the face of extreme stresses, while an asexually reproducing species could be wiped out easily. In fact, the scarcity of asexual species suggests that they hardly ever survive for long in nature.

I know what you’re thinking. If two sexes are better than one in dealing with stress and mutations, wouldn’t three be better still? The fact that there don’t seem to be any suggests the answer is no.

Nevertheless, physicists have developed mathematical models of hypothetical creatures that breed in sets of three. (The researchers who wrote the papers examining the three-sex models, unfortunately, didn’t bother to explain how these creatures would get their three-way groove on.)

Three-sex creatures and their offspring are triploid, with three complete sets of genes rather than the two of diploids like us, or the single genes of haploid amoebas and other simple animals and plants.

The numbers work out poorly for three-sexed creatures. For one thing, it’s much more complex to get a reproductive trio together. The simple fact that it takes more parents to produce the next generation means that the population will grow slower than that of competing diploids just as diploids are out-bred by asexual haploids. Triploids, however, have one thing going for them - they are less susceptible to random mutations than haploids or diploids, thanks to even greater genetic redundancy than two gene animals like us. Unfortunately, they lag behind when it comes to adapting to other sorts of stress. Like so many cases of competition in nature, too much of a good thing turns out to be bad.

If triploid genes work in the same way ours do (which seems like a good guess) then each of the three genetic sequences has a genes for every trait, but it’s the dominant one that wins out, or the trait ends up being a blend of all three. If the blue eye gene is dominant in a triploid population, the fact that each member of the population has three shots at getting a blue eye gene means that it is much more likely that everyone will have blue eyes.

It’s easier to grasp the problem if we take it a few steps further. Imagine a population with ten sexes (and ten sets of genes per cell), and blue eye genetic dominance. Even if nine out of ten genes code for non-blue eyes, the one remaining blue eye gene wins. In cases of incomplete dominance and co-dominant genes, blending more and more versions of a certain trait leads to genetic uniformity instead of diversity, just as mixing more and more colors from a painter’s palette results not in brilliant new colors, but to ever muddier shades of brown. While single-gene haploids have essentially no genetic diversity, increasing the numbers of complete genes in an organism beyond the two of diploids also leads to steadily decreasing diversity, which means less and less opportunity for evolutionary adaptation.

For most organisms, at least the larger and more structurally complex ones like humans, two-sex genetic diploids have an optimal combination of diversity, adaptability, reproductive efficiency, and resistance to genetic errors.

When humans rely solely on the tools nature provides us, we reproduce as most two-sex creatures do - a male provides semen, a female provides an ovum, and another generation begins. With a little medical and scientific intervention, however, we have lots more options.

Artificial insemination of course is one of the oldest and simplest alternatives to actual intercourse. Infertility treatments involving insemination in a Petrie dish are much like the external insemination practiced by fish and other aquatic and amphibious creatures.

While it is not triploid sex, when a woman serves as a surrogate mother for a fertilized ovum she is part of an interaction much like the three part male-female-female mating model.

Human cloning, however, is perhaps the most controversial method that may soon be among our potential reproductive options. Setting ethics aside, humans who reproduce via cloning would gain many of the asexual benefits that bacteria enjoy. Presuming that people who choose to clone are women who carry their own fetal clones in their wombs, and tend to have the same numbers of children over their breeding lifetime as other women, they would be able to increase their numbers much faster than sexual human couples could.

Men who opt to clone themselves need to seek out a woman to host the fetus in her womb, which means the process still takes a man and a woman. So that’s really not an advantage numerically. In addition, the woman host would have to agree to waste precious reproductive time and effort to bear a child of no genetic relation to her. Surrogate mothers do that today for couples who can’t, or choose not to, carry their own children to term, but surrogates usually require fee in exchange for the rented womb.

In a community where male-female couples and cloning women each choose to raise two children, the numbers of mating couples stays constant with each passing generation, but the numbers of clones double from one generation to the next. The clones’ numbers could grow exponentially. Again, it’s the males that are the reproductive liability in mating couples.

Other asexually reproducing creatures are highly susceptible to changing stresses in their environment, which favors sexual populations molded by natural selection. Humans, at least those living in more highly developed nations, tend to deal with stresses through controlling the environment and counteracting the stresses rather than through evolution.

