Guys and dolls: A revealing look at men's sex toys
It's a long time since any stigma was attached to the use of sex toys by women. For most men, the issue remains a little more embarrassing. But not for all. Tanya Gold tracks down some serious enthusiasts
I am standing in the Harmony sex shop in central London, staring up a plastic vagina. I don't often do this. But a few weeks ago I read a news story about some men in Sweden who have reported a pharmacy to the Swedish equal opportunities ombudsman for sexual discrimination. Why? Because it stocks sex toys for women, but not for men. Now people don't usually talk about this; they rabbit on about the rabbit, but the plastic vagina has yet to have its Sex and the City moment. So what is out there? Or rather, what is in there?
Simon Pope is the buyer for Harmony. He is small and he looks tired, but he takes me through the racks of men's toys with the intensity of a man discussing drill bits. "The big thing at the moment are the anal toys," he says, waving at a wall of Rocks Off Naughty Boy prostate massagers. "Men seem to have discovered their bums at last. Straight men didn't used to want to buy anything anal," he beams at me. "That's all changed."
Together we peruse inflatable dolls there is an obese one called Fatima the Fully Functioning
Sex Doll, who I feel a weird compassion for and some vaginas. I stick my finger inside one. It has the texture of rotting jelly. It feels dead. "Men mostly buy these to use alone," Simon says. He points out the Juicy Lucy portable can, which looks like a beer can but has both a vagina and an anus inside, and the Fleshlight, a torch containing a vagina. Both look like they were made by the ever-smiling Q for James Bond: "Now, Bond, if you press this a vagina will shoot out!"
