Photo via Flickr user Yelp Inc.
This article originally appeared on VICE Canada.
I’ve never been able to make myself orgasm.
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Any attempts to get rid of blue balls, with my hand at least, inevitably results in more blue balls.
I remember hearing about the elusive “clitoris” in South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (I was 12), but it would be a decade before I ever found the damn thing. I’m going to go ahead and generalize in saying that guys don’t have this issue. They hit puberty, they figure out how to jerk it, and from then on life’s one big jizz fest.
What would’ve helped me a great deal, though, was having a vibrator.
This week, University College University College Literary and Athletics Society at the University of Toronto is including vibrators in its some of its frosh orientation kits, supplied by local boutique Love Shop.
“When the Love Shop provided this item we gave careful consideration as to whether or not it should be included in the kits. Ultimately we decided that it was appropriate for inclusion,” frosh organizers said in an email obtained by VICE. “We believe that in order to create a safe campus where students feel comfortable discussing issues of safer sex, healthy relationships, and consent we must create an environment where these issues can be discussed openly.”
It’s likely the school’s orientation team debated whether or not it was controversial to greet incoming students with, among other things, sex toys. We can guess what the folks outside Thorncliffe school, angry that their kids will soon learn the anatomical names of their private parts, would have to say about it.
Haters gonna hate, but I think it’s a brilliant idea. Vibrators are a life changer. The earlier they’re introduced (within reason, voting age is good), I say, the better.
Related: What’s the Best Way to Recycle Your Vibrator?
Vibrators have come a long way from their origins as a tool 19th-century Victorian doctors used to treat “hysteria,” now known as sexual frustration. Docs, it seems, were tired of using their fingers to provide relief for female patients, so they created a device to do it for them. These “massagers” have taken many forms over the years with the most modern incarnations designed to look like anything from a bunny rabbit to lipstick. But, despite the fact that roughly 50 percent of women use vibrators, it’s still rarely discussed.
I didn’t purchase my first vibrator until I was 24. A quick survey of my girlfriends revealed that, give or take a couple years, they were the same. Most of us had been having sex for quite a while before we got acquainted with vibrators, and you know what? A lot of that sex was very, very shitty.
“If I knew how good a vibrator was, I wouldn’t have dated my ex for so long,” one of my friends told me.
Teenage boys know what feels good to them. Vibrators help girls figure out the same. Without that knowledge, we’re kind of left to the mercy of the person we’re sleeping with, who is likely taking cues from hardcore porn. The end result, from a heterosexual perspective, is a lot of awkward dirty talk and sex that often becomes an exercise in getting the man off.
My first relationship was a nightmare on every level, but the sex was particularly sloppy. He was drunk a lot of the time and had no concept of foreplay—one of those dudes who will just push your underwear to the side instead of taking it off. The closest I came to feeling pleasure was when it was over (mercifully that usually meant five to ten minutes). But the most tragic part is, because I had no frame of reference, I thought that was normal. I accepted that sex was overrated, and that we were all kind of in on this big lie together, singing its praises ad nauseam.
I went on to date much better men, but the sex still wasn’t amazing, in part because I couldn’t articulate what I liked. And that can be frustrating for both parties. Eventually, my libido dropped off. I went months, and even more than a year, without having sex. I wasn’t loving it, so what was the point? But then, at the nagging of one of my more progressive friends, I got a vibrator. It was an education in getting off. And it made me want to get off more often, both alone and with others.
They say that women reach their sexual peak in their 30s, but I’m willing to bet it would be sooner with the help of a sex toy.
The first time I had an orgasm during intercourse, I was 22. Because I hadn’t known the guy that long, I bit back my urge to run around the room screaming in elation.
At the time, I wondered when I would experience that again. These days, the answer is hidden in my sock drawer.
Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.
