…and baby, talk dirty to me!

I have always shied away from letting naughty words escape from my lips when with a partner. I’ve thought them but the act of letting myself say them has always seemed forced and almost…cheesy.
I once had a partner who thought he was the master of dirty talk. Every time we were together, he ran through his expansive vocabulary. It became almost mechanical and I never once considered it sexy or a turn on. In fact, it ended up as a complete turn off!
In order for dirty talk to work properly it should never be contrived…it should never be rehearsed or practiced. The best dirty talk is the kind that you cannot keep inside.
If you fantasize about naughty words but haven’t yet uttered them to your partner, don’t be nervous.  Of course,  it may feel a little awkward at first but before you know it, the dirtiest words imaginable will be spilling from your lips. If you screw up and say something silly? Laugh it off and keep going! The more you practice, the easier it will be!

For specific phrases, or ideas, try a google search. There are hundreds of websites that can supply you with all the words you’ve ever wanted!

- hyde

Women vs Porn

Andrea Dworkin was a radical feminist and writer who once declared that any one who defends pornography can not be a feminist.  I tend to struggle with accepting feminism sometimes because of ideals such as this.  Some feminist beliefs that claim “can nots” and “do nots” really get under my skin.  I certainly don’t hate feminists, not even close, but I do not identify as one either.  I’m just me.
I do have many many friends, co-workers and family members who call themselves feminists and I respect that. I really do. I respect it and I am interested in everything that they have to say and i love learning about what they believe in.  It’s the extreme label that tends to have me rolling my eyes and blocking out the messages.  Some feminists ( the ones I mainly come in contact with) who aren’t as extreme,  believe that Andrea Dworkin brought attention to some very real and very important issues but that in general she has been more destructive than beneficial to the women’s movement.
I think  that forcing your beliefs on anyone and declaring that they are wrong if they don’t agree with you is  unacceptable, no matter what the message.  Everyone has a right to believe what they want to believe.

Very recently, I was met with some comments regarding some DVD’s that we carry at our Water Street location.  An angry lady contacted us to let us know that we were promoting rape and misogyny and ruining people’s relationships  by carrying the DVD’s that we did.  She said we were anti-feminists. Anti-woman.

Now, as you, our loyal customers and readers, know, Our Pleasure does no such thing. We are determined to promote healthy, happy, consensual and safe sex and relationships. We try to carry DVD’s that have a little something for everyone.  Sasha Grey, a well known, “edgier” porn star and a self proclaimed feminist once said “What one person sees as degrading and disgusting and bad for women might make some women feel empowered and beautiful and strong.”

We try to be open minded and accept all opinions and beliefs…even if we don’t always agree with them.  We don’t intentionally carry DVD’s that would ruin a relationship.  We certainly do not promote misogyny or rape. We believe that anything, as long as it is consensual, is ok.  We are not anti-feminists or anti-woman.
The comment made by this lady really got us thinking…where is this coming from? What’s really behind her words? Can Porn ruin relationships?
Can you really be considered misogynistic if you enjoy porn?
Are feminists allowed to love porn?

We talked to a bunch of women. Co-workers, customers, and  family who were kind enough to  voice their opinions of feminism, women and pornography for us.

“I love naked ladies and porn and everything that comes with it.  It’s a typical thing to say but as long as no one is being abused beyond their threshold i see no problem with the industry in any way. I personally know porn actresses and could consider them to be feminists in their own way, clearly in the other direction, but they are probably more about female liberation than the typical extreme feminist. Don’t you think if someone is blaming porn for their relationship problems it clearly goes way beyond that?  Me and my boyfriend have an awesome relationship and the fact that I couldn’t care less what or who he looks at on the internet probably helps with the whole trust issue. Basically, females who are insecure about their men looking at other women in porn have issues firstly with themselves and their self image, and secondly (which is probably the worst when dealing with relationships) they have trouble trusting their partner.”

I agree! The women who left an angry comment on our blog may have been blaming the porn and choosing to skip over the fact that something is wrong in her relationship if
1. Her partner is choosing to look at porn instead of have sex with her and
2.  She’s blaming an outside source instead of trying to get to the root of the problem, the breakage in their relationship. Porn can be terrible. There been many horrible, degrading films made. But porn is just an inanimate object. Nobody is forcing anyone to watch it. (if they are, that’s a whole other problem)

“I personally don’t enjoy pornography in picture or video form, however, on occasion, I have enjoyed written erotica.”

I respect that. Not every one has to love pornography. Not everyone has to love pizza. It’s all about choices!