If it’s too cold, there’s no need to evolve fur; we turn up the heat or put on a coat. If it’s too hot, we turn up the air conditioning. We no longer adapt natural immunity to diseases; instead we develop vaccines, antibiotics, and prevention methods. As a result, people who are reasonably well suited to surviving in modern society, and who reproduce via cloning, would face few, if any, drawbacks from their asexual reproduction while gaining all the benefits.

Scientists have managed to clone many types of animals including cattle, cats, sheep, and monkeys. As of this writing, there have been no confirmed human clones produced from adult DNA. The complexity of cloning and the risks of severe birth defects mean it may be years before human cloning is perfected. But it will happen eventually.

If cloning ever becomes accepted practice, society could rapidly become populated primarily with women who reproduce by strolling down to the corner pharmacy to pick up the Acme Home Clone kit, rather than wasting time and energy looking for a male mate.

Clones won’t evolve, so there is no reason for them to lose their sexual urges. Although they will have to learn to rely on lesbian sex to fulfill their needs, because men will eventually die out as sexually reproducing people lose ground to the clones.

When clones come to rule the world, sexual intercourse will be nothing more than a source of recreation, relaxation, and social bonding. Sex will be useless for procreation.

If your answer is “to make babies,” you’re wrong. Sexual activity among humans has nothing to do with fertilization more than 99.99% of the time.
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Typical heterosexual couples make love an average of a hundred times a year. Assuming they keep up this pace most of their adult lives, they will end up having had sex as many as four thousand times.

In addition to sex with a partner, most people seek lots of sexual relief when they’re all alone. Men typically learn to masturbate in adolescence and keep up the practice daily until their twenties. The pace usually slows down as men age and often dips when they enter sexual relationships, but most men will probably masturbate ten thousand times in fifty to sixty years of sexual activity. Altogether, the average man can expect to experience fifteen thousand or more orgasms over the course of his life.

Women start off masturbating at a similar age and frequency as men. Most masturbate daily until their late teens, but slow down when they reach their early twenties to about a third the rate of men. Still, they typically enjoy sexual stimulation, either alone or with a partner, for a lifetime total of five to ten thousand sexual experiences.

Despite all that sexual activity, the population in the US and most other highly industrialized nations is fairly stable. That is, there is roughly a single child born for each person in the country, which means that there is one successful pregnancy for every ten thousand sexual experiences.

Humans are unusual creatures in this regard, though hardly unique. Certain apes, dolphins and wolves are among the animals that use sexual interactions for things like pleasure, bonding, and establishing social structure. But intercourse for most other organisms is all about making babies.

Even though humans rarely have sex in order to get pregnant, it’s primarily our genetic mandate to mate and bear young that is reflected in our sexual desire. Evolution ensures things that are good for the propagation of our genes bring us pleasure. For most people, and apparently many animals as well, the orgasm is the benchmark of pleasure. The fact that it produces the most enjoyable sensations and the strongest desires that we are likely to ever experience suggests that sex is effectively the most important thing we do in life, from an evolutionary point of view. Although we have found ways to separate intercourse from procreation, sexual ecstasy is nature’s reward to us for continuing the species.

Sex between a male and a female, however, is not the only way for organisms to reproduce. For millions of years, when life was new on Earth, plants and animals got on just fine without intercourse. Most of them were simple single-celled organisms. At times when there were plentiful resources to keep some organism alive, rather than letting anything go to waste, or go to a competitor, the organism would simply duplicate its DNA and split into two identical copies of the original. Modern bacteria, amoebas, and many types of algae and molds continue the practice.

A look at the pros and cons of various types of reproduction can help explain why we mate the way we do instead of opting for asexual reproduction, or some other scheme altogether. For physicists who ponder reproductive strategies, the subject is similar to many other sorts of problems in physics where systems, in this case populations, naturally find the optimal solution to complex and competing demands.

Dear Nina and Rita,

I?m 38 years old and I lucked out in life and met the girl of my dreams in high school, and we?ve been married almost 20 years. The sex has been getting better and better as our kids are now old enough to entertain themselves, and we have a lot more time. The only problem is that we were both virgins when we started dating, and have been each other?s only sex partner. I can?t help wondering what I may have missed. Don?t get me wrong, we have an active sex life, and have been somewhat adventurous. I just have this nagging feeling that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. How do I let this go without having an affair, which I don?t want to do?

