#SexyEd: O.School Sex Toy Industry livestream w/ Sarah Brynn Holliday (1/7/18)
Recap and highlights from O.School’s livestream covering the highs and lows of 2017 in the sex toy industry, along with a look forward to 2018
From O.School’s website: “O.school is building a shame-free space by offering pleasure education through live streaming and moderated chat. At O.school, you can learn about sex and pleasure, join a diverse community, and share your own experiences.”
We at Katz Boutique LOVE the folks at O.School, and the truly good work they’re doing every day, and when we have a chance to, we love to watch the livestreams, join in on the livechat and share what we learned with our readers, followers and customers.
About the presenter
Sarah Brynn Holliday is, “a queer femme feminist sex blogger, educator, and consultant” with a professional background consisting of work, “in abortion rights and access, queer and trans liberation, and radical, pleasure-and-trauma-informed sex education,” per her website’s About page. Formidable Femme started in 2015, and Holliday has attended and presented at Eroticon, a UK conference for sex writers, been named a top sex blogger on Kinkly and Molly’s Daily Kiss’s annual lists, spoken at colleges up and down the east coast and worked with dozens of incredible companies.
Click HERE for the record of the livestream’s livechat and HERE for the Google Doc resource Holliday shared with viewers during the stream.
2017 Year in Review, ethics discussion and livechat highlights
2017 was a banner year for sex toys, and one could easily argue it was headlined by We-Vibe’s remarkable run: The Jive, Sync and Nora (all body-safe and highly-customizable in shape, with bluetooth/app capabilities unique to each) all won major awards, but it was the Gala Holliday selected as one of her three Best of 2017 picks. Highlighting its ‘powerful, rumbly’ vibratory capabilities and 10 stock vibration modes (that can become virtually infinite through customization through the app), Holliday praised the Gala on its own merits, before lauding We-Vibe as a company for the incredibly impactful, successful year it’s had.
Ethics were definitely a central theme of the evening’s discussion, and We-Vibe’s $3.75m class-action settlement* was mentioned and addressed, though the general sentiment seemed to be that it was an unfortunate, inadvertent misstep for a company generally considered to be one of the more forward-thinking, ethical brands in the industry.
*consumers who bought the We-Vibe Sync and connected it to the We-Connect App were eligible for up to $10,000 in compensation; Standard Innovation voluntarily altered its data-collection practices while admitting no wrongdoing
That makes sense — We-Vibe is an offshoot of Standard Innovation, a Canadian company, “dedicated to shaping the future of sexual health and wellness.” We-Vibe’s website goes on to say, “Our world-class engineers and industrial designers work closely with sexual wellness experts, doctors and consumers to design and develop intimate products that work in sync with the human body. We use state-of-the-art techniques and tools to make sure our products set new industry standards for ergonomic design and high performance while remaining eco‑friendly and body-safe.”
Check, check, check and check. With the regrettable pairing-users’-email-addresses-with-vibratory-habits kerfuffle behind them, We-Vibe seemed to be firmly back in the good graces of sex toy industry watchdogs, Holliday included.
Also mentioned in the livechat stream were the Domi Wand from Lovense, the Nü Sensuelle Pearl, and — keeping with the theme of customization/shaping introduced in the We-Vibe Sync hinges discussion — the Dodil. If you have yet to hear of the Dodil… it’s something. Heat it up with warmth, and you can shape it into virtually anything. When it cools, it stays shaped until heated and molded again. It is not only customizable (meaning that it WILL hit your G-spot; it just might take a little bit of crafting trial-and-error to get there), but infinitely so, over and over.
I especially value toys that can offer new and varied experiences even the second, third, hundredth and thousandth time they’re played with. The Dodil is squarely in line with that philosophy, and is definitely one I’m hoping to get to check out for myself, soon. Here’s a YouTube video from the folks at Dodil, showing off what their little shapeshifter can do.
What can we expect from 2018?
In the livestream, Holliday used her post entitled 8 Commitments Sex Toy Companies Can Make in 2018 (which I highly recommend reading) as a jumping off point to discuss the state of the sex toy industry going forward, and changes she feels are needed. We at Katz are ‘in the biz’ as they say, so I used the Commitments list as an informal self-assessment, with an eye towards what my personal, and our organizational, priorities ought to be in 2018.
I’m glad I (unrelatedly, lazily) neglected to make any New Year’s Resolutions, because I’ve got a full Resoluteness tank, and I’m ready to… peel out.
- Get rid of the abusers and harassers in your ranks. There have been a LOT of changes for Katz this year. New ownership, new management… all very exciting!