“I hate pornography. Every type, everything about it”

This is ok too. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. If you choose to not watch porn, that’s the right choice for you!

“I consider myself to be a feminist and, just like there are different types of feminists (some more extreme than others, differing views, etc) there are different types of pornography. I believe that it depends on the type of pornography and the perspective of the person watching it that makes a difference. There are so many different fetishes and fantasies portrayed in all media, not just porn. Can some of the materials be considered degrading? I would have to say yes, but not all porn is degrading. In fact I think it can be liberating depending on the portrayal. Women are sexual beings, and it is just as important for that side to be expressed and explored as it is for other aspects of life. What I feel becomes problematic is when people are only ever exposed to media which shows women with “the perfect body” in constantly submissive positions satisfying others while not being satisfied, as well as violence and general disrespect towards women; it is these types of portrayals that can create unrealistic views and expectations. With respect to porn and relationships, bring it on! If both partners are open to the idea and are comfortable with the material they are viewing, what is the harm? Problems occur when people refuse to acknowledge sexual desires and discomforts, and keep that from their partner.”

Well said!

“Ok, so I think the only things that can wreck relationships are the adults who take part in them. It’s like blaming the mistress when your husband is the one who said the vows. I am a feminist and I watch porn with my fiance. Being a feminist is about supporting a woman’s right to choose whether it’s regarding marriage, working outside the home, having children, being in porn, whatever. It’s ok for women to be sexual and like sex, like watching sex, having sex, and all that stuff. I am very much aware of the sometimes brutal reality and slimy nature of the porn industry, and there is a ton of porn out there that is demeaning to women, no doubt. But it’s up to a woman what she does with her body whether it’s aborting an unwanted child or taking off her clothes to pay her rent … isn’t that one of the things most feminist would probably agree on? Don’t get me wrong, if I had a little girl I wouldn’t want her to be in porn, but we’re not talking about that, what we’re talking about is porn wrecking relationshps and the definition of feminism. One doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the other.”

It’s true, porn and feminism and the struggles and insecurities within a relationship  really have nothing to do with each other. You cannot blame porn for your relationship or your personal worries. You cannot blame porn for pushing the feminist movement backwards. You cannot blame any one but yourself for your reactions and how outside things affect you.

“i watched a lot of porn when i was really young. i had a television in my room basically always. for a while porn would come on the pay-per-view channels and you could preview the first 15 minutes. i would figure out the schedule for all the channels and watch the first 15 minutes of every porn that came on television.  i was totally addicted and hadn`t even started my period yet.
towards the end of high school i became interested in feminism and started to think more critically about my sexual experiences. i bought a dildo and vowed to never watch pornography again. i didn`t ever ward off sex, but i traced a lot of my ideas about female subordination back to the pornographic photos, movies and erotic stories that i read so religiously as a kid. 

i asked my boyfriend not to watch porn anymore. i also felt incredibly insecure and didn`t understand that a boy could watch porn and still think i was pretty. i felt badly about myself for having rolls in my stomach when i was pretzeled into those positions and for having scars and bruises and short black hair and a rat tail rather than flowing blonde hair and breast implants or something. i thought that porn was evil. i still feel very uncomfortable with mainstream pornography. i still feel like if my partners want to look at porn that i must be doing something wrong. i have reclaimed a lot of things, though. i feel like i have flipped the borderline rape narratives of a lot of pornographic movies and use similar ideas in my real-life sex life. it`s always discussed beforehand and always with a partner who understands, and who respects me and keeps an eye out for any signs of disassociation or negative sexual responses. i still feel shitty for not looking a certain way sometimes and like the only sexual images my partner should want to look at should be of me. i will allow myself to be filmed, photographed, taped, whatever. you want porn? here you go; it`s gonna be of me! 
lately i`ve been finding myself looking for pornographic material. photos don`t do it for me. paintings, drawings and literature are what get me through lonely nights or dry spells now. there`s something about photographs and movies that takes away some of the magic. it`s so much less imaginative, i think. so much more prescribed.”

I agree with you. Most porn is not imaginative at all. Luckily, there’s so much beautiful erotic art out there and even a whole boat load of raunchy art as well.  There are even erotic comic books out there! Some of them are really good!

“I don’t think I will ever be comfortable watching porn, nor do I ever think I would be ok with a partner watching porn. There’s no room for it in my relationships. If it floats your boat, that’s fine, I’m just very anti-porn and like my sex and my intimacy to be between me and my partner. If we truly love each other, why do we need to look at other people having sex? That’s just my opinion.” 