Signed,
Nathan

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Dear Nathan,

Having sex with another woman will probably not be better than having sex with your wife. In fact, you will probably be so nervous that you won’t even be able to get an erection.

And yet, having sex with another woman could still be one of those life-enriching experiences like volunteering at a homeless shelter or seeing the Grand Canyon. If your marriage is so fucking awesome, then you and your wife should try swinging. Sure, “swinger” seems like the one label you don’t want associated with your identity, but you?ll feel better when you browse thousands of profiles of regular couples on reputable adult dating websites. (We?re not giving URLs because Rita and her ex-boyfriend forgot to take down their profile after breaking up.)

The nice thing about swinging is that you don?t have to lie to your wife. But, the hard thing about swinging is that you have to be honest with your wife. We suggest you tell her that you are very happy in the marriage, and you have recently become aware of some new sexual needs that develop quite naturally from becoming a middle-aged adult within a stable family lifestyle. You might even tell her that you feel there?s a lot of confusing messages in our culture, so that having an affair or denying oneself seem to be the most popular, yet unappealing, solutions. And then, take a deep breath and tell her that you want try wife-swapping.

Does it make the conversation easier or harder to assume that, deep down, your wife feels the same way? She?s curious about making love with other men. Before you have this conversation with her, you must become totally comfortable about her making love with other men. If you?re not comfortable with your wife making love with other men, then you are not ready to be a swinger, and you?re not worthy of our advice.

After you and your wife have reassured each other that you are totally in love with each other and completely happy in your marriage, then you can put a profile online and start flirting with other couples. A good couples dating website will have a list of rules and guidelines to help you establish appropriate contact with other couples. You?ve missed the era of online dating, so be warned that there are some fakes out there, but after a while you?ll be able to spot who is serious.

Before you make arrangements to meet potential couples face-to-face, you and your wife need to agree upon what you are seeking. Just like singles, some couples are looking for one night stands, while others want an ongoing connection. In the beginning, it?s fine for you and wife to say that you are “exploring the scene” if you’re not sure what kind of relationship you want. However, you absolutely must establish your boundaries–what body parts and activities are off limits–before you find yourselves in a hot tub with a randy schoolteacher and dentist couple from the suburbs.

All our love and more,
Nina and Rita

* Avoid lubes with sugar, colorings and flavors in them. Glycerin/glycerol is a sugar — read the lube’s ingredients, because yes Virginia, Astroglide contains sugar. Sugar feeds yeast: think about it. Nine times out of ten when I worked in sex toy retail this was the cause of most women’s irritation.

* And that means no whipped cream, chocolate or pussy sundaes, either. Sugar caution also applies to well-meaning lovers who go down on you with a cough drop or mint in her/his mouth.

* Don’t get oil in there either — oils are difficult to flush out of the vagina, though silicone lubes are fine (even though they feel a lot like oil). Mmmm, silicone lube (one brand recently tested and passed FDA regulations for safety). Try to use pussy friendly water-based lubes.

* Always pee after sex, even if it’s sex with yourself. If you have frequent bladder infections, this might be your solution.

* Avoid harsh soaps with intense scent or a high pH, like Ivory and ‘deodorant’ soaps. Use glycerin soaps if you think the soap might be a factor.

* Don’t douche. Just don’t. Douching kills all the good flora and fauna that keeps your pussy healthy.

* Drink plenty of water. Ever drink lots of coffee and no water and have your pee sting? That’s your urethra (G-spot area) getting irritated and pleading for water.

* Is your lover touching your pussy with clean hands? Don’t ever be afraid to have them use a glove or ask them to wash their hands.

* Never go from back door to front (anus to vagina).

* What’s your sex toy made of? (See above section.) When in doubt, try to use silicone sex toys (or metal, glass or Pyrex), or cover your toy with a condom. Keep condoms handy so you don’t have to hassle with washing a toy when you don’t want to get out of bed.

