National Orgasm Day came and went with a bang this week — especially in New York City, where women from two sex-tech startups joined forces to protest outside of Facebook headquarters over its advertising double standard regarding sex-themed products.
Dame is suing the MTA, which operates New York City’s subways, over its refusal to run any of the company’s ads — even though sexual-enhancement products targeting men were allowed. “They’re never going to view sexual pleasure as necessary — only functionality as necessary,” Dame Products CEO Alexandra Fine told TechCrunch. “And since the functioning only matters for one sex, then we’re just encouraging s****y sex or at least one-sided sex. Healthy sex should be pleasurable sex. That’s really what I think is important.”
“This is not just about sex toys,” Jaclyn Friedman, activist, podcaster and author of Unscrewed: Women, Sex, Power and How to Stop Letting the System Screw Us All, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “What it’s about is the fact that the folks who make the rules about what is obscene and allowable is mostly guys, making the rules from their perspective. And the rules benefit them. It really is that straightforward. The rules that they make work for them.
Carol Queen, staff sexologist at the 42-year-old iconic adult-toy retailer Good Vibrations, tells Yahoo Lifestyle that she’s “extremely excited that this is happening.” “Back in the mid-’80s Joani Blank, who founded Good Vibrations, tried to place ads in Ms. and Playboy and was rejected by both. When I started here, in 1990, publications might write about vibrators or other sexual topics, but no vibrator pictures, please! So, in some ways,” she says, “things have advanced quite a lot. But the Facebook situation, especially, is a brave new world, and content restriction there is truly a big deal.