It’s easy to forget, especially within my sex toy bubble, that there are all kinds of people on Twitter. Look up any Twitter directory, though, and you will find circles of people such as pornstars, hate-mongers, cats, evangelicals, and wedding planners. My recent Twitter contest revealed a whole new group of people to me: people afraid of the word dildo.
The contest moved along quietly at first, making its rounds from sex bloggers to sex toy lovers to kinksters. To enter, people simply had to tweet. My template tweet was — I thought — fairly benign: RT @Epiphora: I’m giving away a set of two bumpy glass dildos! Retweet to enter. Rules + picture: http://is.gd/Cldd. The rules stated, however, that the text could be changed to anything. Nobody really changed it.
Slowly but surely, my contest began to creep into less dildo-friendly circles. Suddenly, people began making excuses for entering the contest. One person, immediately after retweeting, tweeted again: “What? I need gifts to give. Including giving them to my mom as a paperweight. So she can display ‘em in her front room. For church social.” Obviously, this was meant to be a joke, but it also says a lot about our culture’s need to preface/postscript any mention of sex toys with some sort of explanation — in this case, in anticipation of perplexed @ replies (Twitter’s equivalent of weird looks). Another person measured her level of embarrassment by the fact that her friend retweeted as well. “I was feeling bad about retweeting that,” she wrote, “but I love that you retweeted me!”
Then there were the couple of people who saw the contest but refused to enter. Instead, they @ replied those who did enter the contest. What I found telling is that these people were not opposed to the dildos themselves, but to the idea of tweeting about the contest. One person tweeted, “i’d never be brave enough to enter that!!! but… those do look nice.” Another person responded to an entrant’s tweet, apparently not realizing her own irony: “Interesting contest, I’m not sure I would want to twit about my love of dildos! to enough to participate, but they are pretty [sic].” When the entrant replied that she’s a stripper so there was nothing odd about the contest in her mind, the replier wrote, “Yeah, but I’m not,so… you could consider a twit of something slightly more discreet and probably get a lot more hits.”
That kind-of blew my mind. It didn’t even occur to me to word the text differently. Two bumpy glass dildos. That’s what they are. By definition, because they do not vibrate, they are dildos. It wouldn’t sound right to say “two bumpy sex toys.” So what would be acceptable? “Two bumpy romance products”? Okay, I’m being facetious now. I could have written something like that — seemingly discreet, but easily decipherable by anyone with half a brain. But I didn’t. Because they’re freaking dildos. (Plus, entrants were free to change the text to whatever they wanted.)
In response to this silliness, Miss KissThis started tweeting, “I’m giving away a set of two bumpy glass fuck toys!” A_LAH followed suit, tweeting, “I’m giving away a set of two bumpy glass sculptures that are oddly phallic!” And soon I was laughing and forgetting about my implied insanity for being completely comfortable with the word dildo. Carrie Ann put it best when she tweeted to me, “If you can’t SAY dildo? Or READ dildo? Without being offended? NO DILDOS FOR YOU!” Besides, according to Backseat Boohoo, “Dildo is one of the best words in the English language, right up there with fork and kumquat.”
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June 18th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
LMAOOO–yeah, I didn’t care who saw my Twitter–as I joined to ENTER your contest. I did give my best friend a ‘heads up’ that she may not want to follow me in case her family filtered thru & she was laughing at me, saying if I won, I have to give her one of them. lol.
I’m thinking of the Soup Nazi’s voice “No DILDOS for YOU” omg, that’s great.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
I forget, sometimes, that we still live in such a puritanical culture. Talking about sex in graphic detail is so “normal” amongst my circle of friends that it does seem bizarre that someone would take issue with the word dildo. I agree completely with Carrie tho…can’t SAY dildo, can’t HAVE dildo!
June 19th, 2009 at 7:17 am
Muh hah hahhhh. I am the Dildo Nazi!
Seriously, though…
I know a lot of us do take sexual openness for granted as if it’s the norm for everyone – and it’s not. But what amused me endlessly was people complaining about the use of the word dildo who then used the word dildo to complain.
Cuz. They saved so many eyes the trauma of the word, yanno?
June 19th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
You know, it probably doesn’t hurt that “dildo” has become an insult. =/
June 19th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
With my friends & lovers–I’m really open. If a bit of booze is involved, I’m shameless. lol. Kinda weird cuz I have Quaker/Baptist roots & I’m really shy unless I know you well.
My mother? Up until 5 yrs ago, she still spelled “s-e-x” and avoided any & all references to anything sexual. Hell, when I started my period, all she did was hand me a pad & said ‘position it well’. I thought I was hemorraging & gonna DIE–I was an early bloomer & school hadn’t had the movie yet. My cousin filled me in later that day.
In any case, I’m confused why people have to hide sexuality in their lives. It’s one of the best perks–evahhh. Right next to breathing & above chocolate. Dildos are fun, so are vibrators & fingers & tongues–etc…
June 20th, 2009 at 12:03 am
Hey! I’m quoted in Epiphora’s blog! Thanx, you are so awsome. I can die happy now, LOL!
June 20th, 2009 at 9:38 am
HAHA thats too great! makes me want to just go type DILDO all day on twitter to see the fun responses i may get!
January 16th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
Dildo, dildo, dildo, dildo!
Seriously, the first time I ever did a sex toy review people reacted very oddly. It was fine that I had already publicly implied that I was perverted, depraved and oversexed since I was reviewing porn but a sex toy was way to much information for people who were regularly reading my movie reviews. I didn’t get it then and I don’t get it now.
I also have been known to promote my reviews on my Facebook page. No one seemed to mind, not even my mother in law once she found me on there (that one had me worried a bit) until someone I went to school with and wasn’t really friends with found me. Then I was getting emails “Quit sending me porn”. HUH? I don’t send anyone porn unless they ask me for it. I had to explain to him about adjusting his Facebook settings. I also started wondering why people who I “offended” (for lack of a better word) in school thought that I would be less offensive years later. If anything I have gotten worse (by their standards).
Then there was the article I had to write on sex and body piercings. People who were always willing to share way to much information with me about their sex life when I didn’t ask suddenly clammed up when I was doing research for an article.
I have come to the conclusion that people are weird. While they may own a dildo or two they aren’t going to admit to it because they feel they need to put on a dog and pony show about who they are and are afraid if their friends found out they had and used a dildo they would be judged, called a pervert or whatever. Isn’t it amazing what you find out about people when you become a sex blogger of some sort? People are so weird and I will never understand them.
January 16th, 2010 at 4:21 pm
@AMToday: You’re so right. Talking about sex toys and porn is completely normal for me, so when other people get weirded out about it, I just don’t even know how to respond to them anymore.
June 18th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
I really can’t deal with the words “fork” and “kumquat” either. Or “Skype” for that matter.