* If you’ve been using a jelly toy with no irritation but suddenly start experiencing irritation, time for a new toy (or start using it with a condom). Jelly toys are porous and can retain bacteria even after washing

There’s no doubt: what the toy is made of makes all the difference in the world. Most commercially available sex toys are made of hard plastic, jelly rubber, silicone, vinyl and softskin (aka Cyberskin or Futurotic). But there are two basic hygienic differences you’ll need to know when choosing a toy: porous versus non-porous materials.

Non-porous toys are made of materials (like silicone, hard plastic, glass, metal and stone) that are easy to clean and do not retain bacteria in the tiny pockets or pores in the surface. What this means is that when you clean one of these toys, they’re completely clean and don’t have the potential to carry STDs or bacteria that can infect (or re-infect) the user. Plastic, glass and Pyrex, metal and stone sex toys can be rendered sterile surfaces by washing with unscented antibacterial soap (like Hibiclens) or a solution of 1:10 bleach and water (1:10 alcohol and water is a fine alternative).

Many consider silicone the perfect sex toy material. Of course, the popularity of silicone toys caused the ethics-free novelty sex toy industry to start incorrectly labeling jelly rubber toys as silicone (or sili-gel) to make more sales — again, buyer beware. Private companies make silicone toys from medical-grade silicone, so you should never be able to see through a silicone toy; real silicone is always opaque. The surface is 100% pore-free, and these toys have a silky-smooth surface, can range from very firm to floppy-soft, and they warm quickly to body temperature and retain their heat for a long time. Silicone toys can be boiled for up to five minutes or run in the top rack of the dishwasher for complete sterilization, which is especially awesome for anal toys. Some silicone toys react badly to silicone lubricants, so it’s best to use water-based lubes with your silicone toys.

Most sex toys are made of a material usually referred to as jelly rubber, though you’ll also see variations like jel-lee, latex jelly, or derivatives like glow-in-the-dark and “realistic” materials such as softskin, Cyberskin or Futurotic. Jelly rubber toys are very colorful, clear (though not always), shiny and visually appealing. It’s the ultimate “mystery material”, mass-produced in mostly Chinese chemical factories with so many mixtures and versions of the material it’s difficult to pin down a set of manufacturer’s ingredients.

It is known that these mystery materials contain latex and phthalates, they have a very chemical smell, they leach oils and can leave spots on fabrics and wood, and the surface breaks down over time. Softskin, Cyberskin and Futurotic toys are especially strange; while they feel amazingly real, they react bizarrely with other jelly rubber toys and actually melt into wet puddles of chemical goo upon contact — needless to say, don’t store these two materials side-by-side. Softskin is the most porous toy of all, able to absorb color from lipstick and even text from newsprint.

No one knows for sure how safe these toys are for internal use; again, it’s the novelty industry so we can surmise that it’ll be about 800 years before clinical tests are done on the long-term effects of jelly rubber chemicals are on the cervix and lower colon. Some people have no problems with jelly rubber toys and have used them for years uneventfully (except for the orgasm part, which is certainly an event). Others have had serious reactions to the latex, or other unknown chemicals, ranging from anaphylactic shock from latex allergy to recurring infections. Here you’ll find an article about the possible harmful and carcinogenic nature of these toys; here is a startling piece about a German chemist’s study that found ten toxic chemicals in jelly rubber.

Which is why many sex toy boutiques (and I) recommend that you use a condom on any jelly rubber or softskin toy that enters your body. If you have no reaction to jelly rubber, and most people don’t, remember to keep the toy really clean. Wash these toys with unscented antibacterial soap (like Hibiclens) or a solution of 1:10 bleach and water (alcohol and water is a fine substitute). Waterproof toys are wonderful in this regard, as they can be completely submerged during cleaning. Consider porous toys disposable, and once it’s been used for anal play, make it an anal-only toy. Keep an eye on the surface; once it becomes dull it’s starting to break down and you can never be sure you’re getting it clean; toss it out and get a new one. And hey — doesn’t everyone want an excuse to go sex toy shopping?