One of our top priorities organizationally is to create safe, inclusive, sex-positive, educational spaces — both in our physical storefronts and in the digital world. Ownership has stressed the importance of new, better hiring practices, onboarding processes and training pedagogy — of identifying, hiring and keeping the right people. Without going into further detail, I’m happy to say (imho) this was a definite check for Katz.
✔️ - Stop selling sex toys made by unethical manufacturers.
We’re working on it! For me, personally, it’s a question of becoming educated, learning who to follow/listen to, where to look for the relevant news of the day, etc. It is absolutely, 100% a priority in the new year.
❗ - Hire social media managers with knowledge of the industry and an understanding of sexual freedom.
Welp. I’ll freely admit I’m wet behind the ears, but sexual freedom and issues like marriage equality, reproductive rights and feminism were my jam long before I intersected with Katz. ‘Knowledge of the industry’ I’m working on… but I haven’t stolen content, promoted harmful/offensive advertising OR made racist, misogynistic or fat-shaming jokes, the hit list of awfulness Holliday outlines in her post. And thanks to folks like Holliday, the other O.School Pleasure Pros and scads of other sex-positive educators like them, knowledge is easier to attain than in years past.
🔜 - Stop fighting sex bloggers and educators on our rates.
One of the current internal conversations we’re actively having right now involves who do we bring in to educate/train our staff, and what resources are allocated for consulting and outside help. This one is a good heads up for us, and something we’ll be all-the-more certain to avoid doing, going forward.
✔️ - Give up marketing your sex toys “for women” and/or “for men.”
This was a bit of a eureka moment for me when I heard it in the livestream. It makes perfect sense! One of the storefront GMs and I went through her sales floor, taking a hard look at the titles for the kiosks and sections. It was not only shockingly easy to reorganize without the Gender Binary concept, but also made our organization and groupings better. It was such a stark paradigm shift for me. It was like… whoa.
✔️
- Invest in sex bloggers to make your company the best it can be.
#StayTuned 👀
✔️ - Stop ghosting people you’ve promised payment to.
AKA #Trumping? Never. Never ever.
✔️ - Overhaul your entire company.
… it’s funny you should mention it! 🤐#StayTunedAgain
✔️✔️✔️
Final Impressions
Terrific content from a terrific provider, as per uzh for O.School. I had a few watershed, ‘aha’ moments during the course of the stream — most notably, that ‘sex toys for men’ and ‘sex toys for women’ (like ‘lesbian sex toys’ or ‘gay sex toys’) are phrases and ideas that make no sense.
When we put it into practice on a sales floor, removing Man/Woman/Gay/Lesbian not only went smoothly, but also improved the way we grouped the sex toys, the way we talked about them, described them… improved our whole mindset in addition to our sales-floor feng shui.
I’m left with a feeling of optimism and hope (could also be a lingering #GoldenGlobesGlow), along with a much-needed gut-check and a partial roadmap for the months ahead.
From the Google Doc:
7 Commitments Sex Toy Companies Can Make in 2017, and posts referenced within:
What Makes a Sex Toy Company Feminist?
The Myth of the Lesbian Sex Toy
Dear Sex Shops: Sex Toys are Gender Neutral. Really! by Dangerous Lilly
[Noted!] 🙏
Fat People Aren’t Your Goddamn Punchline
Pay Me or Get Out of My Inbox
Lelo Doesn’t Care by Dangerous Lilly
I’m a Survivor, and I Will Never Support LELO Again
A Pox on Your Box: The Problem of LELO Hex by Lorax of Sex
8 Commitments Sex Toy Companies Can Make in 2018
Finally, Holliday left the livestream audience with a short list of responsible/ethical sex toy companies, ‘you can feel good about supporting’
- Online feminist sex shops: Vibrant and SheVibe
- Brick-and-mortar feminist sex shops: Check out JoEllen’s superhero sex shop list
[We aspire to this! Another 2018 goal!] - Manufacturers: Doxy is one example of an excellent, ethical company
Whew! That was a lot of info and discussion, all of it useful, valuable and worthwhile. We at Katz think 2018 can be the sex-positive-est, kink-friendliest, most-inclusive year ever, and we’re ready and willing to put in the work to see that through. Big, awesome things coming! It’s like Liz Powell always says, “Great sex can change the world!”
We think so, too. Here’s hoping 2018 is the year of finding that out.
Follow Sarah Brynn Holliday on Medium, Twitter, Facebook and visit her website, Formidable Femme.
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