On a basic level, the book does just that. It provides a general overview of the types of toys available and describes material types as well as basics of playing with them. This book is definitely one that is geared towards beginners with toys so it starts from the premise of needing to convince your partner to play with them and needing to overcome personal embarrassment.

Now, there are certainly people out there that may have feelings of shame and embarrassment about sex toys but I’m not one of them. This irked me a little bit as I began reading but I was able to get past it to evaluate the information that was provided. And the information in this book is of good quality and reliable. However, there were some serious issues with it that ultimately turned me off pretty significantly.

Beyond the assumption of shame and negativity that the book started with, it also carries a strong assumption of heterosexual cisgender relationships. That assumption was one that I could not get past. A book like this has an opportunity to normalize a spectrum of sexual behavior, gender expression, and relationship styles by mentioning them as equally valid and Dr. Sadie Allison doesn’t choose to take that opportunity. The book is illustrated and the illustrations and text refer almost exclusively to hetero couples. The pictures of solo play depicted all depict female-bodied people. Even the chapter on anal play only has passing reference to the male prostate and otherwise assumes female-receptive anal sex. The only image in the book that depicts a same-sex couple is of two women in the section on double-ended dildos.

Beyond the huge blindspot of non-hetero sex, the book also has a somewhat obnoxious tone. Dr. Sadie Allison’s attempts to come off as playful and flirty end up sounding juvenile and embarrassing.  The jokes and puns all sound dorky and forced and they often come at the expense of complete information.

My final critique is the the book doesn’t make a single toy recommendation. Perhaps this is an attempt to appear neutral or keep the material up-to-date but some reference of particular toys and manufacturers would be an incredibly useful element that is simply not included.

In summary, Toygasms: The Insider’s Guide to Sex Toys, is a book that is stymied by inadequate scope. If you have no information whatsoever about sex toys at your disposal it might be helpful. But if you are sitting here right now, reading this review, you don’t fall in that category. With so much quality, specific, up-to-date, and gender-sensitive information available online, I can’t think of a reason to read a book like this. A great place to start, in fact, would be the Good Vibrations Magazine.

Download Episode #20 of Bedroom Radio (15MB, 24 minutes)

In this episode, I interview the amazing, prolific Rachel Kramer Bussel about her new book Spanked. We talk about our favorite ways to give and get spankings and she reads a very hot excerpt from the book.

Be sure to listen to learn about your chance to win a copy of Spanked for yourself! You have to hear the show to know the rules for the contest, but I’ll give you a hint. This picture of my tushy after a spanking is an important clue:

Other links of note for this episode:
The rest of the Spanked virtual book tour
The Spanked blog
Dark Odyssey Summer Camp

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Email: bedroomradio@gmail.com
Voicemail: 206-339-5939
Website: bedroomradio.blogspot.com
Blog: www.lumpesse.com
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Download Bedroom Radio #12 – Splish Splash (15MB/ 15minutes)

Join me in the hot tub for some fun with my special guest, J.

I wish I’d had this book with me at the hotel. . .

Questions, Comments, Naked Pictures – bedroomradio@gmail.com or 206-339-7357

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Read on for more photos.

Who knew that the porn studies field would be so couched in niceties that there wouldn’t be a single concise description of the state of interracial porn? There are plenty of screeds in the anti-porn, MacKinnon-esque camp to latch onto. But, in the world of people taking a rhetorical or cultural studies approach I found very little in terms of hard-hitting soundbites. So, who summed things up best, in my estimation?

None other than Sam the Man over at SugarBank in his post “Porn and Prejudice.” He says in a bulleted list what it takes the academics three chapters to write.

So, why am I linking to a 5-month-old entry in a blog you all read anyway? Because this week I cited it in a paper I wrote for a graduate seminar in Postcolonial theory. Sammy, step right up and receive your accolades with Judy, Michel, Gayatri, Frantz, and Homi.

