Rihanna hit the headlines recently when she visited Paris and went on a $1,500 spending spree – and she spent her money on sex toys. Of course maybe this isn’t a big surprise; you’d struggle to put the words ‘Rihanna’ and ‘sex toys’ in the same sentence and avoid making the headlines. However, it does actually speak to a larger point about the increased interest in this area of sex, and the limits people are willing to go to get the right kinds of toys. Rihanna’s spending only highlighted that some people are very much into sex toys and vibrators. And it seems that she is not alone.
According to a new national survey in the United States that took into account the thoughts and opinions of more than 3,000 Americans, the majority of people feel positively about women using vibrators. And going even further than that, the study was able to associate positive beliefs about vibrators, and having used them recently, with increased levels of sexual satisfaction and other measures of sexual enjoyment and function. This suggests that on the whole, vibrators are considered to be a very good thing for people.
The survey was conducted looking at men and women ages 18 to 60 is the first to examine beliefs about vibrators, said Debra Herbenick, who was the lead researcher in the study and is an associate director at Indiana University’s Center for Sexual Health Promotion. The participants were found from an existing research panel and were then invited to take part in a study about sexual enhancement products throughout the year of 2008. There were 2,056 women and 1,047 men who took part in the survey online and consented to participate. They were mostly middle aged, white and educated.
The participants in the study were asked whether they agreed or not with positive beliefs (defined in the study with statements such as a vibrator “makes it easier for a woman to have an orgasm,” and “is a healthy part of many women’s sex lives”) and negative beliefs (defined in the study with statements such as, a vibrator “makes women too dependent on them for pleasure” and “is intimidating to women’s partners.”) Roughly half of the participants either agreed or strongly agreed with all positive statements about vibrators and sex toys, while fewer than 10 per cent of the participants chose the negative statements as those that they strongly agreed with.
Women that announced in the study that they had positive beliefs and who had used vibrators in the past 30 days also suggested that they had higher levels of arousal, lubrication, orgasm and sexual satisfaction, and lower levels of pain during sex, than those with positive beliefs but who hadn’t used the sex toys as recently. This suggests that not only are sex toys and vibrators becoming more popular but that they can actually improve your sexual experience if you use them.
So it is no longer appropriate for us to characterise people who use sex toys as being unable to find sex in normal ways. In fact many women in happy and sexually healthy relationships use sex toys. This survey shows that using sex toys can even help to make your sex in a relationship better. And it also seems that men don’t have a problem with women using sex toys. The majority of men don’t feel intimidated or consider sex toys to be wrong for women to use. This suggests that we could see an increasing promotion of the use of sexual toys for both single people and those who are in a relationship.
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