* Nonoxynol-9 removes skin. Really. Avoid any and all lube, condoms and “toy cleaner” with Nonoxynol-9. N-9 is a detergent that has been shown to cause cervical abrasions, strips away rectal lining, and only kills HIV/AIDS in clinical settings. if you’re curious, look for the article, “The Nonoxynol-9 Scandal: How ‘AIDS Prevention’ Put Women and Gay Men at Risk by Patrick Califia” and also read, “The Scandal of Nonoxynol-9″.

* Anal-Eze can really hurt you. Lubricants with benzocaine, and numbing agents such as Anal-Eze, “good head gel” and desensitizing creams contain oils, flavors and colorings, and they are very unsafe. Numbing the back of your throat, the penis, the vagina, and especially the anus can lead to serious injury and infections that can (and often) land users in the doctor’s office or ER. Think: you can’t feel the skin breaking or tearing, and if it’s the anus, there’s fecal bacteria. When you can’t feel pain, you are getting injured, period. Pain sucks, but it’s an important tool during anal play, telling you something’s not right. If it hurts you’re either going too fast, you need more lube, the item is too big, you’re not aroused enough, or you’re not really in the mood. And when I researched my fellatio book, I communicated briefly with a dentist who’d seen signifigant bruising *inside* the throat of a female patient — again, just think about it.

* No one knows if “Shrink Creams” can hurt you. Widely available “shrink creams”, “sure grip”, “tighten up” and “feel like a virgin again” claim to make the vagina smaller or tighter. The key ingredient in these creams is alum. Alum absorbs water out of the outer layer of the skin; as more water is absorbed, the cells begin to swell, closing the ducts that water would normally flow through. No study has been done on the effect of these creams on the cervix, which is what they eventually end up getting rubbed on during penetration, but I’ll wager it’s not good. I kind of want to make the manufacturers snort a thick rail of alum, so they can study the effects on their own mucous membranes. What I really hate about these “shrink” creams is the fact that they’re trading on female insecurities about the vagina not being tight, pretty or good enough for their male partner — like we need any negative reinforcement from our pussy-phobic culture about how we look, feel or smell down there. The marketing text runs, “China Shrink Cream is formulated to tighten the vaginal walls. China Shrink Cream is to help with loose vagina due to multiple child birth and frigidity.” I also want to throw up every time I see the packaging on these creams, as they are often called “oriental” or “China Shrink Cream”, paralying off of racist stereotypes and exotifying Asian “sexual mystery”, much the same way the porn industry fetishizes skin color and markets (I think racist) negative stereotypes about black male sexuality with its “interracial” videos.

* Beware any toy sold as an anal toy that doesn’t have a flared base. Novelty companies put “anal” on the packaging of toys unsafe for anal use *all the time*, and no one wants a trip to the ER to get a Pocket Rocket removed, even if the package said “anal” on it.

* Nonoxynol-9 removes skin. Really. Avoid any and all lube, condoms and “toy cleaner” with Nonoxynol-9. N-9 is a detergent that has been shown to cause cervical abrasions, strips away rectal lining, and only kills HIV/AIDS in clinical settings. if you’re curious, look for the article, “The Nonoxynol-9 Scandal: How ‘AIDS Prevention’ Put Women and Gay Men at Risk by Patrick Califia” and also read, “The Scandal of Nonoxynol-9″.

* Anal-Eze can really hurt you. Lubricants with benzocaine, and numbing agents such as Anal-Eze, “good head gel” and desensitizing creams contain oils, flavors and colorings, and they are very unsafe. Numbing the back of your throat, the penis, the vagina, and especially the anus can lead to serious injury and infections that can (and often) land users in the doctor’s office or ER. Think: you can’t feel the skin breaking or tearing, and if it’s the anus, there’s fecal bacteria. When you can’t feel pain, you are getting injured, period. Pain sucks, but it’s an important tool during anal play, telling you something’s not right. If it hurts you’re either going too fast, you need more lube, the item is too big, you’re not aroused enough, or you’re not really in the mood. And when I researched my fellatio book, I communicated briefly with a dentist who’d seen signifigant bruising *inside* the throat of a female patient — again, just think about it.

