Mark your calendars, friends. Texas just got toy-friendly! That is right. On Valentines Day (how apropos), the news hit the stands and websites. Everyone in the toy trade is ecstatic and every activist is buzzing because a federal appeals court overturned a statute outlawing sex toy sales in Texas.
Before this ruling, if you were caught selling a sex toy, you could spend up to two years in jail which means more than five vibrators in your possession was just as legally damaging as a gram of cocaine. You were safer talking to a police officer with a gun in your trunk than a dildo in your, well, you get the picture.
This is only five years after the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 opinion that struck down bans on consensual sex between same-sex couples. With Mississippi and Alabama being the last two states rotting away freedoms with their archaic laws on the sex toy trade, we are very close to a national acceptance of sexual technology. Americas legal system is taking large leaps toward staying out of our bedrooms.
This means our love lives are opening up. We have more opportunity to explore our sexuality and sexual desires. And while the law should not affect how we view certain sexual practices, it does. And now it can affect us in a positive way. We can, in turn, go to a sex store and look at the inventory without the stigma of seeing an item as illegal. We no longer need to see inventory as a political debate. We can see masturbators and massagers as what they are, technology to maintain and often improve a sexual relationship.
However, with all that said, a part of me is going to miss the most adorable "underground" that is the Texan sex-toy trade. I have had the joy of meeting a number of Texan retailers while visiting the novelty trade shows. We would laugh over drinks and talk about the numerous euphemisms they had to use to have their stores. "Educational models" for "instructors" and their "demonstrators. "Personal massagers" for patients.
"Cake toppers" for cake."plugs" for anal areas.(The anus is not considered a sexual orifice). The dance is no longer necessary! The romance and fun is gone! Now, if you want a dildo in Austin, you can just walk into a sex store and say "I want a big toy to use with my girlfriend. The words "I want to teach my friend with some educational models and she wants something that she can see easily, so what is your largest size?" will no longer escape from the lips of Texan shoppers.
So while I celebrate by shipping phallic vibrators to all of my friends in Dallas, I will also mourn the loss of an entertaining art form sex toy code words. Goodbye "I am doing an interactive art project" and hello public requests for stimulators. |
