Filtering by Tag: ADULT TOYS
Etsy Banned Sex Toys, But It Can’t Ban Sex
This story was originally published on Forbes.com in August 2024.
Etsy, the e-commerce platform, prohibited the sale of sex toys as of July 29, 2024. In a June 27, 2024, public letter entitled “Strengthening Our Approach to Mature Content on Etsy,” Etsy Vice President of Trust and Safety Alice Wu announced the platform had updated its Adult Nudity and Sexual Content policy. The updates included limiting the sale of adult toys sold on the site, prohibiting realistic depictions of nudity, and imposing stricter criteria for listings featuring mature content. According to Etsy’s updated policy on adult content, pornography (including Playboy magazine) is prohibited, human models cannot expose their private parts (which includes their “gluteal clefts”), and the sale of sexual services and custom “content that sexualizes a specific body part” (“‘e.g. foot pics’”) are not allowed. Perhaps most impactfully, Etsy prohibited the sale of adult toys except for “non-insertable and non-penetrable adult toys and sexual accessories.”
For sellers who specialized in selling sex toys, the potential consequences were catastrophic. On X (formerly Twitter), Simply Elegant Glass, which sells, among other products, glass adult toys, lamented the decision in an open letter to Etsy. “It's hard to run a business oriented around adult products,” the thread noted. The “blanket ban” was “the lazy solution.” Now, they added, “Everything we've built on your platform will be completely nullified in 30 short days.” Free Speech Director of Public Policy Mike Stabile, wondered: “Do adults get to exist on the web or nah?” In Wu’s public letter, she asserted: “Our policies are designed to protect our global community, and maintain our position as the destination for truly special, creative goods.” But for Etsy sellers of adult toys and mature product who had long seen Etsy as a sex positive marketplace, the revised rules felt like a personal betrayal.
So, what does the new supposedly de-eroticized Etsy product landscape look like? With some sellers pivoting in how their more mature wares are sold, the platform’s products aren’t exactly wholly G-rated. A search for “sex toys” produced a plethora of listings for miniature “dong” adult toys for use in dollhouses ($4), a 7-inch carved obsidian “penis model” ($64.08), a black silicone head hood with a silicone vagina where the mouth would be ($337.69), a rainbow-colored Nicolas Cage “penis figurine” ($8), and a “Ceramic Dildo Sensual Sculpture” ($91.73). While Etsy had expressly prohibited “Materials produced by pornographic publishers (e.g. Playboy, Brazzers),” including “vintage adult magazines and films,” there were numerous Playboy magazines for sale on the platform. As for a search for “porn,” that yielded no listings at all. “We couldn't find any results for porn,” the productless-product page read. “Try searching for something else instead?”, it suggested helpfully.
Ironically, as a New York Times article, “Etsy vs. Sex,” pointed out, celebrities are having better luck hawking their erotic wares to consumers. On Gwyneth Paltrow’s goop platform, one can buy a double-sided wand vibrator ($95), a “TEACH ME A LESSON” ruler ($20), and a bottle of something called a “sex serum” ($24). According to a July 31, 2024, Etsy Inc. investor relations report, the company’s second-quarter consolidated net income was $53 million, which was down $8.9 million from last year. So far, it remains to be seen how the removal of the platform’s once copious adult and mature product listings will effect the bottom line.
About | My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Hollywood Walk of Dildos
I took this photo in an adult store on Hollywood Boulevard. For more of my photos, follow me on Instagram.
About | My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Sex Sales
Today on Forbes.com, I wrote about Etsy banning adult toy sales, among a host of other new constraints imposed on people who hawk mature wares on the e-commerce platform. You can read it right here.
About | My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Meet Bill
Image credit: Hot Real Dolls
Something I came across on YouTube: “170cm M7 Bill realistic male sex doll silicone.” [NB: The video is NSFW.]
About | My Book I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
On the Rack
An adult store in the San Fernando Valley. Follow me on Instagram for more photos from my life in L.A.
Buy My Book I About | My Newsletter I Twitter I Instagram I LinkedIn I Hire Me I Contact
Morning
I had the opportunity to tour a large warehouse today in the San Fernando Valley that was filled to its tall ceiling with synthetic penises, fabricated vaginas, and a box containing a love doll in the likeness of a little person porn star with whom I once costarred in a skit in which I was dressed as Dorothy, as in Oz. In any case, it was an interesting time. Keep an eye out for more on this story in an upcoming report.
SO MUCH FOR TELEDILDONICS
According to XBIZ, AEBN will no longer be selling its RealTouch devices.
This is your date
Last year, I encountered a RealTouch in the wild at a porn convention. An excerpt:
"'It feels like having sex with a robot,' I announce. I extract my finger and wipe it off with a wet wipe from the box on the table."
DILDO IN SPACE
THE VIBRATING BANANA
I visited the Pleasure Chest the other day. It hadn't changed much since the last time I was in one. I asked the woman behind the counter if I could take photos. She wanted to know why. She explained that if I was going to, say, take a photo of something on my iPhone and send it to someone to see if I should buy it, that was fine. But if I wanted to take photos of -- and, here, she kind of waved her arm at the rows of porn videos, and the shelves of dildos, and the displays of lube -- then the answer was no.
SUPER WHAT HEROES?
Adult toy-maker Doc Johnson has a new line of superhero-themed dildos, Super Hung Heroes.
The lineup includes The Caped Cock (Batman: "GoodHead City needs a hero and Bruce Wang is just the man for the job!"), The Amazing Web Shooter (Spider-Man: "Peter Pecker has a sexy secret…he’s the Amazing Web Shooter!"), The Incredible Hunk (The Incredible Hulk: "After a lab experiment gone sexy, Dr. Bruce Boner can transform into a big green monster cock known as The Incredible Hunk"), and Rock Hard Man (Iron Man: "Ladies’ man? Check. Genius? Check. The man that has it all? Check!").
They're selling on Adam & Eve for $59.95 to $109.95.