Celebrating National Women’s History Month all year long continues!
Vie de Femme was an opportunity to show queer women & femmes that Mystiq isn’t just ‘aware of’ them in a vague sense, nor are we tepidly ‘tolerating’ them — we LOVE them, and we’re committed to serving them better than anyone else in Texas (which we learned is kind of a low bar…)
Welcome to our Coming Out Party: Part II!
Firstly, I am WAY late in writing this up. My apologies. Vie de Femme was on… March 29. But a late post is in keeping with the spirit of year-round National Women’s History Month celebration, so…
It has been a VERY busy time for Mystiq, as we try to overhaul how pleasure and sexual health are marketed and as we try to bring everyone in under the sex-positive, inclusive, Mystiq umbrella — especially the people and groups that other sex shops and boutiques haven’t bothered to love or embrace or pursue before.
Mystiq is for everyone — and definitely for everyone at Vie de Femme!
Mystiq is for everyone. That’s part of what sex-positivity means to us — we’re positive that we can help improve your life, whether here on The Sex-Positive Blog, through elevating the level of sexual discourse, or through one of our storefronts, providing products and concierge services that ensure your sexual, romantic and personal desires and needs are met and exceeded.
Step 1 of our ‘Big Strategy’ [not trademarked] was Bringin’ in the Green, which we saw as an opportunity to contribute to the plight of homeless LGBT youth in Houston, but also as an opportunity to show what we could and would do for gay men, putting together a specific, themed package (with a Prostate Rabbit at the center of the Pleasure Kit) for the silent auction.
Vie de Femme
Vie de Femme, the first-ever soon-to-be-annual celebration of queer femme identities across the spectrum from (the aptly named) Spectrum South, represented another opportunity: to show queer femmes that we know they’re out there, we love them and we want to make them a vital, important piece of our overall marketing strategy. Plus, I could finally justify buying some new heels…
This time, Mystiq provided TWO Pleasure Kits, one awarded to a new subscriber to our email list (out of 88! You guys are amazing… if you’d like to sign up, and earn a chance to win a free Classic Rabbit, click here) by random draw, the other awarded to a social media post highlighting the event using the hashtag #ViedeFemme.
And the winners are…
Mystiq provided TWO Pleasure Kits ($350 and $320 value), plus 100 Safe Sex Packs with our info inside
How’d we do? Let us know!
Click the link below to get a detailed look at the two femme-inspired Pleasure Kits we put together, and if you have comments or suggestions, leave a comment on the spreadsheet, itself!
You can do the same thing with our Bringin’ in the Green Pleasure Kit, too
Click the link above to jump to Spectrum South’s website and see photos from Vie de Femme
My objective
Not to make it all about myself (and it was SO lovely to meet every one of you that I met at the event; do keep in touch on Instagram or howevs), but in addition to our corporate desire to be a contributing part of the sex-positive community here and worldwide, I personally have a goal in mind with these first events that we’re supporting, sponsoring, attending, etc.
Mystiq is a brand-new company; our first year of existence coincides with The Montrose Center and Town Hall Meeting I’s 40-year anniversary, which will be a prominent theme and topic of discussion during Pride (#40YearsOfPride!). We’re aware of the history here, and the communities that have been largely ignored, at best. Speaking from a personal standpoint, that’s my life and background and history, and I could not be more profoundly motivated in my mission to serve these communities.
But it has begun to sink in that just because I’m queer and woke and down for the cause(s), etc. doesn’t mean I’m an expert in what, say, a queer, femme, woman of color might enjoy or want, or how she might want to be marketed to, addressed, what kind of products she enjoys or wants to see stocked and why… It’s a big job!
Fortunately, as I’ve begun to probe — polling and surveying, attending events and workshops, reading, listening, believing — the individuals that comprise the poorly-served, LGBTQ+ (not to mention kink, poly, sex worker, the list goes on and on) communities/demographics have been so, so amazing about speaking up to us, letting us know what’s up, and answering so many of the questions we had or didn’t know we should have had.
It turns out, I’m not an out-of-the-box authority on queer and non-binary, femme-identified sexual dynamics and needs.
Thankfully, I don’t have to be. I’m finding that they — like pretty much everyone else I’ve met who also feels left out or ignored by mainstream sex shops — are all too happy to educate me and to have productive, frank, fun dialogues about sexuality and social mores.
Historically, around these parts, if you aren’t a white, straight cisman between the ages of 30 and 60 (or trying to get one off), it’s easy to feel like an afterthought at a lot of sex shops around here. That’s a generalization, of course — places that we love, like Darling Way Boutique and Erotic Cabaret Boutique, in the heart of the gayborhood, are inclusive, sex-positive and have been around for years… they’re role models of ours, and we want to take that exact same love for customers (all customers) and attention to detail and right-minded values, and blow that model up to the size of Greater Houston. After that? Who knows… maybe the rest of Texas, maybe the whole Southwest, maybe all the way to the White House!! HYAAHH!!
The Sex-Positive Survey & the Mystiq outlook
Weighing in on the Pleasure Kit is just one way to get involved, as we try to tune into — and really hear — the wants and needs of sex-positive pleasure-seekers both in Houston and elsewhere in the country. We’re listening veryclosely to a wide swath of humanity.
Houston is the most diverse city in America. As a lifelong Houstonian, I’m proud of that, and I — along with my fellow employees here at Mystiq — intend to lean into it. Mystiq is for everyone!
Mystiq is for everyone!
And for us to be good at serving that many people with that many discrete, unique sets of desires, dislikes and peccadilloes, we need lots and lots of input, data, etc. Helping such a diverse, wide-ranging group realize their desires is a tall order — but with the smorgasbord of digital tools at my disposal, and my enthusiasm for understanding what gets people off and helping them to improve their sex lives… I think it’s doable. Ambitious, but doable.
We mean to create safe, nurturing, comfortable, non-judgmental sex-positive spaces in our retail storefronts, and in order to do that well (and not like everything else that exists out there), we need to know things! So if you’re inclined to do so, please consider filling out this 3-min survey (The Sexy Survey!), which would help us tremendously.
To take the survey, just click below here on the green silhouette of a monkey to jump right to the survey, and one survey respondent will be (randomly) selected to win a free Classic Rabbit vibrator (or a CalExotics Extension, if the winner prefers) when our first storefront opens at 2720 Southwest Freeway Houston, TX 77057 sometime in May.
And please show some love to our friends over at Spectrum South. We are so glad to have partnered with them for Vie de Femme, but we’re even more excited to continue to work with them going forward!
