Novelty Products Not Safe At Any Speed
* 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.