I want to thank all of our customers, friends and family who offered their opinions on this topic.

Porn-tastic!

In seventh grade,  a friend and I conquered the attic of her parents house and turned it into a fortress.  We spent hours upon hours, trying on old clothes, listening to Metallica and pouring through the stacks of magazines that lived in one of the dusty old corners. We drooled over Kirk Cameron in her older sister’s Tiger Beat magazines. We read the ridiculous stories from her mother’s  True Romance magazines and we ripped the pages out of Home and Garden and pasted our perfect lives into collages (shiny cars, a ranch with horses, herbs in little flowerpots on the windowsill, attractive men with perfect teeth)

One day, we stumbled upon a stack of  ”dirty” magazines. We hoarded them. They became our little secret. We would cut the men out from their pages and bring them to school and laugh at them during our incredibly boring French class.

S’il te plait, où est le téléphone?
Quelle heure est-il, s’il vous plait?

This was my first glimpse into the world of pornography.

I’ve come a long way from those days of cut and paste penis’s…and so has my opinion on pornography. Over the years, I’ve swayed back and forth on how I felt about pornography. It started out with a healthy curiosity,  and veered right into something that was pretty “normal”
I wasn’t grossed out by pornography. I wasn’t offended by it. It was just a thing. I had no strong opinions about it. I watched it, I enjoyed it. It affected me no more than an episode of Friends would.
In my very early twenties, I had a partner who loved porn. It was my first time “sharing” porn with someone else. He loved porn and loved it often and I grew to hate it.  I became jealous of it. I longed to be every girl in every photo he looked at.  I thought I had to be thinner,  prettier, fake. I thought I had to moan louder, act wilder. I thought I had to be those women to be appreciated and loved.
As far as I was concerned, at that point in my life, porn was dead to me. We were in a fight! I swore I would never date another man who looked at porn.
And then one day, long after that relationship was over, I found myself having the same issues, yet again, with a man who watched porn while I sat around and hated myself.  I realized, it was not porn that was responsible for the deterioration of my relationships. It was my own insecurities.
So I snapped out of it. I made a conscious decision to take responsibility for my issues instead of blaming them on someone and something else.
Now, many, many years later I am quite the porn connoisseur!
I am right back there, filled with healthy curiosity and a lust for all things naked just like I was in seventh grade when we found those magazines.
Once I let go of all that negativity and those little hurts, I began to understand that porn is not the monster I made it out to be.
These days porn is a lovely addition to my life and to my relationships.
Yay porn!!!

- hyde

p.s. next week’s blog is sort of a continuation of this one. we have some great comments on women vs. pornography vs. feminism from our co-workers, our families and our fabulous customers!

Up Yours!

One thing you’ll learn fairly quickly when you shop at Our Pleasure,  is that you can’t insert certain things in certain places. When experimenting with anal play using toys, we can’t stress enough how careful one must be!
We often get people in the medical field visiting our store with tales of emergency room woes. The things we have heard that doctors and nurses have found inserted in the rectum might shock you!
Let’s make a little list,  shall we?
1. vaseline jars
2. a pepperoni stick
3. a barbie doll
4. vegetables (carrot, cucumber, even an eggplant!)
5. a child’s mini baseball bat
6. toothbrush
7. hairspray bottle
8. wooden spoon
9. crayola markers
10. cordless telephone

The reason most give for having these items inside their bodies?
I was naked, and I slipped and fell on it.

…

Let’s back up a little, shall we?
Please, if you are thinking of slipping and falling on anything tonight, read these pointers first!
1.  Never ever put anything inside of your rectum that does not have a flared base. What I meant to say was…Never slip and fall on anything that does not have a flared base. The flared base acts as an anchor to keep the toy from slipping all the way inside of you.  The muscles in this area are very strong and without that anchor, your toy could be lost forever…or until you get a doctor to retrieve it for you!

2. All toys or objects inserted should be smooth. Never use anything that has rough edges, is sharp or has smaller pieces that can become unattached.
As strong as the muscles in the rectum are, they are also delicate. A small cut or even a small scrape can turn into a serious medical issue.

3. Lubricant is your friend-your BEST friend. Because the rectum does not self lubricate, you’re going to want to use plenty of lube so that toys, fingers or even a penis can be inserted easily and without any pain.

4. Slow it down. Smaller is better when you’re beginning to experiment with anal play! Buy anal beads or a toy that starts small and increases in thickness so you can work your way up to a larger toy.

Follow these pointers and you should be good to go!
Remember, if you’re shopping in one of our stores, our friendly staff are always available to help you chose the perfect toy for you!