The title of my paper? “Black Dicks in White Chicks:
fantasies of miscegenation, black power, and the colonization of
interracial desire”

I will be back in full force on Friday, I have one more big paper to finish before I can return to blogging on good conscience. However, I am doing a lot of work this semester on sex and sexuality so I thought I would hit you with some of the more provocative quotes from things I am reading and writing.

One research project is in the area of sexuality, violence, and colonialism. Frantz Fanon gives a touching and ambivilent perspective on this in Black Skin, White Masks:

Out of the blackest part of my soul, across the zebra striping of my mind, surges this desire to be suddely white.
I wish to be acknowledged not as black but as white.
Now – and this is a form of recognition that Hegal had not envisaged – who but a white woman can do this for me? By loving me she proves that I am worthy of white love. I am loved like a white man.
I am a white man.
Her love takes me into the noble road that leads to total realization. . .
I marry white culture, white beauty, white whiteness.
When my restless hands caress those white breasts, they grasp white civilization and dignity and make them mine.

There is something troubling about the female body as the site of counter-colonization but there is trouble to a lot of Fanon’s gender politics. More about that in the future. . .

I also recently delivered my paper on masculinity in the works of Kate Chopin. I’ve been delving pretty deeply into the masculinity studies literature but the best part of delivering papers with a psychoanalytic bent is watching everyone squirm in their seats when you talk about the phallus. Especially cigars conferred in homosocial gift situations as phallic symbols.

I leave all of you fellow bloggers with some words of encouragement from Michel Foucault, the theoretical ally of perverts and miscreants everywhere:

If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact of speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression.

May the transgressions carry on!

When a friend recommends a book to me, I am one of those rare people that actually picks it up and gives it a shot. Since I read about 700wpm in novels, I can risk investing my time in 50 pages of something just to see if it is worth finishing. Often, the book ends up back on the shelf or headed back to the library. I am a chronic book starter, often having 5-7 started books going at once.

Last week, however, I finished one. Now, finishing a book is not remarkable – I finish several books a week. However, I finished this book the same day I started it. I had no desire to dip in and out of this book, I didn’t want to put it down, and I certainly didn’t want to stop reading it all together.

It was recommended by a fellow blogger Shortly after I finished it, being the trendsetter that I am, this friend suggested that everyone read it and is willing to back up that suggestion. I have to admit that I concur.

With The Contortionist’s Handbook, Craig Clevenger has written one of the most compelling love stories that I have read in a long time. It doesn’t read like one from the beginning. In fact the protagonist renders love down to its most biological explanation by describing it as mere endorphins. However, this cynicism is witness to some incredibly gritty, realistic, and heart-breaking writing on the subject of crime, passion and addiction. The ending made me catch my breath and desperately search for closure. This is a novel that is infuriatingly good – the only thing left to do when I finished was to rush out and get his other book.

I am now half way through Dermaphoria, which is unfolding a bit like a dream. Clevenger’s new protagonist has a more philosophical tone (in contrast to the stark realism of The Contortionist’s Handbook) which suits the story and has drawn me in.

You’ll certainly hear more about it when I’m done reading as I love to kiss and tell. Plus, word on the street is that there is hot sex scene coming up.

I get to change my personality five times a night, stepping into other people’s ideals. I can guess — from a man’s greeting, from his clothes, his eyes — who his dream woman is, and I become her. I take on her bearing, her speech, her interests. It’s a lot like my shows, except I don’t have to come up with my own character or new rhymes.

The comparison between prostitution and live musical performance caught my eye. Carver’s book is billed as a post-punk memoir so it is expected that she would tie these elements together. However, I think there is more to the comparison than convenience. While I have had little peeks into various elements of the music industry through the years, one thing I haven’t been is a musician myself. The idea terrifies me as much as it excites me. That means my opinion on this question has to be taken with a grain of salt.

Still, the analogy seems to pan out at least a little bit. It also tells us that even the most innovative/independent performers, commonly assumed to be outside the realm of commercial influence, feel the impetus to sublimate themselves before the audience. Even when money isn’t the driving factor the imperative to please the audience means that the performer (sexual or musical) has to change themselves to meet someone else’s fantasies.