* No one knows if “Shrink Creams” can hurt you. Widely available “shrink creams”, “sure grip”, “tighten up” and “feel like a virgin again” claim to make the vagina smaller or tighter. The key ingredient in these creams is alum. Alum absorbs water out of the outer layer of the skin; as more water is absorbed, the cells begin to swell, closing the ducts that water would normally flow through. No study has been done on the effect of these creams on the cervix, which is what they eventually end up getting rubbed on during penetration, but I’ll wager it’s not good. I kind of want to make the manufacturers snort a thick rail of alum, so they can study the effects on their own mucous membranes. What I really hate about these “shrink” creams is the fact that they’re trading on female insecurities about the vagina not being tight, pretty or good enough for their male partner — like we need any negative reinforcement from our pussy-phobic culture about how we look, feel or smell down there. The marketing text runs, “China Shrink Cream is formulated to tighten the vaginal walls. China Shrink Cream is to help with loose vagina due to multiple child birth and frigidity.” I also want to throw up every time I see the packaging on these creams, as they are often called “oriental” or “China Shrink Cream”, paralying off of racist stereotypes and exotifying Asian “sexual mystery”, much the same way the porn industry fetishizes skin color and markets (I think racist) negative stereotypes about black male sexuality with its “interracial” videos.

* Beware any toy sold as an anal toy that doesn’t have a flared base. Novelty companies put “anal” on the packaging of toys unsafe for anal use *all the time*, and no one wants a trip to the ER to get a Pocket Rocket removed, even if the package said “anal” on it.

Sex toys are an awesome gateway to an incredible sex life. These silly, bizarre little (or big) things can lead to hours of orgasmic exploration, self-discovery, sexual self-reliance and even deeper intimacy between couples (or a hilarious comedy of errors, depending).
But not everything mass-marketed for sex is safe to use. Plainly put, there are “novelties” and there are toys made for sex. Confused? Most sex toys (and products) that you’ll find in garden-variety retail sex toys stores are created, marketed and sold “for novelty use only”, meaning that while the toy companies explicitly know that people are using their toys for sexual use, they sell them categorized as “novelties”. Why they do this is anyone’s guess; perhaps it’s so they can avoid responsibility for faulty merchandise, as many sex toys are made poorly (almost all novelty sex toys are made cheaply in Chinese factories), or perhaps it’s so they can make outrageous claims on the packaging and marketing materials.

The short of it is that because sex toy companies label their products “for novelty use only”, they can get away with anything — even though they explicitly know their products are for sexual use (genital application). It’s clear that they just don’t give a shit if anyone gets hurt using their products. Same goes for the scary chemical materials many companies use in the manufacture of their toys (mostly in China), but that’s another rant, for another day.

Novelty sex toys are the most widely available as they have a virtual stranglehold on American distribution, and they are the least expensive. In practical terms, this is not such a bad thing. You’ll find the widest selection and best prices in the novelty toy market, making these toys a great place to try new things without breaking the bank; getting a certain size, shape or functionality you desire; or for finding that exact shade of pink you prefer. Novelties often feature the latest innovations in design and use — but also tend to break easily, some are made with noxious materials, and they can ship defective with user-unfriendly return policies.

Technically speaking, novelties aren’t made for sex, but they can conjure an orgasm pretty well. Identifying these toys in stores is easy, as they have the most polished, or garish (and sometimes offensive) packaging, “for novelty use” is printed somewhere on the package, and they typically come from companies such as Doc Johnson, Pipedream or Adam and Eve. In any case, it’s always “buyer beware” when purchasing a sex toy, and nowhere is it more essential for the consumer to be prepared with knowledge about the products, even before plunking down $5 on a plastic discount vibrator.

Not all sex toys are sold as novelties; the ones made for sex that come from independent manufacturers are created with the consumer’s pleasure as their express purpose. There are a growing number of high-quality sex toy companies in the United States and the U.K. who do not market their toys as novelties, and prize sexual health and pleasure as the key building blocks of both their businesses and their products. Many of these companies are women-owned, though many have as yet to break into the “old boys’ network” of distribution to novelty stores. You can find products — or rather, “pleasure instruments” — from Tantus, Vixen Creations, Fun Factory, d.vice, Vibratex and Sportsheets online and in sex toy boutiques that hand-pick their product selections. These companies have raised the bar on what people expect when they plunk down their hard-earned cash for something nice to shove up their (our) butts