- hyde

It’s how big??

Penis size.
It plagues the minds of men all over the world.
Is it large enough? Is it long enough? What’s with that curve?
Am I too small?  What’s average??

Very few men are blessed(or cursed…however you want to look at it) with a penis that is over 7 inches long.
Then there’s Jonah Falcon whose penis is as long as his forearm…a whopping 9.5 inches long when flaccid and 13.5 inches long when erect.

Jonah is an actor/writer who surprisingly doesn’t do porn.  It is said that Mr. Falcon possesses one of the largest known penises….ever…in existance.
He became famous when he was featured in a 1999
HBO documentary called “Private Dicks: Men Exposed” but refuses to do any sort of pornography as he wants to focus more on being a serious actor.

But enough about Jonah…let’s talk about YOU!

Most men have a penis that is an average of  3.5 inches when flaccid and 5.5 inches when fully erect. The majority of males are never much bigger than this. The upside? You can stop worrying about your penis size now. You don’t need to be 10 inches long.
The downside?  There is no downside. You might find it difficult to find a partner when you have a penis that is 20 inches long but,  if you’re an average size, you’ll fit in nicely just about anywhere!

- hyde

Male Enhancement Pills, Do they really work?

If you google that question it returns with 7 million hits! Obviously this is a matter of curiosity for men.  This isn’t a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question.  Some male enhancement pills work while others have failed to produce any results.  A pill that a friend has tried may not work for you and vice versa.  Whether or not a male enhancement pill will work for you depends on your body chemistry.  Everyone’s body chemistry is not the same that is why you’ll see mixed results on different pills.

Before taking any male enhancement pills however, check with your doctor as men being treated for high blood pressure and other such medical conditions should not take them as they work by dilating the blood vessels therefore increasing blood flow.  These pills can increase testosterone levels also.

Some users do not find appreciable difference by taking a single dose, some men may need to take the pills daily and others can take it once and get noticeable effects that last up to 24 hours.  The best pills can do the following:

-          Increase penis size during use (not permanent results).

-          Improve your stamina.

-          Boost your sex drive.

-          Provide more powerful orgasms.

The worst can carry dangerous side effects or simply do nothing at all.  At Our Pleasure we usually stock two different kinds of male enhancement pills, Forta and PerformX.  Both are all natural and safe to use unlike some prescriptions such as Cialis and Viagara.  These contain extracts of precious Chinese herbs.  They actually have much the same ingredients but Forta has a higher dosage of some of the ingredients.  For the most part I have had better feedback on Forta compared to PerformX but again everyone’s body chemistry is different. You should definitely know what you are taking though so pay close attention to labels.  Also, consult a doctor before taking any enhancements as you can have some nasty unwanted side effects.  Some of the ingredients you want to look for in a good natural enhancement pill are:

L’arginine (an amino acid that naturally makes nitric acid which relaxes the blood vessels).

Epimedium(helps with fatigue and is used as an aphrodisiac), Gingeng (enhances libido and performance).

Lycium Barbarum (boosts your sex drive by increasing production of  testosterone, sperm quality and quantity).

Cistanche Salsa(a tonic herb known to improve blood circulation).

 If your healthy and just want an extra boost or are curious why not try them, you may be surprised at the results!

 - C

To read a review of the pills we carry click here! 

Guest blog: Use A Condom!

We received an email from a long term customer this morning, asking us if we would share something she had written for her own blog. The message is one that needs to be heard,  so we are more than happy to pass along her words to you…

One word. Condom.

Sitting to write this I can hardly breathe.  My heart is racing. My head is spinning. I have been waiting for test results, waiting to find out if I have an STI. My Doctor looked concerned when I went to see her.  Her face wasn’t the relaxed, pleasant expression I have become accustomed to. It was tense and she said “this isn’t ok, you KNOW better”.
I DO know better!
Yet I’m sitting on the floor clutching my phone wishing it would ring. I just want to know the answer. I want to tell my new partner whether he needs to be tested.  I just want to know.  I want the intense urge to vomit to pass.  I just want to know.

Sex is fun.  Sex feels amazing.  I haven’t had sex in a week.  I’ve gone to bed fully clothed and felt the distinct pangs of guilt while my partner cuddles close. He assures me that everything is fine and reminds me it could be his fault we are in this situation.  I’m convinced it’s mine.  I’m convinced I’m rotting from the inside out.

Why didn’t I just use a condom?

Please,  if you are sexually active…use a condom! We want to thank this customer for sharing her experience with us and with you!