Another reason to shop Amazon.com September 1, 2005 Jill They now sell sex toys. One bad thing: On the sex toys page, they also sell some things that can be pretty bad for your vagina, like douches and “feminine deodorant sprays.” Via Feministing.
Not trying to rain on the parade whatsoever, but they’ve been selling sex toys for a while now. 😉 True, but not through Amazon.com directly. They had an affiliate site, drugstore.com, carry all the products, and they weren’t searchable from the main page. Generally, Internet-only companies tend to shy away from these sorts of products (witness Netflix’s tragic eschewing of porn), because the among many investors, the Internet is already stigmatized as a smut-heavy media. So, looking at the big picture, Amazon bringing these products to its main site is actually kind of groundbreaking. Here’s my piece about it from Mediapost. You can get a login from BugMeNot.
I’m ok with Wal-Amazon as long as it doesn’t destroy the world with blight-inducing, ecosystem eating sprawl… An guns. It’s bad to sell guns – especially in inner city New Orleans.
Flea is a feminist blogger who sells sex toys, not a flea market. And I agree, buy local. I’m a big supporter of Toys in Babeland. But I do think that the Amazon thing is a good deal, if only because it reaches women and men in rural and suburban locales, who may not otherwise have access to a sex toys store. It also allows the process of purchasing them to be more anonymous, so that people who are uncomfortable buying a sex toy face-to-face with someone has the option of doing it online. And lastly, adding sex toys to Amazon is a step toward normalizing them as products — they aren’t only available in the seedy, gay, or super liberal parts of town, and they’re considered as standard a product as anything else sold on Amazon.
Oh yeah, they are. Ever seen the episode of Sex & the City where Samantha attempts to return her huge “vibrator” to The Sharper Image? Hilarious. (And yes, I realize I am being stereotypical by mentioning Sex & the City. But we’re talking about sex toys here. Cut me some slack).